The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
I've had Alienware M11x R3 before the P35X, and the highest temperature I got was 70 degree C (ULV dual core i7 and 540m).
On my Alienware, the palm rest and keyboard gets hot during gaming or other graphic extensive activities; P35X on the other hand stays very cool (on the palm rest and keyboard - the only place gets untouchably hot is the back end).
A lot of people have been saying that the 980 and 970 both have the same tdp but I just found an article that said this,"Thanks to the Maxwell architecture, the two mobile GPUs are more power efficient and offer greater performance. The GTX 980M and GTX 970M feature 1536 and 1280 CUDA cores, respectively. Naturally, the GTX 980 is the more powerful one with a GPU base clock of 1038MHz, while the 970M is clocked at 924MHz.
The mobile GPUs are built on the 28nm manufacturing process and feature up to 8GB of GDDR5 RAM and up to 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM for the GTX 970M and GTX 980M, respectively. The 980M is more power hungry than its less powerful brother with a TDP of 125 Watts against 95 Watts." Anyone know for sure what both their tdp is?
IF p35x v3 is running on 180W power supply (with 47W CPU + all other components, and we don't have power throttling on it, rather we seem to have temperature throttling) I bet 980m is at most 100W TDP.
980M runs cooler than both 880M and 780M in results that have been seen. The current consumption is less than the 780M and 880M, these 2 cards have about 120W consumption. 980M runs roughly temperature wise like a 680M which was a 100W chip, so the 980M uses about 100W. The 970M uses significantly less juice than the 980M, probably about 75W.
Cake fish or someone else saw power throttling on benchmarks somewhere in thus thread, but that is only in benchmark situations and not actually gaming.
I don't know all the info seems to vary from different sources ive seen them listed as the same tdp and seen the 970m listed as low as 81 tdp. I am hoping that the 970 runs on a little less power, it would make sense as it is nowhere near as powerful.
100% for definite - the 970M uses less juice than the 980M, it has to, it's clocked lower & has quite a few less cores too. I think you're safe going with 75-80W for the 970M and 100W for the 980M - in terms of current consumption.
We'll see in a week's time.
I've just encountered a Driver Power State Failure BSoD, and after I uninstall the SM Bus driver (no idea what it is or where it come from, but it has that exclaimation mark in the Device manager), everything goes back to normal.
Regards
Turns out it was the Intel Chipset Device driver. Update the druver and the exclaimation mark is gone. Let's see if that happen again, if ever.
Each piece of the computer requires a certain amount of power (watts) to run. However, the power supply the computer uses is only rated for 180w. Therefore, if the hardware needs more power than 180w to run at full speed, it will throttle, and that is called power throttling.
When I have the time I'll go searchung through the 172 oodd pages for benchmarks, but I distinctly remember at least one (after repaste, uv, and cooler) that had power throttling)
BTW cakefish, could you update your first post with all the bencharks you have done? It still only has a few of them.
You misunderstand me. When I say in a week's time, I meant unsatisfactory return. But you can be right, thou. Clevo was due out end of Nov or start of Dec when I read about it. What's the date, @Cakefish ?
All power limit throttles says 0% (i am on phone, am i not seeing something?) and current throttle is something associated with turbo clocks right? We already know that gigabyte limited turbo to 3.3ghz. Also unigine is super gpu heavy not a good point of reference, better check 3dmark 11 or firestrike.
edit: saw it on the left (damn phones) but weird that it also says 0 on the right. I think that is associated with turbo clocks. In the worst case you can get a better power supply (i think aorus should fit) to get around it. Though i still think 980m is 100w tdp.
Since someone asked if we if we had to do it again, would we buy the P35X. Here's my opinion.
For 15", I would get the P35Xv3 w/ 4710 CPU & 1080p. The reason is because while 3k is very nice, i don't like the upscaling within Windows and the fact that I wear glasses and have bad eyes. I could change things around but its so annoying. I would try out the 4710 and see if throttles as badly as the 4860. I would also try out the Origin PC Evo-15S, I believe its based on the GB P35.
For 17", I would get GS70-099, which I ended up with after I returned the P35Xv3-CF1. I would also default to this model if the lowered CPU version of the P35X throttles and Origin PC Evo-15S ends up just like the P35X.
The power throttling that XTU reports is when the CPU reaches the 47W TDP limit. When Intel CPUs start throttling because of power consumption, they will reduce the amount of turbo boost. This causes the CPU to run slower which reduces power consumption which keeps the CPU under the TDP limit. All Intel mobile CPUs that have a 47 Watt limit can reach that power limit if pushed hard and will power throttle no matter what laptop the CPU is in. A bigger power adapter cannot fix this issue. It is a limitation built into these Intel mobile CPUs.
The thermal throttling at 90°C seems to be the biggest issue with the P35X. The default cooling solution is inadequate for normal use. Gigabyte should have spent a couple of more dollars on a better CPU heatsink and fan and Gigabyte should have followed the Intel recommended maximum temperature which is 100°C and not 90°C for a 4710HQ. Reducing the thermal throttling temperature reduces maximum performance.
A 970M will reduce the overall heat in the laptop chassis so can indirectly help the CPU to run cooler, also the CPU is joined to the GPU via a heatpipe so this has a further beneficial effect if the GPU doesn't get as hot. How much of a difference it will make to the temperature or throttling of CPU is hard to quantify, but I would still expect the CPU to throttle when pushed hard.
Is the CPU throttling due to temps unavoidable? I am deciding between this and the Clevo P650SE, and if both experience CPU throttling, I will likely get the Gigabyte P35W v3, but if the Clevo does not have these problems, then I will probably get it. I like the size of the P35W, but I do not want to have to deal with constant throttling due to heat.
If the Clevo can handle heat well, I may well have XoticPC overclock it as well, which does not sound like a good idea with the P35W.
- How does this thing carry, and how quickly do you find yourself able to set up and pack up when you're on the go?
- Has the notebook had the same wireless card and chassis fragility issues that cakefish reported?
- Is this the best option for the <= 15" wide, <=.8" thick laptops as seen
here?
From what we've seen, the CPU of the P650SE also throttles, but mostly when it's put under stress tests and like. So far, it seems that the CPU clocks remain stable during gaming, straight out of the box.
The P35W remains somewhat of an unknown quantity at this point - but If you don't plan on getting a notebook cooler and/or re-pasting and undervolting the CPU in both the Gigabytes, then I'd avoid it.
Quick answer to anyone who asked about TDP differences 970m/980m
This article points out the differences
970M - 95W (estimated)
980M - 125W (estimated)
Worth to read the table on the 2nd page of the article. Very good & quick way to compare the 970M/980M
Seems there is a lot of talk about the P35x v3 CPU throttling more than it's other 15inch competitors. I do believe you and certainly don't deny what you are reporting...but can anyone tell me is this issue only present at extreme stress conditions that is hardly applicable to real world usage, or does it actually pose a real issue?
I have 2 burning questions:
1) Since this is a gaming laptop, has anyone done FPS comparisons for games like BF4 (or any others) on the P35x v3 before and after throttling to show what effect this has?
2) Again, using games as an example (BF4 being a popular choice for benchmarking) is there a good review/database that shows exactly how long into gaming the CPU throttles?
I understand you can squeeze a tiny bit more power out of the CPU by undervolting and repasting, but is this really necessary for most users? Is CPU performance going to be noticeably better on any other slim form factor laptops with i7-4710HQ? I plan to take advantage of XoticPC free ICDiamond repaste, in any case.
Benchmarks for running games on the Gigabyte P35x seem to be pretty amazing across the board with no undervolting, no repasting, not even laptop cooler, consistently well over 120fps in BF4 at 1080p, etc., and BF4 is a relatively CPU-intensive game if I understand correctly.
CPU is a bit more important for certain 64-bit creative apps I use regularly, but it seems all the slim notebooks currently on the market ship with i7-4710HQ, so I'm guessing if I'm not able to go with larger sized laptop like the Clevo 751zm, the P35x is going to be about as good in this regard as any other slim laptop, no? Certainly will be much more powerful than the 820QM in my current laptop, right?
It's often unavoidable in thin & light notebooks. See if you can find some reviews for the P650SE to find out what the CPU performance/throttling is like.
It's thin, it's relatively light weight, and if I don't have to take my 3 external HDDs and mechanical keyboard with me, then you just unplug the P35X, put the piece of cloth (that come with the laptop) on to protect the screen from the finger grease left on the keyboard. Put it in your bag and go.
If your bag that can carry A4 size notebook, then P35X will just fit into it. The screen is quite easy to flex when set up, but it's very sturdy when it's closed.
As for the WiFi issue, I've used it at home with Android's hotspot, as well as WiFi on the university campus, didn't encounter any problems. We (Cakefish him/herself included) are quite certain he/she received a faulty card.
In conclusion: as of today, you can't get a laptop with 980m as portable as P35X.
Yep, they point out that those are estimates, and I think they're way off from the real world data I have seen. I linked some power consumption figures from a review of 980M a few pages back, no way a cool running 980M uses 125W, that's the same as the 880M and the 980M runs way cooler. 970M approx 75W, 980M approx 100W.
Search the thread just a few pages back for information & charts posted by Mr Najsman - he tested BF4 specifically & showed charts showing CPU throttling & GPU performance, CPU throttling happened almost immediately but became more severe after about 10mins (from my memory). There was a corresponding slight drop in general GPU usage as throttling became more severe, so it will lower frame rates in that game somewhat, but he didn't measure fps.
Mr. Najsman said he experienced micro-stuttering every 1 or 2 minutes on BF4 in a graph that showed a huge amount of CPU throttling. While he didn't confirm 100% that it was due to CPU throttling, the CPU frequency dips every minute or so in the chart meant it was very symptomatic of the kind of throttling I observe on my machine. The maximum, overall or average FPS doesn't matter to me as much as the minimum FPS. Maybe I'm overly weary of CPU throttling (as it's destroyed my gaming lifel with my current laptop) but that's the kind of thing I'd want to avoid at all costs and if I could get a more consistent FPS on a machine with a 970m, and a CPU that remains stable, I'd take it.
Having said that, the P35x + 1080p + IC Diamond + Notepal U3 still remains my primary buying choice for my next notebook. Just waiting for some more results from other laptops and users before I make the final decision.
Yes, I do intend on updating it with more details. Just a bit busy these past few weeks and next with lots of uni-related coursework. I'll have more time the closer we get to the Christmas holidays.
My preordered Clevo has an ETA of Friday 12th December and should be delivered the following week.
Any others tried BF4 with this laptop? Have you experienced stuttering?
From this video, looks like the minimum frame rate should be around 100+fps on lower settings with no MSAA (still looks good IMO). Looks quite smooth for this unit with no cooler, no repaste or undervolting.
Ok, then isn't the Cyberpower PC FangBook Edge based on GB P35 then? It has a 4870 CPU and I know they have other models based on GB so I probably got them mixed up. NM since it has the 4870 CPU and no other options.
Nope, still gs60, check the chassis, they are the same. Btw if Cyberpower was selling this with the 3k display instead of the 4k 48hz bs, I would have bought it.
Interesting. Sucks these 4k screens come in 48hz. Is Cyberpower and Origin a reputable OEM? Not much traffic in Cyberpowers forum and dont see an Origin forums here on NBR. I actually like Origin for their simple non-flashy design like Gigabyte. MSI Dragon is a little too flashy for me.
I was thinking of Origin PC at one time with the 870m but read they ran hot and 900m coming out soon so i waited. Thought of them again when the 970m were released but pricing was just too high 2.4k+ and release date was in Dec which I couldn't wait that long. At least now they went down in price a bit and better deals than when the new model was announced.
Hi all,
Been following the thread for a few weeks now and have a CF4 on order but still awaiting stock. I'm getting a little worried about all the recent negative talk of software issues and cpu throttling, and am on the verge of cancelling my order.
To all the current owners: I understand the laptop will throttle under stress testing and certain demanding games, but how is "real life" performance? I want to be able to game at native resolution above 30fps in games like Wargame:ALB, recent fps titles and some older classics. I'm not a tech fiddler and probably won't bother undervolting, I just want it to work as it is out of the box.
Would you advise me to stick with my order or cancel until a better laptop becomes available?
Do you say to not game with it on your lap because of the heat it gives off when under demand from games? I do game with my laptop on my lap at times, is that a big problem?
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
