***Gigabyte P35X owner's lounge***

You don't happen to run fans on the Stealth setting do you?

I thought unplugging ac and plugging in again solved this, but it seems the problem came back. However as soon as I clicked 'auto fans' full speed cpu came back. Didn't have chance to try anything else but wondered if the Stealth fan setting also changes power settings not just fan speed?

 

Yeah I'd like to delete the D: partition and just have one larger drive in RAID0. I believe the best way to do this would be simply to delete the D: partition?

Why Gigabyte have done the above setup has me scratching my head.

 

Hi all,

Just an update for anyone who wanted information on buying from HIDevolution in the US. I placed an order for the P35X at the start of Nov and they took my money immediately. One month later the laptop hasn't arrived in stock and I cancelled my order last week. I'm still waiting on a refund and I have to say I am disappointed with the level of customer support. Hope that information helps anyone thinking of buying.

Cheers,

Jamie

 

Use 'Disk Management' in Windows to accomplish these tasks. Type in 'Disk Management' into the search bar of windows.

 

In case the D: partition is not directly next to C: partition in the Device Manager, which you won't be able to merge it into the system partition, then you'll need to use partition software, such as Easeus Partition Master (free).

Regards

 

I'll jump back on it tomorrow and delete the D: drive partition. Unfortunately ran out of time tonight. Will post back how I go tomorrow.

 

Quick Question.

Why did you want the P35x V3 over the Aorus X7 Pro?

Simply the battery life?

If you had to do it all over again would you go with the X7 Pro with 970M SLI?

 

Price been one of the factors, and also not all game support SLI, lastly the P35X was available much earlier than Aorus X7 Pro.

If I were to go back in time and given enough fund, I'd go for Eurocom 980m SLI because I can.

Regards

 

Pommie, the reason your drives are weird is because they weren't installed by gigabyte. As far as I know, they only make a 1080p 128 add and 1 tb hdd, while you are getting more. It is the resEller that you ordered from that installed them that way.

 

Just a quick note to confirm that I've tested the 'Stealth' fan mode from Smart Manager and this does restrict the CPU to 1.6ghz even with AC (takes a minute or so to kick in) I feel a bit silly for not realizing this before but I guess it makes sense that to run with minimal fans the power mode is restricted, it just doesn't say anything in the manual or online.

Anyway this has solved what I thought was my issue with CPU being stuck in battery mode, hopefully this will help others understand what this fan mode does too...

It's actually pretty useful as I realised I've been playing several older games and getting really good performance but with low temps and no fan noise

 

Ah well that makes sense, you can't expect highest performance on stealth mode! I'm glad to hear there was a simple solution and it wasn't a hardware fault.

Sent from my Nexus 5

 

Ok D: partition deleted, now to install the W8.1 upgrade from the CD.

 

I just ordered the P35xv3-CF5 on newegg.

I really like 1080p and do not want to even think about scalling issues. Gaming at 1080p is fine for me.

I was extremely close to getting the Aorus X7 Pro but believe it or not I really want optimus and longer battery life.

Last option was the GS60 6GB which I loved but the battery life is horrible and it's 1899 or 2099. For the same price I get double the battery life and the best card in the biz.

I just hope the CF5 screen is not gargabe. I hope it's IPS but I don't think it is. Should be okay because these matte TN screens are nice. Does anyone know if the 1080p screens are ip's or not? And if not are they still decent?

Well Anyways ...

This laptop will come in just in time because I have to ship off to the in laws soon and this will come in just in time. lol.

Wish me luck everyone.

 

I'm glad to see newegg is finally carrying other versions than the CF4. It looks like the CF5 is just a CF2 with 16GB of ram instead of 8GB? Why that upgrade alone is $100 more than Xotic is beyond me. For some reason I was under the impression that the 1080P screens were IPS. Maybe I'm wrong on that. Have fun with your laptop, I'm jealous.

 

Thank you so much.

I did rush processing and next business day so I should have it Wednesday for sure.

Man that would be awesome if it is IPS.

SLI vs 980M was a very hard decision for me but I just wanted to play all games with no headaches. Just plug and play and with 8GB of ram should be fine for years.

Did you order one from somewhere else?

 

Also...

For experienced owners could you give me a step by step guide on what to do so I do not get BSOD?

So far I am thinking.

1. Install windows updates immediately and like 10 at a time.
2. Install driver updates 1 at a time.
3. Undervolt CPU.

I think that is it. Please advise if there is anything else.

 

Just got the CF5 also! It'll be here tomorrow. Yay Newegg local express! Not yay CA tax. Better than waiting for xoticpc...

 

Sadly I haven't ordered mine yet. I want to pay off my CC before I buy something else. I agree with the single 980m vs SLI 970m, I'll take the single card.

 

Lol not ya CA tax. Made me laugh. But man that tax is worth it. You will be gaming hard core wherever you in tomorrow's time.

Congrats.

I was literally refreshing every hour because I just had a feeling they were going to drop a 1080p version today. I literally ordered the second I saw it.

 

How often are you getting BSOD? Anything in particular you are doing at the time? Have you tried a complete wipe and starting again?

 

Oh its not me my friend. I have just have literally read this entire thread from Cakefish's excitement of purchasing his p35x to his sad demise in returning it.

It almost made me not get one. Also a lot of other users returned theirs because of reasons.

A few people have had good luck though with some tweaking and I do not mind tweaking.

You might be another person who has not had any problems.

I just hope I do not get one with problems. But I think I will be okay now because I know what to do when certain things happen.

 

Same boat. I'm still not entirely sure how to go about updating all the drivers. It seems that you should use the smart manager to update everything except the nvidia drivers. For nvidia, just use the geforce experience program. And before all of this, should I be doing windows updates first?

 

From what I have read do windows update out of the box about 5 or 10 at a time.

Then

Update drivers manually without smart update and simply unistall it. Because it has caused issues.

I think someone has had good luck with smart manager though so maybe they have fixed it.

Intel chip set driver is critical.

And possibly light undervolting via xtu but I probably won't even do that because I am not going to drill my laptop into the ground.

I just want to game nicely when I want to and take notes in class with decent battery life.

This laptop should accomplish this without a hitch.

 

Well after scratching my head at the RAID situation and getting that sorted out. I did the following:

Popped in the W8.1 pro update CD, followed the prompts and installed 8.1 to my RAID0 SSD.

Loaded into W8.1, then used the provided gigabyte driver CD and set it to auto install all drivers.

Then ran Nvidia experience program and updated the GPU drivers.

Now in the process of installing Steam and Origin.

Oh and I am seriously not liking Windows 8 at the moment. It works brilliant on a tablet, but for a mouse only desktop..? No.

 

Now in the process of installing Steam and Origin.

lol.

That is the exact order I will be doing as well.

Just install classic shell. It's a dream to windows 8.

 

I have done all of my driver updates with the smart update except the nvidia driver which i used the geforce experience driver for. Since i did this i have had no issues. I did get one BSOD but this occured when i reset my computer to factory, before i updated drivers.

 

I have yet to have any errors/BSOD occur. * Fingers crossed. Oh and I've lost my 2tb HDD. Looks like I need to name the drive in disk management to get it back in My Computer.

So far, so good. No regrets yet...

 

... Sexy ...

 

By intel chipset drivers, you're not talking about the wifi card, right?

 

No the important one.

Intel chipset driver.

That is a big one and will stop BSOD if you are experiencing it.

 

Whoops didn't see that I just repeated myself there.

It's the motherboard chipset Intel driver. You can usually get it from gigabyte or from Intel but preferably gigabyte.

 

For people concerned about BSODs:
I've had mine for about a week now and haven't had any problems- i've updated all my drivers ( not even the ones on the gigabyte website but the newest versions i found on the net), installed something like 1,5 GB of windows updates at once, even updated geforce experience and i have yet to see a problem. I just avoided gigabytes Smart Update, because it has a bad rep.
After a few days i ( like a total idiot) even re-flashed the BIOS while another windows update was running , the system restarted after the re-flash, windows took a bit longer in setting up the update, but the system worked normally after that ( well windows update made problems after that, but i fixed that with a command line fix i found).
Been doing all the normal notebook stuff - browsing, watching videos, music, gaming an hour or so per day and the system has been stable ( knock on wood )
So far (hence for the freaking EC issue hopefully fixed in the next BIOS) i love this notebook. The performance, even with the throttling is still better then my Asus G750JH. And speaking of that thing heres a comparison ( yes , my phone has a terrible camera) :

 

Your info really helped clarify my thinking on this laptop, thanks for that.

Like others, I'm sure, I've followed the thread and felt swayed back and forth between pulling the trigger and not with each positive and negative report owners have given. The complicating factor, for me anyway, was so many owners had updated the hardware and/or done Windows installs from images/discs or had modifications by resellers that it was hard to know if the issues they had with this laptop were inherent in the laptop itself or possibly a consequence of the modifications/changes they had effected.

In terms of the throttling, I'm interested to know if you have seen actual issues in games with that or is it just something detected on benchmarks/monitoring software?

If throttling does manifest in practical issues, are you able to give any examples of the issues and which games you've experienced them in? I'm trying to gauge if the throttling is just a slow down here and there in particular games or more widely/frequently disruptive.

Also, I wonder about your ambient temperature where you are, as it occurs to me that lower ambient temps would make a difference to temperature issues. My ambient here is around 18 much of the time and given that the most detailed published review I've seen was done at, I think, 23 it occurs to me that my lower ambient may make a noticeable difference. If I throw in a cooling pad, i should see temps quite a bit cooler than the review and that could obviously have a big impact on temp issues.

 

The only 2 games i have currently installed that can challenge this hardware are Shadow of Mordor and COD Advanced Warfare. In SOM the throttling was noticeable - starting of and a nice smooth framerate of above 60 fps to mid 40's when throttling became extreme (please note this is still faster then a 780M, which runs at mid 30's at the same settings). I think gigbytes fan profiles are partially to blame - even on auto they try to be way to quiet and hence spin to slow and move to little air. Your only alternative is "max fans" which is to loud ( but not overly so, I've heard much louder laptops). It would be awesome if we could edit the fan profiles...

In COD:AW the throttling is practically unnoticeable - gameplay remained smooth and above 60 fps although the cpu throttled down to the low 2 Ghz range.

I even ran SOM on "max fans" for like 20 minutes and the cpu stopped throttling, and even kicked in a little turbo here and there. So if you game on some good headphones, you can leave it on max fans and enjoy a throttle-free gameplay. a notebook cooler would probably help aswell.

I'm going to repaste mine with some Liquid Ultra on both CPU and GPU this weekend ( go big or go home ) which should improve the throttling quite a bit. I'll be also installing some Crucial Balistix 1866 Mhz CL10 ram in it ( i have the cheapest version with only 1 8GB stick of CL11 ram) and undervolt the cpu slightly.

I can't be sure about the ambient temp - the thermostat was set to 21 C, but it was in another room, so i cant give you exact numbers.

As for the 1,6 Ghz issue - changing the fan profiles does not affect my unit - when its stuck in this "low power" mode its stuck. No matter what i do, except for throttlestop etc., the cpu gets stuck at 1,6 Ghz.
The GPU behaves curiously as well - after every restart its stuck in battery mode, but unplugging the PSU and re-connecting it solves the issue. Fix the damn EC Gigabyte!.

 

Thanks for the further detailed info, much appreciated. Just got to wait for stock to come in now and I'll be ordering.

 

I agree about the fan profiles, I think they should update the auto-high fan profile to go a bit higher, its loudest state doesnt come close to the max fan profile and it actually stays pretty quiet even when it throttles from heat. I suppose it could be argued that if it went as high as max fan there would be no need for the max fan profile at all. So, with how it is set up now, you can game with near silence, or you can game with very loud fans, theres really no middle ground.

 

Just reran the 3dmark benchmark program in max fan profile, ran it 3 times back to back and got zero thermal throttling in all tests. Here are the graphs using intel ETU
View attachment 118800
View attachment 118801
View attachment 118802

Was very surprised to see such a significant drop in temps. Max cpu was 86c out of all tests. I moused over cpu temp in one of the graphs and u can see the max in that test was 83c. In previous testing i used the auto-high fan mode and got thermal throttling everytime. Keep in mind i do also have IC diamond repaste so that might help a bit. The thermal throttle line is the green line on the lower part of graph that remains flatlined throughout.

 

Thermal throttling wasnt an issue after a while. The real enemy is Power Limit Throttling. Good job though, can still possibly drop a few more with liquid ultra, considering the CPU is soldered.

 

Didnt think to check that maybe ill run it again and see what i get.

Ran test again and did see a couple Power limit spikes, tho it did seem minimal. Here are results, again no thermal throttle unless you count the spike that occurred right as i started test.



Also, just to be clear these tests were run on the p35w v3 not the p35x doubt that it would make much of a difference but it might.

 

Different GPU... It definitely might! But this hint about fan profile is interesting, it was stated earlier in this thread that fan speed did not help at all. I am eager to see more tests here.

Edit: i said it might do a difference because on these laptops cpu and GPU share the same cooling system (unlike on the p650sx where they are separated), so increasing the GPU tdp can actually impact cpu temps.

 

If you google "Power Limit Throttling" There is virtually no information about it. XTU recently added it in there 4.0 something release.

I think we are trying to find a needle in a hay stack here with this laptop.

The little that I found out is that if you try to over clock your GPU you might run into power limiting problem. That should be expected.

But let's be real. The normal user wanting great performance out of this laptop is going to get it. If they run into some thermal or power throttling that is fine because the laptop is just trying to protect itself.

If you don't want that to occur buy a cooling pad, set fans on high, thermal paste, etc.

I think we should be thank full that we have desktop class components in a mac book type feel.

Is it going to be perfect? No.

From what I have read there is no throttling of any kind with 1080p play. Which is perfect for me.

I mean trying to play 3K games on a .19 inch laptop with fans on auto ofcourse you are going to get throttling either power or thermal.

To me it's a give in take. Like I said before. If you want thin and light for carrying around and good gaming on the go, your good but you will have to be sensitive to your system kind of like your own body. If pizza tears up your stomach, stay away from pizza.

If you want 24/7 hard core gaming nice and cooled. Purchase a big huge laptop. And that will be perfect for you. To me if I want to do that I'll build the ultimate gaming desktop. Nice and cooled and much much more powerful. But then I do not want to become a hermit right now.

I just want nice gaming on a cooling pad when I am at home a little here and there and great gaming on the go. Plus I can take notes with the 6 hour battery life when needed.

 

Bottom line is im very happy with this laptop and was thrilled to see that it is possible to prevent thermal throttling at least with the 3d mark demo (firestrike,skydiver, cloudgate, icestorm) benchmarks, by setting fan to max. Hopefully if others do the same they will get similar results. As far as the power limit throttling, it doesnt seem to hinder my gaming experience so im not concerned about it. Actually i wasnt concerned about the thermal throttling either but its been a topic of large debate so i figured id post my findings.

 

OMG! Seems my "low power" aka " stuck at 1,6 Ghz" issue was resolved by .... updating Smart Manager to the newest version !
I haven't done that thinking " what kind of functionality could they possibly have added? " but i read lamanian's post where he talked about the "auto-high" fan profile, which the old Smart Manager didn't have.

So i updated it over the gigabyte website and now when i set the fans to auto high or auto the cpu has no problems setting the multiplier according to load, all the way from 800Mhz to 3,5 Ghz ! I've tried multiple reboots, plugged in and battery , plugging in, unplugging - sometimes you have to change the windows Power Plan to high performance but IT WORKS! My CPU and GPU are no longer stuck in "low power" mode!

Big BIG shout out to markjk7 and lamanian for pointing me in the right direction ! :thumbsup:

 

Do you have the 1080p or 3K screen?

 

would you still avoid updating drivers via smart manager? Someone else mentioned that they used smart manager and no problems, perhaps people who had trouble were using the older version of it?

 

After weeks of no issues, I started having BSOD's again this morning, "DRIVER POWER STATE" issues came back. It would crash every time, just sitting idle in windows within a few mins. I was so annoyed leaving the house for work, not knowing why my computer suddenly started doing this again after weeks of performing good.

The only things I had changed recently were installing the original Assassins Creed I bought on GOG sale (never played any of the series yet) and Fraps. I remembered getting a physx message about more recent version already installed, but I didn't think it was likely that game caused the issue as I played it for a while before I went to bed with no issues. Then I remembered installing Fraps, only because Far Cry 3 was crashing on startup with afterburner.

I tested removing and reinstalling Fraps 3 times. Every time it was installed and allowed to start automatically on startup it would crash, if I uninstalled it or just kept it from starting automatically it was fine. I could even use it in game with no issues. Seems like a really weird issue, but at least I know what the cause was and how to avoid it.

I just wanted to post this in case someone else was fighting the BSOD issue and could see if this was the issue. For all I know, this could have been my original issue a month ago when I was initially getting them and at the time I blamed it on Nvidia driver issues. In my case it seems like Fraps has some incompatibility with something else on my system, or maybe even just how it is starting during windows startup.

 

wow.

Ya this is what I do not want to encounter. I get the laptop tomorrow.

So You think it truly lies in the program fraps?

Do you think it will eventually get fixed because it seems to be software related.

Is this serious enough for you to return it or are you confident enough that this is a small issue?

 

I am sure Fraps is causing it in my case, because it is repeatable every time. I am not sure if it will ever be "fixed" because who knows where issue lies, nvidia drivers, geforce experience, fraps, some combination of drivers? All I know is if I enable it to start automatically my machine will BSOD. No I will not return it as I don't think it is a hardware issue and any replacement will have the same issue. My machine has been rock solid hardware wise and I won't give that up.

 

Anyone have thermal compound recommendations? I'm considering the GC-extreme, but i'm worried about it drying out and not performing as well soon after a repaste.

 

With geforce experience (shadowplay), you dont need fraps. Just turn the FPS counter on when you enable shadowplay.

Have you tried booting up without AC power like we CF1 owners had to do to get it around?