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

I've browsed through the topic and apparently I was referring to this Gentech video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F_h3tn3Ek0&t=12m
However, Gentech responded a few posts below my initial post saying he disconnected the cable earlier for easier filming:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gigabyte/764645-gigabyte-p35x-v3-owner-s-lounge-158.html#post9845703

Sorry for the false information.

I got a confirmation of OCUK today that they've tested my unit. It is indeed dead and they are shipping it back to Gigabyte for repairs or a replacement unit. Can take up to 28 days. Wohoo....

 

Having it die in less than six months is quite an issue. Gigabyte needs to do some thorough QA testing.

 

And improve this cooling system... It makes me sad, it was almost it. They have room to add a heatpipe on cpu. This laptop is so close to the perfect laptop for my usage its flaws itch me to death

 

Is it really that bad? I thought you didn't really notice the throttling?

 

No it is not that bad after all! You can plug the pc and play right out of the box, with 50-60 fps on ultra anygame! But I am an enthusiast and knowing my laptop throttles I needed to repaste to extract the few percent of performance you are losing with throttling. And the fact is that between the two iterations of p35, they did not try to improve the cooling, we are lucky that maxwell is very temp efficient.

 

I had mine repasted with IC diamond from seller and decided to try out arctic silver 5 for the heck of it and ive found that ic diamond was better before and after the arctic silver 5. I only had the arctic on for 4 days so it may not have reached its full potential but i cant see how it would drop enough to rival the diamond. there were a few scratches on my cpu tho from the diamond but it doesnt seem to effect my temps so Im not worried about it. So if your gonna repaste IC diamond is the best in my experience.

 

Liquid pro worked good for me, I am a bit concerned for removal/reapplication though, hope it will not be too soon

 

Once a year if not overclocking or running at 80+ every day.

 

Yeah.. It is not every day but gaming is a journey between 80 and 90 for each AAA game.

 

Price is without any HDD's installed tho, ill buy a mx100 512gb when it arrives.

Thanks mate! Finally I can join the discussion and offer advice based on first hand experiences!

Sent from my GT-I9300

 

Have to agree for the most part, between 80 and 90. I think it's gotten a lot better with the re-paste because now I'm only seeing occasional spikes of 90 and 91 (it's usually somewhere between 70 and 87 during games). I read some rumour (in another forum) that Noctua NT-H1 "evaporates" after 4 days but it's been 7 days now and my temps are still a few degrees lower than they were before I re-pasted.

 

Whelp... was playing csgo, then sound popped, screen turned off, and laptop rebooted. Hope that doesn't happen again.

 

That is pretty unusual, do you think heat caused it?

 

Lol heat from csgo?

Sent from my GT-I9300

 

Could be a driver thing. Don't worry about the pop, that sound happens when the laptop restarts suddenly (like when mine BSODs) and the speakers turn off.

I cannot imagine that CS: Go causes heat problems, it's over 2 years old and not very graphically or CPU intensive.

 

Haha yeah I know, I was trying to be ironic.. Too bad for me. Anyway it may come from a lot of thing, and can be totally random. If it happens again, start worrying, for now on I would let it go

 

Just wanted to share with you my results pre- and post repaste with liquid ultra.Now I didn't think it would make sense comparing temps, as the CPU will still get hot an throttle, but i wanted to share with you

So here's XTU , about 30 minutes playing Shadow Of Mordor pre repaste:



Lowest CPU frequency achieved : 1,36 Ghz - Thats extreme, but please note this was the final battle from the Lord of the Hunt DLC, there are about a million Ghouls and other monsters on screen and it wasnt noticeable in game. The cpu hovers in the 1,8 Ghz- 2 Ghz range while playing normally.

Heres SOM after the repaste:



Lowest CPU Frequency: (couldnt quite catch it while taking the screenshot at the same time) was 1,86 Ghz.I fought a huge pack of orcs at the at the arena to simulate the final battle from the DLC. - CPU typically hovered around 2,2 -2,5 Ghz while playing normally.

So in conclusion a repasting will net you 500 to 700 Mhz more in Shadow of Mordor.

I can also say that i played the new Tomb Raider for something like 5-6 hours straight and there was no throttling on max settings (except for motion blur and the stupid hair-tech, 2x SSAA). I mean none- the cpu was constantly at 3,3 Ghz and the Frequency line was perfectly flat. Sadly it was 4AM , i had a few beers and forgot to take a screenshot.

I can also comment on one small issue i had (if you can even call this an "issue")-after installing the newest nvidia drivers the "spining circle" under the gigabyte logo you get at startup was extremely distorted. It fixed itself after a reboot.

Other than that the system was rock-solid, and i love almost everything about it (except the dam touchpad, which is one of the worst i've ever used)

 

Thats weird, I actually think the touch pad is quite good on this laptop. Did you try turning down the sensitivity on it? Mine is set so its like one notch above lowest sensitivity setting and it works great.

 

Did you run max fans with the back of the laptop propped up?

 

I normally use a laptop cooler and low auto fan. This happened when the laptop was on a flat surface and set to high auto fan, no cooler.

 

No, that's Auto-high, flat on my desk. The ambient temp could have been slightly higher than normal - i was sick last week so i cranked up the heater a bit.

The sensitivity is not the problem, its the "tap to click" that almost never works for me.

 

It's a good touchpad for a Windows laptop. Customizing the settings helps a lot. I was fighting the touchpad out of the box - it would miss taps constantly until I turned down palm tracking.

As for the rest of the laptop, I love the performance, thin form factor, understated appearance, and battery life. With an IC Diamond repaste, I haven't seen excessive throttling and max temps are around 85-89*C for the CPU, and 81-84*C for the GPU. I haven't undervolted. I'm saving that and a Liquid Pro repaste if heat becomes an issue in the summer. The downsides - the whole laptop is a fingerprint magnet, I have a noticeable bulge centered over the A key, and wifi on the 5 GHz band is inconsistent. For example, I can stream a movie just fine over the 2.4 GHz band but as soon as I switch to the much less crowded 5 GHz band, there's buffering and stuttering. I have a desktop with a 5 GHz wifi card right next to the laptop that performs flawlessly. I blame Intel rather than Gigabyte for this and am considering swapping to a Killer network card.

 

Finally, the P35X V3 CF-2 is in stock.
I plan to upgrade it with Corsair 16gb 2133Mhz ram (since the price is same for 1600 and 2133), 1TB mSATA 840 Evo (still choose between 2.5 inch SSD and mSATA).
For wifi, I read through the thread; it sames that AC7260 has couple problems, should I change it to Killer wireless?
I'm not a tech guy, and seek for suggestions with my upgrade choices, thank you.

 

Are you upgrade through your retailer or DIY? I'd choose 2.5" over mSATA coz there are much cheaper 2.5" SSD available on the market (unless the extra paid for mSATA is less than 2.5" upgrade). But get mSATA SSD if there's an unoccupied mSATA port, this way you utilize all the available storage spaces.

You can definitely replace Intel WiFi card with a Killer WiFi.

Regards

Edit: I forgot to mention that, my every attempts I to install Windows on 2.5" SSD have been ended with failure: whole system frozes within 5 minutes after start up. Something to lookout for.

 

Phew, it's taken me pretty much three whole evenings to go read the thread and it's been very useful.

Anyway, I have decided to try out the P35X V3 CF3 as I am sending back my MSI GS60 2QE (The limited edition gold one) as it has a clump of dead pixels on the screen. At the moment I have both laptops in front of me, so if anyone would like a comparison let me know.

Off the top of my head (The Gigabyte arrived about 30 minutes ago and I am making the backup image), the first thing I noticed after taking it out of the box was that the keyboard has a sensible 'Return' key on the Gigabyte, as I touch type, I was constantly pressing the hash key on the MSI which bugged the hell out of me. I also noticed the hump in the middle of the keyboard on the Gigabyte, this looks very odd the first time you see it, I have read that people have removed/ tightened the keyboard screws so I will have a go at that at some point, but out the box under artificial light, it does look strange. In daylight it may be fine.
One other quick thought, I prefer the touchpad on the Gigabyte, I agree with a previous poster that sometimes you end up clicking twice on it before the mouse click is registered, but in the scheme of things, I never really got on with the weird raised surface on the MSI.

Obviously the colour of the gigabyte is a lot more discreet than the gold MSI as well.

Anyway, let me know if you want some comparisons done, I will have both laptops all weekend and thanks to all previous posters, it has been great reading up on the laptop before receiving it.

 

Any idea how long it takes to run the USB backup, it's been just over 2 hours so far and it's still going. I am using a Sandisk 32gb usb3.0 stick

 

When I got the laptop it came with messed up WiFi drivers, so if USB backup needs an Internet connection, that might be the problem. I suggest rolling back to the Microsoft driver, and then taking the windows update (not the smart uodate) for WiFi drivers. Otherwuse I have no idea.

 

From memory didn't take that long, maybe update all the gigabyte tools first, start with smart update one. Then try again?

 

Thanks for the reply guys, I have put the back up on hold until this evening and will leave it running over night.

First impressions are that it is an awesome laptop, one thing that is bugging me slightly though is that after checking the internet speed I am only getting between 40 and 42mb's a second on wifi, On the MSI I am consistently getting 160mb's (I have 160mbs broadband with Virgin media). I have tried updating the wifi drivers via the smart update program but no difference, I then rolled them back using device manager (Intel Dual Wireless-AC 7260) and then using device manager updated them using Microsoft's drivers, but still get 40mb's a second.

The only reason I would like to get 160mb's is that I will be downloading a load of games on Steam later, and it is a shame to be limited by the download speed. Any thoughts please, I know I can change the card at a later date, but I shouldn't need to considering the price I paid for the laptop.

Thanks

 

As stated early on in thread. The AC7260 is incapable of having consistent speeds and wont perform too well outside of the 5.0 band. It does spike/drop every 5 minutes or so for me during the time I had it. My current laptop has the killer wireless and it has been stable so far.

 

Thanks for your reply, can I ask what killer wireless card you have please, I have run a search on Google and there appear to be various types out there, also, is it fairly easy to change.

 

This is the standard wireless upgrade offered by many resellers killer n1202 http://www.pcworld.com/product/1253614/killer-wireless-n-1202.html

 

Thanks for the replies, I have done some searching and found that the problems with the network card can be helped by installing the Intel Pro Set wireless software, I installed the latest version 17.13.11 from the following site (The 99mb file) and not only has it increased my speeds to the max I haven't had any disconnections so far - https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProdId=3714
I guess time will tell, but fingers crossed and cheers for the info on the Killer wireless card in case I need to go down that route in the future.

 

Could you do a comparison of build and screen quality? Apart from the dead pixels of course, which screen is better?

Also, how do the temps comoare?

Sent from my GT-I9300

 

Ok, here goes my quick comparison between the gigabyte p35x v3 CF3 and the limited edition (Gold colour) msi gs60 2qe.

Screen – MSI GS60 2QE wins
I prefer the MSI screen as it is brighter and appears to have a better clarity. I was unlucky as I have dead pixels and an annoying bright spot on my laptop. One downer on the MSI is that it is more reflective than the Gigabyte although it has a matt finish, it isn’t bad at all, but I am typing this while sitting in the conservatory in day light (No direct sun), but I can see the daylight reflection coming through the blinds behind me on the MSI but can hardly see anything on the Gigabyte.

Keyboard – Gigabyte wins –
I prefer the Gigabyte keyboard personally, I can touch type on it no problem where I was constantly hitting the hash key on the MSI keyboard instead of the ‘Return’ button (Seems an odd layout to me). This is just must my personal preference. I don’t particularly like the uneven keyboard on the Gigabyte , but apart from that it is absolutely fine.
The colours underneath the MSI keyboard are multi coloured, the Gigabyte only has white. I have never worried too much about a flexible keyboard personally, I would say that both are fine in this respect.

Size – MSI wins because it is lighter and slightly thinner, the other dimensions are very similar. The Gigabyte is not bad at all though and considering the components inside, it is an amazing achievement, I would be very happy to throw the Gigabyte into a rucksack and travel with it.

Build quality – The Gigabyte wins
The Gigabyte is a beast, I don’t think it is going to fall apart. The screen (lid) on the MSI is already showing signs of coming apart and I have only had it a week. I noticed as soon as I took it out of the box that if I ran my finger along the top of the screen (Where the back and front bezels meet), I could feel it was rough it appears to now be parting at the corners. Both screens (darkened room and black screen) show signs of light bleed, but the MSI appears to be the worst.

Bloatware – Gigabyte appears to be fine for me, MSI has a little more but isn’t bad.

Storage – Gigabyte wins
Although the MSI comes with a 512gb SSD and a 1TB HD, I have marked the Gigabyte as the winner with its 256gb SSD as it can be upgraded easily with new hard drives and the optical drive can be changed as well.

Considering the Gigabyte has a GTX980 card compared to the GTX970 card in the MSI, I would have expected to see better framerates (This was the case as shown below) and more importantly as far as I am concerned playability –
3dMark – The following were run with both laptops sitting flat on a table in normal room temperature. I haven’t played with over/ under clocking on either of them and probably never will.
3dMark Fire strike
Gigabyte – 8307
MSI – 6635

3dMark – Fire strike Extreme
Gigabyte – 4291
MSI – 3378

Sorry, but I don’t have much time at the moment in regards to checking the heat side of things, I can however tell you that the MSI gets very hot, I normally play games while sitting on the sofa with the laptop on a lap tray, this works really well for me, but if I put my hands on the exhaust vents at the back of the MSI laptop they are very hot. I am assuming the same is the case on the Gigabyte but I can’t say I have checked.

The 3dMark scores above show that the Gigabyte is the stronger laptop in terms of frames per second etc, I know that this is very important to a lot of people but stability while playing games is what I am personally interested in. I haven’t had a chance to play much on the Gigabyte yet, but can confirm that while playing Starcraft 2 with lots of units on the screen on the MSI (max resolution 2880x1620) and the settings ramped all the way up, I was getting quite a bit of slowdown and quite frequent crashes (The screen would often hang), this didn’t happen on the Gigabyte. If you are prepared to play Starcraft on 1080p on the MSI it is fine (It is great to be able to play with settings maxed all the way up on the Gigabyte).

All in all I am very pleased with the Gigabyte, I had a problem initially with the wireless but look back a couple of posts and find the solution, apart from this it has been brilliant. One other thought, don’t download the updates to the Gigabyte Smart Switch software as neither the alleged stable or beta versions work (Not on my laptop anyway and I reset back to factory settings after the first attempt and even then they still didn’t work).

Hope this is helpful to people, it has confirmed in my mind that the Gigabyte is the better laptop for me, but this may not be the case for everyone.

 

Great comparison, but the gs60 IS the msi. The gigabyte one is the p35x. You're calling them by the wrong names.

 

Ha ha, I know I should have had a coffee before posting that , I have updated it so that hopefully it now makes more sense

Thanks for letting me know.

 

Hi!! I am considering about buying P34W and waiting for reviews about this laptop. What is bothering me is that there are several threads concerning about the issues on Maxwell cards such as this ( https://forums.geforce.com/default/...-gathering-low-gpu-load-and-other-issues-/29/). The main issue seems to be about a low gpu usage even for playing gpu-intensive new games. Another issues seems to be the low usage of video RAM for gtx970 (Above 3.5gb there are severe stutters). Since P35X/W was out some times ago, there should be many owners of these laptops who have playing games enough time to estimate the capability of Maxwell mobile cards in real world gaming. Please enlighten me about if mobile Maxwell cards run games without any issues in laptops or not.

 

That's very interesting actually. I expected the gs60 keyboard to beat the p35x. The p35x keyboard really isn't something to write home about.

 

Cannot say about the 970m... But the 980m with 8gb vram is totally fine, even in shadow of mordor (ultra) with 6gb of vram usage no stutter, 60 fps steady.

 

Yep, it's just my thoughts, as I mentioned it's the 'Return' key placement that really bugs me on the GS60, the rest of the keyboard looks the business, I also like the keyboard on the P35X because it is similar to the one I use at work and just works for me, others will tell you differently.

 

I haven't had any issues, and the gtx 980m performs extremely well whether in Dota 2, dai, or heavily modes skyrim.

 

I'm surprised that you think the MSI screen is brighter, because I find the the P35X's screen to be very bright. Most of the time, I have to use it with Auto Brightness on. Notebookcheck.net clocked the P35X screen at an average of 350.2 cd/m², the GS602PE at 309.9 cd/m², and the GS602QE 4K screen at 228 cd/m². Apologies is those numbers aren't the most relevant, but I find MSI's naming system very confusing.

 

Yep I agree that on paper it looks like the Gigabyte has a brighter screen and in reality it may, but sitting looking at both screens after work this evening, I definitely think the MSI is brighter, it may be because it is slightly more shiny. Both screens are awesome though

 

Has anyone else noticed if their laptop is somewhat bent? I really want to understand if its normal. Gigabyte told me they would look at it if I sent the laptop... and that seems very inconvenient

keyboard flex:


laptop bend:


Anyone have any comments on this?

 

During my time with the machine: We all agreed that the keyboard will be uneven. This was true in the first 100 pages of the thread. I am not aware of the laptop bending however.

 

Mine's the same in the same places. The first one I had (with a faulty SSD) also had the bends in exactly the same places. Bad design probably, but doesn't affect my usage of it at all.

 

My one looks very similar.. Just to the left of the touchpad there is a bulge so the actual touchpad itself doesn't line up perfectly with the chassis. The left hand side of the touchpad is slightly lower than the surroundings and the front right hand side is slightly raised. It all looks a little odd, but I guess they had to squeeze all of the components in somehow. I'm glad you mentioned it as I did wonder if it was just my laptop. When I hold my laptop up it looks misshapen just like yours so I wouldn't worry too much.

 

Add mine, trackpad and palm rest were not aligned, and when watching light reflecting on palm rest, this one was not even. Cosmetic.

 

With out having to read 250 pages, what's the general jist of the 35x? Worth the extra money over the 35w? Any problems with the 35w. I don't think I'll need the extra power and might help the temps