*** OFFICIAL GIGABYTE AERO 15 OWNERS LOUNGE ***

As of right now, I think the only place shipping immediately today is Newegg for the green color. They offer next day shipping, but even the free shipping should be reasonably fast as Newegg has a distribution hub in the Los Angeles area. Better yet, if it is a really good friend, they could pick it up in person today: http://promotions.newegg.com/nepro/...c=KNC-GoogleKWLess-_-Branding-_-WillCall-_-NA

 

Thanks but what about @GenTechPC? I remember from previous posts that they should be in stock soon. I reaally want that black model

 

I highly recommend @GenTechPC. It's a great place to pick one up and you have configuration options, unlike newegg. I just placed my order with them 2 days ago. Its still under processing but should be shipped out soon. I'm flying out of the country on the 14th and was told I'd receive it before then with regular shipping even though you can pay extra for 3 day shipping.

 

Yeah I've just checked the site and did my configuration with the free Coollaboratory Liquid . They state it'll take more time, wonder how many and if it'll be delivered before the end of the month. It's still preorder only. :/

 

I ordered from @GenTechPC as well. If you don't mind waiting until they are shipping, then that's a great option too. HIDevolution is another retailer on this thread that said they will have stock in late May. I guessed you needed it as soon as possible which is why I suggested the green one at Newegg

 

I also went with that free CLU option and Ken from GenTechPC assure me it would still make it on time. It says preorder but if you order it now as soon as they get it in stock they can work on your build. I've ordered from GenTechPC in the past (2 years ago) and they work fast so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

 

I'm waiting until July for
the 4K version. I just got a good on a Samsung 2TB 960 Pro for $949 on eBay Brand New vs GenTechPC $1,350.

Also got 32GB DDR4 3000Mhz G.Skill CL16 Dual-Channel 16G X 2 memory. I'm also waiting on the new Intel 9260 WiFi card.


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Confirmed.

After you update the "BIOS" (firmware in fact) through G Fusion software, the new version of firmware will be 1.1.5.

Ctrl + Shift + ZXC will be OK
Ctrl + Shift + Space will be Ctrl + Shift + B
Ctrl + Shift + Down Arrow will be Ctrl + Shift + Up Arrow
Ctrl + Alt + D/E will not function

I've already changed for a new one, but now G Fusion software doesn't upgrade firmware to 1.1.5 , but 1.1.4 instead.

So all the combined keys doesn't work. (Ctrl+Shift+ZXCSpace ... )

 

A pic of my workstation with Dell 1440p IPS display and Synology NAS with 14TB. Primarily used for photography.

 

Is there any news when the 4k one might come out? I'm still trying to decide if 4k is even worth since W10 scaling is still a bit off. I have a T460s with a 1080p screen for work and there are programs where the scaling still makes it look blurry, like Excel for example.

That's such a clean workspace. I wish mine could be as organised as that.

 

Don't bother with 4k screens especially Excel. You don't want to squint when starring at the screen because the scaling is awful.

Invest in a higher resolution monitor instead.

 

There will not be anything wrong with the 4K screen, at the end of the day Windows 10 scales pretty well on the Dell XPS 15 4K screen - in fact on the correct scaling setting it just looks about on par with a 1080p panel.

The only downside with having the 4K panel is that you won't be able to game on it at 4K, the resolution when gaming will need knocking down to 1080p.

Liam.

 

Pictures with Excel please? I had a Clevo P650RS with a 6700HQ and a 1070 but ended up returning it. Everything was fine, except that at the time, the scaling you picked applied to both monitors instead of scaling one and leaving the other at 100% which just killed the overall experience.

I think downscaling to 1080p is a fair compromise. It is only a GTX 1060 after all.

 

Google it, I haven't got a 4K laptop at the moment so I can't compare but when I had the XPS 15 4K it scaled Excel fine for me.

I wouldn't advise on using a 4K 15.6" laptop panel with the resolution set to 1080p in gaming either, I tried this on my old XPS 15 4K and the overall image was horrendous - it looked somewhat comparable to the quality of 720p resolution gaming on a 1080p display.

At the end of the day the Aero 15 4K will be marketed and aimed towards image & video editing professionals, not gaming. The FHD model which is currently available is best suited to gamers.

Liam.

 

Agreed 1080p on a 4K screen doesn't look good at all. Had the XPS 15 4K and had to use it at 150% scaling because. A FHD screen at 100% scaling and small icons for the desktop and taskbar are a great balance.

 

Gaming wouldn't be the first priority as it would be in the office most of the time, I just enjoy a HiDPI screen for normal use. Can't really find any screenshots, so probably was a nonissue, but good to hear it worked great for you.

Pity regarding the horrible image quality when downscaling to 1080p with games. Guess I'm sticking with 1080p. I'll see how cheap these are in Asia because VAT is a *****.

 

EDIT: double post

 

I purchased an XPS 15 last year with 4K touch screen. It was nice, but I used my machine 95% of the time in a production environment on my desktop with it pushing 3 monitors (1080p). I HATED the scaling, FWIW.

Trying to go back and forth windows was always displaying things quirky.

 

I contacted GenTech and linked your post. I asked them to check the machine before shipping, because if this was happening I'd just return it for repair.

They told me they are aware of the issue and they will be testing before shipping new machines.

 

Can someone do the UFO test on aero 15 laptop?
I would like to compare the screen response time with xps 15 9650 to see if there are any ghosting issues on this panel .
thanks

 

Notebookcheck.net reviews are good for this: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Gigabyte-Aero-15-7700HQ-GTX-1060-FHD-Laptop-Review.215364.0.html

They reviewed the Dell XPS 15 as well so you can directly compare response times.

 

I just saw in a YouTube thread that it may be possible to significantly upgrade the trackpad experience with precision drivers. I have not yet tried this myself but reposting here for interested users:

Mark Hunter 2 days ago
hey try installing PRECISION TRACKPAD DRIVER FOR ELAN AND SEE THE DIFF ! https://www.reddit.com/r/chrultrabo...cision_touchpad_driver_available_for_cypress/

Pascal 5 days ago (edited)
uninstalling the elan drivers and installing this version (16.11.3.2) did work on my aero 15. https://www.reddit.com/r/MSILaptops/comments/5ki7ed/gs63vr_there_is_a_working_driver_for_using_the/

From thread:

 

Hey guys, just received an email from Ken @GenTechPC and the Aero 15 will be in stock at May 30th at their shop.

Guess I'll wait for while to get it till another friend passes by, hoping that the keyboard will get fixed properly by then.

 

How have you found the new touchpad drivers on your Aero 15? Do they work well? I noticed from the Reddit thread that some people were experiencing issues.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

 

Somehow the black one is in stock again on newegg if you wanted the Aero sooner.

 

I got that crap installed, then immediately uninstalled it. You lose the ability to adjust anything about the touchpad. you can't turn off tapping, palmcheck, or anything like that. It makes the right click more responsive (detects it more close to the center) but still... largely useless.

 

That sucks. Thanks for confirming though! I don't find the touchpad to be that bad to be honest, but I haven't been spoiled by a precision touchpad laptop yet.

My only gripe is that small movements are a little hard sometimes. I don't have any issues with the right click.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

 

You're saying Microsoft's built in settings do not function with said driver? If it is truly a Microsoft Precision compatible driver then there should be a significant number of settings available at: Settings->Devices->Touchpad

 

Nope, just the same settings as with Elan (none). But it felt different and the Elan panel was no longer configurable.

 

For those who have had one for a while, any regrets? Not necessarily minor stuff, since every notebook has quirks. But major stuff that would make you want to reconsider for something else, like XPS15, Blade, etc.

Also, is it as light and portable as you expected? I know it isn't an ultrabook, but is it a hassle to throw in a typical backpack for a day, like classes or work?

 

Never. Buy. Blade. @Papusan will corroborate.

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I came from an XPS 15 and a Yoga 720 15, so it's a little bigger than those two in depth. It is slightly heavier, but still manageable. My main annoyance is the off-centered keyboard because of the keypad. As a writer, it frustrates me constantly as I return my fingers to the home row about 1 key to the right of where the keys are. I also miss the construction of the XPS 15, which is just a beautiful machine. The performance of it, though... simply phenomenal for gaming.

 

New to thread, Got my Aero 15 earlier this week and it's been hit or miss for me. I'm still trying to like it more than I do now just I've hit several annoyances.

-I got myself a 960 EVO to use as my primary but I'm having a tough time trying to copy over the stock drive. Arconis 2015 fails me after restarting at "Do you want to wait for other devices to spin up?". Clonezilla also refuses to start as the BIOS gives off a security violation trying to boot from USB. I don't want to mess with the data on the stock drive in event I return this thing to Newegg.

-In the BIOS, PXE Legacy doesn't seem to want to stay on. I'm assuming this is what is keeping Clonezilla from starting

-Saw the keyboard issue and I've updated to latest BIOS and keyboard software/firmware (1.1.15) though I seem to still have an issue with spacebar row. Using the key combination that was reported, LSHIFT + LCTRL, each key I press on the spacebar row registers the button above it. So Windows Key = Z, LALT = X, etc etc.

-Also getting odd Performance behavior within games running on battery. I set the battery setting to High performance within windows and saw Gigabytes Smart Manager was interfering with the laptop's power behavior. Once I set the power settings to also match High performance, game performance was still unstable on battery power. Overwatch is only game installed currently and I would have 110+ FPS for a while before I get sudden unexplained dips to 20-30 fps. Sometimes It goes back to 110+ FPS after a while, sometimes it doesn't. I do not want the laptop to be changing it's power profile on its own ever.

Anyone else having the trouble I'm getting?

 

With regards to cloning the drive - start again from scratch and use Macrium Reflect Free, awesome program and beats all the others out there. I've been using it for a while now on various laptops and never ran into any problems with it.

Liam.

 

Trying this app now. Isn't letting do a 100% clone since the 960 EVO is 500 gig and the stock drive is 512. So gonna leave the recovery partition on the original drive and be mindful not to ever delete it

 

[STRIKETHRU]Just clone the drive as is and use the freeware Partition Manager to resize the main partition afterwards.[/STRIKETHRU]

Edit - Sorry. Misread. Reduce size of main partion with Partion Manager, then clone so it fits.

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/pm-express/

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For those upgrading the SATA drive included, there are something that I think might worth considering. I just bought a PM961 1TB for $380 to use as a secondary working drive for these reasons, and I plan to keep the SATA one with Windows when the laptop finally arrives.

1. NVMe protocol might actually boot slower than SATA, and the difference on the device part is negeligible, so an NVMe drive might boot the OS slower. (There are plenty of YouTube videos about booting from NVMe and from SATA)
2. Not sure about NVMe drives, but I actually jammed Windows running on a SATA drive (SanDisk Extreme Pro) just by intensive IO to (another partition of) that drive. Therefore two separate drives might be helpful.
3. According to Tom's review, 960 EVO/Pro is not as good as their OEM versions in battery life, and especially terrible with the Samsung driver (not sure if it is fixed).

 

Whoa. I'm surprised at the 50% spread between best and worst on those charts in an area where my intuition was guessing "mostly similar." I wonder how much of that is due to fundamental differences vs. how much is due to configurable options (possibly only in firmware) for performance in desktop units vs. battery in notebook units and how users might be able to make those choices for themselves. In any event thanks for sharing.

I replaced my included SATA drive with a fresh install 960 EVO (no copy, no partitions) and have been happy so far, but I'm usually plugged in so I wouldn't have noticed battery life. Boot time seems fine but this drive doesn't have the full Gigabyte software package on it. Eventually I'll wipe the original SATA drive and plug it back in for an addition 500GB of storage.

 

When I first tried booting from a USB flash drive, I had formatted it with an old BIOS style boot setup. I never found any combination of Aero BIOS settings that would let that work. Then I remade the USB boot image using a UEFI style boot setup, and it worked fine with the Aero's default BIOS settings.

 

What I have been told is that, in reality, day to day the difference between an SATA3 drive and NVME drive is going to be pretty negligible, and probably imperceptible. I'm talking strictly day-to-day, web browsing, email, youtube, gaming, these scenarios.

Is this correct? If so, if someone has no need for the massive throughput of NVME (such as, someone who will never video render or copy huge files), does it make sense to go with an SATA drive over an NVME one?

 

@ lxtbell
Version 2.0 of the Samsung NVMe driver is what was reviewed.
Version 2.1 claims to improve idle power saving on Windows 10.
http://www.samsung.com/semiconducto...msung_NVMeDriver_InstallationGuide_Rev2_1.pdf
It would be interesting to see how well the driver performs now.

 

Here's a video comparing real world times to boot, load a game, etc, etc for NVMe vs SATA vs HDD. Booting for example was 9 seconds on SATA vs. 6 seconds on NVMe (and 20+ seconds on HDD). You could choose to view that difference as "3 seconds, who cares" or you could choose to view that as "50% longer, of course I want NVMe." Certainly part of it would be how much more it would cost you for the NVMe. I'm not convinced there's really any good reason you'd want to go out of your way to get SATA vs. NVMe at the same cost though.

http://www.techspot.com/news/67222-storage-real-world-performance-nvme-vs-sata-vs-hdd.html

 

M.2 NVME is not worth 2x+ the cost for the same amount of M.2 SATA storage.

It's wiser to get 1TB of M.2 SATA with 3 seconds slower boot vs 512GB M.2 NVME.

Usually it's the SATA drive that posts 1 second quicker or more than NVME, but as you can see YMMV

Here's a couple more reviews with additional perspective.

HDD Vs. SSD Vs. NVMe M.2 - Does a NVMe Drive Help Boot Times?


Funny how the NVMe actually boots 1 second slower than the SATA SSD

NVME PCIe SSD vs. SATA SSD for Gaming, Tested!

 

Certainly the value of accelerated storage is only present to the extent that storage is the bottleneck in your system. I don't know how the poor guy in video #1 has 35 vs 36 second boot times (compared to 6 vs 9 in earlier video) but my takeaway there is less that NVMe didn't come through for him, but more that something is not well configured for a typical home use system. His video game test has 29 vs 30 seconds compared to the earlier video's 11 vs 25 seconds. Again, is that maybe an issue of system slowness somewhere else, preventing the storage from strutting its stuff?

And I agree with video host #2 who advises spending money first on a faster CPU or more RAM. The systems where you'd be installing these top tier drives already have the best CPU suitable for their form factor and more RAM than the user expects to need. The Aero 15 is definitely not a budget laptop and is arguably at least at the start of this performance category.

That said you're left with the relative value of money to you. If an extra $100 means your child is not going to eat this week, then of course no way. On the other extreme if the value of your time to purchase, install, and set everything up on the drive is likely to exceed the purchase price of either, and on top of that the purchase cost is tax deductible anyway because it's for business, then I'm not sure why you'd spend any time considering anything else.

There was a period when SSDs were new that some tech reviewers claimed to find no value in them, as they would rarely change the FPS averages that were the focus of their reviews. Fortunately we're past that now. I expect NVMe may be similar particularly as prices drop, systems improve, and applications and testing become more suited to their advantages. I still agree that for those on a tight budget today and for the expected life of the system being built, it is one area you could look to cut costs (although I'm not sure I'd be recommending the Aero 15 in the first place then.)

 

Throwing away 2x+ $ on unrealized performance is a wasteful idea, whether you have the money to burn or not, it's just wasteful.

The NVME drives also run a lot hotter, so it's worth checking on how hot your drive is getting at idle and at load.

Early NVME M.2 drives actually overheated and throttled performance to less than 500MB/sec, so were actually slower under sustained application load than the stock M.2 SATA drives that didn't over heat and never throttled.

Now the trick used is to throttle NVME speed earlier, with less of a drop so a sustained higher than M.2 SATA speed can be maintained.

The reason the NVME drive was 1 second slower was due to NVME driver POST time. It's not as bad as it used to be, maybe that's why that other review was 3 seconds ahead of the M.2 SATA.

Unless you are going to maintain sustained xfers on / off that M.2 NVME drive, and your application is mostly IO, you aren't going to see any real benefit to an NVME drive - most gamers / users won't.

The reason is that storage IO is such a small part of the overall processing time that even if the storage IO is 2x faster it's only speeding up a very small percentage of the total wall time observed.

It's not worth getting an NVME drive unless you have profiled your use and can demonstrate a worthwhile use case.

Like a GPU or CPU, it's gotta pull it's weight to earn back it's costs

 

Hi,
I just bought an aero 15 and a Samsung 960 evo. My plan is to use the Samsung ssd as my boot drive but its not detected.
What should my bios settings be for this drive to be detected?

If I replace the original ssd (liteon sata 3) with the new Samsung - no device is detected and I cant install windows.
If I add the the Samsung drive to the second m.2 slot window/bios does not detect either.

Any help would be really appreciated.
Thanks!

 

Sounds like your 960 is a dud.

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I have to ask, is secure boot enabled? If so you may need to disable it.

 

I understand the point you're trying to make but both of those videos use drives that are roughly half the speed of a modern NVME SSD(depending on the particular benchmark) like the 960 EVO much less a 960 PRO. So yes, a budget and/or older NVME drive is not terribly faster than your run of the mill SATA SSD. You are being slightly misleading because you are referring to newer and more expensive NVME drives while making your value argument but then point to cheaper slower drives during your speed argument.

It's also worth pointing that some people use their computer for more than just booting it and playing games. Personally, I use my laptop for virtual machines and software development first and foremost and games second. I am willing to pay a little more to get a faster drive that will handle multitasking well. If I didn't need more space than the 500GB drive it comes with then I wouldn't bother replacing it with an NVME drive. However, I do need more space so, for me, it is worth grabbing an NVME drive while I'm at it.

Nonetheless, your thesis is still valid and worth considering even if I personally choose to go a different path. If you are money strapped then definitely consider an SATA drive, it certainly isn't a wrong choice.

 

The best way to not *become* money strapped is to not waste money on things you don't need, and to purchase the things you do need for their best cost / benefit.

You can argue from low end to high end NVME, but a nice solid Samsung or other name brand M.2 SATA 1TB - 2TB? will save money, and give you more storage for the same cost per M.2 socket.

Unless you have a specific need for sustained high IO where PCIEx4 NVME throughput significantly reduces your wall time for running jobs, there's no justification for spending 2x+ as much $ on an M.2 NVME over a solid M.2 SATA drive.