P34W v3 First look, impressions and tests - a Pretty Little Beast

Thank you very much for this reply.

I am currently waiting for the version with the 256GB ssd and 16GB memory as standard, because ocuk are only stocking the 128GB and hard drive only version - so hopefully in a few weeks/months time - and I will certainly be repasting based on your info.

I've never repasted in a laptop before, but have done plenty of desktop cpus/gpus so the only thing that was worrying me was the warranty situation - but as you say it should be fine, and I'll check with gigabyte UK before I purchase anyway. I just find it ludicrous that in a niche, high performance/portable machine like the p34 series that such a simple thing like the thermal paste is overlooked on assembly.

Will be interesting comparing the IC7 with other compounds - but at least it's a safe option.

 

You're welcome. To be honest, I haven't had the time to play on it yet. All this benchmarking and chartmaking has consumed me. I'll fire up some games tomorrow and let you know. It won't be quiet in any case, I can promise you that

Hehe, that's good to hear The repaste had a lot larger effect than what I would've thought, so having these benchmarks really opened my eyes.

Yeah, I can understand it from an economics point of view, but not from the engineering side. But, as always, the best solution is not nessecarily the one being chosen by managment. After seeing the results, I almost find it mandatory to repaste...

 

What sort of battery life are people seeing while using the P34W?

 

It's not really the type of paste you use that matters. It's how much time you spend doing a good pasting job.

The goal is to use as little thermal paste as you can. If you're spreading a layer of paste like mayonnaise between the CPU and heatsink, you're doing it wrong. The vast majority of the heat transfer should be via metal-on-metal contact between the CPU and heatsink. The paste is only there to fill in microscopic air gaps that form because the two surfaces aren't perfectly flat.

Copper has a thermal conductivity of about 400 W/m-K (bigger numbers represent more heat transfer). Aluminum about 200 W/m-K. Most thermal pastes have a conductivity of only about 0.5 to 3 W/m-K. So it's very easy to do a lot more harm than good by applying too much thermal paste.

During manufacturing, there's probably some poor slob who only gets about 20 seconds per laptop to apply the paste and screw down the heatsink. So he's not going to do as careful a job as you or XoticPC. And his pasting job ends up more like the mayonnaise layer than yours.

 

So my P34W arrived today, and unless someone has any ideas how to fix it, it's going back tomorrow.

Within a few seconds or minutes of starting a game or 3D benchmark, the GPU Core Clock drops down from 1+ GHz to 64.8 MHz (yes, sixty four point eight) and gets stuck there until I quit and restart the game or 3D benchmark. It doesn't seem to be related to temperature - it's happened at 59C, 61C, 62C, and 63C. So far I've tried:

Updating the BIOS
Updating the video driver
Completely uninstalling and reinstalling the video driver
Testing it with fans at every setting (Max, Auto hi, Auto lo, Stealth)
Testing it at every power setting
Turning off nVidia's Battery Boost
In nVidia's control panel, setting the game's power setting to High Performance
Installing every update indicated in Smart Update
Restoring from the recovery partition
Manually setting the GPU core clock with MSI Afterburner

When the core at 64.8 MHz, the 970m is basically the same speed as the Intel HD 4600. So unless someone has ideas for other things I can try, I'll have to RMA it.

Edit: It works fine on battery, though obviously not at full speed. Seconds after I plug the AC adapter back in, it's back to 64.8 MHz.

 

Hi,
Around 4-5 hours for office use. You can affect this very much by choosing the appropriate performance profile in Windows (or in SmartManager, which actually has autoswitching). Haven't tested for gaming, might give it a shot today.

 

Hi!
Just tested it now. For older games (had a round in BF1942, it's incredible how much games have changed since then!) it's is very bearable, and runs only at low fan speed. I also played BF4 in Ultra which made it a bit more noisy. It was definitely bearable with my TV speakers, but I usually prefer headsets anyway. Overall, I wouldn't say it would be a problem for the person actually playing, but it might be annoying for others if you are sharing a room. There will definitely not be any concealed gaming.

Noise is difficult to assess, and depends very much on the surroundings. If I bring the laptop to bed, I find the brief fan noise annoying, but that's only because everything else is dead silent. All other places I don't notice the fan noise when in Auto-Low mode unless I am gaming or doing other very intense tasks.

 

Just purchased the laptop a few days ago....

Anything I should be looking out for as far as functionality goes or just anything in general?? Haven't really seen any consistent set of flaws...

Also it might not be a bad idea to change this thread to P34wv3 owner's lounge if at all possible by an admin.. It's pretty much turned into that..

 

I think the tl;dr around here goes in:
Do undervolt to a reasonable degree, change to stealth fans on light loads, conserve battery, and consider repasting if you got the skills.

 

Sounds like a software issue. Try doing a clean install of windows 8.

 

Tried that. It was even worse. With just the GPU, WLAN, chipset, and audio drivers installed, GPU clock dropped down to 64.8 MHz even on battery or while charging. I restored to factory default, and now it suffers the same problem even on battery or while charging.

So it's almost definitely a hardware problem (to have gotten worse and survived two complete reinstalls). I've schedule the RMA so I guess it's back to the old laptop for now.

 

Finally got enough time to create our official thread :
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/gigabyte-p34w-v3-phantasus-owners-lounge.772517/
Please @fanchiuho , @bkvamme @Micaiah do ad your review if you can as I didn't found how to easily forward them there, or just tell me how

Have good day, and a great weekend !

 

Sorry if I missed if this was said anywhere but did anyone have bad luck with theirs? I ordered one of first ones when it became available on Newegg and it only lasted around 8 hours before dying. I was very disappointed but I will say that it ran BF4 very well in that short time.

 

How did it happen?

 

Hello, hope this won't seem too off-topic but quick question: have there been any problems with the P34W where the Nvidia GPU will stop functioning and would stop showing at all in the device manager?
Some people owning the P35W and P35X, including myself (with the laptop fresh out of the box) have been encountering that odd issue. ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/gigabyte-p35w-v3-owners-thoughts.768460/). I haven't read all the messages in this topic yet, but could someone confirm if it is affecting some P34W as well? If not, I am seriously considering switching to that model now: I'd rather deal with high temps, noises, etc, than with a laptop that can suddenly "loose" its 970m.
Thanks for the answers.

 

I've been following the p34w v3 since launch and I haven't seen anyone report such an issue.

 

The reports quoted are for P35W. It is reasonable to suspect that maybe P34W (which is very similar) may also be affected. Admittedly I have not seen any reports for the P34W. I would not be overly concerned anyway, as this is something likely to be rectified soon by Gigabyte.

 

Well, I have just switched my order to a P34W with GenTechPC, so we will see :/ the P35W I received was dead on arrival with that problem.
The reason that makes me think it might be different with the P34W is because the whole motherboard-soldered GPU/CPU is probably a bit different (the ports are not in the same place), might be enough to prevent that stupid hardware failure.

 

It started shutting itswlf down and than it wouldn't turn on at all.

 

Hello guys, i'm also myself an owner of this beast.

Recently i've updated the graphic drivers, and from there on, the fan tweak settings by gigabyte (Smartmanager v3), got messed up. I reverted drivers to previous state, but for some reason, whenever i select eco fan tweak, the notebook isn't completly silent, like it used to be before. It just ignores my commands to the fan tweak. I know for a fact it can be completely silent, otherwise i wouldn't be asking how to fix this issue.

Did any of you encounter this problem before? If so, do you know how to sort it out?

 

Are your temperatures the same? The system would automatically override those fan tweaks if it needed to cool itself more.

 

Yeah, temps are the same as before, just that fan ignores setting i put and is louder then before.

 

Try uninstalling and then reinstalling the Smart Manager software.

 

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/9820078

P34W V3 whith 1.3ghz core and 3 ghz mem

 

What kind of temps were you hitting because those are pretty insane clocks (and score).

 

I read a 1,187 MHz on core, was that without boost yet?
Also how are the temps going, I never thought this degree of OC was possible on a P34W.

 

I know this is properly trivial considering all the talk of throttling etc..

But... has anyone noticed the "eject" symbol on the escape key?! What's that there for!!?!! we don't have an optical drive (though I've not tested it for virtual drives) also the F11 key shows the symbol for mobile internet yet we don't have that option and some of the symbols on the keys are wonky!!!!

 

the f11 key shows bluetooth / wifi on / off

 

Bluetooth yes but it also shows the symbol for mobile internet which is not an option on these laptops.... WiFi is found on F2...

 

Funny I just saw this now. I have sent my P34W v3 back to gigabyte TWICE for this problem. First time they changed the mobo, we'll see what they do this time. Since I just bought a Razer Blade QHD I will probably be selling my P34W when I get it back.

 

I just saw you bought that Razer on the marketplace. How do you like it compared to the p34w?

 

Hasn't been shipped yet but should be soon. I might do a comp comparison article on Ultrabook review later as the RB's internals are so similar