aero oled 1660ti, a little engine that could ... struggle :)

so here's my experience with aero oled 1660ti laptop this one has 8gb of ram and 256 ssd

the oled screen is amazing but there are many quirks about the machine:

1. it seems to struggle playing youtube or twitch. i use an app called unstream from microsoft appstore to play twitch streams, and it stutters heavily, the same with playing youtube/twitch on firefox. playing youtube or twitch on chrome lags substantially especially on twitch with 1080 resolution.
the stutter problem can be solved by running the app on the nvidia gpu, however, if i run twitch and youtube both on nvidia gpu it will experience a severe lag. i tried disabling hardware accelaration on chrome to solve the lag, no difference
playing 4k videos on youtube causes the fan to ramp up, it seems like the processor is struggling to decode the video. comparing it to my 980m laptop it semms like the aero is from 2015 my 980m laptop is butter smooth in the above tasks, fan didn't even spin up for 4k youtube videos. changing power profile didn't help either

2. watching dota through the dota game itself gives you a disappointing fps. one thing to note is that changing the setting, like turning off anti aliasing or reducing render quality did not change fps. another thing is that the fps seems to fluctuate rapidly, again compared to my 980m laptop, my old laptop seems to output stable fps.
sure the fps drops during team fights but it doesn't fluctuate too much. on top of that, the 980m gives me a better fps ~ 60 fps compared to aero's 50 fps.
i tested grid autosport as well and my aero only gave me an extra 7 fps increase over my 5 year old 970m system. running gpuz during dota shows that the nvidia gpu is not fully utilized with usage around 85%
i tried reinstalling drivers, dota, changing power profile to no avail it gave me the same performance, i spent too much time trying to figure this thing out

3. opening task manager will show 100% cpu utilization, while a cpu spike is normal, it stayed at 100% longer than my other systems either desktop or laptop.

4. running games at a different resolution than windows screen resolution may cause black screen when the game exits. it happened during street fighter and firestrike multiple times. once the game or the benchmark finishes it couldn't show the desktop no matter what you press, i tried changing output by pressing fn + f5 (or f6 i can't remember now) but the screen is still black.
the only solution is to press the power button to put the laptop to sleep and then wake it up again then you'll see the login screen and everything is back to normal.

5. changing screen resolution from inside the game often not work. it will just get out to desktop and if you click the game it will flash the game and then return to desktop

6. firestrike score is ok i got around 14000 graphics score and 12000 overall score but somehow this doesn't translate to fps

7. playing full hd videos using vlc will cause lag in the beginning or if you resize its window something that 9750h should not struggle with

8. if you hover your mouse over a youtube video (on chrome) to show the progress bar the video will lag, UHD 630 utilization spikes to 100%

9. cpu temperature easily goes up to 90 C intermittently

it seems like this laptop doesn't perform well even with not so daunting tasks i have a few theories on it.

1. it's the single channel memory, after trying all the usual stuffs, reinstalling drivers and etc, i found a video showing the difference between a single channel memory and a dual channel memory in dota, and the guy was also using aero but it's the old aero 14

2. optimus, my 970m system uses optimus and fps during dota fluctuates my 980m doesn't use optimus and fps is stable. i think optimus also causes the lags and stutters for twitch and youtube

3. bios, it might be that the bios is optimized for rtx

this configuration (8gb ram with 1660ti) is only available on newegg as far as i know, i tried putting in another stick of ram but two of the bottom screws have stickers covering them so i didn't bother

if anyone has any idea how to solve the above issues please let me know and i hope my experience helps other people who are thinking of buying this laptop

 

So why are you complaining when you wont bother upgrading your own laptop, those stickers dont mean anything. You have the right to self work or self repair your own laptop, at least in the US you do.

 

i'm keeping the sticker because i'm returning it

 

I have the little higher tier than you (1660 Ti + 16G + 512G). after weeks tweaks, it's simply beyond great, hope I can answer some of your questions:
I undervolt my CPU with -0.15v, overclocked my GPU with +171 core/ +301 mem.
I'm using vanilla system from gigabyte, updated to v1903.
I also repaste my laptop and it drasticaly improve my CPU thermal throttle for 25c difference, I describe here in detail.
1. No problem watch youtube or twitch either 1080p or 4k through chrome, twitch app.
2. I never play dota, sorry, but GPU utilization won't tell you everything, lots of old game engine using DX10 or DX11 usually can't take 100% GPU usages, like Diablo 3, Starcraft 2.
3. No problem
4. No problem, but your problem might caused by nahimic 3, it crash with lots of my games.
5. No problem, but your symtom might caused by 3rd party monitor app like rivatuner or afterbunner.
6. Your 3dmark score is a little bit low, but might because of your single mem. Mine is 16xxx for GPU and 14xxx
7. I'm using potplayer. no problem
8. No problem
9. check my thread, you might have a uneven TIM.

And your extra question.

1. Single mem play a large role in shutter and lag for sure, some of your problem might because of that. and low capacity of SSD. your SSD also use empty portion as cache. the more you use, the speed drastically reduce.

2. I used to suspect optimus, but after months usage, test, benchmark and comparison online. There is no problem on optimus for sure (for me).

3. BIOS on gigabyte is f5, so far no complain.

My recommendation:

1. remove bloatware like Azure AI, nahimic 3. Install newest NVidia driver, instal newest control center
2. turn off monitor app
3. Upgrade Mem and SSD your configuration is screaming for it
4. repaste your CPU / GPU

If you still think it's not worth your energy, just return it and look for other well-known brand like Asus, Acer, Msi. I'd say gigabyte is not a brand focus on details and refinements before product release. Software bug is everywhere, full of traps. I can't say I enjoy all these tweaking for month. But it's really improved a lot and akin to my likes.

 

Wow that's a lot of issues - all wrapped up into one laptop. Disappointing indeed!

 

Have you/ Could you try out some battlefield 5 at 1080p at ultra with no DXR and see if it has no problem sustaining 60fps ? I have the x9 and have been thinking about selling it and getting the OLED 1660 ti . The x9 has the 2070max q and stays pretty far above 60fps but in the old chassis its not really utilizing the 144hz screen. Thank you !!!

 

Sorry I don't have a PC version of BF 5, but I suggest you watch this , it's matching my results.

 

He has the 2070M , your saying its matching the 1660 ti in fps ?

 

It's the same chassis, same heatpipe, thermal performance, compare to his numbers in test, I'd say the game performance difference in in this chassis of 1660 vs 2070 MQ is 5-10%. is that difference worthy $600 in price? I already made my choice.
I'd say the biggest gain is OLED panel and a lot better thermal (hope your TIM spread evenly)

5 heat pipes and denser fan blades definitely better than old version:

 

This has nothing to do with single channel memory. Your laptop is either overheating (maybe thermal paste was applied incorrectly), or there is a hardware defect. You did the right thing to return it.

 

Thank you all for the reply i already returned the laptop planning to get the 2070 clevo with oled
i was very tempted to add another memory to get dual channel but when i saw the sticker i hesitated in case they won't accept my return

what do you do with nahimic ? my gpu utilization is ok for other games grid gave me 99%
for 5 i wasn't running any monitoring software so not sure what happened there

the twitch stutter is very weird it only happened in firefox and unreal app chrome worked well
i saw the temp and it was ok but thanks for the reply

 

Well you wrote your temps were high, that is why I assumed it may be overheating. Anyway, good luck with Clevo laptop.

 

ok i see i meant it spkied to 95 quite easily but it'll go down quite quickly too
so did you uninstall nahimic ?
your 16000 gaphics score is very high for 1660 what did you do to get there ?