Pete J's Gigabyte P34W v3 Review

Discussion in 'Laptops & Notebooks' started by Pete J, Feb 22, 2015.

  1. Pete J

    Pete J Master Guru

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    Introduction

    Some of you may have read my review of the Gigabyte P34G v2. Well, the next generation of ultrabooks are being released and boy, oh boy have things taken a leap, mainly thanks to Nvidia's Maxwell architecture. As you probably know, the Maxwell architecture focuses on lower power consumption and heat generation, which has some serious implications for ultrabooks, specifically the ability to fit a 970M into a 14" or less chassis. Doing a little research revealed that a 970M has approximately TWICE the performance of an 860M - incredible! The thought of running Crysis (yes, I still play that game) at a potential 60FPS on a portable 1080p screen with 4XAA was too much for me to ignore - to put it into perspective, that is the equivalent of two GTX 480s in SLI! Additionally, 2TB HDDs are now being offered, which is all I need to store everything I own digitally (and with room to spare) for the next few years (foreseeably at any rate).

    Anyhow, the review below is effectively copy and paste of my previous review.

    Contenders for purchase

    The Gigabyte P34W v3 is the new version of the P34G v2. A lovely, small design that packs some serious grunt:

    [​IMG]

    i7-4720HQ 2.6GHz-3.6GHz
    GTX 970M 6GB
    Up to 512GB SSD (depending on region - UK probably limited to 256GB)
    Up to 2TB HDD (in addition to the SSD)
    8GB RAM
    Dimensions: 340(W) x 239(D) x 20.9(H) mm

    An alternative to the P34W v3 is the Aorus X3 Plus V3-CF1. Here's a list of advantages and disadvantages (according to me) of the X3 Plus v3 over the P34W v3.

    Advantages:
    • High quality 3200x1800 display
    • 16GB RAM as standard
    • 3 mSATA slots
    • Entirely solid state storage
    • Mini Displayport

    Disadvantages:
    • More expensive, especially when putting two 1TB SSDs in RAID
    • 3200x1800 display
    • Larger in two dimensions: 330(W) x 263.5(D) x 22.9(H) mm

    You'll notice that I've included the high resolution display both as a positive and a negative. While I'm sure it'll look fantastic, truth is that a high end desktop system would struggle with quite a few games at that resolution, let alone a single 970M. I hate the thought of running at non-native resolution, so the 1080p screen of the P34W v3 is actually more tempting. Additionally, my experience over the last few months with a 14" 1080p screen is that a higher resolution would be more difficult to work with and in gaming, 4XAA removes any jaggies without a problem. To have all the storage solid state was also tempting but the cost was quite excessive, plus the drives would be RAID 0, potentially causing problems with data recovery down the road. The X3 Plus v3 does have a mini Displayport which allows output to 4K monitors but I've personally found 4K monitors actually quite hard to work with, plus the HDMI output of the P34G v2 allows 2560x1600@55Hz, so no worries there. Lastly, the X3 Plus v3 is larger in depth, which would stop it fitting nicely in my bag.

    I have also recently found out that Razer have announced a new 14" Blade. This time, Razer seem to have it right in that they offer a 1080p screen version. However, it still only has one SSD drive, so I passed it over (plus my order with Xotic PC was already made).

    I used the same American company called Xotic PC that I bought my P34G v2 from. In addition to the basic spec, I opted for the following upgrades:

    • 1TB Samsung 840 EVO (extra room for a game drive and a scratch drive)
    • 2TB 5400RPM HDD
    • 16GB DDR3 1866MHz 10-10-10-30 Crucial Ballistix Sport Dual Channel Memory.
    • Thermal paste upgrade (for overclocking the GPU)
    • Windows 7 Professional (instead of Windows 8 by default)

    I found that with my previous ultrabook I wanted more room to install games so I opted for the largest mSATA SSD I could. As for the memory, I paid a little extra for the best RAM option as I anticipated holding onto the ultrabook for a good couple of years at least, so I thought 'why not'.

    Xotic PC were a very nice company to deal with. They even remembered my request to only format a small partition for Windows, allowing me to create other partitions. The only downside of ordering from the USA was the US layout keyboard, but to be honest I really don't use the '£' symbol that much anyway!

    Differences between the P34G v2 and the P34W v3

    [​IMG]

    The P34W v3 comes in an all black finish compared to the silver styling of the P34G v2 and according to the specs is 400g heavier. Other than that, there are no real aesthetic differences. I have to admit I prefer the style of the P34G v2, especially as the black styling of the P34W v3 seems to exaggerate any grease from one’s hands.

    Spec wise, there are a few changes aside from the aforementioned 970M in place of the 860M and a 2TB HDD. The CPU is now an i7-4720HQ, giving a 100MHz increase to both base and turbo modes. According to the official specs, the P34W v3 has a Synaptic touch pad compared to the ELAN touch pad of the P34G v2, which should offer more precise control (when not using a mouse anyway). However, I found that ELAN drivers had been installed so I assume Gigabyte kept the touchpad – it does seem more responsive though. Either way, I have my Logitech Marathon mouse anyway.

    Battery life seems to have been improved as well – in a typical usage scenario, I seemed to get about three or more hours compared to the P34G v2’s two hours.

    Benchmarking

    Right, first off, simple FPS results with all settings to maximum except those indicated. No settings were changed in the Nvidia Control panel except to make sure that the Nvidia GPU was running the game (not the Intel onboard GPU) and that performance was set to ‘maximum’ rather than ‘adaptive’:

    [​IMG]

    Not bad for a tiny 14” ultrabook, eh?

    Secondly, a comparison to the P34G v2 (running at stock). Note that this comparison may be a little unfair as the P34G v2 tests were with older drivers:

    [​IMG]

    So, as one can see, a good performance increase that improves as settings are turned up.

    I wasn’t able to enable overclocking, even when rolling back the drivers for some reason (see here for an explanation). Having said that, look at the results below for driver comparsions:

    [​IMG]

    The latest drivers do offer a significant advantage compared to older drivers, so at the moment I think I’m happy until Nvidia unlock overclocking again.

    Finally, some temperature and VRAM comparisons:

    [​IMG]

    For some reason the 970M uses about 50 MB more VRAM than the 860M – no idea why. Not that it matters as 3GB VRAM is more than enough for 1080p – hell, 1.5 GB would be fine (though Wolfenstein: The New Order may stretch it a bit). Temperature wise, the 970M generally runs slighty hotter. Bear in mind that I tested the 860M in May and the 970M was tested in February, so ambient temperatures were probably different

    I will revisit this in the future when Nvidia release new drivers – I still have some thermal headroom to use going by the P34G v2 temperatures. Hopefully this time Afterburner will behave as well and allow me to overclock. After all, if I could get a 10% overclock, that’d see Tomb Raider (FXAA, TressFX) and Heaven (4xAA) jump into the magic 60FPS average and it certainly would take the edge off in more demanding games (Crysis 3 for example). If I can achieve the same overclock ratio I did with the 860M, Crysis (4xAA) would also hit 60 FPS average.

    CPU power

    A brief look at CPU horsepower. The i7 920 results were from here and my own recollection:

    [​IMG]

    People say laptop CPUs haven’t come a long way – quite frankly, b*ll*cks to that. Approximately 75% of the power of a heavily overclocked i7 5930K – can’t argue against that.

    Other comments

    One thing I did notice is how hot the CPU can get. At work I use a piece of software that is massively multithreaded – running this made the CPU cores hit 90 °C and the fans were making a hell of a racket. I don’t know if they throttled as a result, though I assume they achieved ~3.4 GHz as per the wPrime tests. Luckily, due to the power of the processor, the task only takes a matter of minutes and I certainly don’t intend to be hitting the CPU for hours at a time (nor should anyone with an ultrabook).

    Those of you who read my previous review may remember that I had issues with running some games in fullscreen mode. This no longer seems to be a problem, though Mass Effect 2 has to be run in a borderless window mode which is available in the options and can’t be run using high resolution textures (though the P34G v2 couldn’t either). I assume Mass Effect 3 can’t be run with high resolution texture packs either.

    Final thoughts

    If I had to briefly describe this ultrabook, it’d be ‘hilariously powerful’! I have to admit that this was essentially a completely frivolous purchase on my part, but I simply had to own this ultrabook. However, it is an absolutely wonderful bit of kit and has made my life easier – the 970M has made a massive difference for handling the CAD applications I use at work. I also love the fact that I now have all of my digital property backed up in its entirety on it.
     
  2. pegasus1

    pegasus1 Ancient Guru

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    Ive just ordered one from Scan, I need a decent laptop for work and gaming as im away for 10 weeks in every 15. Cant wait to get my hands on it when im home.
     
  3. pegasus1

    pegasus1 Ancient Guru

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    Hi, what size m2SSD does this use? Thanks
     

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