Gigabyte P55W V4 Notebook Review

[Redaktion]

A much needed refresh. Gigabyte's newest redesign throws Broadwell into the mix for some impressive results. Find out why the P55 is one of our favorite notebooks to come from Gigabyte thus far.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Gigabyte-P55W-V4-Notebook-Review.145911.0.html

[Vitaly from Ukraine]

thank you, guys. Great rewiev I was expecting for. Recently, I'd ordered this notebook from newegg and was looking forward for a deep analysis from professionals. I should say, I'm fully satisfied with results.
One remaining question is - do it has an overclocking potential to reach the results of 980m? With max from fan speed, of course.

[MOFO]

It's a shame you need max fans to get full performance of this laptop, overall seems like a decent package, the screen should also be a bit brighter.
Good review

[Aryeh]

It was written somewhere here that 3D Vision isn't supported, although I never used it, but when I updated to the latest Nvidia driver, a 3D Vision shortcut showed up on my desktop, just saying.

[Allen.Ngo]

thank you, guys. Great rewiev I was expecting for. Recently, I'd ordered this notebook from newegg and was looking forward for a deep analysis from professionals. I should say, I'm fully satisfied with results.
One remaining question is - do it has an overclocking potential to reach the results of 980m? With max from fan speed, of course.

Hello,
Overclocking will not get you very far here unfortunately. Core temperatures are already close to throttling even on maximum fan speed. If you want overclocking potential, the Clevo P750ZM can get you a lot further.

[Single Channel RAM?!]

I think it's crazy that they're selling this notebook with only one stick of RAM, ie Single Channel RAM Configuration.  As you can see the performance of the CPU suffers greatly in the Physics test in 3DMark11, so much so that the new i7-5700HQ is only producing the same Physics score as my ancient i7 2630QM from 2012 in my M17xR3 notebook.  Just add another stick of RAM to make it Dual Channel (RAM is cheap!) and that will elevate CPU performance by a great margin.  Strange that they've skimped on the RAM when they've bothered to include a new generation good i7 CPU - it's like equipping your race horse with a 16 stone (101kg) jockey!

[Gary]

Why do you think that adding colour stripes and pointy corners is the mark of style, do you see macbooks with coloured stripes and dragon logo's ?

Please don't rate notebooks based on aesthetic tastes because you obviously have none.  Leave your subjective opinions out of the reviews and they would be much more valuable.

Now, on a technical matter... please do be more precise about HDMI, with the latest range of 4k tv's being cheaper than 2k monitors there is a lot of interest in using these tv's as monitors, but it seems still a confusing minefield of technical miss matches.

Eg  Does the notebook support 4k monitors at 60hz?... does it need a display port to do this? Does it need HDMI 2.0?, does the GPU need to be GTX 970 or above?,  do only  desktop GTX 900's support 4k?.. cuurently searching the internet gives a mishmash of opinion and half-truths. 

Your techincal resources should be able to give us the real facts regarding this significant display development.

PS, could you also consistly give the angle the notebook screen folds out to.

My old Sony z1 used to fold almost 180 degrees... this was great as I could share my screen with others across a table and even more usefully, I could lower it below the sceen of a desktop monitor so I could use both without the notebook screen blocking the view of the desktop screen.

Some screens only fold to 120 degrees making them a severe impediment to working with two screen.

Yes I could get a monitor stand but please remember you are reviewing notebooks and we are not always working at our own desk.

Thanks, love your hard facts, not your aesthetic judgements.. leave subjective opinions to the end users..

[Allen.Ngo]

hello,

the HDMI port is 1.4a, which supports up to 4K at 30 Hz. Gigabyte has also confirmed with us that 3D Vision is not supported here.

Display angle is greater than 120 at roughly 135.

[Ablab]

I wonder about the harsh criticism of fan noise. 52 dB is reached by most gaming notebooks under heavy load. In fact I hardly recall any reviews on this NBC site showing less than 50 dB under heavy load, not even weaker multimedia laptops. And my personal experience with multimedia laptops ist, that most games fully stress them out causing max fan noise...

Given that it has only 1 fan the cooling must be better than in the P35 series. I still don't like this rig... not sure why. I probably expected a thinner chassis and no DVD drive. This would have cause even more room for cooling and less weight.

[Derek]

I just got the P55W V4 and the article is incorrect in that the P55W V4 has an Intel Wireless-N 7265 and not an Intel Wireless-AC 7265. This means there is no wireless AC and no 5GHz support.

[Allen.Ngo]

I just got the P55W V4 and the article is incorrect in that the P55W V4 has an Intel Wireless-N 7265 and not an Intel Wireless-AC 7265. This means there is no wireless AC and no 5GHz support.

hi Derek,

i double checked and you are correct, the info has been changed to reflect that. thanks!

[velo3100]

Single channel ram on a gaming notebook seriously. This is not good as most gaming laptops have dual channel by standard. At least their maintainability is good.

I still wonder if portability of a laptop is worth it as it will be plugged in all the time and doesn't perform as well as desktops. Also the value of the laptop decreases by a lot.

[Simon91]

Is the optical drive replaceable with another HDD/SSD? I had a look around for HDD caddys but couldn't find anything. Would a caddy for a different Gigabyte laptop fit in here or is the design completely different?

[Daniel Bartus]

Hey, I just received my laptop, and everything works great on it.  But I noticed when gaming, my CPU temperature reaches as high as 94 degrees.  What could be the cause of this?  I have my fan speed set to 100 percent.  It doesnt seem to matter what game, even games such as CS:GO and the first Bioshock are causing temperature that high.  Where do you test your laptop?  Do you test yours while it's slightly elevated?  I have mine on a flat surface with no surrounding electronics to cause excessive heat.

Thanks in advance

[Fuskobot]

How quiet is during office use? Is it subtle enough to be used at an office/school?