Gigabyte P34W v3 Notebook Review

[Redaktion]

GTX 970M in a 14-inch laptop. What happens when you cram a 2.6 GHz i7-4720HQ CPU and an Nvidia GTX 970M together in an ultrathin 14-inch form factor? You get one of the fastest and truly portable gaming notebooks around - albeit one with some thermal issues.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Gigabyte-P34W-v3-Notebook-Review.135573.0.html

[Not Fit for Purpose]

As it currently stands, I don't think this notebook is fit for purpose:  extended gaming sessions.  As you can see during Heaven Benchmark the GPU throttled all the way down to a woeful 700Mhz at times, the CPU also throttled down quite significantly below it's maximum Turbo Multiplier.  The massive GPU drops in frequency are more worrying, and will result in very significant frame rate drops, as evidenced by your testing of Metro2033 in your report.  I, for one, couldn't allow myself to buy a new gaming laptop where the internal components were so restricted when gaming - this laptop is not worth the sum of it's components.

[Jojo Kracko]

Looks more like a low quality screen judging by those contrast numbers.  At last they had the good sense to skip the touch nonsense.

But this thing is just too hot and noisy.   It really should skip the quad core and go with the 5200U dual core.  Nvidia needs to figure out how to actually shut down their notebook GPUs.   Then there would be no reason for this thing to be running 5db louder than other notebooks when just browsing the internet.  Crank the fans when the GPU is used, leave them off otherwise.

[gary]

Depends on what your purpose is !  Mine isn't playing games, it travelling with a professional looking powerhouse for realtime architectural visualisations at client presentations.  For 3d modeling, graphic design, architectural design etc.

My current Gigabyte  P34g v1 has served me briiliantly for this up till now, no noise or heat issues... no workmanship issues, and never noticed  throttling in any practical sense . I fitted a second 256gb SSD easily myself..

I just ordered the V3 and cannot see why it would not perform in a similar manner. 

I will give you a review when I have unpacked it.

[alex333]

I'm quite tempted by the gigabyte P37W also equipped with 970m since it's one of the rare 17" laptop with an IPS screen but I am bit worried it will be too hot and too noisy.

[Art B]

Great laptop but the heat and noise is very bad, I can handle it running hot but the loud fans are unforgivable.
It could have been slightly thicker and used better fans to make this a excellent laptop.

[richlikeshislaptop]

I own this laptop with a few customisations. The fan noise is very quiet when performing regular office tasks. However it can get louder when playing games, but typically you may have speakers or headphones on which will cover that up (housemates/partners beware). It gets hot on the underside but not noticeably on top in the parts that you touch. I have seen the CPU throttle in XTU but it hasn't affected the FPS noticeably in games.
Photoshop and Lightroom fly.
There are many larger choices for those who require bigger fans or more cooling. My requirements were portability, power and  battery life of which this delivers in spades.
1.8KG (With mSATA SSD and SATA HDD) for a gaming laptop is amazing in my eyes. It's noticeably faster gaming than my 2.5yr old workstation with a [email protected] ivy bridge and 670GTX, a marvel of engineering!

[Allen.Ngo]

There is a fan Stealth mode setting for browsing or word processing.

One can argue that the P34W v3 would have been better off with a less demanding 965M or 960M to reduce price without sacrificing performance since the current 970M will throttle anyway when gaming. At the same time, I think some buyers may be willing to see through the performance hit for portability in its current configuration.

[richlikeshislaptop]

They now offer the P34K with the same chassis but with the 965 Graphics card. Maybe someone will kindly review that model for a comparison one day! ;-)

[ThinLightGaming]

This looks pretty good. Wish I could hear the fans in person. I'd prefer to keep the fans low and the CPU/GPU throttled down, even while gaming.

The problem with dinging this laptop for throttling and underperforming is that there's nothing else like it. Underperforming compared to a 15" or 17" machine? There's nowhere else to go if you're looking for a sub-15" thin, light laptop with a good IPS screen, reasonable battery life, and a discrete GPU. This market's filled with Intel integrated GPUs. There's not even a lower-spec option in the market like we had with the 14" GTX 630/640/650 laptops a couple years ago.

[TomBBB]

Is it possible to connect this notebook with 120hz display and get the same refresh rate?

[Wang Xuancong]

Hi performance testers,

The in-game performance not only depends on the graphics
setting, but also depends on your current viewing scene.
When you compare RazerBlade14(early 2015) with Gigabyte
P34W v3 using Unigine Heaven 4.0 stress test, the RazerBlade
is drawing a single round object, of course fast; but the
Gigabyte is drawing a complex scene with many objects
including a ship, which takes more computations. Thus, the
comparison is not very fair. Hope you are aware of this next time.

[Will]

@Wang Xuancong

That is just a screenshot.  You need to know how benchmarks work, as your statement makes no sense.  ???

[Ayal]

Can someone inform what form factor the mSATA is for the Gigabyte P34W v3