Gigabyte P34W review – thin and light gaming beast

P34-thin

The latest contender that paid a visit to our labs is Gigabyte P34W – a gaming notebook that looks nothing like a gaming notebook. It has “ultrabook” measurements, but that hasn’t stopped the Gigabyte engineers from squeezing in an Intel Core i7-4720HQ processor with a TDP of 47 watts and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M with power consumption of 81W. But that’s not all, Gigabyte P34W has a 14” IPS Full HD display, up to 16GB of RAM and 128GB mSATA storage combined with a 2.5” HDD. Everything mentioned so far goes into a 20.9mm thick laptop with weight of 1.8kg.

One of the most interesting questions here is how the cooling system handles all that. We’re going to check that in detail, as well as our usual display and sound tests, PWM, CPU and GPU performance, battery life and everything that you might need to know about this fascinating machine.

You can check Gigabyte P34’s current price and availability here: http://amzn.to/1ONR6Rf

Contents


What’s in the box?

Gigabyte P34W comes in a good looking box with some useful things inside – besides the notebook you’ll find a cleaning cloth for its display, user’s manual, warranty card and two DVDs – one with drivers/utilities and another with CyberLink PowerDVD multimedia software.

IMG_3860

Design and construction

The first thing that will amaze you when you encounter P34 is its ultra thin and light construction. Actually, Gigabyte P34W is the world’s lightest GTX 970M gaming laptop. It weighs just 1.8 kg and its thickness measures at the mind-blowing 20.9 mm. Most of the notebooks in this class are at least two times thicker than P34W so the first thing that popped in our minds was “Will it become a mobile furnace when you game?”. That’s why we’re going to put the machine to detailed temperature, stability and comfort tests but you’ll read more on that later.

IMG_3892

Now, let’s take a look at P34W’s design. Using aluminum as a primary material for laptop’s body is typical and that’s because metal, unlike plastic, successfully disperses the heat which makes it the only possible choice for Gigabyte, given the aforementioned thickness of the notebook.

The color is dark gray (or space gray if you like) and the only plastic element on the exterior is a thin cover at the top of the lid, which provides the antennas with better reception. Five centimeters below is the reflective Gigabyte metallic logo.


IMG_3869

IMG_3873

IMG_3896

IMG_3900

Opening the lid, you get a view of slightly darker interior which also combines metal and plastic but this time the latter is used more – for the screen borders and as a base of the keyboard. The keyboard is placed on a slightly concave panel and that’s a convenient decision because in that way typing is a bit more comfortable. The Island Style design contributes for the good impression as well – the keys have enough distance between each other so the chance of making a mistake pressing two of them simultaneously is minimal.

IMG_3878

We should note that although P34W is less than an inch thick, it also has a keyboard backlight which automatically adjusts its power relative to the external conditions. You won’t have a NumPad panel but that’s normal for a 14-incher and given the notebook size we’re delighted with the keyboard’s level of typing comfort. We could say the same for the multitouch trackpad – the size of 100 x 55 mm is enough for easy use with gestures and there is a small plastic strip below it which covers the left and right buttons.

On the other side of the keyboard are the stereo Dolby Digital Plus speakers (2x 1.5W) and the Power button between them.

Gigabyte’s engineers have made a good decision by placing USB ports on both sides of the notebook. Actually, it’s pretty nice to see a wide range of expansion in a laptop this size. On the left are Kensington Lock port, Ethernet, VGA, two USB 3.0 ports and combo audio jack.

On the right you’ll find two more USB 3.0 ports, MemoryCard slot, HDMI and DC-in. In other words, you have everything you might need and all of these are full-sized.

Just behind the trackpad are five LED indicators for the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, HDD, Battery and Power.

Side Photos

IMG_3893IMG_3905IMG_3907IMG_3909IMG_3910


Disassembly and Upgrade options

We’ve already shown you how P34 looks on the inside – the internal arrangement of the components is very important mostly for proper cooling and reducing the chance of faults.

IMG_3918

It was a nice surprise to find an mSATA slot (we would prefer M.2, though) along with the 2.5” HDD, two RAM slots and two cooling fans. You can easily swap the present 128GB mSATA and 1TB HDD with up to 512GB mSATA and 2TB HDD, so you won’t encounter storage issues. It’s even easier to service/replace/upgrade the RAM because it’s covered by a dedicated lid held by just one screw.

These are the specific components we found in Gigabyte P34W:

  • Battery: SIMPLO 961TA013F (GNC-J40)
  • 2.5” HDD: WD Blue WD10JPVX (1TB, 5400 rpm)
  • mSATA: LITE-ON LMT-128L9M (128GB)
  • RAM: Transcend, 8GB (1x 8192MB DDR3, 1600Mhz)
  • Wi-Fi: Intel Dual-Band Wireless AC-7260 (7260HMW)

If you would like to see more internal photos or want to find out how you could disassemble and upgrade Gigabyte P34W, check out our “Inside” article:
http://laptopmedia.com/highlights/inside-gigabyte-p34w-disassembly-internal-photos-and-upgrade-options/

Display quality

Gigabyte P34W’s display has a Full HD IPS panel (AUO B140HAN) and matte coating. It has a 14-inch (35.56 cm) diagonal and 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution. Its ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 157 ppi and the pixel pitch – 0.161 mm. The displays becomes “Retina” (the human eye stops distinguishing individual pixels) when viewed from a distance equal to, or greater than 56 cm. Since typical viewing distance is 60 cm, 157 ppi is sufficient for a flawless experience in this manner.

Micr-Gigabyte P34W

Gigabyte P34W has comfortable viewing angles, as you can see in the photos below, taken at 45°.

Angles-Gigabyte P34W

The mean maximum brightness we measured before profiling is 336 cd/m2 with a maximum deviation of 9%. The average color temperature on a white screen (and maximum brightness) is 7320K – slightly colder than the optimum of 6500K. We have no complaints here.

100pBrightness-Gigabyte P34W

Color reproduction

To put things into perspective, we would like to give you a little introduction into the sRGB and Adobe RGB color gamuts. The CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram represents the spectrum of colors visible to the human eye, thus giving you a better perception of color gamut coverage and color accuracy. Inside the black triangle you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB), used by millions of people in HDTV and on the Web. As for Adobe RGB, it is used to work with professional cameras and monitors when preparing print. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone, and so reproducing them accurately is key in a quality display.

The yellow triangle represents what colors Gigabyte P34W is able to show – 93% of the sRGB color gamut, which is great, especially having in mind that this isn’t a machine targeted at designers and photographers.

Gamut-Gigabyte P34W

The graph below is the same but with recorded results – the one on the left is pre-calibration, while the one on the right is after. The colored circles represent the reference colors, the white circles being the result. You can see the main and additional colors with 100% and 50% saturation inside the sRGB gamut.

Colors-Gigabyte P34W

Gigabyte P34W has accurate colors even on factory settings.

We profiled the screen at 140 cd/m2 brightness level and a target temperature of 6500K. We used X-Rite i1Display Pro.

xRite-Gigabyte P34W

We tested the display using 24 commonly used sample colors like skin tones, grass, blue sky, orange etc. Most of them are in the middle of the color gamut, and after calibration their accuracy was really high – average DeltaE 2000=0.9. Low scores are desirable here, and deviations under 1.0 can be detected only with lab equipment.

We’ve got DeltaE 2000 = 0.61 and contrast of 1000:1, which is an outstanding result.

Result-Gigabyte P34W

REPORT-Gigabyte P34W

Here are some of the colors.

ColorChecker-Gigabyte P34W

The gamma curve is identical to the optimum.

Luminance-Gigabyte P34W

Comparison

Se ipotizziamo una distanza di 58 cm (~23 pollici) tra l'occhio umano e il monitor del notebook, la visione normale (20/20) richiederebbe una densità di pixel di almeno 150ppi per interpretare un'immagine perfettamente dettagliata.

Computer portatileRisultatiRisultato
differenza
PrezzoDifferenza
di prezzo
Gigabyte P34W v3 14.0-inch, AU Optronics B140HAN, 1920 x 1080 pixels157.35
Acer Aspire V15 Nitro (VN7-591G, 960M) 15.6-inch, LG, 1920 x 1080 pixels141-10.39%
Lenovo Y50 15.6-inch, LG, 1920 x 1080 pixels141-10.39%
ASUS ROG G551JW (GeForce GTX 960M) 15.6-inch, LG, 1920 x 1080 pixels141-10.39%
Dell Alienware 15 (GeForce GTX 965M) 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080 pixels141.21-10.26%

Una maggiore luminosità del pannello è fondamentale per il comfort visivo quando si lavora all'esterno o in una stanza molto illuminata.

Computer portatileRisultatiRisultato
differenza
PrezzoDifferenza
di prezzo
Gigabyte P34W v3 14.0-inch, AU Optronics B140HAN, 1920 x 1080 pixels336
Acer Aspire V15 Nitro (VN7-591G, 960M) 15.6-inch, LG, 1920 x 1080 pixels300-10.71%
Lenovo Y50 15.6-inch, LG, 1920 x 1080 pixels235-30.06%
ASUS ROG G551JW (GeForce GTX 960M) 15.6-inch, LG, 1920 x 1080 pixels292-13.1%
Dell Alienware 15 (GeForce GTX 965M) 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080 pixels-

Il Delta E è un'unità di misura CIE della differenza di colore. Valori più alti indicano che il display produce colori meno accurati. (i risultati più bassi sono auspicabili).

Computer portatileRisultatiRisultato
differenza
PrezzoDifferenza
di prezzo
Gigabyte P34W v3 14.0-inch, AU Optronics B140HAN, 1920 x 1080 pixels0.61
Acer Aspire V15 Nitro (VN7-591G, 960M) 15.6-inch, LG, 1920 x 1080 pixels1.24+103.28%
Lenovo Y50 15.6-inch, LG, 1920 x 1080 pixels1.47+140.98%
ASUS ROG G551JW (GeForce GTX 960M) 15.6-inch, LG, 1920 x 1080 pixels1.31+114.75%
Dell Alienware 15 (GeForce GTX 965M) 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080 pixels-

La gamma di colori sRGB, introdotta come standard per il Web, mostra la percentuale di colori utilizzati sul Web che possono essere visualizzati sullo schermo del dispositivo in esame (i valori più alti sono migliori).

Computer portatileRisultatiRisultato
differenza
PrezzoDifferenza
di prezzo
Gigabyte P34W v3 14.0-inch, AU Optronics B140HAN, 1920 x 1080 pixels94
Acer Aspire V15 Nitro (VN7-591G, 960M) 15.6-inch, LG, 1920 x 1080 pixels91-3.19%
Lenovo Y50 15.6-inch, LG, 1920 x 1080 pixels64-31.91%
ASUS ROG G551JW (GeForce GTX 960M) 15.6-inch, LG, 1920 x 1080 pixels84-10.64%
Dell Alienware 15 (GeForce GTX 965M) 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080 pixels-

Conclusion

Gigabyte P34W has a high resolution IPS display, comfortable viewing angles, wide sRGB coverage and accurate colors. All that means that it’s not just suitable for gaming, but even for color work.

Health – PWM / Screen flickering

No matter what the brightness level is, Gigabyte P34W doesn’t use Pulse-Width Modulation, which is great news for your ocular health. You shouldn’t experience any eye strain even after pronged gaming sessions.

PWM-Gigabyte P34W

Sound quality

Gigabyte P34W has high quality sound in our subjective auditory test, with Dolby Digital Plus. In Music mode all tones are clear. The Movie mode makes the sound soft and well balanced. The Voice mode makes conversations loud and clear.

The frequency response fits in +/- 6 dB range for a wide spectrum of frequencies. This differs significantly from what some outfits advertise in terms of frequency spread. You can even come across volume drops of as much as 15-20 dB.

Dolby-Gigabyte P34W

Sound-Gigabyte P34W

Specs sheet

These technical specifications refer only to the particular device being tested in this review. Laptops from the same series could have different characteristics and features.


CPUIntel Core i7-4720HQ (4-core, 2.60 – 3.60 GHz, 6MB cache)
RAM8GB (1x 8192MB, one slot free) – Transcend, DDR3, 1600Mhz
GPUNVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M (3GB GDDR5) + Intel HD Graphics 4600 (supports Optimus)
HDD/SSDLITE-ON LMT-128L9M (128GB, mSATA); WD Blue WD10JPVX (1TB, 5400 rpm)
Display14.0-inch (35.56 cm) – 1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD), IPS matte
Optical DriveN/A
ConnectivityLAN 10/100/1000 Mbit/sec, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0
FeaturesSD card reader, Auto-Adjusting Backlit keyboard, 4x USB 3.0 ports, HD Web Camera, HDMI 1.4, Kensington Lock, 1.5W speakers
BatterySIMPLO 961TA013F (GNC-J40): Li-polymer, 15.2V, 61.25Wh
Height20.60 mm (0.81”)
Weight (with the battery)1831 g (4.04 lbs)
Power supply weight567 g (1.25 lbs)


Drivers

The configuration we tested came up with  Windows 8.1 pre-installed (64-bit), but if you still need drivers, you should check the official support page:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5325#dl

Battery Life

Is 61.25Wh / 4030 mAh enough for decent battery life given the powerful CPU and GPU? We couldn’t go without checking that – we’ll conduct our usual Web Surfing, Video Playback and 3D Gaming tests. All of them we run at connected Wi-Fi, 120 cd/m2 brightness and Power Saver mode.

Web Surfing

As usual, we start with the Web browsing test which uses a custom script to automatically load different popular pages.

surfing-p34

346 minutes (5 hours and 46 minutes) is an outstanding result – just for comparison, Acer Aspire V15 Nitro ran out of juice after 233 minutes (3h and 53m) and ASUS ZenBook Pro UX501 gave up after exactly 200 minutes (3h and 20m).

Video Playback

For our Video playback test we use a 720p HD movie.

movie-p34

261 minutes (4 hours and 21 minutes) is another great result, number one in the race with V15 Nitro (198 minutes) and UX501 (158 minutes).

3D Gaming

For accurate simulation, we used the Metro Last Light benchmark running on a loop with graphics set to minimum.

gaming-p34

Despite the high consumption of GTX 970M, Gigabyte P34W managed to run Metro: LL for 106 minutes (1 hour and 46 minutes). This reaffirms our good impression.

CPU

Intel_Core_i7_logo1Although Intel Core i7-4720HQ debuts in Q1 of 2015, this high-end processor is part of the Haswell family, since the Broadwell generation represents only energy-efficient “U” series chips. The Core i7-4720HQ is a direct successor of the i7-4710HQ which is commonly used in gaming laptops due to its higher clock speeds and high power consumption for more raw performance boost. As usual, the Core i7-4720HQ uses the so-called HyperThreading technology, allowing the CPU to emulate one virtual core for each physical one, thus running 8 threads at the same time with only 4 physical cores. The CPU has a base frequency of 2.6GHz and Turbo Boost up to 3.4GHz for 4 active cores, 3.5GHz for two active cores and 3.6GHz for one active core. This makes the Core i7-4720HQ faster than the Core i7-4710HQ with only 100MHz.

The CPU is designed with 22nm manufacturing process (since it’s part of the Haswell generation). The cache levels are high and are as follows: 256KB at level 1, 1024KB at level 2, 6144KB at level 3. The maximum operating temperature is 100°C and as for the maximum TDP – 47W and that includes the memory controller, VRMs, and integrated graphics. Speaking of which, the Core i7-4720HQ accommodates Intel HD Graphics 4600 with 20 EU (Execution Units) clocked at 400MHz and can go up to 1200MHz. The maximum supported memory of the chip is 32GB DDR3L 1333/1600 with two memory channels. Other notable features are HyperThreading, AVX, AVX2, Quick Sync, Virtualization, AES-NI.

The official Intel Core i7-4720HQ web page can be found here:
http://ark.intel.com/products/78934/Intel-Core-i7-4720HQ-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz

You can take a look at our CPU rating system, to see which place the Core i7-4720HQ gets:
http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you can find more information about Core i7-4720HQ:
http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-4720hq/

Fritz

Fritz is a chess benchmark which tests the computing capabilities of the CPU with various chess moves. The Intel Core i7-4720HQ managed to get 11.996 million moves per second. For comparison, one of the most powerful PCs, Deep(er) Blue, was able to squeeze out 200 million moves per second. In 1997 Deep(er) Blue even beat the famous Garry Kasparov with 3.5 to 2.5.

GPU

geforce-gtx-970m-3qtrNVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M is a high-end graphics chip, announced on October 7, 2014. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M uses the Maxwell GM204 architecture and has 1280 CUDA cores. All of them operate at 924MHz, but NVIDIA’s GPU Boost 2.0 can dynamically increase that frequency.

The graphics card has a 198-bit bus and supports DirectX 11.2, Pixel Shader 5.0, Optimus, SLI, PhysX, OpenCL 1.1, OpenGL 4.4, DirectCompute, CUDA, Blu-Ray 3D and 3D Vision. Memory bandwidth is 120GB/sec. Max resolutions (WxH) are 3840×2160 digital and 2048×1536 analog.

Here you can download the latest drivers for GeForce 970M:
http://www.geforce.com/drivers

See where is the 970M placed in our Top Laptop Graphics Ranking page:
http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-graphics-ranking/

Here you can find more information and detailed specs of the model:
http://laptopmedia.com/video-card/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970m/

 

Gaming Tests

We test gaming laptops in two resolutions – 1366 x 768 (HD) and 1920 x 1080 (Full HD). For this test we used 355.98 drivers version.

Metro-Last-Light-Cover

Metro: Last Light (Low)Metro: Last Light (Medium)Metro: Last Light (Max)
HD (1366 x 768)87 fps71 fps50 fps
Full HD (1920 x 1080)73 fps69 fps32 fps

tomb-raider-2013-wallpaper1

Tomb Raider (Low)Tomb Raider (Medium)Tomb Raider (Max)
HD (1366 x 768)322 fps177 fps84 fps
Full HD (1920 x 1080)245 fps116 fps57 fps

f1-2015-game

F1 2015 (Low)F1 2015 (Medium)F1 2015 (Max)
HD (1366 x 768)93 fps84 fps77 fps
Full HD (1920 x 1080)84 fps69 fps54 fps

thief_4_wallpaper_by_christian2506-d5x4ppb1

Thief (Low)Thief (Medium)Thief (Max)
HD (1366 x 768)60 fps57 fps55 fps
Full HD (1920 x 1080)57 fps55 fps46 fps

gta5

GTA 5 (Low)GTA 5 (Medium)GTA 5 (Max)
HD (1366 x 768)127 fps79 fps38 fps
Full HD (1920 x 1080)115 fps53 fps25 fps

Temperatures, Stability and Comfort

Looking at the ultra-thin body, it’s really interesting to see how P34W’s cooling system will handle continuous CPU/GPU load. That’s of great significance because we’re talking about a gaming notebook whose main duty will be running games all night. High temperature means reduced performance so we hope that the pursuit of a lowest possible thickness won’t throw a curve ball at Gigabyte and their user’s gaming experience.

Gigabyte P34W’s CPU maintains a temperature of 48-55°C when being used for everyday tasks like web surfing or editing documents but our stability test is nowhere near that kind of load. We put the laptops in our laboratory at 100% CPU + 100% GPU torture for hours. As you might guess, that doesn’t represent normal usage but the results are clear indication of what we can expect in the long term.

Let’s start with the…

100% CPU load

We remind you that Intel Core i7-4720HQ has a Tj.max temperature of 100°C, or in other words that’s the limit above which the system will turn off itself automatically in order to save the CPU from burning up. Of course, that shouldn’t happen because reaching temperatures near 100°C will cause a Turbo Boost reduction or even throttling.

5 minutes after starting the 100% CPU load, the processor works at 3.2 – 3.3 GHz, which isn’t that far from the maximum four core Turbo Boost – 3.4 GHz. The base frequency is far off – 2.6 GHz. We should note that the cooling fans spin really hard (we didn’t find out their RPM) and to be fair are quite noisy.

We don’t see any noticeable difference at the 30 minute mark. The clock speed is the same – around 3.2 – 3.3 GHz and the temperature of the cores goes up to 88-94°C.

Gigabyte P34W passes the first hour in the same state and now it’s time to bring in a 100% GPU load into the equation…

100cpu1hour

100% CPU + 100% GPU load

We added 100% GPU load in order to stress the cooling system to its limit. The GPU temperature started from 56°C but jumped to 77-78°C in the blink of an eye.

After one more hour (making a total of 2 hours), The CPU keeps its core temperature at 92-95°C with a frequency of 1.4 – 1.5GHz. At the same time, the GPU doesn’t go beyond 87°C with a core frequency of 540 MHz.

100cpugpu-2hours

Gaming Stability

OK, but what if we keep the GPU load, stop the CPU load and run Metro: Last Light at highest graphics settings? It’s rather surprising that P34W still works like a charm and gets us an average framerate of 14 fps.

We’ll try the same test, immediately after knocking off the synthetic GPU load as well, leaving nothing but the game to task the cooling system. We left the benchmark looping for 20 minutes so we could check if there’s a difference between the first and the last run.

The average framerate in the first run is 29.72 fps and in the last one – 29.17 fps. The difference is negligible, just 6% lower than the result in our “official” performance tests in which we run every benchmark (after a minute in idle) 3 times and take the highest result. In other words, we’re impressed with the cooling system and our only caveat is the fan noise which is slightly louder than we would like.

Comfort

48.1°C is the temperature of the hottest from the nine sectors on the main panel. Yes, it’s somewhat hot but the hottest point is near the power button and outside the keyboard, so you won’t touch it during your work with the laptop and if you do it accidentally, don’t worry – it’s not hot enough to burn your fingers.

The good thing here – the palm rest is fairly cool with a maximum temperature of 32.7°C in the lower left corner. Meanwhile, the air coming out of the vents on the back (below the screen) is pretty hot and it wouldn’t be a good idea to block the exhausts, especially with something that could be burned.

Take a look at the surface temps (after two hours of high load) on the main panel.

temperatures-bottom-p34

Conclusion

editor-choiceIt’s not just the good looks – we really liked P34’s thinness at first sight, but to be fair, we thought that it won’t be able to successfully pass our tests. It turned out that it did it, with a little reproof, though – when the CPU and the GPU are heavy loaded, they’re like little helicopters. But how could we blame Gigabyte for that when P34W weighs 1.8 kg and is 20.60 mm thick, while accommodating Intel Core i7-4720HQ and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M.

It’s not just the performance – Gigabyte P34W sports an 14-inch IPS screen with outstanding color accuracy and great overall quality and on the top of that it doesn’t use the harmful for your eyes health pulse-width modulation.

We can’t miss to mention the high quality of the 1.5W speakers and the wide set of different interfaces including four USB 3.0 ports and HDMI 1.4. The battery life is another nice surprise – Gigabyte P34W can surf the Web for more than 5.5 hours on one charge. Giving Editor’s choice award to this machine is one of the easiest decisions we’ve made.

You can check Gigabyte P34’s current price and availability here: http://amzn.to/1ONR6Rf

Pros

  • High-performance CPU and GPU
  • Stylish, ultra-thin and ultra-light design
  • IPS screen with great color accuracy and 92% sRGB coverage
  • No PWM across all brightness levels
  • Long battery life
  • High-quality 1.5W speakers
  • Good performance stability at high load


Cons

  • The cooling system is louder than we would like, when it’s heavy loaded

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Thierry
Thierry
8 anni fa

Excellent review!Is-it the last version of the P34W (v4) or the V3?
Thanks for’your answer.