New gaming notebook unveiled - AORUS X7

I haven't posted here in a long time since I built my desktop but sheesh, Gigabyte has me really excited about this new laptop and posting here once again. I remember I once asked Asus a question on their Facebook page about whether or not they would release their own sub 1 inch gaming notebook and the response was basically "no." Now, with Gigabyte joining in with this beast of a laptop, I can only hope Razer, MSI, and hopefully, Asus, will step up.

 

Seems like a pretty awesome laptop, but out of my price range for now. Think i'll just pick up one of those new 1440p asus monitors and another 770 for my desktop and call it a day.

 

Isn't the entire consumer electronic world of our era designed by Taiwan geeks, made by ML China labor, and distributed by American business people, occasionally under a Korean/Japanese brand?

 

It does look great, and I like the ability to control fan speed on it. 17 inches is my only gripe, wish it was in the 14 inch category, but then you lose hard drive capacity which i get. I challenge them to build a 14 inch model, with dual msata slots rather than the 2.5 inch ssd slots, and retaining 765m sli...with a 14 inch ips monitor, and macro keys, and fan control keys. If they can do that, that would be the perfect setup for me, and I would definitely give up the g46.

 

So a 10lbs laptop vs a 6lbs one? And enterprise class that gets 30h battery life uses an add-on battery, and likely can't play much more than minesweeper.

From the specs so far it doesn't seem like it has a 120Hz screen. Not sure if 3D is supported yet or not.

We don't know what the battery life is, so we need to wait and see. My cheap Dell work laptop only gets 3-4 hours battery life and I have no issues with it. I can plug in once or twice a day usually not a problem. I'm HOPING it provides more than 4 hours battery life, but for a system like this I don't know that it's a deal breaker for most people.

 

"Mommy? Why doesn't the police officer give me candy like the lady at the store?"
"Mommy? Why doesn't the High-power CPU + Dual-GPU laptop last for 10 hours battery like the piece of crap equipped with a dual-core, low-freq CPU and integrated graphics? They both cost 2000$ Boo-hoo-hoo".

Does that explain it?

 

IMO they will add more laptops in including 14 bu I very much doubt sli. but I think they will have more around 800m series release. ATM I seem them with sli 765m. so they rob make a 15 inch or 14 if they want to go head to head with razer blade 14 or gigabyte p35k. but obviously there is a market there for slim power houses. preferably quiet aswell. im really looking forward to 2014. I might go for the next gen 14" blade with 860m unless the w230ss really improves things over the w230st. my only grpe is the mouse buttons could be made a bit more subtle to click, and the fan noise which all w230st user believes SHOULD be quieter to some degree. special if razerblade did a an exceptional job with it

 

Still no.

When you compare gaming notebooks with workstation counterparts with similar hardware spec, some workstation options have noticeably lower idle power draw without sacrificing peak performance. And that's what we're asking for.

The Precision/Elitebook machines only offer MXM-B in 17" while the 15" Clevo/MSI ones have higher idle power draw. If any side of the two come up with one model that offers both, I (and plenty of people I know that have similar needs) might just stop this "sacrifice A or B" game.


BTW, dual-core or quad-core does not have much effect on idle power draw on Intel Platforms. Only low voltage chips have more battery-friendly idle behavior. Optimums/Enduro laptops also have neglectable off-state dGPU power draw. (It's not exactly zero but close.)

 

This may have been answered, but I couldn't find it.

The graphics in this system are soldered on, right? So, they're not upgradeable? That's my understanding of how they're able to fit all of this into such a small form factor. If this is true, it's a shame they're using previous generation cards when the 800 series is around the corner. Even if they're not a dramatic improvement, they are an improvement over the previous generation. You'll basically be paying top-dollar for old technology.

 

There's nothing preventing them from using 800m series. They probably just can't use it yet because of nda and wanted to showcase their laptop at ces.

Beamed from my G2 Tricorder

 

Explains why I dislike teens

HT you are being fastidious the workstation class doesn't weight the same as the clevo with E CPUs

And you are aware of what the 4000 and the 4400 can do. Anyway now normal 14 and 15 can do that as well, not only the 12.5 like the HP 2560p that people put a quad in there and called it a day.

dosed, mixed and stirred, not shaken, from taptalk

 

I'm sure this thing has been in design and testing for a long while. I think engineering samples are just now appearing for 800 series. Too late for this unit. Next refresh..

 

What part of "the 9 Cell+ batteries is too thick for a 2cm notebook" don`t you understand?
Why do you think people complain about the battery life on mobile phones is too little? Its the same freaking people who complained about the older mobile phone being too thick. Or want more power but still want them thin and light.

Oh the irony

But I guess Gigabyte can engineer and manufacture their own battery thats a big thin block that covers the entire notebook bottom, to get the 10 hour battery life you complain about. Yep...

And I`m not sure why I even have to say this but you don`t have to GAME with the notebook plugged in to the AC outlet. It doesn`t refuse to open up web browser when its plugged in.

 

Looks at the Razer blade, rmbp and other thin and light...err... nope.

dosed, mixed and stirred, not shaken, from taptalk

 

Razer Blade Pro have the exact same battery capacity as X7....
It manage almost 3 hours too running only 29W thanks to Optimus.
Battery Life, Power Consumption & Portability Index : MSI GS70 Stealth vs. Razer Blade Pro - Battle of the Slim 17-inch Gaming Notebooks - HardwareZone.com.sg

Razer, MacBook Pro, they are all way weaker than X7 anyway.

 

This was a fun read. Your posts usually are...

I do agree with you that 2~ hours is not sufficient for daily tasking, but I am also smart enough to not buy an expensive gaming laptop for Microsoft Excel work. Some people buy them thinking it's the best of both worlds, when in it's not, because gaming computers are designed for gaming. They just happen to be able to do other things as well.

I'm sure one day we'll be able to do everything on a single device, but I still believe we're only just now stepping into that territory with some of the smaller gaming systems.

 

It does? Because you're seriously acting like one.
There is no workstation class machine approaching the amount of GPU processing power offered here, except with at least 1kg extra weight (Precision m6x00).

There's a lot of stuff that fits in that 1kg, and a lot more cash forked out for it. Pour l'example, much larger battery, much more research and development done on professional-oriented features, and the convenience of using JUST ONE GPU. Using just one gpu = a much easier optimus or enduro implementation.

Currently, to use dual-gpu and still be able to fully switch to integrated, you would require a hardware mux implementation, more or less requiring a PC restart every time you want to switch. Doing it through the iGPU is unfeasible, trying to synchronize the framebuffers would be a disaster, and the lack of convenience for the end-user and required price increase for the extra feature would just be a drawback.

All these things COST MONEY, and 2000-2500$ is quite frankly, quite cheap for the alternatives at this price point. Just to start, find me a machine under 3.2Kg that can output that GPU power, even single-gpu, even 15". If it's 17", make it under 3.8kg. The m6800, a much heavier, more well-endowed machine can average under 6 hours during low wi-fi enabled usage.

Guess what? That's not really a heck of a lot.

The 4000 and 4400 can do jack. They're integrated cards. The top Iris Pro chip (superior to the 4400) is around 2-3 times slower than a single GTX-765m. Your argument is invalid.

Then there's the features. Dual-msata + HDD, 2 HDMI + DP, dual-gpu, low weight, great cooling, good esthetics, reliable build, etc. etc.

I completely agree i'm a fanboy for it. Wanna know why? Because there's no similar offer on the market. None. Nada. Zilch.
And guess who else is acting like a fanboy right now? You are. But for the life of me I can't find any rhyme or reason to it. You're whining in a thread about a new impressive machine just for the sake of whining.

If you want to buy a HD-4400 lightweight, 12-hour workstation, go for it. Cheers. There's great machines like that. Quite a few of them actually.

There's really very few machines offering what the Aorus. A grand total of none. And there's plenty of us that have been waiting for just this. And really, you're just spoiling our (read: MY) fun now. Can't you bother the Lenovo Y510p people? You know, another cute SLI machine?

I'm sure you'll find very warm reception there with these wonderful, well-thought arguments.

Bottom line is, the sigs of most people in this thread will tell you all you need to know.
We like power. We also are prepared to make a few little compromises for that, such as having it lightweight, sacrificing a bit of that power for more convenience, but basically, we like power. We'll compromise battery life to gain power.
Normally, we'd compromise weight to get power, but because the Aorus x7 is so light, this time we wouldn't have to.
Many of us sacrifice aesthetics, or features, or build quality, or silence, or any other thing, because in the end we want a really strong machine.

Whether we're gamers, coders, chicks browsing facebook or whatever, you can't help wanting what you want. I can't stand slow machines. That's just the way it is. And any machine that would fit your tastes wouldn't fit mine.

TL;DR: Crying "Stop liking what I don't like" sure makes your input useful. Carry on.

Bro, you forgot something in that last statement. They are all much weaker than X7 anyway. Especially rmbp. Pathetically so.

 

Would like to add that for machines with removable batteries, you can always put one extra in your bag to alleviate the problem somewhat. Unfortunately we've seen a trend towards locked-in batteries.

 

There's always external batteries. I can't see it using more than 25W in a low usage situation, which would put it around 3 hrs, maybe a bit less. But we'll just have to wait and see.

Beamed from my G2 Tricorder

 

OK kiddo, let's revise what i said in this thread about the gaming notebook that only serves to play games.

I like the whole idea of the notebook, I don't like the design because its childish, I really dislike the battery life.

Cloudfire said there is no way one can put a large battery on a thin and light, this is wrong. The rmbp packs a 90wh+ battery. The Razer blade 14 packs a very large battery as well, and the list goes on. So the point stands. Gigabyte does it in their p notebooks as well, this is my main pet peeve against them.
The cooling is generally great, the power is good, chassis quality is good, display is usually decent, mobility is good, they usually let down in the battery life

A gaming PC can also do more stuff than just gaming, its a PC, it isn't a console. Not like that consoles have been acting as media centers

You are acting irrationally.

PS there are only 2 workstation OEMS HP and dell. Lenovo pretends they do. So you can check their sites for the k5100

dosed, mixed and stirred, not shaken, from taptalk

 

Any idea if this has hardware or software RAID for the two mSATA. I wonder if it is really worth risk using RAID 0. If I were to get this it would double as a workstation/gaming laptop and I would probably prefer not to have them in RAID 0. I've never used RAID and not even sure how to backup/recover such a config... that is a different subject/topic not to get sidetracked on here.

Thanks

 

Are you not finished yet?

Razer Blade 14 use a 71Wh battery. X7 use 73Wh battery.
MacBook Pro 13 use a 71Wh battery.
MacBook Pro 15 use a 90Wh battery, but it is designed and manufactured by Apple themselves. I said that Gigabyte can make a custom made battery, but how plausible is that for a company thats not even worth 1/100 of Apple, which only sell a few notebooks?

Here is MacBook Pro 15. Look at the battery and the space it takes


Here is X7



Its not possible to use the same battery. You would have to remove the speakers, the HDD, the SSDs, a big chunk of the motherboard (which could make it more difficult to find a suitable MB), and I`m pretty sure there are limit on how close you can put a explosive battery next to the 2 hot GPUs and the CPUs.
MacBook Pro have a 35W GPU and a 35W CPU. X7 have 2x65W GPUs and a 47W CPU. 70W vs 180W. Its on a entirely different league.

You can`t have it all. You have to make compromises. Either mediocre performance and great battery life, or pure gaming power and some battery.

I`m pretty sure Gigabyte have done what they could do. Not just because of the room the battery takes, the heat from the components but also because of the price.

Bah, I`m officially done with this discussion.

 

Been using factory installed RAID0 on my hp envy 15 with hardware controller for the past 4 years. Never had any drive issues and it is about double the read/write speed of the SSDs that were available at that time.

For back ups, simply use an external USB drive.

However, none of those models have dual graphics cards.

I'd agree that the appearance suffers a bit from the weird lid and I would have preferred a more understated design, but it still qualifies as thin form factor, which is a huge plus in my view. At least this is not a giant bulky alien disco spaceship. And it will run games at significantly higher settings compared with the Blade, Blade Pro, GS70, and the P35k, all the other thin form factor laptops available with decent mid-range gaming graphics cards (they all seem to use a single 765m or 760m).

There is not yet a perfect laptop that satisfies all the criteria on everyone's checklist. Normally when buying a new laptop, you have to compromise somewhere. We can go with powerful graphics card + short battery life and bulky form factor, or a thin form factor model, with mid range graphics card + short battery life, or weaker graphics card + longer battery life.

I believe this is the very first thin form factor laptop with better graphics power than a single 765m. I'm excited.

The one area that seems like a missed opportunity is limiting the display to 1920x1080 when there are a growing number of laptops with higher display resolution (3200x1800, 2880x1800, etc) coupled with significantly weaker video cards than the Aorus X7. In contrast, the Aorus model could actually run recent games at those higher resolutions.

In my case, I use my laptop primarily for work, quad core CPU, SSD and fast graphics card help for working with large files in Adobe creative suite applications. Then when I want to run games, dual 765m cards in SLI would be amazing. I always use AC power because I prefer the CPU and graphics card run at the fastest settings with bright display setting, etc.

I travel frequently and I can only recall one or two occasions in the past few years where I ever needed to use my laptop without plugging into AC. Maybe if you are in school and need to take lecture notes? Otherwise, everywhere I go, airport, coffeeshop, hotel lobby, bookstore, even most domestic flights, there is generally a handy AC outlet nearby. I bought the "slice battery" slim extended life attachment for my envy 15, which triples the battery life from about 2hrs to 6 or 7 hrs because I thought I was going to need it, but I've never needed to use the extra battery, and it only adds weight and bulk to my carry on luggage.

 

It looks like they could throw out the 2.5" HDD and increase battery capacity by near half. There's still unused space where more than one mSATA can be located.

 

Good idea. With two mSATA slots, taking away the 2.5" bay for a much larger battery is a sacrifice I'd easily be willing to make. Even one mSATA slot ain't so bad now that there is a 1TB SSD and prices continue to drop.

 

I think 1920x1080 was a good idea. Dual 765m definitely lack the power for higher resolutions. Even 780m manages barely and it has more memory bandwidth than dual 765m, as well as arguably more power in general.

This seems like a great laptop, dual sli, slim profile, a winner for gamers in general, and a nice alternative.

 

Are dual 765m cards in SLI not close to double the power of a single 765m? I'm still able to run most recent games at 1920x1080 on my 4 year old envy with a single 5830m, significantly weaker than the 765m.

I know some rMBP owners are running certain games at 2880x1800 with a weak single 650m. I wouldn't count on running Witcher 2 or Crysis, but I'd expect dual 765m's to run some games at higher than 1080p, it's certainly much faster than the hardware you see in the rMBP, the envy 14 and the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro with 3200x1800 display.

In any case, I'm glad to learn of this new model and I agree it's certainly a win for those of us who have been looking a thin laptop that will run games.

 

It's newer titles that will struggle at high resolutions. Sure you can play some games at 1080p with an Intel igp. But many newer games will need decent horsepower. I can play bf4 mostly high settings at 45-50 fps with a single 765m. SLI will ensure a high frame rate.

And all this argument over battery life when no figures have been reported or more importantly tested.

Beamed from my G2 Tricorder

 

Gigabyte is going to have to be very careful in how they price and market this. I see it as being caught in something of a no-man's land. Don't get me wrong, the idea is great, but it could easily backfire. I really like the suggestion of increasing battery capacity by removing the 2.5" HDD and going with straight mSATA storage. Not only would battery life improve through its larger capacity, you'd be eliminating an energy-draining device.

 

Here is some nice pictures from Aorus X7. Still waiting for a review

The display is matte btw. Not glossy.




http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/8/5289682/aorus-x7-gaming-laptop-hands-on-pictures

 

I don't think it looks bad at all really. I prefer the clean look of my Dell precision laptops, but this x7 doesn't look ugly to me. I think that is because it is so slim. I wouldn't be embarrassed to bring this into my office or show it around to my coworkers. My workplace knows and appreciates good hardware when they see it.

I think I'm going to wait four to five months to see what the other companies bring to the table. I'll wait as long as I can, no rush. Things will only get better

 

Oh I am basing it on the MSI GT60 with 3k resolution screen. A single 780m can drive games at such res, sure, but sometimes struggling to keep the 30fps mark, depending on games. And since we will be playing newer games, the performance hit might vary. Keep in mind I only mean playing maxed out. OF course sacrificing settings here or there, or small OC, will come a long way

There is no doubt it will be able to drive games at high res, and storm like a 780m on 1920x1080 which means you can play at the highest settings at high fps. It's just that I believe 765m for 3 o 4k might not be ideal. At any rate it doesn't matter, it will have more than enough horsepower for high end laptop gaming.

 

Wow, Amazing I had that same idea.

Hardware RAID for sure. I wouldn't bother though. Sequential throughput is increased, but otherwise, meh, no real advantage otherwise.

Very nice! I really like the macro keys too. Much more practical than the Blade's UI / touchpad.

 

Yeah that's a nice shot of the X7's internals. The 2.5" bay is in the perfect spot for another Li-po battery pack if they remove it. Getting it up to 90 Wh or more would be nice.

RAID 0 for SSD's is really stupid to me, you just multiply the chance of drive failure without any real speed benefits. AFAIK the only brand that makes RAID 0 a big part of its marketing pitch is MSI. Features features features LOL.

 

Nope, wouldn`t work.
That HDD bay is 70% of the 2 battery modules they use in this model. I counted the pixels.

Removing the HDD would take away a huge part of their customers who want big HDD to store files. Price range of X7 goes from $2099 to $2699. $2099 might be without SSD, so without HDD but forcing people to buy 256GB+ mSATA SSDs instead would increase the base price to atleast $2300.
This also depends if they could find a suitable battery pack to fill the entire backrow.

Potentially making this a losing project.
Believe me, Gigabyte didn`t engineer this notebook in 3 days

 

I

Did anyone confirm it has great cooling?

 

How about this?

 

The more I learn the more I want.... Damn, let's hope Uncle Sam is extra good to me this year.

 

They need to run a CPU bench on top of that to simulate a real gaming workload. I'm guessing the 765M that's showing 73 °C is the one that shares cooling with the CPU and it'll get hotter, maybe a lot hotter, when the CPU is working hard at the same time in games such as BF4.

 

Thats true. Gaming would be ideal though since Furmark is way out of ordinary. Didnt get any CPU readings yet. Will post when I find some
You are probably right about the 73C being with CPU.

But atleast we know the GPU cooling is great

 

I would assume the one GPU that has its own cooling is "master" and the one with the CPU is "slave". Usually master GPU runs hotter than slave for some reason.

 

CPU reaching 94C

Spoiler

Battery life 2:49

Spoiler

source with lot more screenshot on the bottom..

 

LOL so much for that...

I had a feeling the CPU would be its downfall, much like the other "thin-and-light" gaming notebooks in this category. The GPU's are relatively easy to cool, even a GTX-level chip such as the 765M, but the heat density of those Haswell quads is off the charts.

 

That AIDA64 test gotta be faulty. Pasting or something on the test unit have to be wrong? You can see its only stressing the CPU and not the GPUs which mean the CPU have 2 heatsinks and 2 fans alone to be cooled off on.

What on earth

 

Something isn't right. Those look like single 765m scores if you compare them with mine:

Game: VR Zone 765m SLI / HTWingNut 765m / HTWingNut 765m OC

Bioshock Ultra: 20.2 / 27.7 / 32.6
Tomb Raider Ultimate: 18.0 / 17.3 / 19.5
Hitman Ultra: 6.5 (8xAA) / 27.0 (4xAA) / 32.3 (4xAA)
Sleeping Dogs Ultra: 13.3 / 13.9 / 16.5

And 95C isn't great but not unreasonable. Look at most laptops with a Haswell quad core, they run HOT.

PCMark Battery life is under constant load too. Razer Blade 14 got 2:52 min with PCMark 8: http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/revi...ry-life-power-consumption-portability-index-2

 

Any word on LCD Panel type?

I am guessing most likely a TN panel given the 8ms response type and the fact that they don't specify panel type (IPS is generally a selling feature).

Agree with above comments, would definitely throw out the 2.5" disk for additional battery but maybe the decision was made to keep weight down (another selling point).

I was hoping this CES might be the year of the Thunderbolt PCIe enclosure and some Thunderbolt 2.0 equipped laptops but it wasn't to be.

 

No option for glossy display?

 

@CloudFire you should link the LinusTechTips YouTube video review of this laptop to the main post.

 

A couple more CES videos, apparently the Aorus X7 will be available for retail in March with MSRP $2099:

 

The most important thing for the CPU temp is wether it throttles or not. 94 degrees is fine by me as long as it wont downclock.