***Gigabyte P35X owner's lounge***

I thought the CPU cooling of the Clevo was bad, am I wrong ?
With all those problems, I really don't know what to buy, as there are not many alternatives...

 

Good good, hopefully the P650SG will treat you better!

 

HTWingnut's review of the P651SE seemed to suggest it was OK.

I certainly hope the 7260 won't come back to bite me a second time! I'll explain my reasoning over in the Clevo thread but the only viable option seems to be a build with a 7260 inside it. Scary but a necessary risk, I guess.

 

Cakefish, please help me to decide:
I was waiting for the outcome of your review. For a few days I went to the forum and now I come across your decision to change from Clevo.
What I do not like Clevo: 4GB RAM Video.
What I like Clevo: 32 GB RAM
I plan to use the laptop for 3D work (lumion3d.com). And I need a lot of video RAM, but I also want 32GB of memory...
And who would not like to lose: the laptop I want to be thin.

Thin, Video 8GB, 32GB ram. Looks like THIS DOES NOT EXIST...

Cakefish, do you recommend?

 

Aorus X7 Pro, thin, 6GB vRAM, 32GB RAM.

Regards

 

+ you can cook with it! Joke aside do not get aorus, it has serious throttling issues, much worse than p35x.

 

True that, but I don't think there are any thin-and-powerful laptop without suffer from CPU throttle.

Regards

 

To use programs like Lumion3d.com need "Minimum 5,000 PassMark points dedicated graphics card and 6GB memory (RAM)."
Lumion FAQ Frequently Asked Questions
LUMION 5: Minimum hardware requirements
LUMION 5: How to reduce render times

But it also says:

" System memory (RAM) is extremely Important if you are trying to render complex scenes in Lumion. The RAM limit in the 64-bit version of Windows 7 is as Follows. Windows 8 has even higher limits. For That reason, it is highly . recommended that you 'use system memory as much as you Can Afford Also bear in mind That the CPU is not used much while rendering still images and video - it's mainly used for compressing frames rendered after They Have Been. "

This is why I do not know whether to point to something like "Clevo P650SG" (more RAM) or "P35X v3" (more vRAM)...
As for "Aorus X7 Pro" I do not know if it gets in the USA .... (I live in USA)

 

I think for that particular software, 32GB of RAM is more important than 8GB of vRAM, unless you try to making 4k content, otherwise 4GB of vRAM will be more than enough. RAM usage on the other hand can just piling on (even 64GB of RAM might be barely enough for some, don't ask me coz I don't know any).

Regards

 

Thank you very much DelFang, I really appreciate your opinion.
I asked this same question in the Lumion3D forum . We'll see what they say.
Again: thank you!

 

You'll be just fine with 4GDDR5, i use CATIA for my part, and my 780M with 4GDDR5 could fluently run the most complex models+animation, i used Solidworks too. Had 16Gb of RAM (had to update, from 8 to 16) . I can't see the point of having more than 4gig of Vram It's too useless, manufacturers like AMD MSI, aorus, Gigabyte (=Aorus) (except clevo) use those 8gig of Vram to burst the price.... believe me if a greatly optimised game/software uses the 8gig of Vram entirely our 980M won't be able to cope with the HUGE memory bandwith needed for that, and I'm not even considering Physic/tessellation on all those textures ^^ to answer.


GO with the P650SG you'll have the most important elements that you need : slim form factor, power, A LOT of RAM...and an efficient cooling system.

 

I have no experience with 3D rendering work so I really can't advise either way I'm afraid. Others will be more suited to giving you a proper answer here than myself. It is a nice laptop but I just can't give the AC 7260 another chance, plus the other reasons I have mentioned over the past couple of pages.

I hope you get your answers soon!

 

Problem with this option for me and several others is NO US DISTRIBUTOR has the P65XSG for sale with the customization options we desire. Not to mention we have no ETA on it before Xmas.

 

So, the question still remains; how are CPU and GPU max temps during gaming (BF4, Crysis3 and other CPU intensive games) after a repaste, undervolting and while not using a laptop cooler?

And if there is any throttling, is it due to power limits or thermal limits? If so, what clockspeeds are the CPU and GPU running at and how is this affecting performance?

If I recall correctly, this has been spoken about before, but it would be nice to have a concluding view on this.

 

CPU with turboboost enabled, hit 87C in BF4 ultra preset on 3K/1080P. (No undervolt; CPU maxed at 3.4GHz but usually stayed aroudn 3.2GHz)
GPU hit 82C. (No overclock)
FPS on 3K(Ultra Preset): 30-42 avg.
FPS on 1080P(Ultra Preset): 68-77 avg.

Thermal limits seem to still be the issue.

 

Thanks so much also to you... I'm going to P650SG then...

 

Damn, was expecting better than this for the CPU, might go for the GS60 then. Thanks for the info.

 

Look it that:
https://www.mythlogic.com/configure.php?id=166

 

They dont have the CPU I want there. Have requested an update from them many times. That and they didnt disclose screen panel info a few weeks ago.

 

Thank you very much! I assume since you were not undervolted, you havent repasted either? And with the laptop flat on the desk?

Sent from my GT-I9300

 

Its been repasted. No undervolt.

However, this driver power state failure returned... opting me to return it soon. Been happening since I got anvidia Geforce Experience to finally work properly.

 

I am 100% positive, at least in my case, that the driver power state failure was caused by updating to the latest nvidia drivers. After running a couple days on the stock ones and everything working great I decided to update to the latest ones. Rebooted and within 5 mins I got the failure blue screen. I rebooted, rolled back the drivers to stock and it never came back. That may explain the other person who was having 3dmark error on updated drivers.

I will run a while on stock again, and try the next drivers (heard some are coming out very soon) and if it doesn't work I will try alternate drivers. I prefer the ones directly form nvidia, haven't had to use those alternate drivers (like you used to on laptops) for many years.

 

Same here. Havent been to laptopvideo2go in ages. At least we figured out this one.

 

Ah okay. Well, at least there will be a few C left to squeeze out of it with a slight UV. You werent using a cooler right? Just flat on the table?

EDIT: whats that driver power state issue?

 

Flat on wood floor. No cooler.

Edit: A BSOD due to driver conflicting or corruption.

 

So, I'm still leaning towards getting this laptop. Most of the issues have been minimal from what I've read. Just the normal new laptop quirks that usually take a few to iron out. Do you guys still think it's a good laptop? Has it met your expectations?

 

I have yet to do further testing on temperatures. Will make a mini-review once I finish. Laptop on its own is good, but could be a bit cheaper. For the price more than the P65XSG - it could have better speakers, keyboard, driver issues, ect.

I think sound distortion when running monitoring software is due to doly digital software, but have yet to check.

The Driver Power State Failure issue, if not fixed by newer GPU drivers, will make me cringe and wnt to return it. Its such an odd issue in general.

 

Can you explain a bit more? So the 980M is not compatible with the latest Nvidia driver?

 

It causes a ntoskrnl.exe failure (0xf9) +14f09. Been having it since updating drivers.

 

I see, and with the preinstalled older Nvidia driver this issue doesn't occur?

 

I personally think its Geforce Experience. Yesterday GE was bugged and wouldnt read my system specs so I couldnt use Shadowplay. Never had the BSOD until I fixed the program to finally load my specs to use shadowplay features (fps counter and streaming).

Maybe its the new battery boost feature? It can be configured on GE panel.

 

I would say yes it's an excellent laptop and it's been a fairly "normal" experience for me so far. Like you said, every laptop I've owned has had it's own little quirks I've had to work through.

I was disappointed there appears to be no way to add ANY custom resolutions to the laptop display. I've seen this before and I blame it on the intel drivers and win 8. Luckily my external display did let me add a custom resolution to match the laptops internal. I hate having to switch in game resolutions when moving back and forth from my desk so I wanted to run both at the same. The nvidia driver issue is also annoying but I'm sure I can work through it one way or another. I never got my recovery partition working after upgrading my SSD'sbut again I've seen that every time I try to swap in RAID SSD's so that is nothing to do with this model.

Unrelated rant - Just to show what a typical 24 hr period for me just so you know what quirks I always seem to find...
Yesterday I was working on putting my stock 128GB SSD's from the P35X into an old T500 I had sitting around as a backup machine. Got windows 7 installed on the drives raided, was working great. I shutdown to remove the CD drive and install an old HD for additional space. It booted off that new HD which happened to have an alienware version of windows on it. I shutdown and removed it but it never booted again with the SSD's. They couldn't be wiped or formatted at all, upon trying to reinstall windows it now says the drives are going bad and won't install. I think it may be the msata adapter that's bad but it's weird I was fully up and running fine earlier. I gave up and moved on to the next thing.

I moved a month ago and switched ISP's. The new ISP has faster service, but it seems to go down a lot. I also switched out my main router to a WRT1900AC when I moved which I never setup properly so I was also having wireless issues that complicated troubleshooting. So I decide to setup the router from scratch, and while starting to do that I notice the way my router works is weird, it shows my DNS servers as the router address, that's strange I say and start to troubleshoot that. I was getting unable to resolve DNS host errors so I thought it could be related.

Well the Y50 I was using to trouble shoot the wireless kept freezing, task manager would even freeze, I couldn't uninstall anything, and could not restart or shutddown without holding power button down. Disk usage was at 100% and I couldn't troubleshoot it long enough before it freezing. Weird I say, never had an issue with this laptop. I ended up having to do a system restore in win 8 (never had to use that before for anything like this).

Well many hours later, my T500 has dual HD's in it, gave up on SSD's for now. My Y50 seems to be doing good again. The P35X hasn't gotten much attn today other than some Shadow Warrior game time. My internet still keeps going down and I am too lazy to run downstairs and see if it's the cable modem or my own router, but several times when I did check the cable modem was not showing online. My wireless appears to be working better, but I eventually started doing random things to try to get it working (makes no sense but I mac address cloned a random pc and it worked after that - I have no idea why but since it's working I left it that way lol).

Can you tell I'm frustrated?

 

The Clevo p751zm model has what you want if you're interested. It's due out December and I"m putting in my order this week, so if you have time to wait you can check out my review when I get it. I was in the same boat as you till a few weeks ago when I learned of this. Don't give up after a few searches, the answer is always out there

Info here http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/764662-any-information-new-clevo-p7x0zm.html

Check my signature as well , since that's the config I"m getting lol.


@Cakefish just grab the 7265 w/ the new one <3

 

Hahaha, I've dealt with days like that myself.

And as for the RAID SSD recovery partition issue, I've always had that too. I never can seem to get the recovery partition working. I always thought it was just me doing something wrong, but not caring enough to research it lol. I also remember having similar Nvidia driver issues a couple years back where original drivers worked great but newer ones gave me fits. It usually gets ironed out after a couple more updates come out. I don't think Cakefish's issue will bother me. I rarely use the bluetooth on my laptops, just haven't had a need.

 

I want to say I've had an ntoskrnl.exe error before, and that newer drivers were able to fix it for me. But that was years back, so it's possible I'm mistaken.

 

I just finished a 1 hour furmark+Prime95 test.

Laptop, when under extreme load, gets very hot to the touch around the speaker area, but keyboard and palmrest are perfectly fine. At most its slightly warm on the keyboard in the upper right. (This is with both running)

With only Prime95 and forced max cores at 3.4GHz: Temperatures remained at 88-91C

With only Prime95 and no-forced max cores (goes between 2.2GHz-3.2GHz; mostly around 2.4GHz), temperatures remain at 72-75C.

With Furmark + Prime95 (no forced max cores on CPU): Temperatures for GPU maxes at 87C and CPU at 88-90C (consistent 2.4-2.6GHz)

With only Furmark, CPU stays at 60-70 range (mostly lower 60's) and GPU hits 85-87C.

Furmark settings at: 1920x1080 with MSAAx8.


Noise levels: with the 90C tests, the fans go on quite loud, but not enough to go "i cant hear ****". Only max fans does that so far from what I know. When tests run under general load, laptop makes little to no noise at all, or at least not enough to be noticed clearly.

If there are any other stress tests that needs to be done, do throw here or PM me.


EDIT: Extra details for tests are:

-Gelid GC Extreme repaste of CPU and GPU.
-Ambient temperatures of 23-25C.
-No notebook cooler. Sitting flat on table.


Edit 2: About the BF4 test temps earlier for Achiles(sp? on phone). That was temps on Ultra and 3K res.

 

You need to be really crazy to run furmark + prime95 for an hour. Don't do it unless you want to kill your notebook.

 

It worked quite well. Whats funnier is that it took only 30 seconds to cool the whole notebook to 57-60C and making the PC easy to hold again.

 

Furmark can damage your system beyond repair. That app is not good for long use.

 

So thank you so much LoneSyndal for being crazy : p

Next it would be nice to do the same (or not as long though) with undervolting, then with a cooler. But considering these are extreme circonstances, this is not horrible, no ?

 

I did this knowing full well of the damages. I had been keeping eye on it in the worst case of the system blowing out. However, the card kept cool the whole time.

If it werent for a few quirks, I may stay with laptop longer. Currently wanting to try a P650SG as I originally planned.

 

I dont have a notebook cooler. I hated extra luggage. Undervolting at best removes 3-5C depending on what you're running.

A few tens of pages back, I ran BF4 undervolted and gained an FPS increase of almost 8-10 frames (68 highest) on native 3K resolution with Ultra preset. Temps were +85C sadly, but it worked. On 1080P Ultra Preset with same undervolt- 64-80FPS with temps at 81-86C.

 

@Everyone and potential GTX 900 Series owners:

Seems my thoughts were right on the mark. Newer or more recent Nvidia Drivers/Geforce Experience has caused BSODs of the same nature as the Drive Power State Failure we've been getting on the P35x. It seems that the drivers modify the power state when your PC is on battery, sleep, ect and may cause conflicting issues. One potential workaround is to use only OEM drivers, and another is to use modified/older drivers.

So its not a retarded driver issue from Gigabyte... kudos to them. However, this issue from Nvidia needs to be fixed.

 

Yeah, seems like it was the issue I had in the past. The next set of Nvidia drivers should address the issue with the current updated drivers. That's very good news for current owners.

 

Yea I think it's a really good laptop, especially the 3k version I just love the screen. And the 980m can pretty much power whatever I need it to even at native. There will always be quirks with any new laptop, perhaps with the only exception being mac, but that's what the apple tax is for

 

Just wished the keyboard was more solid like other laptops. Reminds me of HP keyboards.

 

Hahaha, I'm not paying Apple tax just for them to tell me how to use my laptop.

There's a lot I like about this laptop so far. I'm hoping my current Clevo can hold up for the rest of my trip (Screen hinge is starting to bust...) so I can make the purchase when I get home early next year. And by then most of the quirks will be addressed! Nothing like being abroad when your laptop finally says "No more!" haha.

 

Keyboards usually don't bother me too much. My coworker has an HP, maybe I can steal it for a bit to see if the keyboard drives me nuts.

 

Think of all plastic, with a slight weak texture. I prefer sturdy.

EDIT: Currently contemplating on keeping this or returning it in order to try out the P651SG. Decisions decision... I really like this laptop a lot. I have tested dropping my mouse on a corner (at 5 inches, measured with ruler using the pointier end of a M65 Corsair) and it didnt leave a single dent, so cakefish got really unlucky on his damage.

 

I put together a quick pro's and con's list of the P35X. Just my opinions of course

Pros:
Thin and light form factor (almost exact same size as my Y50, but 2-3x the FPS in games)
980m in that form factor
Real i7, quad core 8 threaded, not ULV or i5
Seems to have less cpu/gpu throttling compared to other thin and light laptops
Holds 2x msata AND 2x 2.5" HD's with CD drive removed
3k screen is awesome! (I had issues with the Razer blade 2014 screen that some seemed to like, this is way better than that one was)
The hinges appear to be massive, if they are as strong as they look they should hold up good
Cooling seems adequate
Plenty of port choices (compared to my Y50)
mini DP for 60 hz 4k use
Backlit keyboard
Touchpad is decent (I've had a few really crappy ones this year)

Cons:
Pricey (3x price of my Y50)
CPU speed may be limiting for some (I think for the average Joe like myself it is perfect)
Only 2 RAM slots
Keyboard seems kinda cheap, not perfectly flat, some may find that a deal breaker
Cooling is fairly loud at max levels
Bezel is huge, could have almost fit a 17" display in there
CPU and GPU are not upgradable or replaceable.

Also I wanted to add this for those that have been following this thread (Cakefish's scratch from dropping a USB cord end). I was moving around a power strip and I swung the loose 3 prong end of the cord fairly forcefully, and it contacted the back of the screen. Put a nice sized nick in it. Looks like I will have a chance to try out the black magic marker "fix" method that I recently found out about.