Gigabyte P34W v3 Notebook Review

One would expect high-end gaming notebooks to be flashy or showy, but Gigabyte models are typically more subdued and restrained in terms of design. We're fans of this approach as not all users agree with the boisterous designs of dedicated gaming hardware like the Alienware models. The sleek dark gray and smooth matte surfaces are reminiscent to the Asus ROG models, yet the rounded off edges and corners contrast the sharper and more defined design of a typical ROG notebook. In general, this carries a high-end-but-low-key kind of feel. Otherwise, the chassis is quite barebones with no special texture or accents; It would be easy to mistake the P34W as a regular mainstream notebook at first glance.

In terms of quality, however, the case is a step above mainstream with surfaces that feel solid and well put together. It's not a unibody design, but there are no major creaking, cracks, or crevices to speak of between the plastic and aluminum materials. Pushing down on the palm rests results in no depressions and only slight depressions when applying pressure on the center of the outer lid. The two hinges, though small in size, hold the light display rigidly with no rocking up to its maximum 135 degree angle. The center of the keyboard is perhaps the only area that feels a bit weaker than the rest of the notebook. Beyond the typical fingerprint magnet aspect common amongst smooth matte surfaces, there is actually little to complain about the overall quality of the chassis.

The minimalistic design choice ultimately comes down to reducing the weight and size of the notebook as much as possible. At only 20.9 mm thick, the P34W is almost as thin as today's 14-inch Ultrabooks and thinner than the much weaker Lenovo Y40. It doesn't quite reach the thinness of a 14-inch Razer Blade, however, as the Gigabyte is still about 4 mm thicker, but it still manages to come in lighter than the Blade by about 100 grams (1.9 kg vs. 1.8 kg) and can be even lighter by another 100 grams if the internal secondary HDD is removed.

Keyboard

The keyboard (28.5 x 10.5 cm) provides all the basic keys and nothing else; We would have liked to have additional multimedia or auxiliary macro keys to aid in gaming. The directional keys are also not full-size, which will take some time to get used to for games that take advantage of these keys. Otherwise, the keys provide short travel as is normal on thin-and-light notebooks, so Ultrabook users should feel right at home. In terms of feedback, however, the keys do provide a slightly more satisfying and firm click than on most Ultrabooks where the keys can sometimes feel mushy, such as on older Samsung Series 9 models.

Meanwhile, the bright backlight provides two levels of brightness and is actually white in color despite Gigabyte marketing it with a bluer tone. The ambient light sensor can automatically adjust the keyboard backlight as well as the usual display backlight.

Touchpad

Gaming touchpads are normally quite small as almost all gamers will want to use an external mouse. The slightly rubberized touchpad here (10 x 5.5 cm) will get the job done without any inaccuracies or jumping onscreen pointers for those situations where an external mouse may not be practical. The ELAN software supports multi-touch gestures up to three fingers and responds quite accurately despite the small surface area.

The two dedicated click keys feel cheap compared to the touchpad and keyboard with shallow travel, but feedback is firm and reliable enough for comfortable use if needed. Compared to touchpads with integrated keys, the dedicated keys make it easier to click and drag or highlight text.

Color space reproduction is very good at 60.4 percent and 81.8 percent of the AdobeRGB and sRGB spectrums, respectively. This is wider than most mainstream TN panels and many gaming notebooks where 60 to 70 percent of the sRGB spectrum is the norm. For an even better display, very high-end gaming models (such as those from Eurocom) can be equipped with TN panels designed to cover 95 percent of the AdobeRGB spectrum for serious graphics work in addition to gaming.

Further display analyses with an X-Rite spectrophotometer reveal very accurate colors across the board, good RGB balance, and consistent grayscale out-of-the-box. Colors on the P34W generally become less accurate the higher the saturation level, though only by slight amounts. Perhaps more notably, the color temperature is not overly cool and avoids the bluish screen tint that is so common on notebook displays. Unsurprisingly, these results are close to our measurements on the P34G where a similar AU Optronics display panel is used.

Outdoor visibility is average if at maximum screen brightness and on a cloudy day. Combined with the light weight, small size, and matte display, the P34W will work well outdoors should the occasion call for a quick email or document check, which is already a lot more than what we can say for other high-end gaming notebooks. Regardless, working under direct sunlight is still very difficult as the screen will become washed out.

The high-end i7-4720HQ CPU in the P34W returns very high scores in synthetic benchmarks that are in the same ballpark as other similarly equipped systems such as the MSI GS60 Ghost and GS70. The CineBench R15 multi-core score of 635 points is slightly above that of the desktop Core i7-2600K while consuming just a fraction of the TDP. Similarly, single-core performance according to Super Pi is just slightly higher than the i7-2820QM, which is one of the fastest consumer-based mobile Sandy Bridge cores available. Simply put, this Haswell core is more than enough for current gaming needs.

More technical information and benchmarks on the Core i7-4720HQ can be found on our dedicated CPU page here.

System Performance

The final PCMark 7 score of 6182 points is very similar to other high-end and much larger gaming models like the MSI GS60 and Schenker XMG P704, both of which also carry dedicated SSDs and GTX class GPUs. Considering that the highest score in our database is 6931 points, the 14-inch P34W already ranks as one of the fastest lightweight gaming notebooks available.

Subjectively, OS navigation and multi-tasking feel snappy similar to an SSD-based Ultrabook. We did experience one odd system crash simply by right-clicking on the desktop, but programs and applications launch quickly and effortlessly nonetheless.

The GTX 970M is one of the fastest single GPU solutions on the mobile market. Synthetic graphics benchmarks place the system right in between the GTX 980M and GTX 880M as expected and is well over 50 percent faster than both the GTX 870M and Radeon R9 M290X in 3DMark benchmarks. Compared to other systems with the same GTX 970M GPU, the P34W shows similar results.

Note that the GTX 970M comes in two flavors: 3 GB GDDR5 RAM and 6 GB GDDR5 RAM. When compared to the Schenker XMG U505 and its 6 GB 970M, the final 3DMark numbers are still essentially identical. The 6 GB model will likely show an advantage at higher resolutions with more extreme textures.

We stress the P34W with synthetic benchmarks to observe for any throttling or stability issues. With Prime95 active, the i7-4720HQ tops out at 3 GHz or 400 MHz less than its rated maximum Turbo Boost while core temperatures reach 80 degrees C. With FurMark active, the GTX 970M fluctuates between 683 MHz and 721 MHz according to GPU-Z while temperature peaks at about 85 degrees C. Memory remains steady at its rated 1252 MHz clock rate.

With both Prime95 and FurMark active simultaneously, the CPU can be observed running 100 to 200 MHz below its base 2.6 GHz clock rate with fluctuations up to 2.9 GHz. Meanwhile, the GPU experiences a harder hit with core and memory speeds down to 405 MHz and 799 MHz, respectively. CPU temperature peaks at 95 degrees C, which is just 5 degrees shy of of its rated safety limit, while GPU temperatures reach a 90 degrees C ceiling. A 3DMark 11 run immediately following the hour long stress test resulted in no significant differences in GPU scores, though the CPU score takes a small hit from 8373 points before stress and 8078 points post stress. In the next section, we test to see how this will affect performance in games.

Gaming on battery power will have a much more notable impact on performance. 3DMark 11 GPU and CPU scores drop to 6231 points and 6811 points, respectively, compared to 9779 points and 8373 points on AC power. The CPU can be observed operating at just 800 - 1600 MHz while GPU memory remains flat at just 405 MHz.

Next, we stress with Unigine Heaven 4.0 for a more accurate portrayal of gaming conditions. The CPU can be observed running at its full 3.4 GHz speed, but will eventually drop to 2.5 - 2.6 GHz with only occasion jumps to 3.4 GHz thereafter. Likewise, the GPU will start at its maximum 1037.8 MHz clock before steadily dropping towards the 700 MHz range over time. As a result, both the CPU and GPU are unable to maintain Turbo Boost for very long and will actually level off below their base speeds.

This unfortunately has a notable effect on frame rates when gaming. With the Metro 2033: Last Light benchmark set to 10 consecutive runs, the first run averages about 50 FPS on very high 1080p settings - standard for a GTX 970M - but this average steadily drops to 45 FPS, 44 FPS, and eventually levels off at about 41 FPS.

Battery Life

Power is provided by an internal non-removable 4030 mAh Li-Ion polymer module. The capacity is slightly larger than the Yoga 14 (3785 mAh), but less than the Razer Blade 14 (6400 mAh) and even Gigabyte's own P34G (4300 mAh).

Runtimes are good for a gaming notebook at a little over 4.5 hours of constant WLAN use at a screen brightness of 150 nits (setting 5/10). The more powerful components prevent the P34W from achieving longer runtimes than other 14-inch gaming models as the Yoga 14 and Lenovo Y40 can last longer by at least an hour or more under the same conditions. Nonetheless, battery life is still much better than the Razer Blade 14 across the board.