Gigabyte P55W V4 Notebook Review

Communication

WLAN, WiDi, and Bluetooth 4.0 are provided by a dual-band (2x2) Intel wireless-N 7265 M.2 module. The theoretical maximum transfer rate is 300 Mbps for 802.11n networks. No AC configurations are yet available for this particular model. Nonetheless, we ran into no connectivity issues during our time with the P55.

No WWAN or GPS options are available on this gaming notebook.

Maintenance

Accessibility is user-friendly as all that is needed is a Philips screwdriver. It's not very quick, however, as the bottom panel is held down by 13 screws.

Users have easy access to the battery, both system drives, 2x SODIMM slots, M.2 slot, and other core components. Note that removing the heat pipes to expose the processors will result in voiding the limited warranty.

Accessories

Included items are a User's Manual, Drivers DVD, Media DVD, and screen wipe. Gigabyte offers little in the way of accessories and the P55 has no dedicated port for specialized docking stations.

Warranty

Gigabyte is one of the few laptop manufacturers who offer two-year limited warranty as standard for U.S. customers. The battery and adapter are covered for the first year only, while dead pixels are covered if more than 4 are present.

Keyboard

Gigabyte has vastly improved the backlit keyboard (34 x 10.5 cm) to the point where we can call it one of the most comfortable keyboards for a 15.6-inch gaming notebook. Key travel is now 2.2 mm, which is considerably deeper than other notebook and most definitely Ultrabooks. The Asus G501, for example, provides a travel of just 1.6 mm in comparison. This has also resulted in visibly taller keys that are less flushed with the notebook chassis as shown in our images below.  If you've always complained about how keyboards on notebooks can feel too shallow, then you may be surprised by the P55. Feedback is solid with minimal clatter as well.

The NumPad and full-size Arrow keys are also welcomed. What's missing, however, are dedicated Macro keys and other specialized features. Larger notebooks like the MSI GT72 have a column of buttons for graphics switching and fan control, while even the smaller Aorus X3 Plus has dedicated Macro keys to aid in gaming.

Touchpad

The touchpad is of adequate size at 10 x 7 cm. Its bottom portion is reserved for the integrated mouse buttons, so the actual surface area for cursor control is closer to 10 x 5 cm. This is the exact same size touchpad as found on the sub 14-inch Aorus X3 Plus as well and we feel that Gigabyte could have at least made this a bit wider to take advantage of the additional space. Its surface is still responsive without any cursor glitches and its Elan software supports multi-touch controls up to three fingers.

As for the integrated mouse keys, they require a bit more pressure than usual to register and the travel is very shallow. The feedback is firm nonetheless with a loud and satisfying click.

Color coverage is roughly 80 percent and 53 percent of sRGB and AdobeRGB, respectively. This is common amongst high quality IPS panels, especially when compared to the poorer panel on the Lenovo Y50. Asus advertises the G501 and UX501 series as models with a very wide gamut, so these displays in particular are even better than what Gigabyte have to offer on the P55. For gaming purposes, however, precision colors are not a deal breaker.

Further color analyses with an X-Rite spectrophotometer reveal accurate colors and grayscale out-of-the-box. Our calibration improved color balance just slightly, but otherwise had little effect overall. Colors tend to become more inaccurate the higher the saturation level, which implies a limited color space for the panel. Competing notebooks are more likely to ship with cooler color temperatures and require calibration for more accurate grayscale.

Outdoor usability is average at best as the backlight is not powerful enough to overcome direct sunlight. An overcast day is already enough to wash out the screen. To add insult to injury, maximum display brightness will artificially drop to just 200 nits when disconnected from AC power.

Viewing angles are excellent as expected from an IPS panel and colors do not significantly degrade even from extreme angles. This becomes useful if using the notebook outdoors to avoid as much glare as possible.

CPU performance is where we expect it to be for an i7-5700HQ processor. CineBench ranks the Broadwell core ahead of the high-end i7-4720HQ Haswell CPU by as much as 20 percent in multi-core performance, though both processors are almost neck-to-neck in raw single-core performance. The differences are largely due to discrepancies in Turbo Boost as the i7-5700HQ is able to maintain faster multi-core clock rates for longer compared to the older generation i7-4720HQ. Meanwhile, the i7-4720HQ is already quite adept at single-core Turbo Boost, so there is much less of a performance boost when moving up to the i7-5700HQ.

The desktop i7-4790K easily outranks our i7-5700HQ by roughly 30 percent at the cost of higher power demand and heat output. More technical details and benchmarks on the i7-5700HQ can be found on our dedicated CPU page here.

System Performance

The primary SSD allows the P55 to achieve high scores in PCMark benchmrks. Its PCMark 7 score of 5737 points is on mark with the older Alienware 18 and its GTX 780M SLI graphics. Subjectively, OS navigation is fast and almost instantaneous. Launching larger applications like games will still take some time, of course.

3DMark benchmarks place the P55 alongside its Aorus X3 Plus v3 sibling, which is good considering that both systems carry the GTX 970M GPU. The Gigabyte sits quite comfortably between the GTX 980M in our Eurocom P5 Pro and the Radeon R9 M295X in our Alienware 15 in terms of raw performance. Jumping from a GTX 960M to the 970M will grant a tremendous boost in graphical power.

Real-world performance in games is unsurprisingly similar to that of the Aorus X3 Plus v3. However, our P55 is slightly slower than expected on a few titles such as Thief and F1 2014. While our Aorus in comparison uses the same GTX 970M GPU, it is also one of the few notebooks to carry the 6 GB GDDR5 VRAM variant. This puts the 3 GB GTX 970M in our P55 at a slight disadvantage when playing on higher graphical settings. It also doesn't help that our configuration is equipped with only 8 GB of single-channel RAM.

Nonetheless, gaming performance still rivals the Radeon R9 M295X and is well above the GTX 960M. Overall performance allows most games to be played on locked 1080p30 Ultra settings. A GTX 980M is still required for a reliable 1080p60 experience when playing demanding titles.

More benchmarks and details on the GTX 970M can be found on out dedicated GPU page here.

We stress the notebook with synthetic benchmarks to identify any throttling or stability issues. We have also set the system fan to maximum during these tests. With Prime95 active to stress the CPU, the i7-5700HQ is able to run consistently at its 3.5 GHz maximum while maintaining a relatively cool core temperature of about 75 C. FurMark brings the GPU down to a stable 797 MHz from its base 924 MHz and a warmer core temperature of 80 C.

Full stress with both Prime95 and Furmark causes the CPU to fall steadily to 2.9 GHz, which is still 200 MHz above its base clock. Perhaps more unusually, the Nvidia GPU now runs a bit faster at 835 MHz. Regardless, the CPU and GPU reach much higher core temperatures of 95 C and 87 C, respectively. It's impressive that the notebook maintains some level of Turbo Boost under even the most unrealistic of processing load conditions.

Next, we use Unigine Heaven to more accurately simulate gaming load. The P55 performs better under these conditions as expected. The CPU is able to maintain its 3.5 GHz maximum Turbo and the GPU maintains its maximum 1037.4 MHz core clock. CPU and GPU temperatures remain steady at 80 to 85 C and 80 to 82 C, respectively. Note that the system fan must be set to maximum for the processors to run at these speeds. Otherwise, temperatures will climb higher and clock frequencies will fluctuate when gaming.

To test for any performance degradation, we run the Metro: Last Light benchmarks ten times in a row to see if frame rates drop or overtime. The first and final runs return an average FPS of 78.1 and 76.9, respectively, so benefits from GPU Boost should remain consistent when gaming.

Running on battery power will reduce both CPU and GPU performances. All Turbo Boost benefits are stripped as the CPU will only run in the 2.3 to 2.6 GHz range while the GPU fluctuates in the 860 to 1012 MHz range. Memory clock takes a hit as well from its base 1252 MHz to just 799 MHz. A 3DMark 11 run on battery power returns Physics and Graphics scores of 5840 and 7766 points, respectively, compared to 6464 and 10053 points on mains.

System Noise

The cooling system of the P55 has more in common with the older MSI GT notebooks than other recent Gigabyte or Aorus models. Instead of two smaller fans, the P55 utilizes a single large one with three thick heat pipes. The solution is nowhere near as extreme as the one on the 15-inch Eurocom P5 Pro, but it is powerful nonetheless. Gigabyte's built-in fan controls allow users to manually set the maximum fan speed up to 4300 RPM. Its default Automatic mode will have fan speed in the 1600 to 2600 RPM range.

Setting the fan to Quiet mode will stop it from spinning for silent operation (~ 30 dB(A)). Unfortunately, the secondary HDD in our configuration is very loud at 35 dB(A), so users may want to remove or disable this drive when not in use or simply replace it with a SSD. Fan noise will rise and settle at around 52 dB(A) when gaming. Users can set this lower, but gaming performance will suffer.

Compared to competing 15.6-inch notebooks, the 50 dB(A) range is similar to the Alienware 15 and MSI GE62. Systems with the weaker GTX 960M are quieter, such as the Asus G501, while thicker systems like the Asus G751 have the luxury of both quieter fans and better performance. The P55 is a loud gaming machine no matter how you look at it.

Battery Life

An internal 6-cell 57 Wh battery is included with no other capacity options. This is similar in size to the batteries found on the MSI GS60 and Lenovo IdeaPad Y50, while the Asus G501 carries a much larger capacity at the cost of internal storage space.

Runtimes on the P55 are good at just shy of 4 hours during our standard WLAN test (150 nit setting, Balanced Profile, active integrated GPU) and over 8 hours when sitting idle at the lowest screen brightness setting. The large gap means that users can squeeze out much more than 4 hours depending on Power and brightness settings.

Compared to competing 15.6-inch notebooks, the Gigabyte outlasts the MSI GE62, MSI GS60, and Lenovo Y50, but falls behind the Acer Aspire V15 Nitro and Asus G501. The Y50 has a weaker 960M GPU and it still manages to have shorter runtimes than the more powerful P55.