Gigabyte P57Xv7
In need of some BIOS love
PRICE $ 3,599 www.gigabyte.com.au
Welcometo the latest version of Gigabyte’s highly successful P57 gaming laptop. Based on the naming nomenclature, it seems to be the seventh version of this beast, so they’re obviously doing something right. It’s a big 17-inch bruiser designed to deliver top gaming performance without giving a damn about portability or battery lifespan – we’re talking good old school gaming laptop design ethics. In some ways it’s the antithesis of the Alienware 13, but boy does it deliver performance in spades.
The overall dimensions are dominated by that huge 17.3-inch display, which packs in a rather hefty 3840 x 2160 pixels – 4K gaming is here baby. Well, it would be if the GPU could deliver that much power, but more about that in a second. Being a gaming machine, it’s not touch-enabled, but it is built using IPS technology for superior colour and contrast quality. Despite this, we didn’t notice any horrible tearing or image smearing during any of our new benchmarks, even though it’s locked to a refresh rate of 60Hz.
Weighing in at 3kg, this is most definitely not a machine designed to be moved around each and every day. The extra size has given Gigabyte plenty of I/O options though, and there’s even an optical drive that extends from the front of the machine. Compared to some of the garish competition, the sleek black lines of the chassis with an orange highlight are very subtle, so the folks flying next to you won’t realise you’re gaming instead of doing an Excel spreadsheet. There’s a tiny bit of keyboard flex, but it’s also fullsized, making it great for gaming – you’ll just need to bring along your own mouse.
On to the bits you care about – what has Gigabyte crammed inside. Powering it all is the ever-popular Intel Core i7 7700HQ, along with a whopping 32GB of DDR4-2400. However, rather than pair this top-end CPU with an entry level GPU, Gigabyte has gone for a GeForce GTX 1070. This is identical to the GPU used in the EVGA machine this month, which makes our benchmark results a little puzzling, especially as the EVGA has a slower CPU at default speeds (3.6GHz vs 3.8GHz). When it comes to 3DMark and Ghost Recon: Wildlands, both machines are neck and neck. Yet firing up Total War: Warhammer and Rise of the Tomb Raider showed the Gigabyte lagging behind.
We thought this might be due to an overly active thermal control system, but both systems benched at an identical 50dB when it came to fan
rather than pair this topend CPU with an entry level GPU, Gigabyte has gone for a GeForce GTX 1070
noise. We re-ran the tests countless times, as well as ensuring every Windows and driver update was in place, but we still couldn’t close that gap. There’s obviously something going on here that is keeping the P57Xv7 back from its rightful place as the faster of the two – the sooner that Gigabyte can figure this out, the sooner we can recommend it. Still, at $700 cheaper than the EVGA while delivering identical performance in half the tests, and only 10% slower in the rest, we can’t deny what a great value proposition the P57Xv7 is. BENNETT RING