APC - September 2015 AU.pdf

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LABS BENCHMARK RESULTS
General system performance
PCMARK 8 - HOME SCORE
GIGABYTE P55W V4 3,843
0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000
X264 HD BENCHMARK 5.01 (AVG FPS)
PASS 1 56.6
PASS 2 14.1
Gaming performance
3DMARK - CLOUD GATE SCORE
GIGABYTE P55W V4 19,539
0 20 40 60 80 100
0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000
1080P, ULTRA AVG FPS
METRO: LAST LIGHT 56.7
BIOSHOCK INFINITE 68.9
0 20 40 60 80 100
Battery life
1080P, ULTRA HOURS:MINS
PCMARK 8 HOME 1:58
LAPTOP
$2,300 | WWW.GIGABYTE.COM.AU
PEACEKEEPER – WEB
SURFING 2:27
0 1 2 3 4 5
Gigabyte P55W v4
A top gaming laptop at a reasonable price? What’s the catch?
When it comes to
gaming-capable
laptops at this
price point, the
P55W v4 faces some stiff
competition. Yet based
purely on specs, it certainly
gets off to a solid start: it’s
about the cheapest 15.6-
inch laptop you’ll find that
packs a top-end Core i7
CPU, GeForce GTX graphics
chip and both an SSD and
secondary hard drive for
storage. And those aren’t
budget parts — they’re
basically just a step or
two down from the top
spec, meaning overall
performance is first-rate.
The all-important gaming
performance was bang on
what we’ve seen from other
laptops sporting the Nvidia
GeForce GTX 970M. With
Ultra graphics settings at
the screen’s native 1080p
resolution, you’ll get around
40-50fps in newer titles and
70-80fps in less-demanding
games. Those are definitely
playable frame rates, and
you can often double them
by turning down the detail
settings to High.
The CPU is one of Intel’s
latest fifth-generation Core
i processors — the speedy
quad-core i7-5700HQ. It
outperforms the previousgen
i7-4710HQ (as seen in
many other laptops around
this price) by around 5-10%
in CPU-intensive tasks, like
media encoding.
Even the storage is better
than average. While that
128GB main SSD (a wellspecced
SATA 6Gbps model)
is a little smaller than we’d
ideally have liked (256GB
would at least give you some
room for games, which will
realistically need to be
stored on the secondary 1TB
Hitachi storage drive) just
having an SSD at this price
really is a bonus — it makes
a huge difference to boot
time and overall system
responsiveness.
Although the P55W’s
charcoal-grey exterior is
entirely plastic, this is still
a handsome laptop — and
in some ways, it looks a bit
better than mixed-finish
laptops (sporting metal on
the lid and keyboard deck)
because its finish is more
consistent. Even the orange
‘racing stripes’ — new to this
v4 model — aren’t too
ostentatious; they’re enough
to give it some personality
without screaming ‘I’m a
gaming laptop!’
The P55W does have some
drawbacks, though we
wouldn’t call any of them
serious. It’s not particularly
portable, for example. You
could carry it around if
needs be, but at 2.63kg for
the laptop and another
700g for the charger, it’s
venturing into the ‘pull
your shoulder off’ zone.
And there are a couple
of spots where the P55W’s
performance could have
been better — specifically,
battery life and heat.
Unplugged, this unit can
stretch to 2.5 hours in
lighter workloads (like web
surfing), but that drops to
under 2 hours when you
push it in more demanding
tasks. And speaking of, the
CPU hits a toasty 95ºC under
load, while the GPU reaches
83ºC, so the cooling system
here isn’t the most efficient
— compare those to the
similar Venom Blackbook
15’s 74ºC and 70ºC,
respectively, and there’s
a pretty stark difference.
Regardless, the P55W v4’s
temperature measurements
are technically within
the spec for those parts,
although it’s worth noting
that they will also heat up
surrounding components.
Some shortcomings are
to be expected when you’re
getting this high-value
hardware, of course, and
none of these are what we’d
classify as deal-breakers.
If you’re on a tight budget
and you want all the
performance you can get,
this one’s a solid choice.
Dan Gardiner
Verdict
Features
Performance
Value
Punches above its weight in terms of
specs for dollars, but heat and battery
life could use improvement.
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