Gigabyte and 15G are great in gaming, but not much

Gigabyte’s refreshed Aorus 15G for 2021 features a subtle, all-black design that takes a page from the company’s more focused manufacturer Aero lineup. This is a nice upgrade, but there are not many other changes for better or worse than last year’s model. It offers similar types of ports (including the all-too-rare-full-size SD card reader), and impressively, Gigabyte delivers an excellent 15.6-inch display in a 14-inch-wide chassis. But at the same time, the keyboard is tight and the nostril is awkward to use webcams.

There are a few other swings and misses, but this nail focuses on what it really is: gaming. Collision is the biggest change inside Nvidia’s RTX3070 graphics chip, and it helps this thin-and-light gaming laptop run most games at over 60 frames per second, crossing the bar for reliably smooth gameplay. .

Such performance is very good – and not necessarily given simply because a laptop has this graphics chip. Manufacturers can determine their power levels to balance performance and efficiency as they see fit. Therefore, despite being a compact chassis, I was surprised to see it perform better with the game than the Asus TUF Dash F15. It is usually very quiet, too. Gigabyte found the sweet spot, and if you plug in an external mouse and keyboard, this machine is a blast to use.

The $ 1,799 configuration gigabyte provided for review features the aforementioned Nvidia GPU, Intel’s 10th Gen Core i7-10870H with eight cores, 32GB of RAM, a 512GB NVM SSD, a 99Wh battery, and a 240Hz refresh rate. It has a 15.6 inch 1080p display. Pantone is certified for color accuracy with 100 percent coverage of the SRGB color gamut. It is not the top-of-the-line model of Gigabyte, but it is close. The step-up configuration has the RTX 3080 and double the storage for $ 200 more. A more affordable $ 1,499 model is also available with the RTX 3060.

Although, technically, a laptop with the RTX 3070 is on the road between Nvidia’s low and high-end graphics chips, it can produce great results. Gigabyte’s Our15G might want to be credited to its gimmicky Microsoft-Azure application that automatically optimizes performance with AI, but it is enabled out of the box with default settings. There was not much difference in gameplay with or without the Azure app, nor when I set the GPU and CPU to boost in Gigabyte’s pre-installed Eros Control Center app. Fine from my side; The less tweaking required, the better.

The game is going right in performance, Red dead redemption 2The benchmark running in Ultra has an average hit of 66 consecutive frames per second, falling to a low of 44 frames per second. Tomb shadow Mediums run at an average of 93 frames per second in ultra settings with ray-traced shadows. Tracing it with Ultra, Kiran dropped it to 69 frames per second, which is still a smooth experience. Neither of these results comes close to taking full advantage of a rapidly refreshing screen, but older or less demanding games should be able to hit more high frames per second.

Outside the benchmark, Cyberpunk 2077 Running on ultra ray tracing settings was easily my highlight test testing the Aorus 15G. This machine had little problem with games running more than 50 frames per second in a more barren or enclosed environment, and it rarely dropped below 40 frames per second in crowded outdoor environments – again, this Cranked with the most demanding graphical settings (with Ultra) on every beam tracing setting and DLSS). A lot of people will be happy with the performance here. I was also impressed by Gigabyte’s cooling system, which is surprisingly quiet and quiet under pressure. This is a rare gaming laptop that you can actually keep safe in your lap during gaming.

I’m thrilled with Nvidia’s new RTX 30-series graphics chips. Not just because they are good, but because they sometimes deliver wildly different results depending on the laptop. For example, in the MSI GS66 Stealth, its RTX offers the same performance as a chip inside a 3080 gigabyte laptop, although it should blow it away. The reason for this is that this chip has a higher clock speed and power draw than inside the MSI laptop.

Specifically, this 3070 tops the 105W power draw with a 1,290MHz clock speed, while the 3080 questions at 95W maximum power and 1,245MHz clock speed. In short, you’re getting a lot of power in this slim $ 1,799 machine. You can’t get paid $ 200 for Aorus 15G with RTX 3080 All Many more frames per second, as it has a 105W maximum power draw, but a slightly slower 1,245MHz clock speed. You may know all this information, but you cannot. Nvidia requires manufacturers to share it, though some of them are still caged about it. For the record, Gigabyte is one of the more transparent companies about their GPU specs. I am keeping an eye on other manufacturers here.

Outside of gaming, the Aorus 15G is unfortunately a less convincing product. It has been able to run my normal workload flawlessly, including Affinity Photo, about 10 Google Chrome apps, Slack, and Spotify. Looking at the glasses inside, I expected this. One surprise is that they do not translate so well in video production. During the Adobe Premiere Pro test exporting five-minute, 33-second 4K videos, rendering took approximately seven minutes each time.

There are many other trade-offs that require a laptop for productivity that you do for gaming. The typing experience is fine but the tight keyboard layout has not helped. It has a small trackpad, and its nostril-gazing webcam didn’t cut it for me. In addition, Gigabyte boasts an eight-hour battery life, but I averaged around six hours per charge. The new Asus TUF Dash F15 expands on all things Gigabyte and doesn’t cost much, but the lack of a webcam is a huge red flag.

This is a great machine if you want everyone to get 60 frames per second (and often, better than that) without tweeting multiple settings in most of your games. Doing so is an achievement worthy of praise for less than $ 2,000. But if you care less about mobility and have a slim form factor that offers Gigabyte’s Aorus 15G, MSI’s GP66 Leopard RTX 3070 takes it even further. Its thick, heavy chassis gives the chip even more headroom to get better performance in the game – for the same $ 1,799 price, no less.

Photography / Reporter Door by Cameron Faulkner