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Aorus 17 Alder Lake Gaming Laptop

cadaveca

My name is Dave
Joined
Apr 10, 2006
Messages
17,247 (2.45/day)
Gigabyte's full-size, thin, and light 360 Hz notebook, the Aorus 17, comes fitted with a 12th Gen Alder Lake Intel mobile CPU and NVIDIA Ampere mobile GPU, including the RTX 3060, RTX 3070Ti or RTX 3080Ti. Available in a host of configurations, we take a look at the 3080Ti version combined with an Intel 12700H and DDR5.

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I find it interesting that they choose a 360hz display for this even with that gpu you will need to drop down to like 800x600 and low/med settings to hit that?
 
We shouldn't called these "laptops", these are "portable gaming PCs with extremely bad ergonomics". The laptop means there's some non-zero battery life, what this one offers is a bad joke.

batterylife.png


@cadaveca

Is it too much to ask to upload the advanced BIOS options screenshot?
 
I actually like that centered trackpad on a 17.3" laptop. Very rare to see it now-days.
 
I would quite like to see a money-shot of the laptop internals - gives us an idea of how well made it is, what the structural chassis stiffness is like, attention to detail etc.

At one end of the spectrum you've got motherboards with the bare minimum of quality and cooling, all held together by plastic chassis.
At the other end of the spectrum you've got CNC-milled alloy unibody chassis with a surplus of heatpipes and cooling fins for the TDP.

Most laptops lie somewhere in the middle of that range but I find that many gaming laptops quite often tend towards the bare-minimum end of the spectrum when it comes to material choice and build quality.
 
I would quite like to see a money-shot of the laptop internals - gives us an idea of how well made it is, what the structural chassis stiffness is like, attention to detail etc.

At one end of the spectrum you've got motherboards with the bare minimum of quality and cooling, all held together by plastic chassis.
At the other end of the spectrum you've got CNC-milled alloy unibody chassis with a surplus of heatpipes and cooling fins for the TDP.

Most laptops lie somewhere in the middle of that range but I find that many gaming laptops quite often tend towards the bare-minimum end of the spectrum when it comes to material choice and build quality.
I'm quite interested myself to be honest, but I think maybe other reviewers will have their hands on this laptop after me, so I didn't mutilate the stickers and left it alone. BUt who knows, maybe Gigabyte lets me keep this one for some time. If so, I'd gladly tear into it and add another drive. I think showing this is useful too.
 
I find it interesting that they choose a 360hz display for this even with that gpu you will need to drop down to like 800x600 and low/med settings to hit that?
eSports titles like LOL, DOTA2, CS:GO, Valorant, Fortnite, Rocket League will all happily hit ridiculous framerates at 1080p on a modern high-end GPU.

They're games that target entry-level hardware of several years ago, and will comfortably run on modern IGPs; Something like a 7-year-old $150 GT 950 that launched for $160 can handle 1080p60 in those games
 
2.900€ at Mindfactory, probably the same, I'm too lazy to check all the specs.
It is also the cheapest 17" class NB with 3080ti (the closet competitor is at 3.500€ with i9 12900H, QHD 240Hz and 2.9kgr (at MediaMarkt)
 
FFS 3080Ti without the maximum power limit (160-175w) is just a pointless exercise in marketing. Saying that even at the maximum power limit it is still power limited given the relative performance uplift from the 150-165w 3080.

The full power 3080 in the otherwise stupid Origin laptop shows this perfectly.

I must admit when the Ti was announced it caught my attention. Significant core increase (albeit at lower "turbo" clocks) and faster memory vs 3080 sounded quite interesting. Then I say the power limit increase of ~10w and then the reviews dropped... Oh dear.

My Legion 7 with its full power 3080 - that does hold around 160w even when the CPU loads up to ~40w, is a noticeable step up from the full power 3070 equipped laptop I had before (same CPU)* - part of this I think is down to the Legion having a stronger power delivery thanks to its 300w PSU (vs 230w on the 3070). All this with the GPU only hitting low 70's. :) The Ti on the other hand is only a marginal step up and in models released in the UK so far a significant step up in price.

*Circa 25-30% faster in Cyberpunk 2077 with RT enabled @ 3440x1440 - 3070 undervolted @140w (~1700/15000) vs 3080 @ stock 160w (1755/14000). Similar up uplift in synthetics and I haven't started messing with the 3080 yet.

On that note undervolting would have yielded much better results than just bumping the clocks up. The GPU is already power limited thus just pushing the clocks up won't do a a lot - as noted in the review. This was certainly the case on the 3070 laptop I had. Overclocking would yield higher peaks but lower sustained clocks over the course of a benchmark, thus slower overall.
 
FFS 3080Ti without the maximum power limit (160-175w) is just a pointless exercise in marketing. Saying that even at the maximum power limit it is still power limited given the relative performance uplift from the 150-165w 3080.
The lower power limit allows this laptop to stay thin and light. Most laptops with higher-power 3080 Ti will be thicker than the Aorus 17, which is just slightly over and inch thick when closed. I'd normally agree with you otherwise, but the Aorus is really that thin that I think we can overlook this. I did list the lower power rating as a con, however.

Like you gotta decide, do you want thick and huge loud cooling fans, or svelte and lighter powered?
 
With laptops boasting 144hz/240hz/360hz displays... do these laptops also support external displays at these refresh rates?
 
With laptops boasting 144hz/240hz/360hz displays... do these laptops also support external displays at these refresh rates?
Usually, yep. In fact, they often offer a bit better performance with external display use as often video outputs connect directly to discrete GPU and don't use iGPU.
 
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