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Thermal Performance
It’s a good thing that Intel’s Core i7-4720HQ and Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 970M have performance to spare, because Gigabyte’s cooling solution can’t quite keep up with the P34W v3’s hardware under load.
We logged the graphics processor’s clock rates as Unigine’s Valley benchmark looped in the background and watched it drop from a GPU Boost frequency of 1038MHz to 848MHz over the course of a few minutes. That’s lower than the 970M’s specified 924MHz base clock rate. This should not happen. It’s the same sort of issue that got AMD in trouble when the Radeon R9 290X first launched. In short, Nvidia’s GM204 is quickly hitting its thermal ceiling and then pulling performance to avoid exceeding it.
Meanwhile, Gigabyte’s fans try their hardest to exhaust the graphics subsystem’s heat. In the process, they get obnoxiously loud. This is where high-end components and a compact chassis come to a head. It’s just fortunate that, when the P34W v3 does succumb to physics, your experience isn’t ruined—there’s enough performance in reserve at those lower clock rates to continue gaming smoothly.
