Yep! 2020 was a total waste, but 2021 is the year of the GPUs in the Nvidia RTX 30 series, so gaming laptops are now about to get a much-needed power-up – well, some of them are there already. Regrettably, the Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC went a little bit off track in terms of overall performance.
For about $1,799 bucks, the Aorus 15G promises outstanding performance with its i7-10870H processor in Intel Core and the RTX 3070 GPU Nvidia GeForce, along with a colorful, 15.6 inch, 240 Hz panel screen packed up into a small chassis. But hold your horses, because the laptop does have an overwhelming number of problems, including shorter battery life, a weak display, a badly mounted web camera, a wobbly keyboard and a set of inferior speakers – all this packed into a box which occasionally gets hot – if you haul it at the maximum performance.
Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC – Configuration & Pricing
To start with, all in all specs of this laptop are mentioned below for your reference.
- Battery: 4:48
- CPU: Intel Core i7-10870H
- Display:6-inch, 1080p, 240Hz
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
- Price: $1,799
- RAM: 32GB
- Size: 0 x 9.6 x 0.9 inches
- Storage: 512GB SSD
- Weight: 7 pounds
The Aorus 15G model we have tested in this review has been equipped with an Intel Core i7-10870H CPU, a completely fresh 8 GB VRAM, 32 GB RAM Nvidia GeForce RTX, a 512 GB SSD with a 15.6-inch 1080p, and a 240 Hz screen.
So far the only variant offered other than this one has an RTX 3080 GPU and 1TB SSD for a whopping $1,999. With respect to the features, this is a $200 bucks extra grab. But the system that we are testing comes with only an SSD of 512GB to start with – something that we found to be a little silly.
Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC Design
The all-new Aorus 15G XC now tones the silver appearance over its aluminum cover, along with smooth black color. The branding of Aorus in the middle is very simple. This laptop could be the one for you if you are looking for a subtle looking gaming laptop.
An RGB-lit keyboard with a decent touchpad below it and a long vent above – shows up as soon as you raise the lid up. At the expense of the webcam mounted on the hinge, the bezels and topsides are unbelievably thin, but thank God! This thing at the very least has a privacy shutter!
The Gigabyte Aorus 15G has a very compact footprint relative to other 15-inch laptops at 4.7 pounds and 14.0 x 9.6x 0.9 inches. Acer Predator Triton 500 and Alienware m15 R4 were a little larger in length and width, as were the Asus ROG Strix Scar 15, the MSI Ge66 Raider Dragonshield – for those of you wondering, these are the rival gaming laptops.
Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC Ports
Well, there are a lot of ports offered by the Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC – and why not? It is a gaming laptop. So, looking at the right side of the machine you will find the power jack along with an SD Card slot, besides this, we have also got two USB type-A ports and one USB type C port. Coming over to the left side, we have a headphone jack, an RJ45 Ethernet port, a mini display port, one USB Type-A Port, and of course an HDMI port.
Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC Display Review
The 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080-pixel AORUS 15G XC monitor is a bit dark but vibrant with a smooth range of 240 Hz refresh rate. Confused? Let us explain it with some examples.
For example – the blue jacket of Tom Holland sprung against a dreamy yellow backdrop in the Cherry trailer. Although, when the pair were sitting under a dark walkway, the details behind them were difficult to view, as the display was weak even with maximum brightness. But Holland’s wig had sharp strands of fur which were easy to view as the display is vibrant.
Also, while playing the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, we noticed that the detail in the graphics was immensely beautiful as long as you are roaming outside – in broad daylight. But, as soon as you enter in places that are dark, for instance, a fort – you will immediately notice that it is hard to see the details, sometimes even the enemies in the dim lighted areas are tough to spot. Although the screen brightness was kept at maximum at all times – this right here was a big no for us at least.
As per our colorimeter, 76.7% of DCI-P3 color gamut was protected by the Aorus 15G XC which exceeded the typical laptop average of 68.2 percent. It touched down between the G15 Strix Scar (80%), Raider Dragonshield (75%), and the Triton Predator 500 (77.4%). The Alienware m15 meanwhile went flying by 149.5%.
Aorus 15G has a very dim display at a rate of 259 nits – it comes below the average class of 283 nits. Strix Scar G15 at 278 nits, Raider Dragonshield at 310 nits, Predator Triton 500 at 322 nits or Alienware m15 at 362 nits – all four of these laptops are brighter than the new Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC.
Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC – Keyboard and Touchpad
The Aorus 15G does not provide a great typing experience as the keys started to feel too smooth against our fingertips, and the keyboard deck felt sufficiently soothing to our palms – too soothing.
On the 10fastfingers.com type test, we reached 77 words per minute which is around our current average of 78wpm. You can get used to the keyboard, but for a laptop that is made for gaming? It’s far too tedious.
However, the RGB lighting is incredibly bright and simple to set up. You can simply go to the Fusion tab in the Aorus Control Center and choose from a variety of presets such as Wave or Raindrop. You can also make a personalized preset for yourself – which again is pretty cool.
The 4.1 x 2.8 inches’ touchpad is good and feels soft when you use it, but we felt that the clickers are very rough. Although, the gestures offered by windows 10 like the 3 finger tabbing and 2 finger scrolling worked like a charm.
Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC – Audio
Just like its predecessor, the new Aorus 15G XC comes with low-quality speakers – keeping in mind the fact that this feature should be powerful as the laptop is for gaming and all. We noticed that there are 2 speakers on the bottom of the machine. The sound that they produced while testing them was shallow. Even the bass was essentially lacking.
If you are thinking of listening to music and chill – don’t. why? Because the drums will sound awkwardly sharp, the electric guitar will end up giving you a headache by being noisy and unrefined, you will hear the vocals but altogether the sound will feel somewhat muddy.
Source: gigabyte.com
While playing the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, we raided a monastery – the church bells’ echo felt somewhat empty, but still noisy enough to obscure what was going on. It seemed very weird to fire my arrow in a guy’s shield and it made a strange squishy sound rather than a pleasurable thud. It even seems like that there was a struggle happening outside our door while we were chopping through the enemies with an axe.
The Nahimic audio software didn’t support much – but it’s still recommended. You can control several features. Four presets are accessible, Music, Film, Communication, and Gaming. Settings for stereo sound, volume stabilization, voices, bass, and treble are included in each preset. There is also an equalizer that can be customized according to your preference.
The Era of Nvidia’s 30 Series is here
The Aorus 15G is our first Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU-powered gaming laptop. The processor and its 8GB of onboard storage have speed and reliability – doubled up. Nvidia’s second-generation RTX Ampere design, which is the first 8nm processor in the market, is used with the new 30-series chip. Despite its compact footprint, this time around Nvidia has been able to accommodate even more chipsets. How many? Well, billions! If you want more power, you should have more transistors – and this is exactly what Nvidia did.
Ampere chips made with a custom system have three processors in one for all purposes. The shader performs 3D shading in a rendition and provides other post-processing capabilities (lighting, shadow, highlights). There are RT cores of 2nd generation, which tackle the very critical technologies of radiation traceability, and a tensor core 3rd generation, which can calculate artificial intelligence.
But without any kick-ass functionality, what is the use of all that power? The Ampere chips have a range of gamer-focused features for 30-series notebooks, including the third generation of Max-Q designs that include Dynamic Boost 2.0 and Whisper-Mode 2.0. The Dynamic Boost 2.0 powered by AI sends intelligent power for productivity to the processor, the GPU, and VRAM. The new and better WhisperMode fits even with the CPU, GPU, and laptop fans. WhisperMode produces optimum acoustics by controlling the temperature of the Device to prevent you from worrying about fan noise.
Source: forbes.com
DLSS or Deep Learning Super Sampling is another AI-powered feature. With DLSS, a laptop with more noticeable capacity limitations will achieve duplication of output without reaching thermal or power limits. It lets you deliver high frame rates with the help of a high-end Nvidia machine.
Also, the Optimus platform has received an update from Nvidia. Optimus dynamically moves to an uninitiated graphic to maintain the battery life. Fewer tax systems are used for integrated GPUs while applications such as games, pictures, and video editing are used in discrete GPUs. A hardware switch determines which GPU is attached to the monitor at any time in this newest Version, called Advanced Optimus.
In contrast, Advanced Optimus plays well with G-Sync technology from Nvidia. G-Sync compares the refresh rate of the monitor with the GPU to make gaming performance smoother and quicker. Moreover, Advanced Optimus gives you more battery power and screens that push higher FPS – 1440p displays at 240Hz and 4K at 120Hz – to be exact. Although keep in mind that only the Nvidia Control Panel will switch between Automatic, Optimus, and Nvidia GPU.
The Resizable Bar provides another efficiency improvement. The Resizable Bar helps the CPU to reach the frame-buffer capacity in one large batch, which is easier to process than the video memory that has to be processed in smaller processing requests at the moment.
The other goodies of Nvidia are the Reflex, which uses G-Sync technology to reduce lag. Broadcast enables you via AI functionality to transform a meager game nook into a user-friendly streaming headquarters which cancels ambient noise, automatic webcam framing, and virtually creates background effects.
Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC – Gaming, Graphics, and VR
Snuggled deep in the bowels of the beast is a brand new Nvidia graphics card – Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Max-Q GPU with 8GB VRAM. So, how capable are these chips? Alright, to give you an example, in the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, we walked up the mountain in 1080p settings and took out two enemies at the same time – all at 63 FPS!
The Aorus 15G reached 62 fps, up above the average 47 fps mainline gaming laptops, on the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey benchmark (Ultra, 1080p). The Aorus 15G RTX 3070 scored a total of 60 fps against the Strix Scar G15 Super RTX 2070, but it reached the strength of RTX 2070 Super (63 fps) from the Raider Dragonshield, the RTX 2080 Super Predator Triton 500 (65fps), and the RTX 3070 from the Alienware m15 (67 fps).
Source: hebergementwebs.com
In Borderlands 3 (Badass, 1080p), the Aorus 15G clinched 70 fps which passed the average category 51-FPS. The Strix Scar G15 (65 fps), Raider Dragonshield (66 fps), and Predator Triton 500 also managed to overthrow the results (68 fps). The Alienware m15 did, however, go off scoring 85-FPS.
Although the Aorus 15G achieved a 93-FPS on the Far Cry New Dawn benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), the Strix Scar G15 (90 fps) and the Alienware m15 (91 fps) were beaten, but it dropped behind the Raider DragonShield (95 fps) and the Predator Triton 500.
The average of the Aorus 15G was 59 fps on the Red Dead Redemption 2 benchmark (medium, 1080p), which is 42-fps. In a close race, the raider Dragonshield (58 fps) and Predator Triton 500 (61 fps) landed between the Strix Scar G15 (60 fps). The Alienware m15 was nevertheless outstanding at 69 fps.
Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC Performance Review
The new GPU is a 32 GB RAM processor Intel Core i7-10870H. It’s strong enough for 40 Google Chrome tabs and 5 1080p YouTube videos to be screened out as Assassin’s Valhalla Creed operated – in the background
At the Geekbench 5.2, the Aorus 15G achieved 8,009, smashing the typical laptop conventional gaming standard (5,025). It also exceeded Core i7-10875H CPUs from the Triton 500 of Predator (7,666) and Core i7-10870H of the Alienware m15 (7,636) but it did not equal the Strix Scar G15 (8,163) Core i9-10980HK CPU and Raider Dragonsheld (8,571).
Source: wannaplay.news
The Aorus 15G transcoded a 4K video into 1080p, which is better than the average 8:27 category, in 8 minutes and 5 seconds. But the Strix Scar G15 (7:26), Raider Dragonshield (7:01), Predator Triton 500 (7:37) and Alienware m15 (7:07) went soaring by.
The 512GB SSD in Gigabyte Aorus is 801 MBps higher than the normal laptop for gaming (675 MBps). SSDs were however even quicker for the Strix Scar G15 (1,542 MBps), the Dragonshield Raider (993 MBps), the Triton 500 (1,403 MBps), and the Alienware m15 (1055 MBps).
Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC – Battery Life
When it comes to battery life lately, laptops have had their ups and downs, and the manufacturers certainly try more to hold it up. Sadly, in this respect, the Aorus 15G fails.
The Aorus 15G survived the Laptop Mag battery test – 4 hours and 48 minutes behind the typical conventional laptop game average (7:22). The Strix Scar G15, the Dragonshield Raider (5:10), the Strix Scar G15, and the Alienware m15, though, were neither above the average. (4:01) But the Strix was still not near the average. However, the bad result is not justified by the company – yet.
Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC Webcam Review
Okay. To be brutally honest if we see one more laptop with a bottom-placed webcam in 2021? We are going to explore the living life out of it. We still don’t know why companies like this design.
Source: tomshardware.com
Wanna know what this 720p webcam caught during our testing? Just the fingers and the nose! The webcam is not even on the bottom of the bezel practically. It’s on the deck! It means that it can’t be moved. It has a privacy shutter at least so no one will be able to spy on the fuzzy camera, which is poorly placed. Ironically, the lens captures colors sufficiently well to reflect our colorful Zelda legend calendar.
Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC – Heat Issues
Wow, this computer is getting hot – literally. The Aorus 15G’s underside after 15 minutes of gaming boiled up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, above our comfort threshold of 95 degrees. The middle of the keyboard and the touchpad reached 92 degrees and 75 degrees. The hottest was on the right-center bottom, though, 154 degrees.
But the Aorus 15G stays pretty cool while you’re not playing games. After 15 minutes of streaming the 1080p recording, the lower side touched 95 degrees, the keyboard hit 80 degrees and the touchpad was 72 degrees.
But wait – this is a gaming laptop, right? The heating issue shouldn’t be there at all. Hence, this was the second no for us.
Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC – Software and Warranty
You will receive, as a standard, an option to control and track the CPU, GPU, and fan status of your Aorus through the Control Center. With the help of this software, colors, battery efficiency, and illumination on the keyboard can also be tailored according to your preference. Some system settings are also available for you to create a system backup.
Windows 10 bloatware, including Cooking Fever, Hidden City, and Fishdom, are also included on the machine. The Aorus 15G has a fixed-guarantee of one year.
Final Thoughts
Yes, with its brand-new GPU, the Gigabyte Aorus 15G is highly powerful and is super compact with a colorful 240Hz screen. But a solid GPU alone doesn’t make a laptop decent for gaming. The battery life is limited, as is the monitor, webcam, keyboard, speakers, and even the heating solution of this computer.
Take pleasure and donate something more to try out the Alienware m15 R4 ($2,499) that has a much better view, a webcam in the right place, and isn’t almost as hot.
We would suggest you add some more bucks to your budget and opt for the Alienware m15 R4 – it will cost you around 2,500 bucks but it will amaze you to the fullest with its nicer display, a perfectly placed webcam, and it doesn’t even boil up so you can play your favorite games whenever and wherever you want.
If you want a strong result at a good price, the Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC is here for you, but with many setbacks which you will have to bear.
What we like
- → Graphics and the overall performance is excellent
- → Vibrant 240Hz panel
- → Compact design
What we didn’t like
- → The display could be brighter
- → Mediocre speakers
- → Poorly placed webcam
- → Runs hot
- → Short battery life
- → Squishy keyboard
