A personal review: Gigabyte G5 laptop
Thanks to the constant lockdowns and the Austrian winter, I’ve gotten back into gaming lately. But my old 2015-ish gaming PC was due for replacement. Newer titles had become a bit too demanding, particularly on a 1440p display. Add in the current unavailability of desktop hardware, and pulling the trigger on a cheap gaming notebook becomes an easy decision.
In this article, I share my personal experiences with the Gigabyte G5. I’m not aiming to write a typical review of the G5 (after all, this is a literal blog post). Besides performance, I’m more focused on practical considerations, many of which I don’t think are super idiosyncratic to my situation. I’m hoping they can shed some light on the general state of entry level gaming notebooks in 2022.
Hardware#
Gigabyte’s G5 is offered in several variants, mostly differing in the GPU. Options include the RTX 3060, RTX 3050Ti, or the RTX 3050. There’s also a higher end sister model with AMD hardware. But at 750 euros, I paid about as much for the 3050 model as a buddy paid for his new middle class desktop GPU alone. And it’s well specced:
- i5-11400H hexa-core CPU
- RTX 3050 with 4GB VRAM
- 16GB DDR4 RAM
- 144Hz 1080p 15.6” IPS panel
- 500GB NVMe SSD
The RTX 3050 is the smallest GPU in Nvidia’s 3000 series, though at 85W, it does get a comparatively large power budget in the G5. Thanks to this, it achieves similar performance to the 3060 chip in Dell’s competing G15. This performance advantage is paid for with a thick case (see below.) But in my books, that’s an OK tradeoff, especially considering that it’s not as heavy as it looks at 2.1kg. In any case, it should be noted that VRAM is just 4GB, so resolutions much higher than 1080p aren’t going to work as well.
The G5 comes with surprisingly good peripherals. The keyboard actually isn’t too far behind my ThinkPad, and the trackpad is decent as well (considering it won’t see much use). The display bezels are thin, consequently the footprint isn’t completely humongous, and it’s still got a webcam in the usual spot. It’s also got fairly capable speakers, which is a particularly good thing because those fans can get loud.
The builtin screen has a 144Hz refresh rate, so a separate gaming monitor isn’t a necessity. A wireless mouse and headset complete the portable gaming setup. Of course you need to make do with a 15.6” 1080p display, but personally I quickly got used to that, even coming from a 27” 1440p display. For me, the ability to take my entire setup anywhere outweighs a larger screen.
The single thing that’s still annoying to have to carry around is the power brick, and there’s no way you won’t need it because battery life is a whopping two hours. In idle. Really, it’s more like a UPS, not a battery. Short excursions aside, the G5 truly isn’t made for the couch or the bed - it’s more of a desktop than a laptop in the literal sense.
There’s no Windows license, either saving or costing you extra money depending on whether you have a spare license or not. Or maybe, whether you’re willing to try alternative activation methods. In my case, the same Windows 8.1 key, bought sometime in 2013 or so, has lasted me for all of my last several gaming PCs. And this one is no exception.
Upgradeability is very good, as far as laptops go. Unsurprisingly, CPU and GPU are soldered, but RAM isn’t, and there are two M.2 slots and a 2.5” SATA drive bay. Just the perfect place to give your old SSDs a second life, and get some more space for today’s stupidly big games. In my case, reusing old hardware nets me a total of 2.5TB SSD storage. For basically free. This makes the G5 a ridiculously good deal - and it’s a big reason I picked it over the competitors, none of which offer a 2.5” bay.
The bottom case feels sturdy and nice to touch, even though it’s just plastic. The display, on the other hand, is quite wobbly. Overall design keeps juvenile gamer styling to a relative minimum. The only RGB is in the keyboard backlight, which can easily be set to a fixed shade via Gigabyte’s Control Center tool. That’s also the place where you would change the laptop’s power limits. The interface manages to produce an extraordinarily substandard feel, even measured by shoddy-OEM-tray-app standards.
(I do concur that it’s not particularly annoying in the big picture, since shitty tray apps are a dime a dozen nowadays. If you actually want to use your hardware’s advertised features, there doesn’t appear to be a way around running a ton of these apps. I’m not sure whether the resurgence of Windows stability issues isn’t at least partly to blame on them. But anyway, at this point, one process more or less doesn’t really matter anymore. What we need is to start over. </rant>)
But Windows also has a couple things I’m positively surprised about.
Productivity#
Even somebody like me with mostly UNIX-based workflows can at least get some work done on Windows nowadays. It still has its limitations, but WSL is good enough that I can use my Vimwiki knowledgebase, for example. Or that I can write scripts for plotting the performance data below. And blocking M$ spying domains at the DNS level appeases my inner tinfoil hatter at least somewhat.
One thing that’s nice about having a relatively potent GPU is the ability to do 3D modeling. I’ve been playing around with Blender in the last couple of weeks and realized that computer graphics (CG) is actually a pretty fun field. 3D printing your models really feels like you’re living in the future, and it makes a bunch of projects possible that just weren’t before. Besides modeling, rendering 3D art is a challenging and powerful art form, and the math behind CG is also very interesting. So basically it opens up the door to this whole technical and artistic world of CG.
Speaking more generally, as a Linux user I appreciate the breadth of professional software that’s available for Windows. Most of the less technical fields never really made it big on Linux, because it’s just too small of an intersection. Sure, there’s native Linux DAWs, but the selection is far more limited than on Windows or macOS. Same thing for photo editing, video editing, UI mockups, and tons of other areas.
Now, proprietary software isn’t without its issues, and you don’t need industry standard tools for everything, and you could make them run on Linux if need be, but it’s still just nice to have everything available with minimal hassle. Even if you’re just dabbling in it. Or rather, especially if you’re just dabbling.
Gaming performance#
The G5 offers four power modes to pick from: Quiet, Power Saving, Entertainment, and Performance. At 11243 Fire Strike points, Performance mode only achieves a very modest advantage compared to the 10782 points in Entertainment mode, and comes at the cost of ridiculously loud fans versus just loud fans. Meanwhile, the two low power options don’t seem to allow the 3050 enough juice that it can manage newer games.
So I just keep the device in Entertainment mode, yielding the added benefit of never having to touch the control center app. In this mode, the G5 manages most recent AAA games at a solid 1080/60 in high to max settings, and 144fps in esports titles. Though on a 144Hz display, 60fps produces noticeable stutters, so we should really be going for 72fps.
All games tested at 1080p, with samples taken roughly every 500ms.
Evidently, the 3050 doesn’t manage maxed settings in all recent AAA games, so if that’s important to you I would go for the 3060 model. Personally, I barely notice a difference between high and ultra in most games, so I can live with lower settings.
Of the bunch, Borderlands 3 is the worst performer by far, stuttering heavily and refusing to go above 60fps unless details are set to medium. Fallout 4 is capped at 72fps (physics issues), but it also pretty much stays pegged there. In RDR2, I didn’t find that DLSS lived up to its hype: it topped out at a gain of maybe 10fps. Anyhow, the framerate is hovering around 72fps, so I’m happy.
Esports games are stable at 144fps, which is quite important. Weirdly, League of Legends seems to suffer more FPS drops, particularly in action laden scenes such as teamfights. Reducing the settings doesn’t seem to have much impact either, hinting that the problem isn’t with the GPU.
I haven’t been able to figure out the root cause of this, though some cursory research produced the vile notion of a “single threaded renderer”. But anyway, it hasn’t been too annoying. I just play Valorant instead. It’s way more fun anyway - apparently the balancing team hasn’t been busy snorting cocaine for the past six months ;)
Conclusion#
The G5 doesn’t come close to the beastly performance of current desktop GPUs, nor is its comparatively tiny 15.6” screen the best option for serious gamers. Still, I’m going to make the case that it’s a viable option for many people.
The most obvious advantage is portability, but hidden within that convenience lies the option to have a separate gaming setup and work setup. I feel this separation is a necessity in times of ubiquitious WFH - spending 80% of your waking hours sitting in the exact same spot, staring at the exact same thing just isn’t great for your mental game.
Now clearly, not everyone has space for two desks. But get yourself a gaming laptop, and the dinner table can house your gaming setup, while work remains exclusive to your office desk. That should be conducive to both your work and gaming sessions.
And after all, gaming laptops aren’t merely an attractive deal right now, instead it’s almost like there’s no real other option. You can buy a laptop, or you can pay the same amount just for a GPU. This situation only seems to change once you’re way past a grand, so if you’re not willing to spend that much, the decision truly is a nobrainer.
As for the G5 in particular, I believe it’s a good pick in the entry level. It’s good value, comes with a nice screen, recent GPU and CPU, enough RAM, plus it’s upgradeable. Now, it’s also fat and has a shit battery and software. But with those specs, offered at 750 euros, you just cannot complain. Doubly so if you have old hardware to reuse and get some extra storage.