The Gigabyte Aero 15 X9 is a thin laptop which is a great option for both gaming and content
creation, so let’s find out what’s on offer, how well it performs and if it’s
a laptop you should consider buying.
These are the specs we’re dealing with, a 6 core Intel i7-8750H CPU, 16GB of memory
running in single channel, Nvidia RTX 2070 Max-Q graphics, a 15.6” 1080p 144Hz IPS
screen, and 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD. For network connectivity we’ve got killer gigabit ethernet
as well as WiFi version 5 with Bluetooth 5 support.
It’s also available with the overclockable i9-8950HK or dual channel memory, while the
Y9 model has RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics.
The chassis is basically the same as the older v8 model, but I’ll be comparing both in
a future video, so get subscribed for that. The lid and interior are a matte black aluminium
with plastic trim, and overall it felt well built.
The dimensions of the Aero 15 are 35.6cm in width, 25cm in depth, and just under 1.9cm
in height, so on the smaller side for a 15 inch machine.
The weight is listed at around 2kg on the Gigabyte website, and I found mine to weigh
2.1KG, or just over 2.9KG with the 230 watt power brick and cables included.
It’s got an LG 15.6” 1080p 144Hz IPS panel, no G-Sync here, although you’ve also got
the option of a 4K 60Hz panel with higher colour gamut. No issues at all for me with
viewing angles due to the IPS panel, and the top and side bezels are just 5mm thin.
I’ve measured the current colour gamut using the Spyder 5 Pro, and my results returned
97% of sRGB, 66% of NTSC and 72% of AdobeRGB, so fairly good results for a gaming laptop,
and it comes colour calibrated from the factory.
At 100% brightness I measured the panel at 336 nits in the center, and with a 670:1 contrast
ratio, so decent brightness although contrast is a bit lower than I’d like, but again
expect better results with the 4K panel.
I’ve taken a long exposure photo in a dark room as a worst case backlight bleed test,
and there was a little picked up by the camera. To my own eyes this wasn’t viewable, but
this will vary between laptops and panels.
Screen flex was about average while intentionally moving it, but as the screen hinge is basically
most of the width of the body it was fairly stable. It can easily be opened up with one
finger, demonstrating a fairly even weight distribution, it sat on my lap fine.
The 720p nose cam is found down the bottom in the center.
The camera quality looks alright aside from the up the nose look and you can see your
fingers while typing, otherwise the microphone sounds pretty bad.
The keyboard has individual RGB backlighting and can be controlled through Gigabyte’s
Fusion software, although the AI features will also control it, for instance if you
open a particular game it will highlight keys used in the game. The lights may look flickery
on camera, that’s just due to the shutter speed of my camera, in person they look solid.
Gigabyte told me that the keyboard is the same one used in the previous v8 Aero laptops,
however I haven’t had any issues with this one so far, no problems with typing and here’s
how it sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
There was a bit of keyboard flex while pushing down fairly hard, but this wasn’t an issue
at all while typing normally, overall it felt fairly sturdy.
The touch pad felt extremely smooth to the touch and worked well. The new Aero 15 laptops
use precision drivers rather than ELAN like the older model which is great, no need to
manually update.
Fingerprints show up on the matte finish, but as it’s smooth they’re easy to wipe
off.
On the left there’s the ethernet port, USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A port, HDMI 2.0 port, USB 3.1
Type-C port with DisplayPort 1.4 support, and 3.5mm audio combo jack.
On the right there’s an SD card reader, USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port with thunderbolt
3 support, two USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports, power input, and kensington lock.
There’s nothing on the back, as air is exhausted below the screen, so you probably won’t
want to close it while docked for best cooling.
There’s nothing on the front, just smooth plastic with a groove for getting your finger
in to open the lid.
On the lid there’s the Gigabyte logo in the center which lights up white, and a carbon
fiber texture towards the bottom.
Underneath are some air intake vents towards the back and the speakers towards the front
left and right corners. The speakers sounded pretty good for a laptop, fairly clear even
at higher volumes though a noticeable lack of bass.
Opening the laptop is fairly straightforward, you just need a TR6 screwdriver. With the
metal panel removed, from left to right we’ve got easy access to the WiFi card, battery,
two memory slots, and two M.2 slots. I’ve got a whole video dedicated to upgrading the
Aero 15x, which should apply here too, check the card in the top right corner for more
information.
Powering the laptop is a large 94 watt hour battery. With a full charge and just watching
YouTube videos with the screen on half brightness, keyboard lighting off and background apps
disabled, I was able to use it for 6 hours and 15 minutes. The Intel graphics were in
use thanks to Nvidia Optimus, giving a very nice result for this test from a laptop with
this hardware.
While playing the Witcher 3 with medium settings and the frame rate capped to 30 FPS with Nvidia’s
battery boost it lasted for 1 hour and 35 minutes, however the frame rate did drop to
unplayable levels 55 minutes into the test with 37 battery remaining, but it went back
to 30 FPS after a bit, but then was back to unplayable levels at 20% remaining until zero.
I’ll also note that I never saw the battery drain while plugged into power with the 230
watt brick, it seems to be adequate for the specs in my unit.
Thermal testing was completed with an ambient room temperature of 24 degrees Celsius, so
expect different temperatures in different environments. Also keep in mind there are
heatpipes shared between processor and graphics, so a change in one component may affect the
other.
I’ll also briefly talk about Gigabyte’s new AI feature that comes with the v9 Aero
laptops, so the new ones with RTX graphics. There are two modes, AI Edge and AI Cloud.
AI Edge processes the data locally to make the best decisions in terms of what to change
like fan speeds and power limits, while the AI Cloud setting will send data to Microsoft
and get the best settings for the workload based on other user submitted data, so I’m
expecting it to perform better. Otherwise all other tests had the AI disabled unless
stated otherwise.
Starting down the bottom of the graph at idle, the temperatures were on the warmer side as
the fans were basically silent. The gaming results were tested playing Watch Dogs 2,
as I find it to use a good combination of both processor and graphics. The stress tests
were done by running the Heaven benchmark and the Aida64 stress test at the same time
as a worst case scenario. The CPU was undervolted by -0.12v as denoted by UV on the graph, and
the graphics overclock was with a 90MHz boost to the GPU core. I’ll also note that out
of the box, the X9 was overvolted by 0.01v.
In every single other test, the CPU was thermal throttling at 90 degrees Celsius, as shown
by the blue bars, while the 2070 Max-Q graphics was thermal throttling in most tests, any
time the green bar was at 86 degrees Celsius. The graphics only stopped thermal throttling
when the fan speed was manually maxed out, and at the top with the Thermaltake Massive
20 cooling pad in use I got the best results.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. Let’s start towards
the bottom with the gaming tests. Despite thermal throttling taking place for each of
these tests, there are clock speed differences from the different settings. Both of the AI
settings were giving better performance compared to just running the laptop at stock, however
from what I could tell the AI Cloud setting ran with a higher fan speed, which reduced
thermal throttling, which is why I think it was ahead of the AI Edge results. Either way,
with my manual -0.12v undervolt to the CPU, +90MHz overclock to the graphics and with
the fans manually set to maximum I’m getting a big improvement over both stock and the
AI settings.
At the top of the graph with our best case result using the cooling pad the 8750H was
500MHz from being able to reach the full 3.9GHz turbo boost speed due to thermal throttling.
These are the clock speeds I got while just running CPU only stress tests without any
GPU load, and we’re seeing higher clockspeeds now as there’s less heat in the system without
the graphics contributing. At stock I was hitting power limit throttling for the first
time rather than thermal throttling. By boosting the power limit with Intel XTU the clock speed
was improved, however this now resulted in thermal throttling, which is why the undervolt
at the top of the graph allows us to hit the full 3.9GHz turbo boost speed of the 8750H.
These are the temperatures for the same tests just shown, and we can see that with the power
limit boosted the 90 degrees Celsius throttling was reached, while the undervolt improved
temperatures by 7 degrees Celsius while also boosting clock speed.
While it was possible to boost the power limit of the CPU, this was not attempted in the
gaming and stress tests shown previously, there’s no point as thermal throttling was
taking place without it, we only need to look at boosting the power limit if we’re hitting
power limit throttling but that wasn’t the case there.
To demonstrate how this translates into performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks.
While it was possible to get full CPU performance in Aida64 with the undervolt only, in Cinebench
I still had power limit throttling at the default 52 watt TDP, so I had to boost it
a bit to almost hit 1200, just a little under what I’d normally expect from an unconstrained
8750H.
Here are the GPU only clock speeds while under a graphical only stress test at stock and
with a 90MHz overclock applied, and we’ll see how this affects game performance later.
These are the temperatures from the same tests, no change with or without the overclock, and
not reaching thermal throttling at 86 degrees Celsius as we saw in the combined CPU and
GPU loads earlier.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was in the low to mid 30s, warmer up the back and cooler over the WASD keys. While gaming
the palmrest and touchpad were still fairly cool, the middle of the keyboard was fairly
warm though, getting to 50 degrees, the WASD keys are still sitting at around 30 though.
Similar deal with the stress test running. The back gets to the high 50s as hot air is
exhausted below the screen, but I don’t think it’s an issue as you don’t rest
your hands there.
The bottom also gets quite hot under heavy load, something I personally had issues with
while exporting CES videos in an airport with my 15X on my legs.
As for the fan noise produced by the laptop, I’ll let you have a listen to some of these
tests.
At idle it was almost silent, and then while gaming and under stress test with the fans
at default it was actually very quiet, much quieter than most other similarly specced
laptops I’ve tested. With the fans maxed out it was quite a bit louder, now about the
same as many other laptops I’ve tested, and as we saw earlier the fan boost improves
CPU and GPU clock speeds by a fair bit.
Overall my Aero 15 X9 is a hot machine, although at stock the fans aren’t actually that loud,
and as we’ve seen performance is negatively affected as a result, and this is with the
i7-8750H and 2070 Max-Q, the Y9 is available with i9-8950HK and 2080 Max-Q, so I’d be
interested in seeing how that goes in the same body.
Finally let’s take a look at some gaming benchmarks, all games were run at 1080p with
the latest Windows updates and these Nvidia drivers, the latest Gigabyte provided at the
time of testing. As the Aero 15 x9 is available in either single or dual channel memory configurations,
I’ve tested both so you can see the difference.
Fortnite was tested with the replay feature. The graphs can be a little confusing when
there’s so much data, so I’ll spend some extra time covering this one. Basically I’ve
got the setting levels used along the side, so low, medium, high and epic settings. The
blue bars represent dual channel memory, while the purple bars show single channel memory.
While this game was easily playable at all settings with single channel memory, dual
channel was giving a 23% improvement to average FPS at epic settings.
Overwatch was tested playing in the practice range, and in terms of average FPS at epic
settings there was only a 7% improvement, however this was much larger at lower settings.
For example with low settings dual channel was averaging 37% higher average frame rates,
but again the game was easily playable at max settings with either configuration.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode and not in multiplayer mode, as it’s easier
to consistently reproduce the test run. I apologize for the rainbow colours, but there’s
not much you can do when trying to display so much information. In this case the purple
and green bars were tested with RTX on, and it wasn’t really playable at ultra or high
settings, with averages in the mid 30 FPS, medium and low were ok though, both averaging
above 60 FPS. In my personal opinion ultra settings with RTX off both looks better than
lower settings with RTX on and performs better too.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark, and this test was
able to average above 60 FPS even with the highest settings in single channel, but going
to dual channel did improve average frame rate by 22%, with up to a 43% improvement
seen with the lowest settings.
CS:GO was tested using the Ulletical benchmark, and this test saw a huge difference between
single and dual channel memory. With all settings maxed out there was a 42% improvement to average
FPS with dual channel, shown by the blue bar right at the top of the graph.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark, and again there was a fair improvement
with dual channel memory here, though realistically very high frame rates from the X9 in either
case. At ultra settings there was a 35% improvement to average FPS with a dual channel memory
configuration, and interestingly the 1% low with dual channel was around the average FPS
from single channel.
Far Cry 5 was also tested with the built in benchmark, and the results were quite decent
for this game, once again with a fair improvement from the dual channel configuration shown
by the blue bars. At ultra settings there was a 16% improvement to average FPS with
dual channel memory.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was another that was tested with the built in benchmark, and
although I don’t think this game typically needs a high frame rate to play, at ultra
high settings dual channel was improving average performance by 32%, with a smaller 15% improvement
to 1% low.
Watch Dogs 2 is a demanding game, but even with single channel at ultra settings I found
it playable, however we can significantly improve the average frame rate with dual channel.
At ultra settings there was a 38% improvement to average FPS, and a much larger 54% improvement
to 1% low.
The Witcher 3 was tested with Nvidia hairworks disabled, and it played fine on the X9 with
either single or dual channel memory, even with ultra settings, although it was possible
to improve average frame rate by 22% with dual channel.
I’ve got more games covered in the dedicated gaming benchmark video if you’re interested,
just check the card in the top right corner.
The i7-8750H and 2070 Max-Q graphics are giving us pretty good results in these games despite
the thermal performance, they’re all easily playable with good settings no problem. The
X9 version of the Aero 15 is also available with an i9 CPU, so expect different results
there.
As we have seen there is a fair difference between single channel and dual channel memory,
you can buy the Aero 15 x9 with either single or dual channel configurations, so I’d suggest
dual channel based on these results if you plan on playing games.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike, Timespy, and VRMark from 3DMark, just pause the video if you want
a detailed look at these results.
As we saw earlier we’ve got the option of overclocking the graphics, undervolting the
CPU and maxing out the fans to boost performance, so let’s see how this actually helps in
gaming.
Far Cry 5 was retested using the built in benchmark at 1080p with ultra settings. Down
the bottom I’ve got the results purely from running the laptop at stock. Just above this
is with the fan set to full speed, which gives us the second best performance. The AI Edge
and AI Cloud settings are giving better performance compared to stock with the default fan, but
simply setting the fan to full speed was enough to provide better performance as it helps
reduce the thermal throttling. Finally at the top once the CPU is undervolted by -0.12v
and the graphics overclocked by 90MHz on the core and 400MHz on the memory with the fans
at full we’re getting the best performance, not surprising, I think manually tuned settings
will always win.
I didn’t personally see much improvement with the AI feature, as we saw before I was
able to get better results with my own simple tweaks, though of course most people probably
won’t be doing that. Compared to running at stock with AI disabled I was seeing some
improvements with the AI, but better results were had by simply maxing out the fan which
is something anyone can easily do. I think in future as different workloads are learned
it may improve over time, it could just be that the AI isn’t currently optimized to
best handle the workloads that I was testing, especially the AI Edge setting, as I presume
that learns from my behaviour and I’ve only had the laptop for a couple of weeks, whereas
AI Cloud has more data to work with from people around the world.
For storage I’ve got a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD installed, and this was providing very nice
read and write speeds, but there’s also a second M.2 slot which supports both NVMe
and SATA drives for upgrades. The UHS-II SD card slot was getting good results with my
V90 card, the Aero has one of the best SD readers out of all laptops I’ve covered.
For updated pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording, in the US with these same specs it’s going for around $2400 USD,
not too much more than the 15x. Here in Australia though, there’s a larger difference, with
the new X9 with these specs going for $3700 AUD.
So what do you guys think about the Gigabyte Aero 15 X9 laptop? Overall, like the last
generation I think it’s a nice machine, but it does get hot under heavy load, the
webcam is still in a bad spot, and you’re paying more for RTX graphics which still don’t
have many available games. I personally use an Aero 15X, and I think it’s the best laptop
available for me in terms of both gaming and content creation, the X9 is essentially the
same, just a bit more powerful and overall more polished. For instance it’s got precision
drivers out of the box now, updated control center software, and I’m interested to see
how the AI feature goes in the future, however as we saw it doesn’t help too much yet.
The Aero 15 X9 has got nice build quality, it’s fairly thin, the battery is one of
the best available in a laptop with these specs, but unless you really want RTX and
that extra GPU power, or higher power from the optional i9 CPU, which given the thermal
throttling will likely only see improvements in less core heavy workloads, it may make
more sense to go for the cheaper 15X model. I’ll have a comparison between the two soon,
so get subscribed for that one.
Let me know what you guys thought about the Gigabyte Aero 15 X9 laptop down in the comments,
and leave a like to let me know if you found the review useful. Thanks for watching, and
don’t forget to subscribe for future tech videos like this one.