The Gigabyte Aero 17 has been refreshed with Intel 10th gen and Nvidia Super graphics,
but how does this new combination perform in games?
I’ve tested 21 different games at all setting levels and compared it against other laptops,
and spoiler, the gaming performance of this 90 watt GPU beats 115 watt 2070 laptops.
My configuration of Aero 17 has the Intel i7-10875H processor, which has 8 cores and
16 threads.
There’s Nvidia RTX 2070 Super Max-Q graphics, 16gb of memory in dual channel with a 17.3”
4K 60Hz screen.
You can find different options and updated prices linked in the description.
Although the Aero 17 isn’t exactly designed to be a gaming laptop, with these specs it
should still be capable of some excellent results, and should serve as a good reference
of what sort of gaming performance to expect from this level of new hardware.
The Gigabyte control center software lets you select different performance modes, I’ve
tested with the highest options available with max fan speed for best performance.
We’ll only be covering gaming performance in this video, we’ll start by looking at
all 21 games at all setting levels, then compare the Aero 17 with some other laptops afterwards.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested using the game’s built in benchmark tool.
As a resource heavy test, the lower ultra result is expected, though 70 FPS at high
settings and near 100 at low is a good result.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode, I’ve got the results with RTX enabled, shown
by the green bars, and RTX off, shown by the purple bars.
RTX was playable at low and medium settings, but I’d prefer to just run with ultra and
RTX off which performs better and in my opinion, looks better too.
Control was also tested with and without RTX enabled, however as the game also supports
DLSS 2.0 I’ve tested this in the red bars.
DLSS runs it at 720p and upscales it, and it looked pretty decent while also still performing
quite well at high settings, very similar to with RTX completely off.
DOOM Eternal was tested with vulkan and regardless of the setting level used the average FPS
was excellent, I had no issues at all playing even with the highest ultra nightmare setting
preset which wasn’t too far below 200 FPS.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark, and the results here
were excellent, but we’ll compare this game against some other gaming laptops soon.
Apex Legends was tested with either all settings at maximum, or all settings on the lowest
possible values, as it doesn’t have predefined setting presets, and I’ve disabled the frame
rate cap.
Even at max settings the results would be a good match up for a 144Hz screen.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare was tested in campaign mode, and I’ve also tested it with
the settings either maxed out or at minimum.
Max settings were still playing smoothly, the 1% low was above even the 60Hz refresh
rate of my 4K panel, while above 100 FPS was possible at minimum settings.
Borderlands 3 was tested using the game’s built in benchmark, and even the highest setting
preset was still able to average above 60 FPS in this test.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint was also tested with the benchmark tool, and is fairly resource
heavy at higher settings too, though it was still able to average above 70 FPS maxed out,
a good result for this game, while high settings was still above 100 FPS.
Fortnite was tested with the replay feature, and it generally runs quite well on basically
any modern hardware, so even at epic settings the 1% low was above 100 FPS, with well over
300 FPS achieved at low settings, absolutely no issues at all here.
Overwatch is another less demanding game and was tested in the practice range.
Again even with epic settings it’s performing very well without any problems at all, while
the 300 FPS frame cap was being hit at low and medium settings.
CS:GO was tested using the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and the performance here was noticeably better
when compared to most of the other 9th gen laptops I’ve been testing for the last year,
perhaps owing to the higher turbo boost speeds of the new 10th gen i7.
Dota 2 was tested playing in the middle lane, and as another game that seems to prefer higher
CPU power, I was again seeing notably better results at low settings compared to 9th gen,
that said even maxed out the performance here is still more than enough.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark but using Vulkan, which was recently
added to the game.
Even ultra settings would be a fair match for a 144Hz screen with this hardware, and
even the 1% low is above 100 FPS, a nice result.
Metro Exodus was tested using the built in benchmark, most parts of the game perform
a fair bit better than this, so don’t take these results as a good indication of what
to expect throughout the entire game, it’s more of a worst case.
The Division 2 was also tested with the built in benchmark, ultra settings was almost at
60 FPS for the 1% low, which is a decent result for this test.
I think a recent game update has really boosted performance here, as 1% lows used to be consistently
far behind the averages.
PUBG was tested using the replay feature, though the results aren’t comparable with
most of my previous tests due to the map change issues I mentioned in the G14 video.
Regardless, it was still running near 100 FPS at ultra settings in my random play through.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark, and is one of the
more resource heavy games tested here.
Almost 60 FPS was hit at ultra high settings, which doesn’t sound great but for this game
it’s actually quite good as far as laptop hardware is concerned.
Far Cry New Dawn was also tested with the games benchmark, and the results are a little
better compared to many of the previous 9th gen laptops I’ve covered, the extra CPU
power is likely helping out in this test.
The Witcher 3 was playing fine even with max settings, however stepping down to high settings
improved the performance a fair amount while still looking pretty good in my opinion.
This is probably the oldest game I still test, so I’ve got years worth of data to compare
to in other videos if you’re interested.
F1 2019 was tested using the game’s benchmark tool, and as is usually the case in this test
the performance at ultra high settings looked good, but like the last game, stepping back
just one setting preset was able to offer a decent boost.
Let’s also take a look at how this config of the Aero 17 compares with other laptops,
use these results as a rough guide only as they were tested at different times with different
drivers.
In Battlefield 5 I’ve got this Aero 17 highlighted in red near similarly specced machines.
The results were fair in this game, the average FPS of the 2070 Super Max-Q is keeping up
with many of the other 2080 Max-Q laptops that I’ve previously tested, however the
results were more interesting in the other titles.
These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark.
This test tends to favour CPU power, and the 8 core 10th gen processor can actually hit
some nice speeds in this chassis, I’ll show that in depth in the upcoming thermal testing
video.
Anyway the results in this game are some of the best out of all laptops tested, likely
only behind the Triton 500 at the top as that lets you disable the integrated graphics which
boosts performance.
These are the results from Shadow of the Tomb raider with the built in benchmark at highest
settings.
Again the Aero 17 with this new hardware was producing one of the best results out of this
selection of laptops.
I found it interesting that it was ahead of the GX502GW, given that it has the 115w 2070
with the iGPU disabled.
The FPS from the new Aero is almost 19% faster than the last gen Aero I’ve got on the graph
too, with 9th gen 8 core i9 and 2070 Max-Q.
Based on these results, it looks like the combination of the 10th gen processor and
new Super graphics is actually holding up quite well compared to the last 9th gen and
non Super graphics options.
I was pretty surprised when I found the 90 watt 2070 Super Max-Q outperforming the 115
watt 2070 laptops, now I’m really interested to see how the new 115w 2070 Super laptops
stack up.
Let me know what you thought about the new i7-10875H and RTX 2070 Super Max-Q performance
down in the comments, and if you’re new to the channel make sure you get subscribed
for future laptop videos like this one, including the thermal testing and full review of the
Aero 17.