Gigabyte G5 MF review

[ntab Configuration]
Gigabyte G5 MF is probably the most affordable budget gaming laptop featuring an RTX 4000 dedicated graphics card from Nvidia, making it a great contender in this market segment, where gamers want to have the newest technology but don’t necessarily want to pay for all the bells and whistles of the more expensive premium laptops. The RTX 4050 dGPU promises a leap in performance while also allowing users to take advantage of the DLSS 3.0 technology (only available in RTX 4000 series), which inserts AI-generated frames between the actual frames generated by the graphics card, giving double or triple the FPS in more demanding games. The laptop is also rocking a 12th gen Intel processor featuring four performance cores and eight efficiency cores for a total of 16 threads, making short work of any serious challenge. But how does Gigabyte offer such excellent computing power at an affordable price, and how does the G5 compare with other budget gaming laptops? Read the full review to find out!

[ntab General overview]

The G5 uses a basic Clevo design, as it is manufactured by Clevo, with some generic “gamey” elements engraved on one of the corners of the display lid. However, even with these, it can easily be used in an office without attracting attention. Clevo is a laptop manufacturer which produces laptop chassis for other manufacturers to configure and sell under their brand, Gigabyte being one of their clients here. If you want to learn more about Clevo, we have an article you can find here. Sadly, the affordable price of the G5 is also reflected in the laptop’s build quality. The all-plastic chassis feels cheap and has a lot of deck flex when typing or using the touchpad, degrading the laptop’s user experience. The display is wobbly, and even though is not recommended, it can be opened with one hand, but the laptop will follow a few inches before falling back to the desk.

The typing experience was ok overall. The keys are large enough, decently spaced out and RGB backlit. The keyboard also has full-size arrow keys, a traditional Numpad and dedicated Del, Home, and End keys, features that are missing even in more expensive gaming laptops.

The touchpad is on the large side and feels great when moving the fingers on it, but the story changes completely when the touchpad is pressed, mainly because of the chassis flex. However, this issue can be avoided entirely by using a mouse instead.

The peripheral port selection is ok for a laptop in this price range, but some are inconveniently placed. Most of the ports are on the back of the laptop, which is to be appreciated, but the RJ45 port is placed on the right side of the chassis for some reason, taking precious space from the mouse area and often getting in the way of the mouse during gaming. Also, there are only two USB 3.0 ports which an external keyboard and mouse can quickly fill. Overall, the laptop has the following:

On the back:

On the right side:

And on the left side it has:

[ntab Display]

The display is one of the laptop’s weaker points. Starting with the pros, the BOE CQ NV156FHM-NX4/BOE0910 is an IPS panel, so it has excellent viewing angles, and it also has a high refresh rate of 144 Hz, a great feature to have when playing competitive games. Unfortunately, the display is very dim, with a peak brightness of 250 measured nits and has washed-out colours even after calibration. With a colour coverage of 59.6% sRGB, 41.5% AdobeRGB and 42.7% DCI P3, the laptop is unsuitable for photo/video editing.

Here is a link to the calibrated display profile of the reviewed unit. Because each display is unique, this profile will not perfectly match other displays of the same model. Still, using this profile should give better overall colours.

sRGB profile and calibration

[ntab Disassembly]

[ntab Benchmarks]

Night Raid

SCORE	30335
Graphics score	42174
Physics score	11718

Fire Strike

SCORE	17773
Graphics score	22170
Physics score	22984
Combined score	6421

Sky Diver

SCORE	50320
Graphics score	58405
Physics score	21740
Combined score	36292

Time Spy

SCORE	6321
Graphics score	6037
Physics score	9042

Orange Room

SCORE	7156
Average frame rate	155.99 fps
Target frame rate	109.00 fps

Cyan room

SCORE	5460
Average frame rate	119.02 fps
Target frame rate	88.90 fps

Blue Room

SCORE	518
Average frame rate	11.29 fps
Target frame rate	109.00 fps

Nvidia DLSS Test

DLSS Off	– fps
DLSS On	– fps

Cinebench R20

Single Core	639 pts
Multi Core	4817

Blender GPU

Monster	1428.395853 s/m
Junkshop	730.491374 s/m
Classroom	736.139380 s/m

Geekbench 5

Single-core score	Multi-core score
1614	9172

Geekbench 6

Single-core score	Multi-core score
2155	9427

PCMark 10 Web Score 9178 Apps Score 13512 Chat Score 7470 Photo Score 4591 Video Score 4522 Writing Score 7139 Spreadsheet Score 11003 Essentials 9748 Productivity 8862 Digital Content Creation 6434 SCORE 5894

Unigine Superposition benchmark
720p Low	26476
1080p Medium	12004
1080p High	4020
1080p Extreme	4732
4K Optimized	5127
8K Optimized	2198

Crystal Disk Mark

[ntab Gaming benchmarks]

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[ntab Temperatures]

The cooling solution of the Gigabyte G5 consists of four copper heat pipes (one for the CPU, two for the GPU and one shared between the CPU and GPU), two heatsinks (both located at the back of the laptop) and two medium-sized fans. The laptop pulls its fresh air from underneath and pushes it out through the four exhaust vents (two at the back and one on each side of the laptop). Due to this design, the machine will significantly benefit from a cooling pad.

All the tests were performed at an ambient temperature of 26° C (78.8° F), on Performance Mode and with the fans set to their maximum speed 24/7.

During the standard 30-minute AIDA64 stress test (CPU, FPU, cache), the processor reached an average temperature of 89 °C (192.2 °F), with a maximum of 101 °C (213.8 °F). At these temperatures, the processor maintained an average frequency of 2.22 GHz on its performance cores and 3.08 GHz on its efficient cores, with occasional dips to as low as 0.39 GHz on its performance cores and 1.79 GHz on its efficient cores. These results show that the CPU is throttling, failing to maintain the minimum guaranteed frequency by Intel of 3.10 GHz for its performance cores.

In the combined AIDA64 + Unigine Superposition stress test (which had both the processor and the dedicated graphics card under heavy load for 30 minutes), the processor once again reached a maximum temperature of 101 °C (213.8°F) and throttled until it settled at a temperature of 64 °C (147.2 °F). During this test, the processor kept an average clock speed of 0.55 GHz on its performance cores and 1.11 GHz on its efficient cores, with occasional dips to as low as 0.39 GHz on its performance cores and its efficient cores. The dedicated graphics card maintained an average clock speed of 2338 MHz with a maximum boost of 2595 MHz. Temperature-wise, the video card hovered between 64.6 °C (148.2 °F) and 84 °C (183.2 °F). This test has excellent GPU performance and temperatures, but the CPU cooling is, again, terrible. Even though the temperatures are much lower than the first test, the laptop achieves this by heavily throttling the CPU to the point that it can’t even maintain 1 GHz on its performance cores, which is unacceptable.

Finally, the laptop was tested with the AIDA64 stability test, another combined stress test for the video card and processor. The results were very similar to the previous stress tests. The processor reached a maximum temperature of 94 °C (201.2 °F) and throttled until it settled at a temperature of 77 °C (170.6 °F). Due to its heavy throttling, the processor kept an average clock speed of 0.43 GHz on its performance cores and 2.05 GHz on its efficient cores, with occasional dips to as low as 0.39 GHz on average performance cores and 0.89 GHz on its efficient cores. The dedicated graphics card maintained an average clock speed of 2460 MHz with a maximum of 2595 MHz. Temperature-wise, the video card hovered around 82 °C (179.6 °F).

[ntab Noise]
By pressing Fn+1, users can toggle “Maximum fans speed” ON or OFF and pressing Fn+3 switches through different power profiles, like “Performance”, “Entertainment” “Power Saving” (which turns off the dGPU) and “Quiet” mode. Installing the Control Center app also allows users to set custom fan curves.

The LatencyMon test evaluates if a laptop is suitable for video/audio editing and recording. The results are mixed. When the WLAN / wireless connection is used, the laptop experiences high latency, which may result in clicks or pops when recording. This problem disappears if the laptop is used on the LAN / wired network. Otherwise, LatencyMon did not signal any other issues with this machine. The device should work well for video/audio editing and recording as long as the laptop is wired to LAN.

LatencyMon test – WIFI	LatencyMon test – LAN

[ntab Battery life]

Since most laptops are used on battery for mundane office activities and web browsing, the laptop was tested using a simulated continuous web browsing session over WiFi. The browsing session involved checking emails/news, social media and accessing multimedia websites, similar to the behaviour of an average user. The level of brightness was set according to visibility and usability. At 50% brightness, the laptop provided an enjoyable viewing experience. The sound volume was also set to 50%.

With its 54 WHr battery, the laptop lasted only 1 hour and 6 minutes. The machine was tested using Firefox and Edge and yielded similar battery life results regardless of the browser. The dedicated GPU usage was at 0% for most of the test, indicating that the laptop switched to the integrated GPU. There is no clear explanation for this meagre battery life, but hopefully, this will improve with future BIOS updates.

Charging the laptop from 5% to 95% took almost 2 hours.

[ntab Conclusion]

Pros:

• high refresh rate display
• backlit keyboard
• competitive pricing

Cons:

• disappointing gaming performance due to cpu thermal throttling
• keyboard deck flex
• the RJ45 port is on the right side of the laptop
• low battery life

In conclusion, is the Gigabyte G5 MF worth it? Well, no, definitely no. When writing this review, it is the cheapest option to get an RTX 4000 series GPU in a budget gaming laptop. However, due to its poor cooling solution and lack of BIOS updates, the laptop’s performance is terrible, beaten by gaming laptops from 4 years ago. During gaming, the laptop starts to overheat after the first ~5 minutes or so. Since the cooling solution can’t handle the components inside, it fixes this by heavy throttling, dropping the performance to under 30 fps, making some games unplayable even on low graphical settings. Combined with the poor-quality chassis, mediocre display, loud fans and terrible speakers, the Gigabyte G5 MF is a hard pass.

[ntab Videos]