Gateway P-6831 FX: Best Midrange Gaming Notebook Ever
by Jarred Walton on March 28, 2008 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Other Application Performance
Finally, we ran several other performance benchmarks, including the popular Futuremark 3DMark and PCMark test suites. Since this is primarily a gaming notebook, we aren't as concerned with performance in general applications. Besides, just about any modern computer is more than sufficient for your typical office and Internet work. Because of the slower CPU, the Gateway P-6831 scores much lower in many of these benchmarks — excepting 3DMark, of course.
 |
The Gateway P-6831 places right where we would expect it to in these tests. In the 3DMark benchmarks, it falls below all of the 8800M GTX notebooks as well as the SLI notebooks we've tested, but it bests everything else. In PCMark05, it places at the bottom of the pack, helped by the 5400RPM hard drive and the T5450 CPU. Note that for 3DMark06, you need to use an extrenal LCD capable of 1280x1024 resolution to generate comparable results. (At the default 1280x800 use the 1440x900 laptop LCD, our score improved to 7005.)
We're also including full PCMark Vantage results starting with this review. Most of the scores should be similar to PCMark05, but for now we only have results from the AVADirect M570RU, Dell M1730, and Gateway P-6831 laptops, and variation between benchmark runs seems to be a bit higher than other tests (around 5%). Our results are summarized in the following table:
| PCMark Vantage Performance Breakdown | |||
| AVADirect (Clevo) M570RU |
Dell XPS M1730 | Gateway P-6831 FX |
|
| PCMark Suite | 3995 | 4496 | 2946 |
| Memories Suite | 3127 | 3559 | 2293 |
| TV and Movies Suite | 2585 | 2853 | 2140 |
| Gaming Suite | 4429 | 4015 | 2687 |
| Music Suite | 3808 | 4390 | 2988 |
| Commincations Suite | 3558 | 3907 | 2852 |
| Productivity Suite | 3954 | 4189 | 2041 |
| HDD Test Suite | 3137 | 4139 | 2585 |
In video encoding and 3D rendering, the CPU is almost the sole determinant of performance. We only have results from Penryn X9000 systems for these tests, and outside of QuickTime (where the RAID 0 hard drive array helps the XPS system), we see better than linear clock speed scaling from the X9000. The 2.8GHz chip is clocked 68% faster than the T5450, and it performs up to 85% faster. Having three times as much L2 cache certainly helps.
Again, keep in mind as we see CUDA enabled applications in the future, raw CPU performance may turn out to be less important for these highly parallelizable tasks.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
88 Comments
View All Comments
Sector7g - Thursday, April 3, 2008 - link
Ive had this laptop for just over a month now. Cant beat the bang for the buck. I got the last one here in Edmonton for $1350. This was when the price was $1700 in the states I was quite surprised to see such a price difference. Now I don't even see it listed on bestbuy.ca, I wonder if they stopped selling it here in Canada.I have just installed 2 of 3 upgrades, another WD250GB 5200rpm HD in Raid0 and a 2nd 2GB stick of ram. I did not however make a backup DVD as was mentioned, and now am looking for some of the apps that came with it. Is anyone that made one of these back up DVD's able to get me a copy? If you reinstall from the DVD that came with the Laptop does it install the aps that was on there? repartition the hard drive for recovery? I installed with another disk I have for ultimate x86. I have x64 on my desktop and had a few problems, but I don't have 4 gigs ram on my desktop. I'm trying to find a T9300 for less than $350 here in Canada but thats seems hard to do.
Also my ram index rating in the windows benchmark stayed a 4.5 and did not go up to 4.8 as some have mentioned. It lists 4 gigs ram in the post, but of course displays only 3 gigs ram when in vista as a result of running x86.
Tattered87 - Wednesday, April 2, 2008 - link
I bought this when I was down in Texas on vacation 2 weeks ago, saw what was in it and thought "wow, that's a beast" and then I saw the price tag and my jaw dropped. I immediately went home and found this was by far the cheapest computer with a viable mobile graphics chipset for the performance I wanted if I ever did in fact get a laptop.Plays WoW like a champ, and that's pretty much all I got it for; for those who knock it for the processor, it's definitely not bad for what it is, the laptop eats my old northword core 2.4 w/6800nu that I have sitting at work for breakfast. The only thing I can see the laptop really limiting would be strong physics based games, such as Crysis.
I wasn't even looking for a laptop at the time, but this thing definitely got my attention and I ended up going back the next day and buying the last one in stock. Unfortunately it came with the 1.66 cpu, but it really doesn't bother me since I got what I paid for.
Speaking of which, a great thanks to the writer of this article for including that it was on sale this week; I like to read reviews of things I buy in a sort of "it was ok to spend all that money since you got a really good deal on it" sort of way, and I ended up going to BB and utilizing their 2 week price match guarantee and got $107.50 back (the $7.50 is from Texas tax going to Illinois tax).
Overall an excellent review and I highly recommend this laptop to anyone who is considering it. Thanks for the fantastic review and also for saving me some $$
ccubsfan94 - Sunday, April 20, 2008 - link
hey i was looking at this laptop to buy what i mean was is i chose and still waiting to buy but i saw you say the crysis part and i looked at youtube alot and over half the people who showed crysis vids on there was using this laptop (the P-6860 not P-6831 though) just thought to tell you that and it has no lag of what i saw except one guy mad a explosion of 3,000 barrels of oil and couldn't watch or his computer would start lagging a bitQuantumPion - Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - link
I played with this laptop at Best Buy when it was on sale for like $1150 or so. I have to say, this laptop has an amazing keyboard. Not just for a laptop, it was one of the nicest feeling keyboards I have ever used. It had perfect spacing and a really nice feel, it gives even high-end desktop keyboards a run for their money. This laptop really is amazing for its price, too bad I don't have much use for it otherwise I might buy one :DDocdoc - Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - link
Superb review! Many thanks.I'm in the process of upgrading computers for my house, and I'd like to purchase gaming laptops for their portability.
Question of the Day:
The myriad games that were tested are helpful, but there's an elephant in the room that currently has over TEN MILLION subscribers which makes this laptop a very likely culprit for which a gaming computer will be used:
World of Warcraft
How would this laptop perform with a 1920 x 1200 external monitor? Any noticeable difference from a 'regular' desktop using a midrange dual core processor and a Nvidia 8800 GT 512MB video card?
If there's not a noticeable difference between this laptop and a desktop, I'm sold.
Thanks.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - link
WoW is extremely *un*-demanding when it comes to graphics. Part of the reason WoW is so successful is that you don't need even a moderately powerful system to run it. You can max out the detail settings on a Radeon 9800 Pro card, based on what I've seen, and still run at 1920x1200.This laptop has a GPU that is the mobile equivalent of the GeForce 9600 GT, which is more than capable of running WoW at maximum detail... probably even at 2560x1600, although the video output options won't support that. So, if all you're interested in playing is WoW, you'll be very happy with the performance the P-6831 offers.
Donkey2008 - Monday, March 31, 2008 - link
To the guy who said laptops are the "losers choice for gaming" - I'm not sure that I agree with that statement, but hey it's the internet so we can all vomit our opinions without actually having to prove what we say.I have owned a Dell XPS M170 laptop (Pentium-M 2.0,2GB 533MHz RAM,7800 Go GTX 256MB) since late 2005 and I can still play games like Bioshock, BF2142, World in Conflict and COD4 very easily on med to high settings (Crysis on med, more lowish) on my "ancient" notebook. Oh, by the way, this notebook scores a blistering 3400 in 3DMark 06 (further reducing my confidence that it is a measure of actual gameplay).
This Gateway should have an equally good lifespan. I don't really see any games being developed that are going to knock this laptop down (seeing as most new games are first and foremost developed for older console tech). Obviously you will have to make some graphic compromises as time goes by, but a $1500 investment (with CPU upgrade) is as good as it gets for the portability/performance it offers.
The only problem I see is the size (like my M170). I am positive that most mobile gamers like me plug it into an external LCD when at home (or work), so the internal screen is only used when truly mobile (at school, at girlfriends, in the car, etc). For that reason, I think Alienware has hit it on the head with the 15.4" M15x. Small screen, yes, but much easier to fit into a backpack and use at school. The 17" is just way too big to do this and the Alienware is $3000 afterall.
Gateway would have the one laptop to rule them all if they made a 15.4" version of this under say $1500.
Anyway, great review. PS - it would be nice if gaming laptops had a movable screen (like the HP 12.1" laptops) so we all don't develop carpal tunnel as we age.
GuitarFreak - Monday, March 31, 2008 - link
Great review. I think I found my new laptop. I especially like how you can upgrade it. I've got a t9300, a 2GB stick of RAM, and a 7200rpm hdd lined up to go in when I get one :Dmdudeja - Monday, March 31, 2008 - link
Jarred, could you give a few more details about the LCD, such as backlight bleed and viewing angles?SilthDraeth - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...Asus F3kA Seriies, out of the box with 2gigs of Ram, and ATI HD 2600 512 MB Video Card. $899
I have this notebook. I bought it when it was $1000. I upgraded it to 4 Gigs of RAM, and Run Vista 64 on it. Asus even provides drivers for Vista 64. (Though they tell you they don't support Vista 64)
I am just curious on the price to performance. I believe the Vid Card in the Gateway is superior, and the processor is as well. But the Asus is very good for gaming comes with a 30 day zero dead pixel warranty, and 1 year accidental damage warranty, and 2 year standard warranty on the rest of the notebook. So the value is extremely good.