Gateway P-6831 FX: Best Midrange Gaming Notebook Ever
by Jarred Walton on March 28, 2008 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Battery Life, Power Use, Temperatures, and Noise
For battery life testing, we ran our standard three in-house tests. The first consists of surfing the internet until the battery runs down. We set Internet Explorer to load three web pages (including AnandTech.com), pause for 60 seconds, exit, and then reload those pages. The second test simply plays a DVD until the battery runs dead. For the third test, we loop the four gaming tests in 3DMark06. In all cases, we set the power profile to "Balanced" and set the display brightness at maximum brightness. The GPU on the P-6831 still consumes quite a bit of power, so turning down the backlight for the LCD won't help too much. However, you might be able to improve battery life by 20-25 minutes with a bit of effort (i.e. use the max power saving profile and turn down LCD brightness).
Related to battery life are the power requirements. We measure with the system plugged in, so some of the power saving features are not active. The numbers below will still give you an idea of how much relative power various tasks require.
The Gateway system comes with an 86 Whr battery, in comparison to 95 Whr batteries on several of the other 17" systems and 65 Whr on the AVADirect and WidowPC laptops. The P-6831 places near the top of the battery life benchmarks, at least when compared to other gaming notebooks. Reducing the display brightness and performance mode should easily allow over two hours of battery life for web surfing. DVD playback is just over an hour and a half, so you could watch some shorter movies on a single charge. The gaming battery life falls behind several of the other notebooks, but then it appears that the GPU clock speeds don't throttle as far on the P-6831 FX. That's likely because the CPU isn't using a lot of power, relatively speaking.
Those worried about extremely high temperatures should be pleasantly surprised. While we won't go so far as to call the P-6831 a cool-running laptop, it doesn't get all that hot. After looping 3DMark06 for over an hour, we measured the following temperatures. The exhaust on the back left of the laptop was by far the hottest area, measuring 46-48C. While that seems high, all of that heat comes from the GPU, and the bottom of the laptop is nowhere near that hot. The bottom ranges in temperature from 26C to 36C, with most of the surface around 31C-33C; only a few hotpoints (right near the center under the Gateway label, presumably where the actual GPU sits) reach 35-36C. The palm rest stays at a cool 26-30C, and the keyboard is mostly in the 30-32C range, with a few areas (around RTY/FGH - again just above the GPU core) reaching up to 35C. Note that all of the testing was conducted in a ~21C environment; temperatures would naturally be higher if the ambient temperature increases.
One last item we would like to comment on is the noise levels of this notebook. Given the slightly less powerful GPU and the slower CPU, we figured the noise levels would be lower than other gaming notebooks. Compared to the Clevo M570RU, that's certainly the case; the maximum noise level of 42dB is about the same as the minimum noise level (41dB) of the Clevo. The GPU and CPU still require decent airflow, though, so even at idle noise levels never reach the point where we would call this notebook "silent". It fluctuates between 34dB and 36dB at idle, with the difference coming from the CPU fan spinning faster for short periods of time. At 100% CPU load, the noise stays at a constant 36dB. As soon as you load up any game, noise increases to 40dB initially and then usually reaches the maximum 42dB after a few minutes. Again, we have to give Dell credit, as even with SLI their XPS M1730 is nearly silent when idle (31dB).
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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.