Gateway P-6831 FX: Best Midrange Gaming Notebook Ever
by Jarred Walton on March 28, 2008 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Closing Thoughts
We always enjoy reviewing top-end notebooks, as it's exciting to see just how much performance can be packed into a (reasonably) portable package. It's a lot like eyeballing a sports car that you probably won't buy but you can still lust after, or perhaps being lucky enough to take one for a test drive. Who among us doesn't relish the thought of burning rubber Need for Speed style in an exotic sports car? At the end of the day, however, most of us drive home in our Honda Accords, Toyota Camrys, or — gasp! — minivans. (I myself drive around in a Chrysler Sebring.)
Just because you drive a midrange, midsize sedan doesn't necessarily mean you have to sacrifice in all areas, however. It's possible to get a V6, leather interior, and other upgrades, and even if you will never be able to keep pace with the exotic cars of the world you can at least be reasonably content. If gaming laptops were cars, the Gateway P-6831 FX would manage to attract a lot of attention — and deservedly so. Imagine being able to buy a very nice sports car that could compete with the Dodge Viper at one third the cost, and that's what Gateway has released on the market.
If you've ever been interested in a gaming notebook but have decided that the price/performance just can't be justified, now might be a good time to rethink things. Oh sure, there are compromises made — your gas mileage is going to go down, the car may be a bit bulkier and noisier than you'd like, and in a flat-out drag race you will probably get smoked. But as long as you're only competing against the average business notebook, feel free to rev up your 8800M GTS engine and make some people jealous.
When we first saw Gateway's new FX notebook at CES, we were intrigued. Then they told us the expected price and our jaws hit the floor. We have never seen this much relative graphics performance in a notebook for such a low price. If you're into the LAN party scene and you're thinking it's about time to upgrade your aging desktop, it might be time to finally ditch desktops entirely.
The Gateway P-6831 FX isn't perfect by any means. We don't like the fact that the battery juts out from the rear of the notebook, we really would have liked a 1920x1200 LCD option on some of the less expensive models, the one-year warranty is short, and the LCD contrast ratio isn't very good. Like many OEM systems, it also comes preloaded with a ton of bloatware — that's easy enough to uninstall, thankfully. And would it be too much to ask for four audio jacks so we could use 5.1 headphones with a microphone? But that's just us being greedy.
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teknomedic - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
Hey, great review... I read it yesterday... I bought the P-6831 today... hope your happy, cause I am, lol.Anyway... In short order I'll probably be upgrading the proc to the T8300 and getting a matched set of 4GB RAM and then installing Vista 64bit.
Just wondering (since I haven't opened the box yet and am still thinking about keeping it)... how are the Vista 64bit drivers for this lappy? Will I beable to find all the drivers I need or will I need to run 32 for a while until they sort those out?
Thanks again!
Che - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
Well, I stated installing 64-bit Vista about 24 hours after buying the laptop. Used a 64-bit disc and the laptop's activation key with no issues. As for drivers, most of the drivers are 64-bit aware (even if they are only listed as 32-bit). Took me a few hours but got it up and running great. IMPORTANT: Use the Gateway Recovery Center program and make a backup Drivers and Applications CD. Was very useful in reinstalling the drivers (many on the gateway site don't want to work right)Only drivers hard to find were: modem and nvidia.
For the modem I used the following: http://www.notebookforums.com/thread212673.html">http://www.notebookforums.com/thread212673.html
Nvidia I used the following: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=2...">http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=2...
Hope that helps.
teknomedic - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
that's awesome info... thank you... I really want to move to 64bit since that's what I'm running at home. Thanks again!!teknomedic - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
^^^ oh, and also... futher down the road, will I be able to upgrade the video as well? It also looks like if I did that, I'd have to rip the lappy apart?win32asmguy - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
Sorry but the 8800M GTS is soldered to the motherboard, roughly under the number pad area of the keyboard. That is one of the reasons why this machine is thinner than the Clevo M570RU-U clones that are out there.JarredWalton - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
I didn't actually check to see if the GPU was soldered on or not, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that's the case. Even if it is an MSM module that can be upgraded, it's highly unlikely you'll be able to do so. Just ask Dell XPS owners and Alienware m9750 owners how many GPU upgrades they've received over the years. Anyway, the GPU would be under the left side of the keyboard - the CPU is under the number keypad.JarredWalton - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
Regarding video drivers, you have to get the current drivers from Gateway or try hacked drivers from LaptopVideo2Go. In the case of the latter, you will almost certainly get lower performance. Right now, Gateway doesn't have 64-bit GPU drivers (or 64-bit drivers for anything else) on their website. You can get around everything but the GPU and potentially sound drivers.I would wait for the 64-bit upgrade until NVIDIA releases their next "rapid driver update" mobile drivers, and see if they support the Gateway FX laptops and if there's a 64-bit version. I'm betting yes on 64-bit, but in talking with NVIDIA they *just* received their Gateway systems for validation testing, so they may or may not make it into the next driver release. They will be in the release after that almost certainly, but that's ~4 months out.
The other question of course is whether you even need to go 64-bit and 4GB right now. I don't think so, particularly if gaming is your major concern. 32-bit is still better overall, IMO... maybe in another year 64-bit will begin to make an impact.
teknomedic - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
Thanks for the replies... too bad on the video considering I have a 5 year old laptop that allowed me to upgrade the video... and I'll wait on the 64bit drivers then. I'm already running 64bit vista at home and gaming too!... I've not had any issues beyond new PC trying to run old games... but that's what my WinXP and Win98 machines are for. ;)Che - Saturday, March 29, 2008 - link
Just FYI... I received this laptop today (and love it). I have the p-6831FX model and it came with (according to Vista) a T5550 CPU @ 1.83 GHz (not T5450 @ 1.67 GHx). I just checked it using CPU-Z and it says T5600 @ 1.83 GHz. Any ideas?? or did I just get lucky? Of course i'm not complaining, lol.The sticker on the palm rest states T5450. I did order mine off ebay, but it was still sealed and new in the box as was stated in the auction.
Dgacioch - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
mine has the 1.83ghz T5550 as well, just bought it yesterday. Updated the video drivers and ran 3dmark 06. pretty respectable 7450 score, so at least a little improvement over the t5450. Ill be running some more games on it tonight to get some better impressions, but so far performance seems quite good even with the gimped cpu.