Exterior Overview
The Gateway FX chassis is pretty
similar to what you see in most other 17" notebooks, with a few noteworthy
exceptions. Besides the exterior styling, the most interesting difference is
that the entire unit is "flatter" and perhaps slimmer than most of
the other 17" notebooks we've looked at recently. Understandably,
notebooks like the Dell XPS M1730 are quite large — they need to be in order to
provide adequate cooling for the dual GPUs. The Clevo M570RU chassis is smaller
than the Dell, but it has a sloped design so that the back is quite a bit
thicker than the front (22mm vs. 44mm). In contrast, the Gateway FX chassis is
much flatter: 33 mm thick at the front and 43 mm thick at the back. It also
doesn't have any thick "feet" to raise the bottom of the laptop above
a flat surface. We generally like the flatter feel of the Gateway chassis,
though other opinions may vary.
There's an unfortunate drawback to
the design, however. The battery protrudes quite a bit from the back of the
notebook, as you can see in the images below. This can make it more than a
little difficult to fit in standard 17" notebook carrying cases. What we
weren't able to confirm is whether our battery is the standard size, but
judging from the other pictures we've seen there's only one battery available. Despite
what the website says (Gateway lists a 2600 mAh battery), the actual battery is
a 7800 mAh (86.5 Whr) 9-cell design.
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We also want to take a moment to
comment on the keyboard layout. Gateway got this aspect almost exactly right. You
get a full-size number keypad, and all the keys are where you would expect them to be, including large enter and zero keys. The Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys are
above the number keypad, which is not necessarily ideal, but we had no problems
adapting to this location after a few hours. (If you try to use multiple
notebooks, it can get confusing at times remembering where some of the keys
are.) Some people might argue about the placement of the Fn key in the lower
left corner. I personally prefer to have my Ctrl key in that location, so I
would dock points from the keyboard layout; Anand on the other hand gets upset
if the Fn key is not in the bottom left corner. You also get a second Fn key
located near the cursor keys, which is unusual but not necessarily bad.
The keyboard on the Dell XPS M1730
is still the gold standard by which I judge all other keyboards. It does
everything right, and the LED backlighting option is an added bonus. If the XPS
M1730 keyboard earns an A+ grade, the Gateway FX is not far behind, garnering
an A or an A- depending on how you feel about the Ctrl/Fn key positioning.
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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.