No Disassemble!
For those of you who like seeing the
innards of the various notebooks we review, the following might disappoint you
slightly. You see, we didn't really feel it was necessary to completely
disassemble the Gateway FX chassis. The reasoning behind this should be quite
obvious, however: there are two access panels on the bottom of the laptop,
which provide you the ability to upgrade all the critical components — including
the CPU!
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Normally, you need to go to great
lengths to access a notebook CPU socket. Generally speaking, you will need to
remove 15 to 20 screws from the top and bottom of the notebook, take off the
keyboard, and sometimes even remove the LCD panel. Only then can you gain
access to the CPU socket. On the Gateway FX, five small screws are all that
stand between you and a new CPU (not counting the six or so additional screws on the heatsink/heatpipe). It's almost as though Gateway is expecting
some users will want to upgrade the CPU, so they made it easier, or maybe they're just being nice to the assembly workers. Also under the
main panel are the SO-DIMM sockets and a couple of mini-PCI slots (one of which
is occupied by the wireless networking card).
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The second access panel hides the
two hard drive bays. On the lower-end models, only one of the hard drive bays
is occupied, but end-users could easily add a second hard drive should they so
desire. The hard drives are installed in metal trays that slide into the
chassis.
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asusftw - Friday, March 28, 2008 - link
asus g2p? what era are we in? benchmark the g2sg-a1 or the g2s-b2. don't use notebooks that are past their expiration date please.pnyffeler - Friday, March 28, 2008 - link
Ouch. :-)kenbx84 - Friday, March 28, 2008 - link
I like how these guys like to compare the outdated Asus G2P to this gateway as oppose to the more up to date G2Sg or even G2S-B2...Hey guys try comparing the latest notebooks with the latest notebooks please.
ap90033 - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
Are you talking about this one? http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:nBTuWHg8-gQJ:...">http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:nB...p;hl=en&...If so 5200 in 3dmark06 isnt really close to 7000 that I get with the P6831FX...
JarredWalton - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
Note that in order to compare 3DMark06 scores properly, you need to test at 1280x1024... that link only does so at the end and then scores a paltry 4715. For the 6831FX, you need to use an external LCD (which I did). 6820 is a respectable score, held back quite a bit by the CPU (which contributes something like 1/4 to 1/3 of the total points, I think).But really, who cares about 3DMark? We don't play that; we play actual games. Compared to the 8700M GT in the X205:
Battlefield 2, Bioshock, Quake 4, Stalker, and Supreme Commander are roughly half the performance. Meanwhile Far Cry, the HL2 games, and Oblivion are about 2/3 as fast. So in tested games, the P6831 is usually at least 50% faster than the X205, and frequently twice as fast. I wish I still had an 8700M GT system so I could run some of the new games through the wringer, but regardless it's not looking pretty.
MrX8503 - Friday, March 28, 2008 - link
"I like how these guys like to compare the outdated Asus G2P to this gateway as oppose to the more up to date G2Sg or even G2S-B2...Hey guys try comparing the latest notebooks with the latest notebooks please. "
Reading is your friend. Theres a reason why they did this.
deshiboy - Monday, January 25, 2010 - link
8690 HYA HYA!jburgett - Friday, March 28, 2008 - link
Frequently reviewers of laptops neglect to measure the heat radiating from the top and bottom of laptops. This can be a major factor in the actual use of a system. For example, I had a Gateway nx860XL that reached 52 deg C on the underside while sitting on a flat surface! Such hot temperatures prevent using it on your lap for even short periods. Further, the area under your left hand while gaming (the WASD keys) reached 45 deg after a long gaming session, and this was while raising the back of the laptop to provide maximum fan airflow!Please consider adding temperature measurements on teh top and bottom to your reviews. It would be very helpful, as the differences from one laptop to another are dramatic.
Currently only notebookreview.com and notebookcheck.net provide temperature readings.
Thanks for the review!
ap90033 - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link
Interesting point, its not important for me, I use the Ideazon Fang... Its way better than using a keyboard and makes this a non issue. I have used mine a lot gaming and surfing the net and never noticed but of course when gaming my fang gamepad allows me to play with no distractions. Actually for a gaming laptop I was suprised at how cool it runs...Wolfpup - Friday, March 28, 2008 - link
I'm wondering if this comes with a real Vista DVD like Dell's systems do (not no one else does) so you can reinstall it from scratch when you get it.It actually sounds like it does from the manual for the FX series, as it talks about reinstalling from the Vista DVD. Presumably if it didn't HAVE a DVD included, they'd at least mention "oh you have to buy it".
I also wonder if this can run Folding @ Home whenever it's on. Sounds like maybe it can actually handle it, if 100% CPU utilization doesn't require it to ramp up the fans all the way.
Overall, I hate the slow CPU, but even that's not much different from a lot of notebooks in the price range. I probably should have bought one during that sale (DOH!) But maybe I'll still pick one up...
Oh, and to the person who said people reading Anandtech won't use this as their main machine...why not? I've got a pretty big backlog of games to get through, so I might be an exception, but I figure I can get at LEAST a year or two of use out of this before I start getting held back by the CPU and GPU. And the price is low enough that I can just figure I'll buy a new notebook or desktop in 1-3 years when needed, and it'll still be cheaper then buying something more expensive now.
Actually another question...I wonder how getting the memory in dual channel mode would help performance? 3GB is beyond adequate, but I'd assume these newer systems still give up 10%+ performance when running single channel.