Gateway P-7808u: to Quad or Not to Quad?
by Jarred Walton on April 13, 2009 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Overview
Following in the tradition of the P-6831 FX and the P-7811 FX, the P-7808u FX is the latest "affordable gaming" laptop from Gateway. Once again, we have upgrades to make this model more desirable than the previous releases. In this case, Gateway has moved from a 2.26 GHz dual-core CPU up to the latest 2.0 GHz quad-core Q9000 processor. That means tasks that don't leverage the extra cores may actually be slower than on the previous P-7811, but for those that need more multi-threaded computing power the Q9000 will be up to 33% faster than the fastest 3.0 GHz dual-core mobile processors. The P-7811 utilized a 2.26GHz P8400 CPU, so relative to that model you're only giving up 267 MHz of clock speed, making the newer P-7808u up to 75% faster than the P-7811 in CPU intensive tasks.
The overall appearance of the Gateway FX laptops hasn't changed at all. Love it or hate it, the P-7808u on the surface looks identical to the P-6831, P-7811, etc. We've covered this laptop design extensively in previous reviews, so we won't spend a lot of time rehashing that area. Below are images from the P-7808u, with internal images from the P-171XL (which looks the same as the P-7808u, despite some component changes).
All of the expansion options remain unchanged. On the front, the only noteworthy item is the WiFi on/off switch. The left side has the optical drive, two USB ports, and the cooling exhaust. On the right, you get a 4-in-1 flash reader, headphone and microphone ports, FireWire, another USB port, Ethernet, HDMI, VGA, and eSATA. The rear has a second cooling exhaust, a modem jack (yup, some people still use those on occasion… poor souls!), and the socket for the power adapter.
We really don't have many complaints about the overall design, so sticking with the same packaging allows Gateway to keep costs down and focus on improving performance. Our one continuing complaint is that the battery extrudes about an inch from the back of the chassis, but the laptop will still fit in a standard 17" laptop bag. Unfortunately, despite relatively few changes and some minor upgrades, costs have gone up quite a bit this time. Where the P-6831 launched at a price of around $1300 and the P-7811 moved that up to $1450, the P-7808u is launching at a suggested price of $1800. You can already find the P-7808u for sale online at a price of $1700, though, so hopefully costs will continue to drop over the coming months. Let's take a closer look at the features to see if the price matches the features.
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andrezunido - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
Battery/Technology isn't there yet for "affordable" pc gaming on the move. Is it possible that these lower quality screens have substancial power savings when compared to screens like the Dell's XPS 16, or are they just to save on the moneys?It's nice to see the Apple laptops in the battery charts but since these are almost "consoles" (OS and hardware fine tunned for each other - I think Apple compiles the OS with special optimizations for its hand picked hardware), can they really be compared?
crimson117 - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
Sure they can be compared... hardware manufacturers are allowed to work with MS for driver and OS optimization to make their parts work well with Windows, if they want to.andrezunido - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
...they should have to! Buggy drivers are responsible for lots of power leaks in idle hardware (low power consumption modes in some drivers are non existent). One of the main reasons for this lack of optimization is the big market for PC's and competition between hardware manufacturers to get the hardware out without proper testing, or drivers that don't support proper power saving optimizations. Of course some of this can be blamed on the "generic" nature of the OS (running on various permutations of hardware), making the testing of hardware/software difficult.The Mac OS has the drivers for its limited hardware configurations partially written by the OS maker allowing the fine-tune of the OS for each computer hardware installation.
Like Anand said in a article, its a model/year thing just like a car. The optimization and integration of hardware and software is a well thought thing in a Mac.
In a generic PC the only way that i know of accomplishing this battery efficiency is by building your own Linux installation (i.e. using Gentoo) and tinker with the kernel, drivers and settings to achieve a power efficient installation (see: http://www.lesswatts.org/)">http://www.lesswatts.org/).
Wrapping it up: It can be compared, but... one has to be mindful of what is what.
andrezunido - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
Sorry for the bad link, if anyone is interested in getting a bit more power efficient on Linux, http://www.lesswatts.org/">http://www.lesswatts.org/ has some nice software and information.Anyway, the P-7808u seems like a very capable machine for its price. Too bad about the screen quality, being the first thing I consider on a Laptop (Second is Battery), I find it too bad that it was "downgraded" when everything else seemed to be bumped up (even the price unfortunately).
I guess the battery would have to be a expensive monster to feed this kind of performance machine with a decent autonomy. But the screen would have added a lot a value with "potentially" less investment from the manufacturer.
djc208 - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
I had figured one of these would be top contender for my next laptop but I'm not impressed with this "update". The worst part is that there really isn't a lot of competition for this notebook, even at smaller chassis sizes.I'll just have to hope Gateway or some other company will fill this niche properly by the time I'm ready to buy later this summer.
Thanks for the honest review, hopefully someone at Gateway is listening.
djc208 - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
I had figured one of these would be top contender for my next laptop but I'm not impressed with this "update". The worst part is that there really isn't a lot of competition for this notebook, even at smaller chassis sizes.I'll just have to hope Gateway or some other company will fill this niche properly by the time I'm ready to buy later this summer.
Thanks for the honest review, hopefully someone at Gateway is listening.