Gateway P-7808u: to Quad or Not to Quad?
by Jarred Walton on April 13, 2009 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Battery Life
For battery life testing, we run all laptops at around 100 nits brightness. If you choose to run your LCD at maximum brightness, you may lose anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes depending on the laptop and the display. In the case of the P-7808u, maximum brightness is ~220 nits and uses 3W more power, so the impact on battery life is relatively small (see the idle chart below for reference).
We run several different battery life scenarios: Internet surfing (load several webpages using the wireless adapter every minute until the battery dies), DVD playback, x264 playback, and idle (maximum) battery life. For x264 playback, we copy a 720p file to the hard drive and loop playback using Windows Media Player Classic Home Cinema; we will include scores from other laptops, but it's worth noting that we did not have GPU accelerated x264 decoding enabled in earlier laptop tests. We've also included web surfing results (and DVD for the MacBook Pro) for the latest Apple MacBooks as a point of reference.
Several systems that we've tested include extended capacity batteries or a second battery, so we've colored those results light blue. The Alienware m15x has two batteries in addition to letting you disable the discrete 8800M GPU and run on the integrated X3100 graphics, so we colored the IGP results gold/yellow. Some have questioned the results of the m15x in the past, but remember that using the IGP cuts power requirements by about 20W at idle (and over 60W at load), which dramatically changes its placement in these charts. We really wish more manufacturers would offer such a feature, especially with high-end GPUs.
Battery life is quite good for a gaming laptop, scoring near the top of the charts when looking at similar options. The P-7811 swaps places in several tests with the P-7808u, which is somewhat odd. The 7811 does better in DVD and x264 battery life, but the 7808u wins in the Internet and idle tests. Running the LCD at max brightness rather than 100 nits (three steps down for maximum) reduces battery life by 25 minutes. However, we need to look at battery capacity in addition to battery life to get the complete picture. The following is an apples-to-apples comparison, showing the number of minutes of battery life you get per Whr (Watt Hour) of capacity.
We've said it before and we will continue to say it until we see a Windows laptop that can prove a strong: Apple MacBook laptops are killing Windows options when it comes to battery life performance. Apple uses 40-50 Whr batteries, so there are Windows laptops that can offer "more" battery life, but once you compare performance, features, size, and weight Apple comes out far ahead of the competition. Integrated graphics solutions clearly help, but it will take quite a bit to close the gap. Lenovo is supposed to offer battery life comparable to the MacBooks, but we have been unsuccessful in acquiring a test sample to date.
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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.