Gateway P-6831 FX: Best Midrange Gaming Notebook Ever
by Jarred Walton on March 28, 2008 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Gaming Performance — Resolution Scaling
Considering the rather low-end CPU, you might expect that there are many situations where the GPU is held back. With the initial native resolution benchmarks out of the way, let's look at performance scaling at higher resolutions. Since we become more GPU limited, the Gateway P-6831 FX actually closes the gap with some of its more expensive competitors.
There are obviously a few titles where we are still CPU limited even at 1920x1200. Battlefield 2 and Far Cry for example have virtually flat resolution scaling curves. Other titles — Bioshock, Crysis, Oblivion, and Unreal Tournament 3 — show a pretty sizable gap between the 8800M GTS in the Gateway and the 8800M GTX in the AVADirect notebook. However, it's not entirely clear whether that gap exists primarily because of the discrepancy in CPU performance or if the added Stream Processors are the culprit. While it certainly would have been interesting to test with an upgraded CPU, we didn't have any Core 2 Duo processors readily available (nor the time to rerun all the tests).
Regardless, the net result is that we can't help but be impressed by the Gateway system. In some of the titles, the difference between the 8800M GTS and the GTX is virtually nil, particularly at higher resolutions. Since the GTS and GTX both have the same amount of memory, the same memory bandwidth, and the same number of ROPs, it's not all that surprising that some games hardly show a difference between the two graphics chips. It's unfortunate that we haven't seen any manufacturers giving customers the choice between the GTS and the GTX; we wouldn't be surprised if more than a few people would be happy to sacrifice a bit of performance in order to save a couple hundred dollars. Since that isn't an option, we recommend the Gateway P-6831 FX as a very reasonable alternative.
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deshiboy - Monday, January 25, 2010 - link
I use the FX for school and my Sager 8690 for gaming. Sager looks plain but preforms likes a desktop, I wish they did a better job on the battery life. But thats where my FX comes in to save the day.atlmann10 - Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - link
Gateways doing the same thing with the next on this line except its centrino 2/core2duo with ddr3 and a 9800 GTI for 1449 frickin awesome these will be hard to come by after the last one (the one in this review)atlmann10 - Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - link
oh with a 7200 rpm Hard drive and wireless N oh did I mention ddr3 can you say lower power better performancexeryx - Thursday, June 5, 2008 - link
Obviously Gateway and Best Buy has decided to blow away the competition with this notebook!!I have been laptop Gaming for years, because my job keeps me on the road alot. It is a great way to pass the time away from family, and stay out of trouble.
I currently own a Sager 17" laptop with the 7800m 2gb, and a 80gb hd. When I bought it new it was $2200.
As a comparison to the Gateway, (Best Buy version)get an almost equivalent system from Sager, your looking at $2200. In all fairness, that is the 8800gtx ($395) and a 2.1 ghz (t8100) with no option of a second HD, let alone Raid 0. It also has the fingerprint scanner.
To me the 2nd hd (even though 5400) is very important, let alone the potential for raid 0. I find that laptop HD performance is not very good overall, and can cause delays when gaming.
Screen resolution, I have been gaming at 1680x1050 and in all honesty, it is too high for a 17" screen. Especially in the desktop. 1920 is way too high for a 17" screen, unless you have SLI8800m's. That is a completely different bracket.
In my opinion they did an excellent job in trading off, and adding in some very key features. SO you basically save $1000.00 for a little bit less performance than a 8800 GTX machine. The key here though is at @ $1200, not $2000 you get a machine that will be able to handle just about anything you can through at it (Crysis doesn't count).
If you are thinking about getting a laptop, for gaming...this is the absolute best smoking deal you can find!!
Rekonn - Friday, April 11, 2008 - link
Anybody have an update on when the P-6860fx will be out?Rekonn - Friday, April 11, 2008 - link
Found answer today on Yahoo finance:The Gateway P-6860FX comes with Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit Edition with SP1 and will be available beginning this weekend at Best Buy with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $1,349.99. It comes with NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8800M GTS 512MB GDDR3, an Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 processor, 3072MB of DDR2 SDRAM and a 250GB(1) 5400RPM SATA hard drive. This system also comes with a multi-format dual layer DVD-R/RW/DVD-RAM drive with LabelFlash technology(2) for burning images and text onto a DVD or CD.
teknomedic - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
I've returned both my P-6831s because of the P-6860FX... the above post is a bit wrong about the specs... here's what I know:Gateway P-6860 FX
Basically the same as the P-6831 with a few nice upgrades:
Proc = T5550 @ 1.83-1.86Ghz (up from T5450 @ 1.6Ghz)
RAM = 4GB (up from 3GB)
HDD = 320GB SATA (5400rpm) (up from 250GB)
OS = Vista Home Premium SP1 (64bit) (up/down from 32bit?)
MSRP Price = $1,349.99 (same price before BB $100 off online)
All other hardware appears to be the same... there's a small chance that the CD-Burner supports one more Dual Layer format, but that could simply be because of Best Buy not listing specs correctly.
Side note... has anyone had issues with the right speaker having bad distortions on certain sounds or speach from games... both my P6831s had this issue (another reason I returned them).
TK.
HEY, Anandtech.com.... any chance we can get a refreshed review including the P-6860... it would be interesting to see if the extra boost of Proc and RAM with 64bit OS helps or hurts the laptop.
***please, please, please, please, please***
xeryx - Thursday, June 5, 2008 - link
You did forget a couple of other differences.BTW Get this Laptop at Best Buy!! The upgrades are well worth it as compared to the Gateway website!!!
1) Comes with the Bluetooth the Gateway 172s does not
2) The wireless adapter is the upgraded to support b/g/n
3) 64bit operating system vs 32bit
Thank goodness you can Raid 0 this puppy later, I was worried! The specs for the 172s says no raid support??
kyp275 - Monday, April 21, 2008 - link
aye, a refresh on the review for the 6860 would be great :)Rekonn - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
Yes, please update the review! I'm planning to buy a laptop soon and would love to see how the faster Proc, more RAM, and 64bit OS affect results.