Gateway P-7811 FX: We've Got Upgrades
by Jarred Walton on August 15, 2008 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
200m Gaming Medley
Arguably the more interesting performance results are going to be in games, so we will start here. We have dropped testing for most of the older titles, as discussing Battlefield 2 or FEAR performance doesn't mean a whole lot when we're looking at modern hardware. We've tried for a more varied selection of games this time around, with selections from most major genres.
For the FPS group, we have Crysis, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and Unreal Tournament 3. Real-time strategy gaming is represented by Company of Heroes. Assassin's Creed and Devil May Cry 4 take care of the action-adventure genre, and GRID covers driving simulations - and all three of these also represent recent console ports/cross-platform releases. Finally, we have results from Oblivion and Mass Effect for the RPG lovers like me.
We use built-in performance tests on Company of Heroes, Crysis, Devil May Cry 4, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and Unreal Tournament 3. For Assassin's Creed, GRID, Mass Effect, and Oblivion we benchmark a specific scene using FRAPS. In all tests, we run each benchmark at least four times, discard the top result, and report the highest score of the remaining results.
We will use resolution scaling graphs to compare the different laptop configurations, as that will allow us to examine how the GPU and CPU affect performance. At lower resolutions we should become more CPU limited, while the higher resolutions and detail settings should put more of a bottleneck on the GPU.
Gaming performance is at least equal to the P-6831 in every test, and in several instances the P-7811 is substantially faster. The games where performance is tied are somewhat surprising, as most are considered GPU limited. Crysis is a virtual tie between all three models, indicating that the bottleneck is GPU memory bandwidth rather than GPU shader performance; Quake Wars is also GPU bandwidth limited. In the remaining games, we see everything from a tie at 1280x800 in Assassin's Creed to as much as an 80% lead in the Devil May Cry 4 benchmark at lower resolutions.
The average performance lead of the 7811 over the 171XL in non-bandwidth limited situations does appear to be around 20%, matching the GPU core speed increase, so the 9800M GTS is definitely an improvement. Shader clocks are apparently 1250MHz on all the 8800M/9800M parts, so we would categorize any differences of more than 20% as coming from the drivers and/or 64-bit OS (or perhaps some other hardware difference).
The significantly slower CPU in the 6831 does limit performance at lower resolutions, and it's important to remember that the 6831 ships with a 1440x900 LCD - the other resolutions were tested using an external display just to show how performance scales at higher resolutions. The 171XL has a faster CPU than the 7811, so the performance leads of the 7811 would actually be somewhat higher if the CPUs were equal. Any way you slice it, though, the performance of the 7811 is very impressive for the price. The 9800M GTS does tend to be slightly slower than the 8800M GTX, but only by about 10%. Considering laptops with the 8800M GTX typically cost $2200 or more, the P-7811 is a great follow-up to the P-6831.
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ezinner - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 - link
I've been searching for days on this. Gateway has a Broadcom driver and an empty slot next to the Intel wi-fi card. Plus, many reviews have a preproduction model with Bluetooth. Anyone have the part number, cost and where you can buy this so I can hook up a wireless mouse and/or keyboard without needing a dongle?Urbanos - Friday, September 26, 2008 - link
i've noticed elsewhere on the net that the P-7811 supports 2 harddrives, and some have even had the luxury of enabling raid 0/1. can anyone confirm that? reviewers?jfdmit - Saturday, September 13, 2008 - link
I took my malfunctioning 7811 back to Best Buy today and exchanged it for another. The difference couldn't be starker. Whereas the old one was a crash-happy piece of junk, the replacement machine looks like it was made by a completely different company...a competent one. The performance, stability, and overall quality are first rate. I'm glad I managed to get my hands on one of the good ones at last.jfdmit - Thursday, September 11, 2008 - link
The statements in the article about the 7811's poor stability are accurate. I bought the machine yesterday, and must say I'm pretty disappointed.The first problem I noticed was that the Webcam only works sporadically. It'll activate the first time you click on it after boot, but thereafter it just craps out with a "Graph Render Failure" error message. This is apparently a fairly common problem with the Chicony webcam used by this machine and a number of others (including Toshiba and Acer laptops). I've tried the various solutions proposed on various web forums, but the problem remains unsolved.
The next (and from my perspective more important problem) is graphics performance. As long as the 7811 isn't taxed too hard, it will work fine with the standard driver. Run games like Spore, Crysis, or Sins of a Solar Empire, however, and you'll suffer through total lockups, bluescreens, and assorted other nastiness. Using the LaptopVideo2Go.com 177.92 with the patched .INF doesn't make any difference. Nor does the 177.98 driver. The lockups can happen as infrequently as every four or five hours or as frequently as every fifteen minutes. Even shutting down every service not essential to running the game makes no difference.
While, on paper, this looks like a good machine and excellent value for money, it's just too unreliable to be of any use. I'm a keen MMORPG fan, and I have no intention of spending three hours trying to find a pickup group, only to have my PC die the second I get into a dungeon.
Sorry Gateway, nice try but no cigar.
atlmann10 - Thursday, September 4, 2008 - link
Bloatware removal http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/">http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/then run the next after download
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Utilities/Syste...">http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Util...pair_Uti...
Then download and run this http://www.auslogics.com/registry-defrag">http://www.auslogics.com/registry-defrag
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atlmann10 - Thursday, September 4, 2008 - link
Gateway just released a BIOS update for the 7811 FX here's a linkhttp://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/getFile...">http://support.gateway.com/support/driv...te%20Ver...
wakasenshi - Thursday, August 21, 2008 - link
I am looking at purchasing a Gateway P-7811 FX from Best Buy and I was wondering if the 3 year warranty they offer is worth $379? (They have a few cheaper/different warranty plans available in-store, but the $379 one is all they offer online.)In addition, Geek Squad offers an optimization service which essentially wipes out all the trial software (something I am sure I can do myself) but they also go into the registry and clean out some of the hidden resource hogs (something I could learn but presently have little experience in). Geek Squad charges $129 for this service coupled with some antispyware and antivirus programs. They said they spent something like $1.5 million in R&D for this optimization process, but that was from someone trying to up-sell me. How hard would it be for me to learn to do this myself?
JarredWalton - Friday, August 22, 2008 - link
I did it before testing. I think AV and Firewalls are for people that don't know how to surf safe... you know, use Firefox, don't visit porn sites, and don't download all sorts of silly executables. It's amazing how sluggish even a fast system can feel with AV software running... at least in my experience.Anyway, if you want a "clean" boot, run msconfig, go to the services and hide all Microsoft services, and then hit "Disable all". You can probably go to the startup tab and disable all of those as well. Then watch how fast your PC starts up! Just be careful of malicious websites....
As for the warranty, $379 for an additional three years is a lot, but I often feel consumer laptops aren't really designed to run for more than two years reliably. Considering it's pretty much impossible to find reasonably priced Gateway laptop parts online ($80 for a keyboard, $70 for a cooling fan, etc.), if you don't just want to toss it should something go wrong, I'd grab the warranty. FYI, having Gateway repair a laptop out of warranty is usually a $400 charge I think, plus parts.
wakasenshi - Friday, August 22, 2008 - link
Thank you, I appreciate it.okron1k - Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - link
i'm curious if can configure when purchasing these? for example a different gpu or processor?