Gateway P-7808u: to Quad or Not to Quad?
by Jarred Walton on April 13, 2009 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Gaming Performance
We've chosen to focus on "reasonable" settings for the games below. That means we run Assassin's Creed and Company of Heroes in DX9 mode at maximum detail setting - DX10 reduces performance by quite a bit in AC and by a much larger amount in CoH. We run Crysis at Medium settings (for reference, High detail drops performance almost in half: 20.7 FPS for the P-7808u at 1680x1050). The remaining games are at maximum detail settings, but without any anti-aliasing.
Again, we chose to focus on 1680x1050 as a baseline performance comparison, and we will do so with other laptops going forward. If necessary, we will use an external LCD to run at that resolution - which we did with the P-7808u. Besides 1680x1050, we will also include results at the native LCD resolution, and one other resolution. In this case, we include results at 1440x900, 1680x1050, and 1920x1080. Ideally, you would want to run any laptop at the native LCD resolution, but depending on the game and your hardware that may not be practical. The following charts are color-coded for ease of reference: green is for 1680x1050, red for the native resolution of 1440x900, and gold for results at 1080p. For Mirror's Edge, we also provide results with PhysX enabled, shown in black/purple.
Overall performance in games is very good for a single GPU solution, with only the Toshiba X305-Q725 and the Clevo D901C consistently beating the P-7808u. However, updated drivers have clearly influenced performance in many of the titles; otherwise we would expect the Alienware m15x (8800M GTX) to consistently surpass the P-7808u. There are also a few instances where the older P-7811 is faster than the P-7808u, which we can safely chalk up to the faster 2.26GHz clock speed of the P8400 being more beneficial than the extra cores on the 2.0GHz Q9000. Beyond that, it's a bit difficult to determine how those two laptops actually compare, because of the difference in drivers. Because of the driver changes, we will most likely remove many of the old results in our next laptop review.
In our "equivalent settings" comparison, the P-7808u prices right where you would expect given its use of the GeForce 9800M GT. The 1GB of memory may help in a few games, but very few titles will benefit when running at the native LCD resolution. Focusing just on the results at 1440x900, the P-7808u shows the benefits of running a lower resolution LCD. All of the titles we tested provide very acceptable frame rates at the native LCD resolution, with the only exceptions being Crysis and Far Cry 2. The scores of 43.5 FPS and 34.9 FPS, respectively, are lower than some users would like, but both games remain playable. Those are two of the most demanding titles currently on the market, and they always seem capable of utilizing every ounce of GPU power you can throw at them. We would recommend dropping the detail levels in Far Cry 2 from "Very High" down to "High" or even "Medium" - just as we recommend with Crysis.
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Jedi2155 - Sunday, April 19, 2009 - link
I have a Gateway 7805u right as well but it has a Western Digital 7200 RPM 320 GB instead of the 500 GB 5400 RPM model.Lately in the past month or so I've had a few freezes that are exactly as you described in this article. I'm wondering if that issue is happening to a lot of other WD hard drives or is it just ours that are defective.
Myrandex - Friday, April 17, 2009 - link
I bought the 7805u a couple of months ago and I have to say that I am extremely pleased. Another advantage to that laptop is the 7200RPM hard drive as compared to the 5400RPM hard drive in this laptop that was reviewed. I don't mind the 1440x900 resolution, but I never saw the one before it. I just can compare it to other screens on laptops that I use and it seems alright. I do wish that the Fn and Ctrl keys were swapped though. I also feel that the speakers were a little lacking compared to other laptops from other companies. Some in the same price range had 4 speakers instead of 2, or a small built in sub, etc.I have thought about popping in a Quad whenever I feel that I'd need it, but for now I'm more than happy with the Dually that is in it.
Jason
Marcel17 - Thursday, April 16, 2009 - link
C'mon Gateway , pluck your arses or eyes or whatever you use to receive visual information , and see the product for what really is BEFORE you get it out the door .It seems that in the last few years the laptop manufacturers have a world championship :Who can shove the ****est panel in a laptop and and sell it for 1500 bucks .These displays do have a place on the market and it's called entry level or to quantify the 400-666 $ segment .
Me ? I'll gladly send some more money to Dell for that sweet 16 . By the time I will save 1500 it will have Win.7 and ATI 4650M and it will be Purrrfect.
7Enigma - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 - link
What happened to the lower/higher is better in the screen benchmarks? I just got done praising you in the Dell review, and come to this one and see it's back to the old subtitles without telling us what is better/worse. Please bring it back!JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 - link
Sorry - had it on one of the charts, but it wasn't in my spreadsheet since I updated the charts directly. Consider me flogged... I'll go update the graphs and spreadsheet now.atlmann10 - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
Hey if you want one from BB try the ASUS it looked pretty sweet. I actually bought the P-7811FX, and am reasonably happy with it. However, if I had the choice to make again I would go with a smaller lighter unit. Do not get me wrong the 7811 is great, but really how often do I game on it? The answer is not much. I use my desktop for gaming, and yes if I was on the road that may be different. But if I was on the road for work I think the time spent gamin would still be rather low. So lighter more transportable with power would be my pick now. This new unit I don't see the point much. Yes; it has a quad cpu but really what makes use of that especially that your going to run on a laptop. Even games don't make use of more than 2 cpus, then one is handling regular computer duty in the background maybe but I doubt it. I also think they should have done a 1600-1680 rez faster refresh display. So this package? Maybe if it was a full desktop replacement because I know first hand you can really forget mobility to the greatest degree.nubie - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
Re:[quote]drivers for the various pieces of hardware (touchpad, audio, GPU, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.)[/quote]
I watched my brother kill all of the processes/widgets associated with his 'drivers' for audio/video and it didn't stop the drivers from working just fine.
I wish that it was made optional to have these widgets run when you install the drivers.
Worst is printer drivers, I don't need 5 widgets running full time and locking up the system just to print. When will they learn?
On topic:
I think that for "gaming" they need to offer a 3 ghz dual core with a 98/112/128 SP card. (I am ashamed that they consider the 48 SP card a 9600GS on the desktop, and this "9800M" with the specs of a 9600GT is pitiful).
I suppose that is nVidia's fault, but it would be nice if the laptop came with more graphics power. Although this is a decent amount of power for the money (Around $1,000 - $1,500).
I like that they are keeping the chassis the same and focusing on what matters, the hardware.
They should offer an OCZ or SuperTalent SSD, it would really make a noticeable difference in the computing feel for $130/209/345 more in 32/60/120GB capacities.
I don't know if this lappy is set up for dual hard drives, but if it was you could spin down the HDD 80-95% of the time and run the OS and main apps on the SSD.
JarredWalton - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
Many of the driver widgets aren't 100% necessary and are merely system tray icons. However, rarely have I had any crashes that I would blame on touchpad, audio, keyboard, WiFi, etc. widgets. With 4GB of RAM, I just don't notice a difference between running with or without the drivers; some of the drivers are also necessary. Touchpad drivers as an example enable scrolling at the edges, I believe, along with some other extras (which you may or may not like). Another one that seems necessary for full functionality is the WiFi driver, though even there you can usually switch to letting Windows manage that connection and get rid of another app.As for printers... well, if all you need to do is print (as opposed to scanning, faxing, etc. with a multifunction printer), you can usually do a "driver only" install and ignore the manufacturer applications that tell you about ink levels and such. I hate those large driver suites almost as much as I despise the 5-8 processes created by most "Internet Security" suites.
crimson117 - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
I like the Gateway® P-7805u FX Edition for $1,149.99.$1150 at best buy. It has a P8400 (2.26ghz dual core 3mb cache) instead of the Q9000, and a 320gb instead of 500gb HD. Otherwise, it looks identical.
Well worth saving $550 over the 7808u!
crimson117 - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
I also posted that before reading the final page of the review... ;)