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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
16 Comments
View All Comments
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... ;)