Gateway P-7811 FX: We've Got Upgrades
by Jarred Walton on August 15, 2008 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
False Start or Judging Error?
We've had a lot of good things to say about the P-7811, and on paper there's plenty to like. Clearly performance is also good, and for the price there simply aren't any other laptops that can seriously compete right now. What the previous pages haven't told you is that we did have some difficulty with our test laptop, specifically in regards to stability and graphics drivers.
Two of our gaming tests could not be run on the driver that initially shipped with the laptop because of display corruption. Company of Heroes DX10 and the Devil May Cry 4 benchmark (again DX10 mode only) both had completely corrupted colors. Performance in some other titles wasn't quite where we would expect it to be. Even now, we're still not entirely sure about performance in some of the games - are the games GPU bandwidth limited, or is it simply a case of the drivers not being fully optimized yet? Unfortunately, driver difficulties are something you have to deal with on pretty much every gaming laptop out there, and the Gateway P-7811 certainly isn't any worse than the competition.
Complaints about graphics drivers are nothing new, but the stability problems are much more troubling. We continued to have sporadic lockups throughout testing, but tracing down the cause of the lockups is difficult. You see, Gateway provided us with a beta graphics driver to fix our display corruption issues, but beta drivers could also create stability problems. We had the system crash during a gaming test, during the DVD playback battery life test, and once or twice while it was just sitting idle in between testing. (Note that the lockups were not a frequent occurrence; we encountered perhaps five or six during several weeks of testing.)
Besides the beta graphics drivers, there's another potential cause for the lockups. We are testing prerelease hardware, and despite similarities to previous P-series FX notebooks we are dealing with a new motherboard, chipset, and processor. We definitely got the impression that Centrino 2 wasn't entirely ready for prime time at the official launch last month, so the instability we experienced might be related to that. It's entirely possible - even likely - that Gateway just needs to finish a bit of BIOS tuning. We also noticed that the exhaust port for the GPU tended to get hotter than on other FX notebooks, and the fans never seemed to run at maximum speed. Higher temperatures certainly could have contributed to the lockups during gaming, and a minor tweak to address cooling concerns could easily fix the problems.
Given the above concerns, we are not ready to declare the P-7811 an unequivocal success, but we are still very optimistic. We only encountered a few problems during our couple weeks of testing, and for early hardware we're willing to give Gateway the benefit of the doubt. If you're not willing to take a chance - even a small one - you might want to hold off a bit. Then again, if you hold off too long you may find that the P-7811 is no longer in stock, or even in production. All of the upgrades that Gateway provides compared to the earlier P-6831 provide an exceptional value for users looking for a new gaming notebook. Our only other request for Gateway is that the next time they look to revise their gaming laptop lineup, they need to rework the chassis slightly and get rid of the protruding battery. We would be a lot happier with a slightly thicker notebook that can fit in standard 17" laptop bags.
We can't say with a straight face that anyone actually needs a gaming notebook, but if you're in the market and you don't want to break the bank the P-7811 is our current pick for best overall value. If you can't find it in stock, check the Gateway website and TigerDirect for some other options. You might need to spend a bit more money, or a bit less money as well in some cases, but either way Gateway's P-series FX notebooks have a lot of very attractively priced options for mobile gamers.
We are still at work on our laptop roundups, which should hopefully be posted within the next week. In addition to providing the additional testing and results from Gateway's P-7811, we will also provide any updated information about stability and/or BIOS updates.
Update: As mentioned in our Gaming Laptop Roundup, updating the graphics drivers to the hacked 177.92 Vista 64-bit drivers at LaptopVideo2Go.com seems to have cleared up the stability concerns with the P-7811. While the P-6831 FX received a Gold Editors' Choice upon release, the bar has since been raised. The P-7811 makes a lot of meaningful upgrades to the P-6831, but given it uses the Centrino 2 platform, the lack of Hybrid Power as a feature (and the bulky chassis) is no longer something we can wholeheartedly recommend. The price/performance offered is way ahead of the competition, however, so if you don't mind the design or missing features we have no other remaining reservations.
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solgae1784 - Friday, August 15, 2008 - link
If you look at the magazines, Gateway's track record hasn't been that impressive, scoring pretty low on many aspects. So I'd be a little more wary when you're considering them. Your experience may be different from what the responses were after all.Adamantine - Friday, August 15, 2008 - link
http://geek-news.net/2008/07/nvidia-geforce-9700m-...All of the press releases, like the one I referenced above, concerning how many shaders are in the new 9800M chips states that the GTS is 64 shaders, GT 96 shaders, GTX 112 shaders.
Adamantine - Friday, August 15, 2008 - link
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_9800m_gts.htm...">http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_9800m_gts.htm... 64 SP'shttp://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_9800m_gt.html">http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_9800m_gt.html 96 SP's
Confirming that the press release is accurate, at least on the SP count.
BTW, Gateway has never used a GTX in any of their gaming notebooks.
Way too many mistakes in this review.
JarredWalton - Friday, August 15, 2008 - link
Lack of details from NVIDIA is partly to blame. Wrapping things up at 2AM is another issue. While there were admittedly some errors on the number of SPs (caused by NVIDIA's crazy naming decisions), the vast majority of the text is correct. I have also added the clock speeds, now that I was able to access both laptops again. (I was out of town on family matters, so I was wrapping things up without access to the hardware.)Initially, I thought the GPU in the 7811 was more SPs but with a lower core/shader clock relative to 8800M GTS, but it turns out it's the same number of shaders as the 8800M GTS but with a 20% higher core clock (600MHz compared to 500MHz). Also worth noting is that I had all of the SP counts correct in my http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=335...">mobile buyer's guide, so this was just a slip caused by the confusing names.
Adamantine - Friday, August 15, 2008 - link
"One alternative was to simply shop online and purchase a similarly configured notebook from Gateway, and although the price was a few hundred dollars more you also got some upgrades. TigerDirect.com also carries many Gateway notebooks, including the P-173X FX for $1350, which bumps the processor up to a T7500."This isn't entirely accurate. The Best Buy version has always had a identical Gateway Direct version, 6831 = P-171, 6860 = P-172. The P-173X has no Best Buy equivalent and could be bought direct from Gateway around the first/second week of May. The P-173X became available through online retailers when Gateway ceased their direct sales operation.
On the specs page, the 7811 FX is listed as having a 8900M GTS, which should be 9800M GTS.
djc208 - Friday, August 15, 2008 - link
I think there are quite a few situations where you might need a gaming laptop (not like you "need" food of course but you know what I mean).I've been reading with interest because I have to go on travel for 6-8 months next year. I'll want something to play my games on but don't want to ship my desktop system out with me. This could be worth the investment and a huge upgrade from my current notebook.
sephiroth135 - Friday, August 15, 2008 - link
Page 2, 3rd tableNVIDIA GeForce 8900M GTS 512MB
should be
9800M
homerdog - Friday, August 15, 2008 - link
Same mistake on page 3.fabarati - Friday, August 15, 2008 - link
The 9800m GT is just a rebranded 8800m GTX. So it is a faster card than the 9800m GTS.fabarati - Friday, August 15, 2008 - link
Ohterwise, good review.