Gateway P-7811 FX Review

by Kevin O'Brien

Affordable and gaming notebook don't always belong in the same sentence, but that is just what you find with the new Gateway P-7811 FX notebook. This notebook will set you back only $1,399, but with that small sum you get a WUXGA LCD, NVIDIA 9800M graphics, 4GB of DDR3 memory, and a notebook that can competently play Crysis. This review covers all aspects of this budget gaming rig and in whether it deserves a spot at your next LAN party.

Gateway P-7811 FX specifications:

• Intel Core<SUP> </SUP>2 Duo Processor P8400 (2.26GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 3MB L2 cache)
• NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS with 512MB of GDDR3 discrete video memory
• 17.0" WUXGA Ultrabright TFT Active Matrix (1920 x 1200 max. resolution)
• Genuine Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit) SP1
• 4GB (4096MB) DDR3 800MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 x 2048MB modules)
• 200GB 7200rpm Serial ATA hard drive w/ 16MB Cache
• 8x Multi-Format Dual Layer DVDRW with DVD-RAM featuring Labelflash Technology
• Integrated 1.3 Megapixel Web Cam
• 9-cell 11.1v 7800mAh battery, 120w power supply

Build and Design

The design and layout of the Gateway P-7811 FX notebook is laid back, but with just enough lavishness to show that it isn't your average consumer notebook. The main body is covered in a carbon fiber design trimmed with silver, with the "FX" logo held inside a silver checkerboard banner. The keyboard and palmrest is outlined with orange strips of plastic, as well as the notebook body itself which is split in half with orange trim. I have to admit that I have been a fan of the Gateway FX notebook designs, mostly because of the black finish and brightly colored accents.

Build quality is above average, with excellent fit and finish, and fairly durable feeling plastic pieces making up the body of the notebook. The body does have some mild flex when holding it by a palmrest, but I have yet to see a 17" notebook that didn't. Localized flex is minimal in the palmrest and keyboard, giving you a solid surface for long hours of gaming, or late-night term paper completion (sometimes even in the same evening). The paint quality is above average, although the glossy surface isn't immune to heavy scratches if you aren't careful.

Users wanting to upgrade components down the road will enjoy the easy access panels on the bottom of the notebook which revel all user-upgradeable parts. No "Warranty Void if Removed" stickers were found, which shows Gateway trusts us enough to know we won't destroy the notebook if we decided to increase ram or hard drive capacity.

Display

The glossy WUXGA panel found on the Gateway P-7811 FX notebook is breath taking, and one of the better 17" panels I have seen in quite a while. Colors are spectacular, black levels are great, and brightness is more than adequate for more than well-lit environments. I don't want to say it works the best outside in the sun, as most glossy displays don't. Viewing angles are great, with a broad vertical viewing range before colors start to become inverted or washed out. Horizontal viewing angles are nearly 90 degrees, showing an almost perfect screen up until the point where you are looking at the front cover of the display.

Brightness adjustment is average and I would almost prefer a notch or two dimmer for nighttime viewing. In a dark room without any lights on the screen is still pretty bright. No dead pixels were found on our review model, and backlight leakage was minimal at best.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The full-size keyboard with number pad is easy to use and gentle on the fingertips once you get used to the layout. While I usually adapt quickly to most new keyboards, this one had a steeper learning curve. Key presses gave decent feedback, and required mild pressure to fully click. The texture of the keys was almost glossy, with a very slick black paint. While I don't usually complain about the keys themselves, the reflective nature of the keys was prefect to wash out the letters with a bit of overhead light. Keyboard support was strong, showing little flex under moderate pressure.

The touchpad is larger than most and very spacious for the pointer finger sliding around the surface. On the small touchpad on my ThinkPad, I usually follow the edges of the touchpad, while on the P-7811 I rarely grazed the border in normal use. The surface is a fine matte finish that is easily to slide across under most conditions, and sensitivity control was excellent. The touchpad buttons are very large and have shallow feedback with a solid click.

While many notebook manufacturers are moving towards touch sensitive multimedia bar buttons around the keyboard, Gateway is sticking with the tried-and-true clickable buttons for all but the volume controls. While it might not be as easy as barely grazing the surface to activate a button, it does prevent accidental triggering.

Performance

The Gateway P-7811 FX has one of the best performance to price ratios we have ever seen, and for the features you get a deal that no other notebook comes close to matching. This notebook offers an Intel P8400 Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 200GB 7200RPM hard drive, and an NVIDIA 9800M GTS graphics card for $1,399. With this setup the notebook packs quite a punch, nearly reaching 9,500 in 3DMark06, as well as an impressive 6,800 in PCMark05. While these synthetic benchmarks give you a good idea when comparing systems side by side, below we have a couple real life examples of what this hardware can do in games:

Portal

Portal ran very well on this notebook, and at the native 1920x1200 resolution of the notebook and all settings maxed, it peaked at over 130FPS. Looking through portals dropped the framerate to 90FPS, but that is still plenty of speed for fast gameplay. Lowering the resolution down to 1280x800 made the framerates jump to 293 in low action and 120 through portals.

Crysis

Crysis with all settings on high, and the resolution set to 1280x800 managed a consistent 29-31FPS throughout the beginning of the demo, even while engaging adversaries. If you turned back the settings to medium, framerates peaked as high as 63 FPS during low action scenes and dropped to the low 30's during action. The game felt perfectly playable, although don't expect the same results pushing 1920x1200.

Synthetic Benchmarks

wPrime is a program that forces the processor to do recursive mathematical calculations, this processor benchmark program is multi-threaded and can use both processor cores at once, it measures the amount of time to run a set amount of calculations.

wPrime comparison results (lower scores means better performance):

Notebook / CPU	wPrime 32M time
Gateway P-7811 FX (Core 2 Duo P8400 @ 2.26GHz)	33.366s
HP Pavilion HDX18 (Core 2 Duo T9600 @ 2.8GHz)	27.416s
Acer Aspire 6920 (Core 2 Duo T5750 @ 2.0GHz)	44.457s
HP Pavilion HDX (2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9500, Windows Vista 64)	28.978s
Lenovo ThinkPad SL400 (Core 2 Duo P8400 @ 2.26GHz)	34.628s
HP Pavilion dv5z (Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80 @ 2.1GHz)	39.745s
Dell Inspiron 1525 (Core 2 Duo T7250 @ 2.0GHz)	43.569s
Dell XPS M1530 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz)	37.485s
HP Pavilion dv6500z (Turion 64 X2 TL-60 @ 2.0GHz)	40.759s
Sony VAIO NR (Core 2 Duo T5250 @ 1.5GHz)	58.233s
Toshiba Tecra A9 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz)	38.343s
Toshiba Tecra M9 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz)	37.299s
HP Compaq 6910p (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2GHz)	40.965s
Sony VAIO TZ (Core 2 Duo U7600 @ 1.20GHz)	76.240s
Lenovo T61 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz)	37.705s
HP Pavilion dv6000z (Turion X2 TL-60 @ 2.0GHz)	38.720s

PCMark05 measures overall notebook performance (higher scores are better):

Notebook	PCMark05 Score
Gateway P-7811 FX (2.26GHz Intel P8400, NVIDIA 9800M GTS 512MB)	6,815 PCMarks
HP Pavilion HDX18 (2.8GHz Intel T9600, Nvidia 9600M GT 512MB)	6,587 PCMarks
Acer Aspire 6920 (2.0GHz Intel T5750, Intel X3100)	4,179 PCMarks
HP Pavilion HDX (2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9500, Nvidia Go 8800M GTS 512MB)	6,921 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad SL400 (2.26GHz Intel P8400, NVIDIA 9300M GS 256MB)	5,173 PCMarks
HP Pavilion dv5z (2.1GHz Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80, ATI Radeon HD 3200)	3,994 PCMarks
Dell Inspiron 1525 (2.0GHz Intel T7250, Intel X3100)	4,149 PCMarks
Dell XPS M1530 (2.20GHz Intel T7500, Nvidia 8600M GT 256MB)	5,412 PCMarks
Dell Inspiron 1520 (2.0GHz Intel T7300, NVIDIA 8600M GT)	4,616 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad X61 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	4,153 PCMarks
Lenovo T60 Widescreen (2.0GHz Intel T7200, ATI X1400 128MB)	4,189 PCMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	4,234 PCMarks

3DMark06 comparison results:

3DMark06 represents the overall graphics performance of a notebook. (Higher numbers indicate better performance.)

Notebook	3DMark06 Score
Gateway P-7811 FX (2.26GHz Intel P8400, NVIDIA 9800M GTS 512MB)	9,355 3DMarks
HP Pavilion HDX18 (2.8GHz Intel T9600, Nvidia 9600M GT 512MB)	4,127 3DMarks
HP Pavilion HDX (2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9500, Nvidia Go 8800M GTS 512MB)	8,791 3DMarks
HP Pavilion HDX (2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7700, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB)	4,205 3DMarks
Gateway P-171XL FX (2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo X7900, NVIDIA Go 8800M GTS)	8,801 3DMarks
Toshiba Qosmio G45 (2.50GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9300, NVIDIA Go 8600M GT)	3,775 3DMarks
Toshiba Qosmio G45 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA Go 8600M GT)	2,934 3DMarks
Dell Inspiron 1720 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600M GT)	2,930 3DMarks
Dell Inspiron 1420 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,329 3DMarks
Sony VAIO FZ (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	532 3DMarks
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,408 3DMarks
Asus F3sv-A1 (Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz, Nvidia 8600M GS 256MB)	2,344 3DMarks
Alienware Area 51 m5550 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB	2,183 3DMarks
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 (1.66 Core Duo, nVidia 7600Go 256 MB)	2,144 3DMarks
Asus A6J (1.83GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB)	1,819 3DMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	827 3DMarks
Sony VAIO SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	794 3DMarks

HDtune results:

Ports and Features

Port selection on this gateway notebook is average for a 17" notebook, and has a bit of room for improvement. I can't complain too much considering the hardware you get, but only three USB ports is weak for a 15" notebook, even worse for a 17" gaming notebook with quite a bit of unused space. Multimedia savvy individuals will enjoy the HDMI connection for outputting gameplay to a larger screen, as well as the eSata port for extra movie and entertainment storage.

One fairly awesome feature this notebook has is a direct access button to enable or disable ALL of the external lights around the notebook. This includes the multimedia keys, power and harddrive activity lights, and even the AC power and charging lights. With a simple FN+function key press you can disable all the distractions on your notebook, which is great for movie watching.

Speakers and Audio

The onboard speakers were leaving much to be desired, sounding like earbuds cranked up to max volume. Peak volume levels were pretty low with all settings maxed and bass and midrange were very weak. While it might work out just fine for watching to occasional movie on Hulu, I would really push for headphones so you can actually hear all that is taking place on screen. Headphones also give you more privacy while enjoying audio, which helps out those around you.

Heat and Noise

Thermal performance of the notebook is pretty good, but don't expect it to stay perfectly cool during gameplay. The palmrest and keyboard warm up quite a bit in performance mode when gaming, even while the fans kick up some speed. During normal conditions case temperatures are pretty run of the mill, but the fan noise can get annoying. This notebook has quite a hyper cooling system that likes to speed up for a fraction of a second, then drop in speed, then repeat 50 times. If Gateway would come out and release a firmware fix that would put a delay on the fan speed I would be overjoyed. It is not that the fan is loud, but the constant changing in pitch will drive you up the wall in no time.

Battery Life

Battery life with the screen brightness set to 60%, wireless enabled and active, and the notebook on the Windows Vista "Balanced" profile was 3 hours and 10 minutes. For 17" gaming notebook this is fairly impressive, and should give plenty of time for a bit of use inside or between classes.

Conclusion

The Gateway P-7811 FX is easily the best bang for the buck gaming notebook sold right now. For a hair under $1,400 you have a portable gaming rig that can play Crysis at 30FPS at a decent resolution, and play nearly all other modern games with decent frame rates. On top of that you get a great glossy WUXGA display and reasonable battery life.

For the above reasons, this notebook easily wins an Editor's Choice award for September 2008. While it might not have the highest performance out of any gaming notebook we have tested, it easily wins out at the much lower price point. Gateway sure has a knack for building affordable gaming rigs, and being sold in lot of retail locations such as Best Buy is just the icing on the cake.

Pros:

• Stunning display
• Awesome 3D performance, largely from the NVIDIA 9800M GTS
• Low selling price (only $1,399!)
• Cool color scheme

Cons:

• Hyper cooling system
• Could have more USB ports
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Best price for performance ratio I've ever seen period.

 

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^^^ This is all I'm seeing. I think the article might be broken (or maybe my browser is broken).

 

Does this mean that all the problems that ppl have been facing with this Gateway Notebook is no more(not there) in the ones being sold now???

 

seems like you're rushing through the review.
But yeah, that price/performance is hard to beat. Wonder how could they do that?

 

I didnt find any problems with it locking up during gaming or anything. For the review I was using the latest Laptop2Go drivers (177.98) and it ran flawlessly. Used Portal, Crysis, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Doom 3, and a few others.

 

Thx for this review Kevin!

this notebook achieves better scores in 3dmark then Sager 5796/8660!!!And don't forget that gateway drops the price to 1250 every weekend or so!

 

I will second this statement. I also have the P-7811 FX and have had no problems with it other than the stock display driver crapping out while on battery power. Game performance, stability, display, price, and everything else has been excellent.

Still waiting on Best Buy to give me those rewards points though...

 

Oh Kevin, the price is 1,449.99 not 1,399.
Great Review. As far as I can tell, the 7811 has been giving some users issues.

Did Gateway release this unit for review with you guys?

 

http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668123.php

$1,399.99 MSRP

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...cpncode=07-16979913&cmp=KA14525&ref=16&loc=02

$1,249.99 on sale at the moment

 

Yep, but the regular price is 1,499.99 at BB.

Perhaps you could point out in the review that $1,399.99 is the MSRP, and not the price buyers will be getting?

 

Kevin - can I ask some questions?

How long did you run the games you tried on the Notebook?
How did you get the notebook to review - did Gateway send it to you?

The reason I ask is that I, along with a LOT of others, have had tremendous issues with this laptop where it locked up after 15 minutes or so of either gaming or other graphic intensive work. I have done a lot of research into why my particular P-7811FX locked up, and it definitely is heat related. In fact, I also proved that the exhaust from the GPU port is being sucked back into the intake because they are just to darn close to each other. The rubber feet on the bottom of my unit are so thin that there is not enough clearance to allow the GPU fan to pull in enough cool air to cool properly. Proping up the back of the unit just a bit, and taping a piece of paper to the side of the notebook to ensure that the exhaust air from the GPU cooling system didn't get sucked back in are the ONLY things I was able to do to make the notebook stable.

If yours is working as excellently as you claim, I really would like to understand why? I too am running the same Nvidia drivers available at Laptop2go - but what you didn't mention is that Gateway claims that running that driver not only makes it impossible for them to support you, it may VOID the warranty.

I would really appreciate some more detail if you could about how you tested, and specifically how the cooling system in your unit is operating.

 

What resolution did you use at the 3dmark06 run?

 

How does this compare with the Clevo M860TU?

From what I am seeing:
(1) Money $1249 + tax vs $2100 + shipping for similarly configured.
(2) 9800GT vs 9800GTS => I game (Crysis and such), but how much performance am I really gaining? Will I even notice?
(3) 17" vs 15" => I prefer 15", a more portable notebook, but that is alot of money.

Give me some honest answer, please. Which would you spend your money on if you were buying a new notebook as far as maxing your bang-for-buck?

 

looks nice

 

nice review Kevin! +rep for this and the now deceased dancing wookie!

 

This was sent to us by Gateway. S/N is P2886 010 00243 if you want to try and see how it works in for batch number.

Games were run for 15-30 minutes. If needed I can start the Gateway back up and let it run Crysis for the night and see what the temp gun and internal temp sensors say.

Jerry and I always benchmark notebooks at 1280x800. Sometimes Chaz and others prefer the 4:3 1280x1024 and use that in their reviews.

 

I greatly appreciate it if you could run a game for an hour or so to see what happens. Don't prop the thing up - have it flush on a desk - play a game for an hour - running at 1920x1200 so that the GPU is stressed, and see what happens. I was able in some cases to run Wow and Supreme Commander for almost an hour before it froze. I am curious as to what you will find.

 

Just Realized. 9800GTS is Essentially 9600GT,
Same Shaders,Similar Clocks,Both G94 etc.

 

So confused. I can't see all of this review. It was end at battery and Not anymore can see after that include some reps

 

excelt 9800GTS has twice the cores and twice the gigaflops

 

plz qoute the review since battery life till end review. I wanna know that

 

?. What both are g94 & About the Same. Its good to know if you want to kn ow what to expect

 

I own the P-6831 FX, (4GB 64bit Vista version) and it's quite an impressive notebook. Yes it does get quite hot, which is normal for a higher end video cards (for both laptop and desktop). I play video games (Crysis, Portal, WOW, DMC4) all day on it and it quite stable (stock no drivers update), although I can't say much about the new P-7811 FX Version. However, I'll be surprise if the 9800 video cards are getting hotter than the 8800 cards. I suspect if it is freezing after 30 min of play you may have a defective unit, RMA it.

I wouldn't expect the P-7811 version of this laptop to greatly outperform the 6831 version, since 9800 are essentially rebranded 8800s. Best Buy does play around with the price of this laptop, but since it is Best Buy, you should buy it when it is available if you intend to buy it. BB offerrs at least 2-3 weeks of price protection and these laptops fly off the shelf very quick. I got a $100 refund two weeks after I bought it because of a price difference.

Overall I am impressed with the design and capability of these Gateway notebooks. It is designed as a desktop replacement so don't expect long battery life and ease of portability. Look elsewhere if that's what you want.

 

There are too many people on this forum that have reported the freezing issue for me to believe this is a defective unit. I can't stress enough that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that there is a problem here that needs to be addressed. By the way - if you run through the reviews of this notebook at BestBuy.com you will also see a lot of people complaining of the same issue. I have no idea if they are the same people that reported it on this forum, but I have to believe the majority are different people.

I have read numerous professional reviews of this notebook - and not one of them mentions the overheating/freezing issue. That is just amazing to me. If I was the only one, I would immediately think mine was defective - but there are just too many people that have voiced the same concerns about this notebook.

 

A great laptop.
but WUXGA and no blue-ray drive?

 

lol you can't expect blu-ray for $1250

 

9800s are completely different cards than 8800s. They are new gen cards and far superior than 8800s. Just look at the benchmarks, you'll see 15~25% improvement over 8800s.

 

And is 2.5X more powerful

 

I have been asking this in almost every thread but haven gotten a reply at all!!!

Does the new Gateways with the Bios(for Raid0) free from all the problems that ppl have been having with theirs(bought earlier)???

 

If you havent heard, the majority of G92 and G94 (which is basically all 8XXX and 9XXX variants) chipsets are subject to manufacturing defects. Google it and you'll find that stockholders are filing a class action lawsuit against Nvidia for keeping this underwraps and some PC manufacturers are demanding Nvidia to issue an official recall. This suggests that the probability having a faulty unit that have these video card is quite high.

Moreover, Microsoft have recently point the finger at Nvidia drivers for stability problems with Vista OS.

The main difference between 9800 series from 8800 series card is that 9800 series use 65nm and 50nm fabricated GPU while 8800 series uses 80nm and 65nm (depending on which model). It's not as huge as a leap as going from the 9XXX series to the Geforce 200 series in which streaming processor were increased dramatically. And no 9800 series does not offer 15-25% increase in improvement over 8800 series card (Where are you looking at?) If anything an 8800GTX 768MB is still superior to a 9800GTX. And 8800 GTS (G92) is just about a hair shy of a 9800GTX. The 98XX series were suppose to be more power "efficient."

 

Okay, let's not get a little too loose with the facts. First, Nvidia has never publically admitted which series has issues. Second, the OEMs that are reporting high failure rates are reporting them with the laptop 8400 and 8600 chips, of which this Gateway does not have. Third, while Microsoft did indeed finger Nvidia for a lot of Vista crashes, they did so for the initial release of Vista. Recent vintage Nvidia drivers for Vista have no such lockup issues.

That being said, it is possible that this particular Gateway has an overheating problem that results in a lockup. Could be a bad design, could be a BIOS problem with not running the fan aggressively enough, could be faulty parts, etc. Could just be very vocal users who make it appear as if their lockup problems are greater than that of other models. There's always some risk involved in buying a brand new model of anything, whether it be laptops or software or automobiles. It takes a while to work out the kinks in this kind of stuff, no matter how much you go over it in the lab with a fine toothed comb.

 

This infuriates me as a P-6831FX owner... Sigh...

 

Just got back home. I will do even one better. I will run Portal at full resolution with it sitting on my couch to limit airflow with the material pressed up against the fan intakes.

edit: heh, intake ports covered = couch nearly on fire. Going to do it on flat desk instead

 

I've played WOW, COD4, CS, and UT3 atleast 2-3 hrs per game at different nights and some nights back to back without any problems.

Vista 64bits and stock Nvidia drivers 176.15

 

^ Must be a Slickdeals frequent.

 

It has been going for nearly 2 hours so far with no problems. GPUz lists the video card temp at 88-90C

 

i might have to pick one of these up... just so i have something for diablo 3/ starcraft 2 later = )

 

Thats still pretty warm.. Hopefully nvidia has the new soder on that gpu. I know many of the m1330 dells were frying their 8400's at those temps. Personally, I don't trust nvidia anymore but I am sure they secretly have changed over their process.

 

Excellent review Kevin. When I reviewed my P-7811FX, it didn't freeze or lock-up at all. The only problem I had was the GPU reached 90*C eventually. Once I propped the battery up with a wallet, my GPU would never exceed 79*C.

Those 3dMArk Scores are impressive. My stock scores were 8600 . Now with 179.85, I get around 9100.

Let's see how this review will stack up against mine .

 

From what I understand, that is really hot. I have never been able to see temps like that - I am pretty sure that my system is locking about about 75C or so. There just doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason here - I am thinking I will try and exchange it at BestBuy, but with so many people saying this is an issue, and BestBuy and Gateway refusing to acknowledge it I am leery. Thanks for doing this! Now here's hoping that the unit you got wasn't 'special'

 

If I prop the back of the notebook up with 2 DVD cases the temps stay at a consistent 63C. Maybe a mod to double the thickness of the feet would work to cool it down under gaming?

 

I travel for a living. One of the ways that this could be adressed is with a notebook cooler - and so I went to Micro Center to see what they have. Antec makes a notebook cooler - "Antec Notebook Cooler to go" that basically is a pair of fans in a plastic case that you place under the notebook in the back. This props up the notebook a bit, and then it blows cool air under the notebook. For me this is a few steps better than placing a book under the notebook - and it does keep my GPU temp right at 62C max no matter what I throw at it.

Still, I am a curious guy - and I am puzzled why your laptop didn't freeze with those high temps and mine did. I am taking my notebook back to BestBuy today or tomorrow and attempting to exchange it to see if I can get one that is not so sensitive to heat. If you only raised yours by about what - 1/4 of an inch? to cool it from 90C to 63C (I believe the 90C was your attempt to get it to freeze - which means you didn't have the laptop on a flat surface then - or did you?), then it would seem that your idea about thicker rubber feet is right on - but why does yours run fine even with the heat and mine (and others?) don't? There have been mentions on this forum that there are known defects with the Nvidia chipsets that may be the cause of this - and maybe I was one of the lucky ones that got a 'defective' chip that doesn't like heat. All Gateway can tell me is that I am running a game that isn't compatible with 64-bit (which I didn't care about because I know the games WILL run on 64-bit but I am actually running 32-bit Vista on my notebook) or that the game is 'uncompatible' with the specs of the notebook (which is amazing given the specs of this notebook), or that my unit is defective and send it in - and no - they have never seen this before. I both hate and love puzzles like this.

Thanks for your replies!!!

 

I played R6: Vegas 2 yesterday for a little over 30 minutes and the GPU got up to 98C. No lock ups and no drops in FPS and this was on a flat surface. I'm thinking Kevin's model probably got an updated/better GPU heatsink

 

ya the 7811 fx is the best laptop ive seen for msrp that ive seen in about 3 years of following the laptop market

It is closely related to the one i have obviously however:
it comes with a mid range cpu not a low range one like mine which bottlenecks the great gpu ( intel might have given them to gateway free i dont know there are so many people that upgrade)
and it has wuxga screen not wxga like mine

wsxga would be enough too.
So its essentially maxed out out of the box and i think the msrp is only up like 50-100 so the best deal on the market got just way better.

dont get fooled by the 9800 gts though all indications is it is exactly like the 8800 gts clocked higher, and the 8800 gts can be overclocked ridiculously already so Im not sure its any better in any way in the gpu.

 

See here is the issue. People expect to play max settings and resolutions on a gaming laptop that's jam packed with hot and fast hardware, and not increase airflow. I mean would you build a desktop for gaming and not do everything you could to increase cooling? I wouldn't game even on my ice cold vostro 1700 without putting it on a cooler or at least prop up the back a little for increased airflow. Its common sense, yes the cooling system in it may not keep it ice cold. But remember people your paying $1250-1450 for a top level card and a bunch of other high heat and power goodies in a tight thin chassis.

Basically yeah the cooling system should be able to handle certain things, as kevin proved it can support gaming, but keeping a gaming rig ice cold on stock cooling is a huge stretch.

 

What resolution and settings was Crysis run at? Does gateway have another 15.4" with the 9800M GTS?

 

any chance you can or anyone can check if the model you have supports raid 0/1????

this is a big deal to many of us, and other threads are sketchy at best.

i know it supports 2 drives, and *should* have support for raid. please please please take the time to look for us. thank you.

 

Doesn't get better than this. Thanks GATEWAY!!

 

kevin can you tell me the lcds hardware id? Also is the screen grainy at all? I saw this notebook at BB and its screen was terrible. Had the same problem a few years ago with a nx860xl notebook where the screen was really grainy. The notebook at BB i saw had an AUO1088 i believe. Thanks