Gateway P-7811FX Review

The Gateway P-7811FX Review

The Gateway P-7811FX is a 17’’ desktop replacement notebook targeted at gamers on a budget. The P-7811FX features a beautiful widescreen LCD, high-end nVidia graphics, and the newest Intel chipset at a bargain price.



The specs for the Gateway P-7811FX are as follow:

• 17” WUXGA Glossy “Ultrabright” TFT Display (1920x1200)
• Intel Mobile PM45 Chipset - Centrino 2
• Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 (2.26GHz/3MB L2 Cache/1066MHz FSB) Processor
• 4GB Samsung DDR3 PC3-8500 1066MHz RAM
• Intel WiFi Link 5100 a/b/g/Draft-n
• nVidia GeForce 9800M-GTS with 512MB dedicated RAM
• Windows Vista Home Premium 32/64 bit (64 bit installed)
• Seagate 200GB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive
• 8x DVD +/- RW with Labelflash
• 9-Cell Battery 7800mAH

Size:

• Weight: 9.2 lbs. (4.2 kg) system unit only including battery
• Dimensions: 1.3"-1.70" (H) x 15.75" (W) x 11.75" (D)

Extras:

• 5-in-1 Digital Media Manager (Memory Stick™ (MS), Memory Stick™ Pro, Multi Media Card™ (MMC), Secure Digital™ (SD), xD-Picture Card)
• Integrated 1.3 Megapixel Web Cam
• 120 Watt AC Adapter

I purchased my P-7811FX from a local BestBuy for $1,554 with tax. The notebook retails for $1,449.

Unpacking and Included Accessories



The Gateway P-7811FX is packaged in a plain black box with just the picture of notebook and the “FX” logo on the outside. The box is very deceiving - it makes it seem as if the P-7811FX is an ordinary notebook, but it’s certainly not.

Reasons for Buying

I was in the market for a gaming notebook, and at the time I narrowed it down to these options:
• Gateway P-7811FX
• Sager NP5793/5796
• Toshiba Qosimo x305
• Alienware M17x
• Dell XPS M1730

My budget for a high-performance PC was about $2,200. All these notebooks fit the bill, but the Gateway stood out the most. The P-7811FX has the specs of a gaming machine at the price of a budget entertainment notebook. You may ask if I had $2,200 to spend, why I didn’t get something better? The P-7811FX simply had the best performance-per-dollar ratio, and is a great deal for what it offers. The other notebooks listed retail for over $1,800 yet offer similar specifications, which was the deal breaker for me. I believe that the Gateway P-7811FX is the best deal out there for gamers looking to purchase a notebook on a budget.

Additional factors leading to my decision: the Toshiba was just plain ugly, and the Alienware and Dell were both overpriced.

Build and Design

The P-7811FX is composed of three colors: black, gray, and orange. The main chassis is black and the area above the keyboard where the media buttons are located is gray. The notebook chassis and keyboard are outlined in a thin orange “copper” strip, and then surrounded by more gray. Most of the notebook is constructed of plastic, except for the aluminum gray and orange parts.

The plastic construction has its drawbacks – for starters, it’s glossy. This type of glossy finish makes the notebook look shiny and sleek but requires more maintenance because fingerprints are easily visible, and dust collects very fast when the lid is closed. I have a microfiber cloth always handy. Also, the plastic is more prone to scratch marks. When I moved my notebook while it was upside-down on a table, several small scratch marks appeared on the lid.



The other negative of this plastic is it’s fairly cheap and thin. This means that there is a significant amount of flex all around the notebook. The plastic used on the bottom is very rigid and strong, except for the compartment pieces (the parts you can unscrew and remove to access internal parts), which are very thin and flexible. The plastic used on top of the notebook is strong along the edges, but when I applied some pressure, the closer I got to the center of the notebook and the keyboard, the more the flex increased. To be realistic, if I rest my hands on the palmrest, there is only a small amount of noticeable flex. If I push one of the multimedia buttons, such as “mute”, the flex is very bad. The weakest spots of this notebook are the multimedia buttons / top of keyboard, the speaker grills, and the orange aluminum strip that is above the touchpad. All this flex can be justified because of the great price on this notebook.



The LCD itself has a normal amount of flex, as it can be twisted a little bit and wobbles an inch back and forth. This is natural for a 17’’ notebook, and therefore I have no problems with the display flexing or twisting. There are two hinges that secure the display, and are solidly built. The display does not fall forward or backward when set; rather it stays firm in the location it is set it at. Ripples occurred when I pressed down on the plastic on the front of the LCD. No ripples appeared when I pushed down on the back of the LCD.As you can probably tell from just looking at the color scheme, the P-7811FX does not look like an ordinary machine. The notebook has a “special” look or design, to distinguish itself from the other “ordinary” notebooks. It certainly is eye-catching, but not always in a good way. Gateway has adopted “orange” as a primary color for their “FX” series notebooks and desktops. In my opinion, this orange does not blend well with gray or black. To be more specific, the orange trim around the chassis adds color to the notebook. But, the orange around the keyboard doesn’t make much sense when you have shiny black, and dull, gray brushed aluminum, and now you add in a bright orange. All the indicator lights shine orange, and the multimedia buttons also shine orange. I think that there is just too much orange. Maybe if Gateway stuck with a plain, shiny black plastic, and just the orange trim around the chassis, I would have to say the notebook looks awesome.

Overall, the Gateway P-7811FX has an “okay” construction. It has an inordinate amount of flex in certain areas and, to me, the colors don’t match well. The notebook is certainly eye-catching; passersby can’t help but stare when at the notebook.

Screen



The P-7811FX is outfitted with a large 17’’, high resolution (WUXGA) screen. It features Gateway’s “Ultrabright” glossy coating to make colors stand out more. The screen is simply amazing - there is no other way to describe it. It is evenly lit; the brightness at max is perfect – not too bright, not too dark. Anything above 60% brightness did not require me to squint, or move closer to read. The resolution is very fine, and the colors are sharp. 1920x1200 took a little getting used to, but now I feel like it is the perfect resolution for a 17’’ notebook. This LCD fully supports Blu-ray; too bad the P-7811FX is not equipped with a Blu-ray player, as I can only imagine how perfect movies would look.

Contrast is very clear, white is white, not tinted white or peachy white. The screen does not have the “grainy” problem that some notebooks have. Distinguishing colors such as red and infrared is easy. High definition pictures look beautiful: there is no pixilation, and every detail can be clearly made out.
Viewing angles are good compared to most notebooks; there is little color distortion when viewed side-to-side or when the LCD is all the way down. My camera does not show this very well, but the viewing angles are better than average.





Also included on the display are a 1.3MP camera, and a built-in microphone. The camera produces a clear image of me when using Skype’s Video Chat. Lots of movement caused the image to be blurred.

Speakers / Audio

The Gateway P-7811FX is equipped with two speakers, both located in the corners above the keyboard. They provide stellar sound with minimal distortion. The only problem is bass is not very clear, and distortion does appear when I set the volume to 92-100. Some songs distort around 80. Of course, music at 60-75 is more than enough for me, but this notebook may leave some audiophiles hanging. I am surprised that an entertainment notebook like this doesn’t provide better sound or at least a subwoofer. I am satisfied overall but disappointed by the bass.

The audio jack works perfectly fine. I plugged in my headset, and did not receive any static or feedback, and the sound was very crisp and natural.

Processor and Performance

The P-7811FX features an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 rated at 2.26GHz. The P8400 is on the lower-end of the spectrum of the new Montevina platform. Being one of the weakest processors of the Montevina platform, I wasn’t expecting too much from the P8400, but certainly a step-up from my old Pentium 4 desktop. Daily tasks such as web-surfing, AIM, and Skype, are handled with ease. The 4GB of RAM and 7,200 RPM hard drive are also big boosts. Booting up old games such as Warcraft 3 or Command and Conquer Generals literally takes 2 seconds. Vista is also fast to boot.
Let us take a look at how the P-7811FX performed in benchmarks.

Benchmarks

*Note: All benchmarks were done on Vista 32 bit and performed at least twice to ensure consistency. No component was overclocked, underclocked, or undervolted. Benchmarks were performed with the AC adapter plugged in. I used xFastest 177.85 drivers.

3DMark 06: Older program designed to gauge your graphics card and processor performance. Higher is better.
Overall: 8815

3DMark Vantage: New, Vista only, program designed to gauge your graphics card and processor capabilities. Higher is better.
Overall: P3587

PCMark 05: Older program used to gauge your system’s overall performance. Higher is better.
Overall: 13668

PCMark Vantage: New PCMark, that gauges your system’s overall performance, designed for Vista. Higher is better.
Overall: 3672

wPrime v1.55: The scores for wPrime were very interesting, showing that even the weakest “new” C2D can perform well. Lower is better.



32m: 34.507s
1024m: 1093.512s

SuperPI: Good old, obsolete SuperPI. Lower is better.



1M: 22s
2M: 53s

HDTune: this program measures the data access and transfer capabilities of hard drives. The results for HDTune were a pleasant surprise. The Seagate 200GB 7,200rpm HDD performed extremely well.



WEI Score: Mircrosoft’s own little “overall” system benchmark tool.



Overall: 5.2

Performance tests for this notebook turned out amazing. The video card, processor, hard drive and RAM, certainly helped this machine achieve spectacular results. Overall, the Gateway P-7811FX is a well-balanced system, and performance is nothing short of spectacular.

Heat and Noise

The Gateway P-7811FX is cooled by two exhaust vents and two fans. The CPUs thermal system is located on the left side of the notebook. The CPU fan has a copper heatsink, but near the vent, Gateway decided to use aluminum. The CPU is kept nice and cool, and the fan is whisper quiet. I can never really tell when the fan turns on except for start-up, when the CPU fan becomes “jerky” and switches on and off for about a minute. The GPU side (right) consists of an all-copper heatsink, and keeps the GPU relatively cool. The fan is nice and quiet when playing older games like Warcraft 3, but when playing Call of Duty 4, the GPU temps can soar quickly all the way up to 87*C. The fan then starts to get noticeable, and a good amount of hot air is being released from the vent. The fans are not very loud, the CPU fan is dead silent, and the GPU fan is fairly loud, but only when the GPU exceeds 75*C. The hard drive never exceeds 50*C, and the rest of the components are kept cool. To fix these absurd temperatures, I lifted my notebook by wedging my wallet under the battery. Surprisingly, my GPU temps never exceeded 72*-76*C simply by raising the back up.
The only parts of the chassis that get extremely warm are the right palmest and the multimedia buttons. The right palmrest gets very warm even from just surfing the web for about 1-2 hours. It is irritating because obviously, my hands will always be on that part, and they will start to get moist if I leave them there. The same goes for the multimedia buttons; I do not have to be playing a game for those parts to get warm. This I found was a poor design by Gateway. Investing in a notebook cooler might be a good idea.

I do have a problem with the power brick. Sometimes when the notebook’s battery is fully charged, the brick releases a hissing/whining/radio frequency interference sound. I’m not quite sure what causes this, but it is annoying. About a month later, I purchased a Targus 180w AC adapter to fix this problem. The new AC adapter never gets too hot, and never makes a sound.
As stated previously, the only time that I can tell the fans are running is when I am playing a demanding game. This is definitely a major plus. When I change my battery mode to “Power Saver” the GPU fan rarely kicks in, so the notebook is simply silent. I should also note that the right palmrest does get warm when in “Power Saver” mode, but not as warm as when it is “High Performance” mode. This is attributed by the always spinning hard drive.


The internal components of the P-7811FX

Keyboard and Touchpad



The P-7811FX features a full-sized keyboard with a number pad. The keyboard is quiet when typing, and the keystroke depth is a normal depth for a notebook; not too short but not too long. The keyboard itself doesn’t flex much when being typed on. The arrow keys are downsized, and they are more “rectangular” than square. Also, the Ctrl button is downsized to a regular “letter” key. Gateway stuck in a second FN key right under the Enter button and above the right arrow. The left FN key and Ctrl keys are switched, which is rather annoying when I need to use the Ctrl key to crouch in games.

The P-7811FX sports a number of multimedia keys. From left to right: MP3 player, DVD player, Pause/Play, Stop, Back, Forward, Mute, and a volume bar. What is interesting is the volume bar: you have to slide your finger across in a certain direction for the volume to change. This is painful because to go from 100 to 0, you have to slide your finger about 14 times.
Also, I find the “Enable/Disable Bluetooth” button funny. In this model, Gateway decided not to include a Bluetooth module, but has a button for enabling/disabling it. Maybe it is if you decide on an aftermarket upgrade, who knows. It is disappointing that Gateway didn’t include a Bluetooth module for this notebook. The P-7811FX’s predecessors both had Bluetooth, but the P-7811FX doesn’t.

The touchpad is basic. Left and Right click buttons, and a scroll zone for the touchpad. Whether your fingers are moist or dry, they will glide on the touchpad, which is very nice. The sensitivity could be improved. The only thing that bothers me is the very loud clicking noise from the left and right buttons.

Input and Output Ports

Front:



Power indicator, Battery Charge indicator, LCD Panel release latch, Wifi Switch.

Left:



Kensington Lock Slot, 2 USB ports, Vent, DVD Drive.

Right:



5-1 Memory Card Reader, IEEE 1394 port Firewire, Express Card slot, Audio Jacks, USB port, Ethernet Jack, HDMI port, eSATA port, VGA port.

Back:



Vent, Battery, Power connector, 56k modem jack.

The P-7811FX has a wide variety of ports. It supports HDMI and VGA for external monitor/TV. The one nice thing about the VGA port is it has screw holes, to keep the VGA cable from wobbling. Also, the P-7811FX supports the rare eSATA port for an external hard drive. The 5-1 card memory reader works, I put in my MSP card, and the reading time was fast.

I believe that the Gateway P-7811FX should have a TV Tuner because there is one more mini-PCI slot not in use. With that addition, this notebook would be the ultimate budget entertainment machine.

I must say that 3 USB ports is not enough for some people, 4 would have been an ideal amount.

Wireless

The P-7811FX comes standard with the Intel 5100 WiFi card. It supports A/B/G/Draft-N. I am using a G router and I must say the WiFi card is amazing. I have never been able to connect to 2 stories higher, and have near-perfect connection. I’ve connected to both WEP- and WAP- networks with no problems.

Battery

With the 9-cell battery in “Power Saving” mode and the screen down to 55% brightness, I was able to achieve an impressive 2 hours and 38 minutes of web surfing and listening to music. The battery life was certainly a shocker. Apparently nVidia did a nice job throttling down the GPU so it wastes less power. Expect only around 1:30-1:45 hours of battery life in high-performance mode while gaming.

Operating System and Software

The P-7811FX comes preloaded with Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit. There is a disc that Gateway provides which has both 32bit and 64bit version of Vista Home Premium. Gateway does not include a recovery disc. You get can one for a $20 shipping fee. Gateway provides minimal software with the computer, and cannot be recovered back if you re-install Vista. Also, there was very little bloatware installed on the PC.

Customer support and Warranty

Gateway customer support has been known to be “sub-par”. Gateway offers a variety of ways to contact them. You can call them, email them, or do a live-chat with a customer service representative.

I did have to contact Gateway support once when I did a fresh-install of Vista and no drivers were to be found on the Gateway site; hopefully it will be my only time. The rep I talked to claimed my machine was not in their database, so I had to re-register my machine even though I had already done so. It took her 7 minutes just to integrate my laptop into the database. Also, the rep could never understand what I meant by “Gateway P-7811FX drivers; do they exist?”. I felt so dumb bothering to contact Gateway; I asked a simple “yes or no” question, and couldn’t get an answer for 20 minutes. All she did was offer me $20 recovery discs, and blamed it on me for not creating a recovery disc. Of course, creating a recovery CD should have been the first thing I did, but accidents happen; Gateway still should had the drivers on their website. I have a saved transcript of the conversation, and I was told I could buy the discs for $20, 5 times. “Thank you, but I’m not interested” was obviously not a good enough answer.

Gateway was tardy in updating their drivers section. It took Gateway over a month to finally get drivers for the P-7811FX on their website. This is unacceptable; just head over to the Gateway forum to see the pain people like I had to go through to find P-7811FX drivers.

The P-7811FX comes with a standard 1 year warranty and can be upgraded to a 2 or 3 year warranty through Best Buy. The warranty covers the notebook, the battery, and the AC adapter. I stuck with the standard warranty, banking that if something is going to go wrong, it’s going to happen within a year. So far the notebook has had no problems though the AC adapter began to worry me. The sizzling noise and very hot AC adapter gave me an excuse to buy the Targus 180w AC Adapter from Amazon.


Stock Gateway Power Supply (top) vs. Targus 180w Power Supply (bottom)


Conclusion

Even though I am not thrilled by the build quality of the P-7811FX, I am certainly impressed with the notebook’s performance and price. It is certainly eye-catching with its “different” design. Though the design is not very appealing to me, the performance is, and that’s what matters. Aside from some flex issues on the notebook, this notebook is a great gaming and entertainment rig, and is perfect for the budget gamer. The P-7811FX offers all the bells and whistles except for Bluetooth and a TV Tuner for a low price of $1,500.

Pros:

• Excellent price, retails at $1,449
• Beautiful WUXGA display
• Great overall performance
• Included eSATA and HDMI ports
• Now offers RAID with 2nd Hard Drive

Cons:

• Large amount of flex in certain areas
• Very bad heat issue under right palmrest and multimedia buttons
• No Bluetooth, previous generation had it
• Glossy plastic prone to scratches and fingerprint marks
• Questionable customer service
• Only 3 USB Ports

I would like to give out special thanks to Chaz for all his help in this review.


Here is a nice chart contrasting the difference between the 3 models Gateway has that are still on the market:

 

very well written review!

 

Very nice review, you should definitely consider asking it to be a official review.

+ rep for you.

 

I did, and this was about 3-4 months ago when I first wrote the review. The review was much different than this one, but I still sent it in. I was never responded to once I had emailed it, and then about 1 month later Kevin's P-7811FX review was posted on the front page, and I just assumed that that was the reason why mine wasn't posted. I decided to revise is with much of Chaz's help, and this is my final product.

 

Which bios do you have, i have the latest .12 , and i can't say that the fans are quiet CPU fans are always on, and constant humming. But Your review was Good!

 

my father finally sent me some money after several months and i'm planning on getting a gaming notebook. i thought the gateway fx series is good but the ac adapter scares me..

 

Good job! Thanks for sharing your experience.

 

I believe I am using .08 BIOS. Even with the stock BIOS my CPU fan is always whisper quiet, and my GPU fan only goes on when I'm playing any games. I will upgrade to .12 when I convince myself to setup a RAID array.

That's why I purchased the Targus 180w AC adapter. It definitely made me feel more comfortable about my notebook. Check out the P-7801u or the P-7805u if you are thinking of getting a Gateway FX series. Both are cheaper now, and have a couple upgrades to them.

 

Excellent review, and very professional. Based on my limited experience with the Gateway FX series, your statements seem accurate.

Thanks for taking the time to write and post this.

 

I vote for this going on the main page, good job

 

Thanks for all the feedback guys, I really appreciate it.

I've created a mini-chart contrasting the differences between the 3 FX models out on the market:



Hopefully, this will help some members find what they need.

 

good review, i am now 5% sexier having read it

 

This is a Holy Cow review! (no religious connotation intended)

PS: I have no flex. True - right palm rest gets warm but I would not call it a problem. This is the coolest running laptop I have owned to date.

 

Great review. I have this laptop, and agree with you on all accounts.

I would mention that the upgrade laptops mentioned with the larger HDs are 5400rpm drives and not 7200. I'd personally a smaller drive at a faster speed.

 

I'm glad you thought the review was good!

Actually, the P-7811FX, the P-7801u and the P-7805u all sport 7,200 rpm hard drives.

Syngensmyth, try pressing down fairly hard left of touchpad and on the orange trim area around the keyboard. You will notice a significant amount of flex on the chassis.

The only reason i rated it as a problem was because if I left my palm on the right side of the notebook for an extended time, my palm would become sweaty and uncomfortably warm. Imagine that area with dual hard drives.

 

In looking, I think maybe we were both wrong... Here's the gateway spec page for the 7801, which lists a 5400 rpm drive, and Here's the spec page for the 7805, which lists a 7200rpm drive.

Sorry for questioning.... I was partially wrong.

 

Asking questions is always a good thing. On Newegg's page, the hard drive is listed as a 7,200 RPM drive. I guess the only way is to ask a P-7801u owner.

 

One of the reasons I didn't get the 7801 is because of the HD speed. I'll be ticked if it's a 7200! lol

 

Great Review! Sick Laptop! Rep for you!

 

Thanks for the feedback! Yes indeed, it is one hell of a notebook.

 

LOL I have 2 drives and yes it is warm on my right wrist. My right hand is on a mouse a lot but when I decide to write my novel it will probably be more irritating. "Syngensmyth - CSI"

I still don't see the flex as significant. I have had flexy laptops so I see this one a quit hardily rigid. I guess it depends on your frame of reference.

Now that you have me thinking about it, the right palm rest is toasty ... I'll give you that one.

+rep for reviewing excellence

 

Very good review, and very professionally written. I'm glad to see that you not only pointed out positive aspects, but negative ones as well.

One small nit-picking thing, though:

It's actually not the weakest Montevina CPU, the weakest is the C2D P7350, rated at 2.0GHz.

Other than that, great review

 

Ah, thanks for catching my mistake! I'm glad you thought the review was good.

 

Nice reviews with comprehensive picture illustrations! Appreciate your great effort!

I'm from Singapore and Gateway starts its maketing compaign here from this year. Have ordered the new P7804G gaming laptop. More details available here.

Would like to know whether the internal designs like the vents/fans are the same? ( I suppose it should be the same. )

And can I install windows XP professional on it? i.e. will I be able to find all the drivers for windows XP version?

Many Thanks!

 

Good review ! I was also looking at the gateway recently, but went for the Sager 5793 and the main reson being, as components of both notebooks are comparable, was build quality and the Sager is built like a tank ! No flex, have to hold bottom of notebook to open screen ! But in the end, your right...........it's all about performance !

 

Excellent write up!!

 

omg Singaporeans get ripped off again as usual....

 

I'm sorry for not attending to this thread in a while. Didn't know it still had new posts!

Sorry for never answering your question, but hopefully you'll come back to check. The internal designs of all the FX's are the same. It's just updated computer hardware components that change from model to model. As for Windows XP, the sound drivers, modem, and HDMI (I believe it's those three) will never function fully. You will have to sacrifice one to have the other, and the sound drivers are pesky and take time to work around as Gateway doesn't support Windows XP for the FX lineup.

The 5793 is a better machine to buy if you have the money. Performance comparable at similar prices. The Sager wins hands down if you spend the more money on it, but the P-xxxxFX's are better machines for the money, and they support dual hard drives.

Actually, it's not all about performance. It's all about the ratio of price : performance; that's what truly counts.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

I have had trouble connecting via usb bluetooth adapter. I bought my 2nd adapter this week thinking I had a bad one orignially, but had the same results. Anybody else having trouble connecting a usb bluetooth adapter with this laptop?

 

There's been a lot of talk about adding bluetooth on the Gateway forum; I think some users actually tracked down the correct internal module you could add. In any case there's a lot more info there.