P-16831fx gateway 8800m gts

have you determined if it's a hardened plastic or magnesium alloy?
how is heat idle, and when gaming?
I think you said you preferred that it was matte, so I assume it's a glossy screen...good, average, or bad screen?
have you had any blue screens, or general problems with the laptop?

I appreciate all the testing you've done, nice to have one of the first, if not the first person on the forum with a new laptop take the initiative and give some info about it

 

Its brushed finished mangnesium, its very nice looking. The orange trim around the keybord seems to be made of the same material. Heat is almost non existent for myself when idle/useing the internet. Then again my house is 65F. The fans do kick up when gaming, but thus far I can't get any programs to monitor temps to work. Rivatuner wont work at all besides detecting the card and ntune works and allows overclocking, but still wont report temps. I did use TAT to run the cpu through some stress test and it never went above 60c with max load.
The screen is glossy and I would say it rates as good, certainly better than the alienware m9750 that I had. Only problem so far is that the system is specifically meant to be run on vista. Only problems so far is when I tried to use XP on the system, had to change back. XP drivers are non-existant for sound and bluetooth. I might drop in my other 2gb memory chip later tonight and finally determin if the unit is indeed equiped with dual hard drives. ^_- don't worry I'll make sure I take pictures. I'd have more info on gaming and such, but reinstalling OS's has been slowing things down.

 

Update: models are now up on the gateway site. The base model from gateway cost more than the bestbuy model, and only uses a slightly better processor. The chipsets are the same accross the board so this does indeed prove the laptop can be upgraded to penryn
as wells as a extreme processor.
Link to the models on Gateways site

Edit: I just found this link and it said this at the bottom
"The Gateway P-Series is already available through the company's online retailers' network. The BestBuy retails stores will start selling it as of January the 13th. All the notebooks in the series ship with the pre-installed version of the Windows Vista Home Premium operating system." Looks like they weren't suppose to sell it lol, just so you guys know it is on the gateway site now, wasn't earlier today.
Link to the models on Gateways site

 

Today I received confirmation, that their will be no support for windows xp. Not only that, but there are also hardware conflicts with windows xp. Including the obvious ready boost, blue tooth and audio hardware is not compatible. Also at this time Gateway will not have any driver support till the official release on January 13th.

 

Thats a turn off for me right there...

 

Well if you look in the Gateway section of the site, it seems this is a problem with several of their models.
Vista system scoring

 

Its a long shot but maybe Acer has the drivers you need, seeing Acer bought Gateway not to long ago.

 

Maybe, will know more when gateway has any drivers at all on their website.
Also I did a stress test for 30 minutes with Ntune, temps never went over 51c. The thermal design on the laptop is very impressive, probably because it was built to handle an extreme processor.

 

im sure someone can port over the drivers to XP, id mostly be worried about the GFX card drivers but you can get those from Nvidia.

 

I had no problem running 3dmark 06, even picked up another 100points and that was with out the xp multicore update. The problem is I like to play my games with sound >.>. I gave up on the sound drivers after looking for them for 3hours.

 

Just went to BB to see this machine its pretty cool looking. I am impressed with how thin this notebook is with that kind of graphic power.

 

crap, that sucks, i guess if i had to go with vista i could...still considering this laptop of it comes to canada, the cheap model that is, ill just put my own penryn in it.

 

anyone know if the t5450 supports more than 3gb of ram? I was under the impression that at least 3.25 gb of ram would show, as I have now installed 4gb.
Anyways here are some picks of the insides of the computer. I was rather impressed with the cpu heat sink, it looked pretty beefy. The gpu and fan are under the top right portion of the laptop. explains why it runs so cool, because the gpu has its own fan. The cpu looks like it would be very very easy to upgrade.

 

It should recongnize the 4gb of ram, don't know why it shouldn't...

 

The bios does recognize it, but once I'm in vista it only says I have 3gb. I think it is the cpu thats holding it back, suppose I'll know more once I've upgraded to a penryn.

 

32bit OS's will only recognize 3-3.25 gb of ram, if it was 64 bit Vista it would recognize it all.

 

I new a 64 bit operating system would recognize it all, but I didn't know 32 bit would recognize 3-3.25. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

 

Wow that Cpu is right where it should be in every notebook!!! Dual hard drives for sure. I'd keep vista though, my Sli1 does fine with it tweaked, I have 4gb of ram in the SLi1 and it only shows 3gb (32 bit).

 

gateway knows whats going down when it comes to hardware/port placement. CPU in the middle, hard drives on the right, fans on the back and the left sides. nice.

Only thing I don't like is that the battery sticks out on a 17".

 

That might be a 9-cell battery, the specs on the other models all state 9-cells. is it a 9-cell Bxhxeon?

 

Crysis pics on a 8800m gts 1280x 768 Dx9
Drivers 167.58
Please keep in mind this cards performance is supposed to be on par with sli 8700m's and that this system is using one of the lowest
cpu's available.

all settings high




Crysis 1440x900 8800m gts DX10 all medium

 

The FPS is great for a notebook(at least in my standards ), what settings are you running it at?

 

oops sorry lol forgot to post them, edited

 

Holy smokes those are impressive results considering the limitation of the CPU as well. From what I’ve seen so far this notebook is definitely a great buy and this might finally be the laptop I upgrade to (if it ever comes to Canada :/).

 

Update: Following a gateway xp thread, the reason my scores barely increased in xp is do to the lacking chipset drivers and also lacking the multi core config. I'll see what I can do in the next few days.

 

Lost planet all settings as high as they go, no anti aliasing 1440x900
To date this is the only game I know of that actually runs better in directX 10

DirectX 9



DirectX 10

 

just out of curiosity, what is the batter life? oh i went to bb to get this and thye were not there yet. guess i will have to wait till sunday!

 

wow those are extremely good results, put a better processor in and it could even be a bit better. im pretty set on this laptop right now

 

Can I run the demo of LP in DX10? If so..how? lol


EDIT - Didn't know the DX10 demo is a seperate download, steam just gives me the DX9 version.

 

The demo will run worse, my test where with the full version.

update: my m9750 will be arriving next monday, I'll be able to do a comparison between the two. I'll do a test comparing a single 7950 gtx vs a 8800m gts and also a sli 7950gtx vs 8800m gts. I know the sli will win though, I got 58 fps average at the same res in dx9.

 

can anyone here confirm that you can upgrade the processor to maybe a t7500 or penryn ?

thanks

 

That'd be a sweet notebook.... if it had user-upgradable graphics. A year down the road with that and you won't be maxing out too many games. It looks pretty awesome though! The price is great, too.

 

Cool review bwhxeon, looks like a great deal. Repped for the pics etc.

 

Edit: Chaz made me feel guilty so I updated the OP so it is a full review now.

 

hmm why is your windows score only a 4.6 due to ram? I have 2 gigs of ram in my 1520 and the rating is a 4.8

 

I think this is an awesome thread and you're doing one hell of a job keeping us informed so you deserved some time in the spotlight.

 

Damn I def. want one!.

I want one with 4gb of ram and a T9300.
That would be one awesome laptop.

I only wanted 15 inch but this one scores almost 3 times as much as an 8600M gt. For a slightly higher price.

It would be dumb to pass this up.

 

Damn laptops are cheap now. I bought the laptop as configured in my signatures for the exact same price as this one, and even though it has a much better processor and is a little more portable and reliable since its an Asus, that pretty much where it ends. This laptop is insane!

 

can you take a picture of the gpu?

 

not without completely taking the laptop apart.

Its the score on the memory is also affected by the cpu, justin from exotic pc running a new penryn model, got increased scores on the memory as well.

 

have you found out if the processor is easily upgradable?

 

i just scored mine from bb and i can say that this has a great build quality and feel to it. The processor is definately a bottleneck, but i am going to wait until dell or hp has an awesome deal and buy one of their smaller laptops with a penryn 9300 in it. prob will pick one up for 700 or so. then i will swap processors and have 2 laptops one gaming and one portable for 2k or so. wow what a good laptop. thanks for this thread and if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask...

 

Hows the battery life while playing games and surfing the web i kno bwh got around 1 30 min for surfing the web is that considered good ? Also why is gateway charging 600 more for a penryn ?

 

yes it is user upgradeable, but if your asking if gateway would allow it under the warranty that I can't guarantee.

Hey thats a pretty good idea. I might do the same.

 

I like gateways, as I have the t-1616 which i wanted something small n portable, but isn't the orange color on that laptop kinda garish/loud?

looks kinda like an over-the-top alienware of XPS

 

any idea what all processors are compatable with i?

 

Few question
Is it worth it to get the year BB service plan for this?
Will this laptop last 2 years for gaming(at least on medium setting?)
Is the processor really holding this machinge back?
Thanks

 

lol i called best buy to see if i can get a better processer in there and first the guy goes:

the processor was the brains of the computer and thats like doing a brain transplant not only that its soldered to the motherboard and cant be taken off.

I go you cant????
YOu can take em off, you basically just pull the heatsink and processor off.
No computers/laptops have the processors soldered to the board.
(now I know its more difficult for a laptop but....)

He goes:
Well thats very difficult and you void the warranty.

I go: Well I've done it before...

he says:
Well if you want to do that on your own thats fine.

lol
.... oh MAN! processors are not upgradeable and brain surgery PHEW! Its a good thing I have a degree in computer science!
Otherwise thats just too much to go into!

Not that the degree has anything to do with upgrading or putting together laptops... but should still be knowledgeable

lol.


Anyways,

an extra 2gb of ram costs: approx $65 patriot mem 667mhz
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220229

intel t7700/t9300(apparently both are supposed to be the same price as the t9300 is its replacement) at newegg $329
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819111316

1350 + 329 + 65 = 1744 before tax.
Price is getting steep but not really out of my league.

... have to think about this one.
I think I'm gonna get it and then do upgrades the out of the box performance is excellent for the price.

Destroys my msi 1029 with an ATi x700 128mb of ram.

 

I just bought one today myself. I have a desktop with a 6850 and 2 8800 GTS in sli but wanted a laptop i could sit in the living room with and play when i wanted to since i have a little one. I love it so far but i havn't installed any games yet, gonna install COD4 and Crysis here shortly. But for the price and luxury of the card installed its a great deal.

 

Just one thing I need to be confirmed.

Best buy says the ram is only upgradeable to 3gb.

You can do 4gb in a 64bit O.S. if you wanted right?

I mean because 2 slots means the use of up to 2gb per slot which ='s 4gb of ram.

I think this is a misprint due to the fact that it uses a 32 bit o.s.