AnandTech: Gateway P-7811 FX Review

Review Link

I just saw this go up on their site. I have not read it yet but I'm posting it here FYI.

Edit: I just read it. Interesting results specially battery life and the instability issues.

 

good one, though some glitches and typos

 

good
thanks sephiroth135

 

Great, comprehensive review. It's still a letdown that the 9800m GTS can't handle DX10...

 

its not really an "9800m GTS", its a die shrunk 8800m GTS with increased clocks...I can OC my 8800m GTS and have an 9800m GTS, taaa daaa

 

Yeah but you can OC the 9800GTS still.. And why can't it handle DX10 with Vista?

 

it was just a bug issue, probably drivers. And I still say 1440x900 is th perfect res for this laptop, while 1920x1200 is nice, the GPU is just not quite powerful enough.

 

It's powerful enough to run WoW at 1920x1200 perfectly.

 

Did they use flyby or botmatch for UT3 benchmarking? Flyby tends to show 100% increased performance over botmatch.

If it is, indeed, flyby, then the review is misleading to someone who buys the laptop based on this review but when he tries to play the actual game he's only going to get 30 fps(give or take) instead of "promised" 60.

They should clear this up in their review IMO.

 

My thoughts exactly.

 

It can play Devil May Cry 4 comfortably at 1080p resolution. It matches/very close to 8800m GTX performance.

 

From that review it would appear not, i cannot beleive the sh!tty framerates they were getting, def was a driver issue. Our users on this forum are much more competent than the reviewers, and can tweak their systems to be much more effective.

And I know the 8800m GTS can handle most games ATM at 1080P + res's, but into the future its gonig to start to fall behind at higher resolutions, as do all notebook GPU's.

IMO 1440x900 is just perfect, I am very happy with this resolution.

 

Yes, but that's one game. My 6860 does reasonably well in some games at 1440x900 and in others it's slower then I'd expected. I'm thinking the 7811 would have pretty much the same problem. Not saying anything is wrong with the 7811, just that I'm happy with my 6860. I knew the 7811 was coming out when I bought my 6860, but liked the specs on the 6860 better. Just making myself feel better with my own decision I guess...

 

Narsail, don't feel bad about your notebook...

The review shows that the 9800m GTS has about a 20% increase in performance over the 8800m GTS. If you overclock it, then you will get more and get very close to 8800m GTX's performance.

It's disappointing to see that the 9xxx cards are not performing well with DX10 games.

 

why should he feel bad, his rig scores much higher 3dmark than any 7811
it seems the only advantage the 9800gts holds over the 8800gts is its clocks, my notebook runs them very cool, mind you dx10 run perfectly...now let us see some o/c 9800gts to support what you say.


lol, the 7811 is a very good step, just as they said its still new and it will take time for drivers to bring it to its full potential.

 

I do not get all these threads defending the older 6830 series. I had one and was scoring in the 9700's all day long with mine oc'd with a T9300. I sold it and plan to get a 7811. Why? Better hardware overall & a much nicer screen. I think people are forgetting 2 things here.. 1.) The 7811 drivers are very early and I am sure there will be way better drivers 2.) Nobody has oc'd the 9800 GTS yet..

 

If your OC - ing a laptop - your asking for it...

 

No. Only people who have no clue how to risk ruining their laptop.

Again, the benchmarks have proven that the 9800m GTS beats a stock system with a 8800m gts. If you upgraded the 7811 FX with the same CPU (Core 2 Extreme X7800, OCed @2.8, UVed to 1.1375) as Narsail has then I'm sure it will easily beat his 6860 without any problems.

It's just a bit more powerful system overall.

 

And I don't get why someone who doesn't even own a 7811 is coming into a thread, trying to stir things up. Not to mention the others with the "The 7811 is clearly better, blah blah blah" BS. Honestly, it's a bit childish and nobody really cares. The performance is so similar it's moot.

 

I've owned a 6831 & the point I am making is every time someone posts ANYTHING about the 7811 lately people start bashing it. I never said **** to imply I was stirring anything, please learn reading comprehension.

 

It's called buyer's remorse/jealousy. BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Calm down guys, we're only talking about notebooks...

 

LOL. Point proven. Have a nice weekend.

 

I am a 6831 owner with no hint of buyers remorse. My 8800GTS/T7500 combo is amazing, and I am sure the T8300/9800GTS combo is more amazing. If you are that quick to hate your purchase, you probably were never happy in the first place, and were just looking for an excuse.

Rather than everyone fighting, we should be embracing the new members the community. It is great to see Gateway building this amazing line of laptops, and more people means more support. If gateway can really keep this line going, it will only mean good things for ALL model owners..

 

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the reviewers at AnAndTech are incompetent. I read on a couple of their reviews that they review some comps (like store bought computers) all stock because most people that buy them aren't going to know to install a new gpu driver (unless its in Windows update) and many more aren't going to go through the hassle of modded infs, powermizer messing up, etc... so it gives them a better idea of what to expect out of the box. Imagine if they installed the most optimized driver for each game, clocked the gpu to its limits, and tweaked the game and then reported 10 more fps in Crysis than the average buyer will ever see, people would be pissed and exchanging comps when there was no problem.

 

which is what I was saying, it is not a correct review if they are short-changing the laptop, not pulling out its full potential. Buyers have a right to know what something is capable of, and while they mostly need to research they're selves to figure it out, 90% of the buyers will not know what there laptop if really capable of.

 

Well, they did have an explanation in the summary, talking about the difficulty with the drivers. I haven't looked into it myself, but possibly none of the drivers available yet are mature enough for that GPU? Or maybe they'll only do reviews with drivers supplied by the manufacturer? Not sure, but it would have been nice to have a little more info. I may have to head over to their forums and see if I can dig a little deeper...

 

We also don't know what map they used. The benchmarks are not very clear.

 

thats why I think mine are much more accurate, different laptop, but those same results or better should be expected out of the P 7811.

 

I have a "old" 6831- FX with a T9300(thats the only upgrade I did) and always score around the 8400-8500 in 3DMark 06 scores on 1200x800 settings.Runs very smoothly.

 

just downclocked my cpu to 2.2ghz used 9800m gts clocks and got 8561 on 3dmark06 1200x800. mind you i have only 3gb ram and running x86 vista (original install). i would expect 300-500 points gain on a fresh install.

performance wise there is no reason to switch from the p-68xx to the p-7811, the differences are not that big. i might reconsider when the p-88xx will launch.

 

This laptop is going to last me for 3 years hopefully, right through college. As well I see no reason to upgrade from a 6831 to a 7811, not worth it.

 

+1

Absolutely not worth the purchase if you already have a 6860.

 

Agreed. However in the unfortunate event you have a defect in your 6860, you can exchange it for a 7811 from Best Buy because the models are actually not serviceable by the Geek Squad Service Center. The unit is marked as DEVO despite the Return process citing to ship it out. If you do need repair, ask the Technician to look it up in STAR and he will see it is DEVO, and hopefully authorize your exchange. *No guarantees, but I just did it 2 hours ago*

 

LOL@Unfortunate event. And this is assuming the customer has the PRP, correct?

 

No, Best Buy must honor any MFG Warranty (even if bought elsewhere) for their partner wholesalers. Basically, if the service center cannot fix it, they replace it. While it is under the actual MFG Warranty, Best Buy can send the item back to the Manufacturer and get most of their money back. The DEVO process has its limitations such as how many items can be sent back pooled from ALL Best Buys per year, as well as the cents per dollar Best Buy actually gets credited back to their bottom line. So when returned, the customer is given a store credit card in the amount they ORIGINALLY paid. If however, the DEVO item was outside of the 1 year MFG Warranty, the store would offer you a "comparable model" regardless of original price.

 

The problem with the 6860 and the repair/return process is that the Point of Sale units say it is serviceable, while the actually Geek Squad database says it is DEVO. Unfortunately, most stores will probably require you send it out, even though it will come back with no work performed. To add to the confusion, not even the product process manager has access to check the actual DEVO status of an item anymore... and I doubt 99% of GS Agents know how to find that information within STAR (the service order / parts database) either.

 

Great bit of info. I dont know if you plan on sticking around or not, but I repped you anyways. Thanks.

 

Hmm the 9800m GTS while already having higher clocks stock will easily push to 700 on the core, well even 725 on the core alone, without any volt mod. Nice, would love to overclock one of those

 

people has o/c the 8800gts to 650/900 so no reason the 9800gts wont go there as well

 

Yes that´s what I said, the 9800m GTS has an edge towards 8800m GTS. Since 9800m GTS is already clocked 100MHz higher on the Core this means it can be pushed higher than the 8800m GTS.

 

To bad we cant flash the cards so we can up the voltage of our cards in the process which would give us more stability and higher clocks.

 

ya we went through all that quad...haha i dunno if you were around for that, I tried to make our 8800m GTS's an 8800m GTX by unlocking the other stream processors, turns out the VBIOS is shawdowed, therefore we cant really do anything with it.

 

Oh ya nar i was around when you were working day and night trying to get it resolved its to bad there was never a good outcome though Maybe one day someone will be able to figure it out . I just miss my xps days where people wrote custom bios for overlocking, overvolting etc . i know the sager guys are doing it and the results could be pretty massive. i also think its part of the reason are cards crap out at certain clocks is the lack of proper voltage.

 

its gotta be, but you pay more for more freedom i guess, im still very pleased.

 

While the GTS is built from the same components as the GTX, any difference in ROPs or Stream Processors are laser cut and permanently disabled. A soldered volt mod is practically impossible on an integrated board. And finally, to say that the 9800 starts higher and thus can clock higher is an entirely misinformed statement.

 

Hey plazmic maybe you can figure out a way then so we can flash our own bios proper because thats where all the clock info is at for our cards and ntune is crap for the most part.

 

NiBiTor should work fine?

 

Nope wont work.Everything has been tried up to this point and no one has had any sucess .