Gateway P-6831FX on sale ( $100 Off) $1,249.99

I don't know. $100 buys you 4GB of RAM, and the extra hard drive space may or may not be important to you. The CPU is a bigger deal than either of those IMO.

And it's probably safe to say it WON'T ship with 64-bit Vista, as hardly anything does.

Right, the two speeds aren't related.

 

I would agree with you. I can tell you that I installed everything else first and ran the setup with the T5550. The difference between the two procs is amazingly different. I think the combination of added speed and a larger L2 cache really made the difference.

Additionally, I don't know if it has more to do with the Arctic Silver 5 that I used on the install or the new 45 nm process, but even under load, the new processor puts out less heat then the T5550.

 

Woah, that's impressive since that's a large speed bump.

 

whats the cpu suppose to be on the new machine? As for the extra ram and hd space .. For $100 its still worth it.. Now if only the processor was better than the current 1.8 ghz.. that would be totally awesome but it probably wont be since its only a $100 increase..

 

What if Gateway decided to discontinue the P-6000 FX series altogether and instead give best buy their P-171S FX model for $1599 regular price. Would you consider getting an upgrade to a T7250 worth an extra $250? Personally I like the idea of being able to get a T9300 instead.

 

i highly doubt that Gateway would do such a thing.. After all i think the 6831fx specifically has been a hit judging by how best buy is consistently out of stock .... But i guess i will wait for the "new batch" of 6831fx due to arrive in april so i can take advantage of the ram and hd offerings..

Hopefully Bestbuy lets me cancel my order if not ill return?

 

It's the same CPU as in the refresh. And what I'm saying is it's really not necessarily worth the extra money. If you don't need the hard drive bump, or plan to replace it, then that's no better, and RAM is less than the price difference to upgrade (if you even want to-only reason to upgrade the RAM is to get the system into dual channel mode, and I'm not sure how big of a difference that would really make).

 

I personally wouldn't buy the P-171S FX at Best Buy if they offered it instead of the P-6000 series. Mostly because Gateway can price it a bit cheaper while Best Buy is inflexible about prices unless it's on Clearance or Discontinued.

At least with the P-6000 series they have a step inside the gaming market because of their price.

 

yea it makes sense i just looked at prices at newegg and everything seems cheap.. As for the dual channel i believe i read somewhere that the system was infact running in dual channel mode even though its not 2x2gb .. I might be mistaken it was either a gateway pc or an hp..

 

i got lucky i think...i bought mine when it was on sale and it was open box, so $1199

 

I think I was even luckier - picked mine up a few days ago for $950!!!

Open box but it had only just been put on display so it was perfect

 

well i think people have gotten it for $1249+ a free $50 game so pretty much the same as yours..

 

It is running Dual channel for sure!

 

That's running 4GB though-2x2GB, so it's in dual channel mode. It can't run in dual channel with 1x1GB and 1x2GB, which is the default configuration.

 

Actually it does run in dual channel even with the mixed ram not sure how but its been stated in these forums as well as in anandtech`s review that is running dual Might be a new feature of the gm965 chipset not sure though.

 

Anandtech's review says no such thing. That's NOT POSSIBLE. The only way it theoretically might be possible is if the chipset/BIOS could be set to run it in dual channel mode and ignore the extra RAM on the larger stick (so that the system would have effectively 2GB total as shipped). I'm not sure if that would really be possible or not, but it sounds plausible-but to my knowledge that's never been implemented, and it certainly wouldn't let you get 3GB out of a 1GB and 2GB stick.

But at any rate, you can not run dual channel mode with DIMMs of different sizes. That...is quite obviously impossible just by virtue of what dual channel is.

If I'm remembering correctly, Intel's next generation CPU is going to add TRIPLE channel support I wonder if they're going to try putting three DIMM slots in laptops...

 

Wolf

Im just the messenger so please dont shoot me down ...

Quote:
"Memory is an unorthodox 3 GB configuration; a 2 GB and 1 GB SODIMM in tandem. This caused some concern on my part that the memory might not be running in dual channel mode. Not doing so would reduce overall performance. A quick check in CPUID allayed my fears - the FX is running dual channel at 667 MHz."

Original NBR user review here for reference:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=209623

Frag

 

Just as an FYI for 64 bit support, quite a few new PC's arriving at BB have Vista 64 in them. In fact, every machine we have with 4GB has Vista 64 on it. I'd be willing to bet real monies that the P-6860FX is running Vista 64.

 

meaning that the new batch thats gonna come in april with the increased ram + hd space will most probably come with x64?

 

Ya i thought i had read it in the review portion on anands but its actually in the comments section and written by the reviewer there. here ya go a portion of the comment .

The latest Intel chipsets are able to run dual-channel with mismatched memory sizes, as the others above pointed out. There is a small performance penalty, but in truth RAM performance isn't the primary bottleneck, particularly on notebooks. Look at the WidowPC vs. AVADirect scores - the AVADirect uses faster RAM, but performance is still a tossup.

 

Hmm...that's really bizare. If true they need to do a whole article about that, and what's happening exactly-or possibly it's just not reporting it correctly.

There's no way it should be possible, and I suspect it isn't regardless of what's being reported. If it was somehow, and still allowing the full RAM to be utilized, then it would only have dual channel support for SOME of the RAM, which is bizarre. You'd have completely different access times depending on what memory location was accessed.

EDIT: I asked the author of the review about that. I've never seen that reported or discussed in chipset reviews. It would have to be leaving 1/3 the RAM not in dual channel mode, so you'd get different memory bandwidth randomly.

 

That's pretty impressive.

Most retailers aren't releasing 64 bit OSes for their machines.

I can imagine an issue with drivers though.

 

Just wanted to chime in and say that after owning this laptop for almost 2 weeks now, Im a very happy camper.

Zero issues (of course learning Vista is another story but thats OS related) with the hardware so far (considering its a Gateway product and I had nothing but early issues with a Gateway monitor I bought 2 years ago).

Also luv the full size keybaord and luv the 'springiness' of the keys. The HDMI output is a blessing and right now, I'm hooked up to a 720p projector and typing this on my 120" screen.

Yesterday, I took this out to my backyard while my 2 year son old was playing and finished Cryisis/CoD4 demos (both running at the native res) while sitting outside in the shade, with a Coors Light refreshing my throat.

Since the newer batches already had the upgraded T5550, I find it fine for my computing needs. Couldn't have asked for more in a $1250 17" laptop.

Later
Frag

 

It's sold out online now, and at least for me locally has been sold out at every Best Buy for quite a while. I actually saw someone buy the display unit while I was there last week.