NX860X review?

Everyone,

I've been doing a lot of looking around for reviews on this one and have so far not come up with a single one. Has anyone given this laptop a spin to see how well it fairs?

 

We don't have any reviews that will tell you about performance yet, but if you would like to get a preview about the notebook features, such as mouse, screen, keyboard, build, you can look at the reviews below.
Gateway S-7700N
Gateway 8510GZ
Gateway M680
Welcome to the forums, by the way

 

My NX860XL was delivered yesterday and I'm still playing with it. It's literally the first notebook I've ever laid hands on so I'm not sure how useful my impressions will be, but here are a few:

- it's big. At the retail stores they bolt down their notebooks so you have little opportunity to pick them up. My first impression taking it out of box was this thing is a beast and heavy. Luckily I got it mainly as a desktop replacement while rv'ing.

-the construction seems fair enough. It's pretty solid with a plastic top cover, but I was a little miffed to see the hinges were plastic. I'd heard about Gateway hinges. The screen can be wobbled and bent a little. Don't know if that's typical of 17" screens or not.

-I really like the expansive keyboard with the key pad. The key actions feel very good. It'll take a little while to get used to the finger pad and click keys. I may get a mouse. With all the many different options on this keyboard, a quick reference card would have been very helpful. One must go to the Gateway website and print out a 66 page manual to obtain this info.

-the sound is much better than I expected and am impressed with the sterio sound coming out of a small package like this.

-the 1680 x 1050 Ultrabright Active Matrix screen is very impressive and I'm quite happy with it. I do think some of the other brands I saw at retail stores might have been a little sharper, but one would almost have to compare them side-by-side to know for sure.

-I haven't done any real battery test so far, but it seems about what one would expect with a beast like this. Today it's been running about 1.5 hrs on the 8-cell battery and it's down to 30%. When running on plug-in power it runs very hot and the fan runs almost continually. It's not very comfortable to have it on one's lap because of the heat. It seems to run cooler on the battery.

-I haven't run any real speed tests on it yet. It boots much faster than my desktop, but the latter is an old 512MB warhorse burdened with way too much software and ram-resident junk. I did uninstall much of the bloatware that came with the notebook.

-the CD/DVD is very slow, much slower than my desktop drives. When getting a listing on one of my old back-up cds, it takes a long time to list all the files.

-I haven't installed any games like Doom3 yet so can't really say how it will perform there, but expect with the Geforce 256MB 7800 it will do just fine. It loads up Ofiice apps, and other apps, much faster than my desktop. I installed a processor monitor on the notebook and with 1 GB of RAM, I haven't seen it even come close to 50% useage. I get the feeling that this machine will be able to handle graphics and memory intensive software much better than the old desktop which often came to a complete stop with hard drive spinning madly as it topped out at 100%.

-to quickly initialize my MS office package I used the dialup modem and it worked fine. I plan to set up a wireless network soon.

-I started to play one movie DVD. It seemed to work fine, but didn't seem to be near a sharp as I see on my desktop which has a 19" Trinitron CTR. The screen would darken and then brighten on the notebook, but I noticed that the battery was about run down so suspect that was the reason. The stereo sound effects from the movie were very distinguishable.

I think, so far, that I made a good choice selecting the NX860XL.

Pros: sharp bright screen, fast, wonderful keyboard, good sound

Cons: runs hot, plastic hinges, no detailed hardcopy manual

 

Storm, I believe you and I will be the only ones with 860XLs here, so maybe we could collaborate and create a very nice review of this machine. I'm still waiting for mine to get here so until then the podium is yours.

 

A.C. , yes a more thorough review would be good. My initial impressions were meant only to be that, a newbie's initial impressions. It would be interesting to put it through some speed tests, etc. I look forward to your feedback when your machine arrives.

 

Just to note...the plastic hinge issue was with an Arima manufactured frame(used in several Emachines and Gateway models), but not this particular series of notebooks. As far as I've been able to tell, this NX860 series has the same basic casing as the M680/8510GZ/S-7700N series mentioned above. No hinge issues have been reported with these machines. I'm not sure on manufacturer...but I've seen some references to Quanta...but I haven't confirmed that yet.

I'm not sure if the actual hinge is plastic....could be metal brackets just cased in plastic, as mine(8510GZ) feels quite sturdy. Any 17" screen will have some flex to it, unless the lid is very thick and seriously reinforced(makes the unit much bigger and even heavier).

I am curious to read more about the heat though. Would love to see some temperature readings on the 7600 vs the 7800 on the palmrests.

 

I'd be interested in hearing anything else you guys have to say about the NX860XL, I just ordered one yesterday. I had originaly gone with the NX860X, but then I checked the website a couple days later and they lowered the specs for the XL. which lowered the price by 400 dollars, so I canceled the 860X and ordered an XL. After doing all the same upgrades to the XL I was able to get the same specs except the faster 256 meg 7800, versus the 128 meg 7600, plus the higher resolution screen, for about 80 bucks.

 

Tullnd, after your note I went back and looked real close at the hinges and you might be right that they are plastic coated metal or anodized aluminum that appears to be black plastic. I 'm not sure now and hesitate to scratch at them to see what is underneath. On another matter, I did some super PI runs on it. It calculates to 1M places in 33 sec and 2M in about 1:20 min going up to 90% use of memory, about 3 times faster than my old 512 mb, 1.8gh desktop, not sure how that compares with other core duos with 1 G.

 

Storm, just a quick question, the cord running from the socket to the power adapter, is it 2 or 3 pronged, meaning which APC in-line surge protector do I need. BTW, I was looking into the auto-switching ones because I am in Iraq.

http://apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=173&fs=Mobile Computing

 

It is two pronged. Surge protector probably a good idea. I need one too, living in country where power is sometimes flakey (hawks and buzzards landing on power lines and Sat night drunks running into power poles).

 

I have an NX860XL and so far I really like it.
Quick Specs: CoreDuo at 2.0, 1GB RAM, 7800 256MB graphics, 1680x1050 17" screen, 100GB hard drive, DVD burner.

This laptop is big. It isn't real thick, it just has a big footprint. It seems to have very sturdy construction. The screen is very nice for an LCD (I'm a die-hard CRT man, myself. I think color is sharper on CRTs.). I don't see any ghosting with fast moving objects. The screen is a bit reflective in many lighting conditions though. While I wouldn't label the speakers "excellent" they are good for a laptop offering. The keyboard's feel is one of the best out of all the laptops I've tried. With all the real estate around the touchpad I don't accidentally move the cursor around while typing like I do with other laptops. (I have to turn off the touchpad on Toshiba systems.)

MS Office and .pdf documents open very fast. Games, such as Battlefield 2, Star Wars Empire at War, and Civilization 4 play very well. I do use a mouse when gaming but the touchpad is decent for productivity apps/internet. The scroll bar on the touchpad is a welcome and usefull addition.

Last night I was installing and configuring several programs, using the DVD drive, hard drive, and a wireless connection, while on battery power and I got more than 2 hours out of the standard 8 cell battery with no problem. If I had more to do I figure I would have gotten 2 hours 30 minutes or so, which I feel is pretty good for a laptop this size.

My only gripe, and a minor one, is that the monitor out is a standard VGA port and not DVI. It also has Svideo out, 4 USB ports (2 on each side - very convenient), firewire port, modem, ethernet, a memory card reader, mic, and headphone jacks.

A.C., the power supply is a 2 prong setup. The brick is rated for 100-240v so International travel isn't a problem. I am currently waiting on an international surge protector too . BTW what area of Iraq are you in, if you don't mind me asking. I'll be heading over there later this year.

While gaming the area under the left side of the keyboard gets very warm and the vent in that area also puts out warm air. For normal productivity apps you can tell the machine is on but heat isn't an issue for them. After I'm done gaming the laptop cools down very quickly (within a minute or so) to idle levels. The fans normally run at low speed and are quiet. Some very graphics intensive areas of games will make the fans spool up to a more noticeable level but they step down as soon as the load does.

dlstorm, while watching the DVD on battery power your power saver settings may have been trying to reduce the system load. Right click on the battery icon down by the clock to examine your settings while under battery power.)

 

Hey jahcs, thanks for the info, it sounds like an awesome laptop, I'm just worried that I made a mistake ordering it when I did. Acording to the estimated ship date I will have several days to spare before I go on vacation, I ordered it online 6 days ago and it still says the order is being proccesed, it's not even in production yet. Did you order yours online, and how many days did it take to show up?

 

Heh, I ordered it over the phone on 2/16 and it shipped on 3/23. Gateway told me that they believe the "parts shortages" have been corrected and will no longer be an issue. Good luck. Once it arrives I'm sure you will enjoy it.

EDIT: Oh, one more thing: My order said processing until the day it shipped. It never said "in production" when I checked the order status online.

 

From what I've been hearing it sounds like it's not going to show up for a long long time. I should just go on vacation on not worry about it I guess, maybe it'll be here a week after I get back.

 

Thanks JAHCS for NX860XL evaluation. It's interesting to get feedback from others with the notebook. By the time we're done we will have a full review. One additional little datum: I ran the Super PI on mine. It did 2M places in 1 min 13 sec. That's one of the fastest out there, I think. I earlier reported 1:20 in another note, but had misread the results report. I've got the identical set up that you have on your's.

I've had mine now for one week and love it. I set up a wireless network this week (Linksys WRT54G) and can surf, print, and talk to my desktop from my Lazy Boy now. Setup and operation were flawless (but that's another story).

 

I just d'loaded super pi and I'm getting about 1:17 with all my backround programs running and the computer still warm from 2 hours of Battlefield 2. Even running other programs while calculating only makes it vary by a few seconds. Go Go Dual Core!

 

I just checked my order status online and it says mine has shipped! The ups tracking info says that it's going to be delivered on the 12th, if that's true then it will have taken less than 2 weeks to get my laptop.

 

I am still waiting to pick up my order from my APO. Jahcs I cannot tell you specifics sorry, you will learn about that soon. I've been eagerly waiting for this beast. Ill post my review soon.

 

Here's some user feedback on the NX860XL from zdnet:

http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/Gateway_NX850XL/4505-3121_16-31517087.html?tag=txt

 

The review at zdnet is for the NX850XL - the previous version. No CoreDuo, No 7800 graphics.

Similar chassis though.

 

Jahcs, so it is. I was so surprised to see the zdnet evaluation, I misread the model #. Hopefully they'll do our new model eventually. Mine is still humming a long, no problems to report, but I noticed that its super pi has slowed down from 1:13 to 1:20. I've got several more ram resident stuff floating around including CA's spyware and NHC. Maybe that's the reason. Slow down was also about time that I got wireless network going if that has any effect. I'm starting to play some games. They are right. That really heats up the beast.

 

It arived earlier today but I'm having some problems. The biggest one is that every single game I've tried runs poorly, and they all behave exactly the same way, for example, the game will be running very well for a few seconds and then for no apparent reason the framerate will go way down and there will be horrible mouse lag, I'm talking about a change from 60 frames per second down to 10 or less with huge ammounts of mouse lag for a good second or two and then right back up to 60. All games I've tried do this constantly, a few seconds of running perfectly and then a couple seconds of extemrely poor performance. For some reason it only does this at the higher resolutions, if I turn it down to 640x480 or 800x600 then it runs just as you would expect it to, with very high frame rates.

I have the nx860xl with 2 gig of ram and the games that I've tried are Unreal Tournament 2004, Half Life 2, Half Life 2 deathmatch, Quake 4, and World of Warcraft. I also tried 3Dmark2001se and it does the same thing. although not in every test.

I've removed most of the bloatware and I ran msconfig and disabled everything in the startup, but it only changes the frequency that the bad preformance happens. If this was a desktop pc then the first thing I would try would be some different video drivers, but I have yet to find any drivers that will install on this laptop other than the gateway ones it came with. Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this?

UPDATE: I tried some older games and they all worked fine, Quake 3, the original Unreal Tournament, and SiN, they all played perfectly at high resolutions, as high as 1680x1050. At this point I'm still thinking it's a driver problem, is anyone else having these kinds of problems?

 

The only fairly new game I've played on mine so far is Rise of Nations set at maximum everything and it performs OK. The graphics, speed and responsiveness is far superior to the old desktop. I don't have any of the newer versions of games that you mention. I'll finally get around to installing Doom 3 today and see how it performs, and report back. Hope your problem is just a driver.

 

Hmm, I haven't had any problems either.
Diablo II
Star Wars Empire at War
Civilization 4
Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War
Battlefield 2
All these games run great for me with most settings near maximum.

Games ususally run better when set as close to native resolution as possible for me.

I don't know much about software configuration. The most advanced thing I've done is relapce a PSU and video card in my desktop and reload the video drivers for it. When it comes to mucking around in Windows I'm a bit lost.

Make sure you have the latest patches for the games.

 

I just ordered one of these so we'll see how things go. They say it will ship on the 19th. I hope it does ship as I need this notebook yesterday.

 

Make sure none of your vents are being blocked. Components overheating is the only reason I can imagine for your poor performance.

 

I just got my new NX860XL yesterday. One day before what was schedule, so I am very happy.

I haven't had any trouble with it and I think overall it is a great computer. It is very heavy and the screen is great. I do think it should have some quick acess keys, specially one for the wirelless (Fn+F2 also does it but a nice key would have been better). It also lacks bluetooth so I guess I will have to rely on a USB device.

I have the 12 cell battery and yesterday it lasted for 2:10 with wirelless on. I have to test it again without the wirelless.

tullnd asked for the temperature readings. I can tell that it runs hot. Specially on the left lower corner. Underneth the table gets really hot but not on the lower corner, its the upper left corner that gets really hot. I ran Fresh Diagnose 7.25 but it doesn't give a reading. Does anyone know of any software that would read the temperature?

 

You could try Everest for the temperature [ http://www.lavalys.com/]
You only got 2:10? What were you doing? I would have expected much, much more with a 12 cell

 

it proabably wasn't fully charged..
now i'm getting 3:20h

 

Hmm, that's closer I would have expected a little more than 4 hours though..
Also, I just realized that Everest free was discontinued (a long time ago actually..)! Why they did that is beyond me. Sorry about that.

 

I installed and ran Doom 3 this afternoon with max settings (1600x1200), awesume. It ran very well, graphics and speed were great, but I have no idea of the frames/second, but was very sharp, fluid animation. There was no hesitation using my Logitek v200 wireless mouse. The notebook cpu heated up from 46C to 52C during about 1/2 hr of the game. I use NHC to monitor temp. I continue to play with Super PI and have been absorbed by the apparent variability of results. I get the fastest results, plugged in, when first starting notebook (1 M at 33 and 2 M at 1:13) and cpu temp at 40 C. After running about one hour and cpu has warmed to 46C, I get 1 M at 40 and 2 M at 1:34. Is this due to the cpu warming up? Does it slow down as it heats up? It seems that, due to the apparent variability in Super Pi results, they must be carefully interpreted.

 

4 hours is going to be hard....
I'll try it again tomm with most things reduced to a minimum..

Any other ideas besides everest? The temparature reading I get with it is 115 when I' just browsing..

 

Nope, sorry. I know I just heard someone get a temperature reading.. but I don't remember where/how. It may have actually been in this very Gateway forum that it was said, heh.

 

Aflac! Aflac! Notebook Hardware Control for temp monitoring...and more:

http://www.pbus-167.com/chc.htm

 

NHC -- that's what it was

 

Not sure if it will last that long.. 4h is a lot...
Regarding the temparature readings I got 150/146 F (60 C) for regular web browsing and watching movies..

Anyone kwos of any other free program that will allow me to read the temperature?

 

Maybe 4h is a lot. I thought that the core duos had better battery life than the P-M though. Is this wrong?
You should probably search the whole forum for free temp readings. If there are no threads about it, start one in the Software where more people can see it
As for me, I don't know of any other ones.

 

Small update on my performance problem, I used gateway's online chat to talk with one if thier techs, he wasn't all that helpful, he actually tried to tell me that "laptops aren't made for gaming" and nothing is wrong and I need to turn the details down. I kept insisting that I know what I'm talking about (because I do) and he said that he was going to have "advanced technical suport" contact me.

Someone asked if I was blocking the air vents, well it's sitting on a desk with nothing around it, so the air flow should be fine.

dlstorm: How did you get Doom 3 to run at 1600x1200? I decided to give it a try after you mentioned that it worked well for you, the highest I could get it to go was 1280x1024, if I selected 1600x1200 it would revert back to 640x480. And by the way, the performance problem shows up in Doom 3 just like the other games on my laptop. It's a shame because I get to see how well it can run for just a few seconds at a time, it's like it's taunting me.

Also, to verify that I hadn't screwed something up when I removed and disabled most of the bloatware I reinstalled the OS with the included cd and it made no difference.

 

Do you have the 7800, Adam?

 

Yup, it's the 7800 go 256 meg. I have the nx860xl with 2 gig of ram and a 1.83 ghz cpu.

 

Nice setup
Have you reformatted yet? Taken off the preloaded soft? Graphics accelerator on?
There is obviously something wrong here..

 

I had originaly uninstalled most of the preloaded stuff, and disabled the rest of it through msconfig, but I thought maybe I screwed something up so I reloaded the os back to the way it came, including all of the preloaded ****. It didn't make any diffenrence one way or the other, it does the same thing no matter what. I don't think it's a driver problem now since no one else seems to be having this problem and we are all probably using the same drivers, so I believe this is a hardware problem, most likely a bad video card.

Here are my 3DMark scores if anyone wants to see them.

2001se -17,362
2003 -6,728
2005 -2,855
2006 -1,733

Note: those are not the scores of a healthy system, only compare them to yours if you want to feel better about yourself

I'm going on vacation soon and I'm taking this thing with me, I might actualy get to test out some of the other features for a change instead of obsessing about the poor game performance.

 

can you tell me out you unistalled?
and what did you install? because I only installed some codec packs, firefox and download manager.

did anyone reformated the drive? the original setup is kinda stupid with two partitions of 68Gb and 5.6Gb..

 

I have 1GB of RAM (2 512MB 533mhz modules), the 2.0 CoreDuo, and 100GB hard drive at 5400 RPM.

I wouldn't think your proc being a 1.83 would hamper games that much. I wonder if your computer is throttling the GPU or CPU heavily? Could a poorly seated heatsink cause excessive throttling? Also, have you run any tests on the memory? I hope your system didn't ship with a hardware fault.

 

Adam, you're right it does revert back to 640x480 when choosing 1600x1200. Didn't realize that. The highest it will stay at is 1280x1024. It's even sharper at that resolution, but also a little jerky.....and at one point when action got very intense, it stopped for a second or two. That happened once, not sure if that's the same thing you are seeing. Didn't expect to see that with this video card.

 

Do you have the OMega drivers? They help a lot.
NVidia Drivers:
http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=Files&go=cat&dwn_cat_id=26

Home:
http://omegadrivers.net

 

I seem to have the latest NVidia driver (Forceware 81.98) dated February 2006. I didn't see anything described as 81.98 on Omega site. Did I miss something?

 

Back to the temperatures' issue..

I'm now getting 104F on normal web browsing because I raise the back of the computer to increase heat dissipation from the bottom. The table was getting really hot before!

When playing (Star Wars Empire at War) the computer gets really hot. It says 125 but I think its more.

Any suggestion for a effective wide notebook cooller?

 

3DMark05 Project Details


Main Test Results
3DMark Score 4947 3DMarks
CPU Score Not enough CPU tests run

Detailed Test Results

Game Tests
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 20.6 fps
GT2 - Firefly Forest 14.7 fps
GT3 - Canyon Flight 25.6 fps

 

I finally upgraded the Nvidia driver from the Gateway site up to ver 83.20. Doom 3 plays better now, no stopping. Here's the 3DMark scores I see now at default settings with all resident programs running except firewall in 2005 which interfered there:

2003: 11,508
2005: 5,324 - CPU=6,010 - GT1=23.6 - GT2=15.5 - GT3=26.5
2006: 2,966

Looks like all's OK.