New Gateway MX7515

On Best Buy's site, the Gateway 7510GX has disappeared and I get the feeling it's never coming back.

Its refresh is listed as "coming soon." Basically the same specs as the 7510GX (see my sig), with two differences.

Mobile Athlon 64 4000+ (2.6 GHz) instead of 3700+.
64MB Video RAM instead of 128MB.

Personally, I think that second point keeps the 7510GX as the better deal of the two, so if you were thinking of getting one you'd better go out and get it NOW, because they're disappearing and fast.

 

My Friend and I were at Best Buy tonight and he bought the new 7515. I bought the 7508gx a couple of weeks ago and I wish I would have waited, had I known that this model was coming out.

It has the AMD 64 4000+ @2.6 ghz. 1gig ram and a 100 gig HD.
15.4 screen is awesome on both models. The radeon x600 is a 128 meg, but if you use omegadrivers with the hypermemory it has 256.

It is on sale on Sunday (we got the early edition paper) for $1199. It even comes with the actually recovery disks instead of having to create your own.

 

Are you sure? The local video memory on it, near as I can tell, is 64MB. Can you run Everest and tell me what the local video memory is?

 

Judging by the name, the 7515 must obviously be the upscale 7510. In that case, the graphics shouldn't be worse.. Is the chassis any different from the 7510? I noticed a few differences between mine (7426) and the 7510.

 

Not necessarily. Gateway lists an MX8520, the replacement for the 8510GZ. Only difference between the two is that the 8520 has a slower hard drive, amusingly enough.

 

I work at best Buy selling computers... when i got in saturday night i saw we had some new Athlon 64 Gateways in... I sold the last of the 7510gx's a few days before.. so when i saw the 4000+ i was like HOLY CRAP and put it on display... sold one tonight and plan on selling the rest soon. Im pretty sure that it has the same graphics chip as the 7510. I just wish the hard drive ran at 5400 rpms at least... and maybe some DDR 400 RAM would make this baby even better. Iv got a Emachines 6810 that suites me fine, but a 4000+ for like 1350$ and even cheaper if you live in an area that has the extra 150 instant rebate we put on for gateway every few weeks. I can get tons of data on it if you guys are interested.

 

Yes, it is definately an X600 128 meg video. But I was wrong about one thing.....the Best Buy advertisement will be NEXT weeks national ad. The sale price will be $1199.

 

hey, this messege for Uscooper. u can get tons of data? Hook me up yo haha. Check this out. last August when the HP zd7260 came out I had bought it when it first camre out because it was top of line Best Buy had then and I needed a comp for school. So what happened is that this sep. 6 I had bought my computer to best buy n I have platinum 500 dollar service plan. Buit instead of 7 days or less it took them up until the 28th to realize threy dont make the parts for it so Im getting a new computer next week. I payed 1950 for the HP so their gonna match up the price so knwo I plan to get the awsome gateway 4000 MX7515 from best buy. it's gonna be my firast gateway ever but from the specs I'ce seen and from what people told me, i'm in for a treat..

 

It's worth noting, I work at Best Buy and had the opportunity to check out the machine.

It only has 64MB of local video memory. If anyone can find the old 7510GX, GET IT.

GET. IT.

BUY IT. DO IT NOW. It's the only one in the series with 128MB of video memory and is a superior gaming machine to the MX7515.

 

yeh just tell me what all you need about it but if you go to the product specs on the site they should have a TON of technical stuff listed.. but i mean if theres something not there that you need, i have a massive database at work for sometimes more detailed specs. its an awesome laptop... i put it out before we even had a real tag for the thing and we sold the 4 we initially got in 2 days. Its like woah. But yeah i mean that was worth the service plan wasnt it? you are getting a new machine lol, and you still have the service plan... can i say upgrade?

 

yo Pulp man, MX7515 has local onboard dedicated 64 but the **** graphics card is 128MB, besides most games dont even use more than or even need 64 lol, but u will have 128 MB running off the **** graphics card Pulp :-\.

 

Hey Pulp,

You are right about the 64mb of on board (if memory serves me right). However with hypertransport you get 128, which with the x600 is more then enough. The 7510 with the 128mb on board that has 256 with hypertransport does nothing for you because the x600 can't even utilize the full 128mb on board. So the 64mb is not horrible for this chipset. It would suck with a x700 or x800...but with the x600, no worries. (I remember reading about this somewhere...wish I could remember where)

 

A little crazy cursing eh?
anyways I have had no problem with my x600 anyways. I do tweak most of my games like bf2 and source but I am fine after that. I still run CS source on all high settings, no AA or AF and get 100 fps no problem. In BF2 I just turned down the effects settings and lighting settings for the video and everything else is on high, get around 60 fps and drops to like 30-40 during artillary strike.

 

So how long does the battery on this one last? The 7510 I can't get more then 1 1/2 hrs. If this is more powerful its gotta be less.


Howard

 

Would someone mind running a 3Dmark05 on the MX7515 to get a comparison for how much of a performance hit the cut in memory causes?

Remember kids, HyperMemory steals system memory to make up for that missing local memory, and HyperMemory is SLOOOOWWWWW compared to local video memory.

 

ditto I want to see a 3dmark.

 

I just got the MX7515 from best buy. It was $1550 and change which includes tax and the 3 year warrenty ($250).

I'm in the midst of transfering data onto it and doing a few other things. I'm not an uber-computer geek however I will try and run some benchmarks on it and post an update later today (I actually got it to start writing a paper for school).

As mentioned previously the only thing I'm not liking is the weird position of the FN key and the lack of a volume mute button.... other than that the staggering amount of junk ware installed is the only other thing. No dead pixels... so far so good!

Oh yeah, this being my first post I reserve all newb rights!!! lol...

---edit---

Ok, I ran 3dMark05 and here's some scores with no tweaking:

Game Tests 3DMark Score: 1040
GT1 - 5.0fps
GT2 - 2.8 fps
GT3 - 3.4 fps

CPU Score: 3866
CPU Test 1 - 2.0 fps
CPU Test 2 - 3.4 fps

The rest of tests had N/A not sure if this is because the features aren't there or if it was a result of using the free version of 3DMark05

... ok back to homework..

 

the mute button is there...you just have to hit the volumn up and volumn down button at the same time. Also, if you bought it at best buy, take your reciept back......its on sale this week for 1199, which will save you 100 bucks.

 

Thanks for the volume tip!!!!

I did get it for $1199.. but also got the 3yr warrenty and of course uncle sam got some action..

I'm thinking about trying out other ATI drivers when I try gaming.

So far I've copied over 20GB of music files from my other computer wiped out most of the junkware, got open office, i tunes, firefox.. and doing homework!!! Really pleased with the performance so far.

--edit--

anyone know if this puppy will take faster RAM?? I think a faster hard disk is in my future too...

 

*ahem* I told you ALL so.

After updating the drivers, this thing should score about 1200. That's still a full 500 under the 128MB one.

I said there would be a major difference; lo, there it is.

 

Ok, now I had try 3Dmark with the Omega 2.6.71 driver with no setting changes.

drum roll please.....

3DMark Score: 1341
GT1 - 6.2 fps
GT2 - 4.0 fps
GT3 - 6.1 fps

CPU Score: 3955
CPU Test 1 - 2.0 fps
CPU Test 2 - 3.4 fps

I wasn't expecting a DTR out of this but I'm pretty satisified with the scores as my DT which is a P2.4 /w 5700ultra got a score of 754. I haven't gotten around to playing games on this yet to see whats up..

dahh.. back to homework..

enjoy!!!

 

Does the Athlon 64 that's in the MX7515 and MX7510 take dual-channel ram?

 

I'd like to find that out too!!

Also, anyone here try running Linux on the 7510 or 7515 series? Any comments or tips!? I probably won't try it until after school tones down...

 

On the 7510 it does not because its socket 754, Im not sure about the 7515 because I havn't seen any 4000+ on the 754 socket. I thought they were all 939 socket which does support dual channel, however they may have disabled it to be more power efficient.

 

It's 754. The Mobile Athlon 64 4000+ is a 2.6 GHz socket 754 Athlon 64; single-channel memory.

 

That is about the same score I got with my 7510gx. Looks like I didn't miss anything.

....EDIT....

I will have to run the 3dmark test again but this guy gets a better score than you with the 7510gx using the omega drivers. Just a heads up for everyone.

*high fives Pulp*

 

Socket 754s are all gonna be single channel ram, i havent seen a mobile athlon 64 that was socket 939.. i dunno that they exist. I use an Hp thats socket 939 standard amd 64, its more a desktop replacement with dif power management... in a laptop, id have to say that the mobile 64 is the way to go. Socket 754 is also turions, which are very similar to athlon 64 mobiles. 754 is more 64 bit built on top of 32 bit architecture. Socket 939 is hotter, more power, but like in the desktops socket 939 supports dual channel ram and is more of a true 64 bit processor. Technically a desktop 939 could be upgraded to a dual core... but you dont wanna flash your bios.. :/

 

754 vs. 939 is one simple difference: single vs. dual channel memory. Really, that's it. Mobile Athlon 64s are (well, were) just regular desktops that have/had been binned for running at a high speed on low voltage. Now they're pretty much their own line, since desktop Athlon 64s in socket 754 are bordering on extinction.

The 128MB X600 in my 7510GX pulls 1704 in 3DMark05 with the most recent Omega drivers, vs. the 64MB X600 in the MX7515 which is only pulling 1341. The CPUMark difference between the two is a whole 180 in the MX7515's favor.

I will say this in the MX7515's defense, though: the only thing that dulls a little of its shine is the existence of the 7510GX and its superior video memory. If the 7510GX never existed, I'd be going crazy about the MX7515 instead. And as it stands, the MX7515 is still a ridiculous computer for the price.

 

its whole different architecture, 754 isnt really "true" 64 bit, but 939 is true from the ground up

 

When you talk about Omega drivers, are these for 64 bit or XP? Where do you get them?

 

those are the modified catalyst drivers available at www.omegadrivers.net

 

Where the crap did you read that? The only reason it has the extra pins is because of the dual-channel memory support. That is the ONLY REASON.

939 is no more "true" 64-bit than the 754 is. In fact, the newer Newark-core Mobile Athlon 64s are running virtually the exact same core as the San Diego socket 939s, complete with SSE3 extensions and everything. Now how is that if they're only on 754? Compound that with the fact that early in their existence, some programs even registered them as San Diego core chips.

 

Catching this discussion at the end. I agree with pulp 754 and 939 are identical in every aspect except the extra BW offered by the dual channel capability, which as usual doesn't account for much (I mean not toooo drastic) improvement with AMD (they have a history of being BW friendly, but for the small $ difference why go 754 on a desktop). And I think in a notebook dual channel for AMD would matter less than in a desktop, but I could be wrong about this last one!

 

maybe not a lot of performance dif but socket 754 is built on top of 32 bit architecture... socket 939 is 64 from the ground up similar to the intel itanium. More or less the 754 "reads" 64 bit, but when running it you wouldnt get the full advantage of 64 bit... it more like a 48 bit lol.

 

Where did you even come up with this! Enlighten us if you have some sources, PLEASE.

Cause as pulp said ... THEY ARE PRACTICALLY THE SAME CORE ... only difference is dual channel capability, and well yes the way they interface with the mobo!

And what does 64 bit built on top of 32 even mean in the first place!

 

Uscooper is a good name, cuz you need a scooper to scoop all the poop you're pushing. You have no idea what you're talking about so please do us all a favor and be quiet.

Go read some Anandtech tech docs and shut up with your talking out of the rear end.

And yes I registered just to tell you what an ignorant nincompoop you are.

I think the the point that he is stumbling around being correct about is that K8 is essentially a 32-bit chip with 64-bit extensions. However this is common to all K8, it has nothing to do with the number of pins or even the core revision.

 

The 939 also has 1000Mhz hypertransport compared to the 754's 800Mhz hypertransport, fwiw.

 

ALL i was saying is that 754 wasnt built from the ground up to be 64 bit... i use a 754 they are BOTH good... lol, just commenting

 

We're not upset because you're saying "939 is better than 754." 939 is better than 754.

We're upset because you're saying 939 was built to be 64-bit from the ground up while 754 was not, and that's not true. Read what everyone else is saying, you're misinformed and you're misinforming others, and spreading misinformation is not OK here.

 

But it is true... 754 is more like a p4 630... it supports 64 bit but basically has the capabilities to READ it but not so much on the performance advantage side... Iv talked about this with not only the Senior of PC sales, but our Double Agent at the geek squad... I didnt believe it either at first buy then i talked to some more guys

 

Funny, the guys that work in my Precinct aren't that misinformed.

If that's the case, how come the Mobile Athlon 64 3700+ and 4000+ are sporting 90nm cores typically used with the socket 939?

Alright then. Have you actually read any technical articles or anything like that?

 

No offense to anyone who works at Best Buy, I'm sure there are SOME well-informed guys that work at SOME Best Buys, but...

Scoop, if Best Buy is where you get your technical information, this discussion isn't even worth continuing. You are wrong. Your senior of PC sales is wrong. Your buddy on the geek squad is wrong. The End.

 

I told you 64 bit is more like 48 bit in some cases... even 40 bit... just look at this... and ill get more info on "true 64 bit" soon... so dont all gang up before you do YOUR research.. i used to think 64 bit was cut and dry too...

Of course, there's a big difference between the amount of address space that a 64-bit address value could theoretically yield and the actual sizes of the virtual and physical address spaces that a given 64-bit architecture supports. In the case of x86-64, the virtual address space is 48-bit, which makes for about 282 terabytes of virtual address space. (To borrow a line from my old IA-64 preview article, I'm tempted to say about this number what Bill Gates supposedly said about 640K back in the DOS days-"282 terabytes ought to be enough for anybody." But don't quote me on that in 10 years when Quake 16 takes up three or four million terabytes of hard disk space.) x86-64's physical address space is 40-bit, which can support about 1 terabyte of physical memory.

http://arstechnica.com/cpu/03q1/x86-64/x86-64-2.html

 

You're just dancing now. What you just said has nothing to do with what we are calling you on.

 

I guess you didn't do your research either, the limited memory addressing of 40bit-actual 48bit-virtual exists in both flavors of the AMD64 754/939/940.

40bit affords you a total 1TB of physical memory, and the extra 8 bit virtual gives you an extra 255TB. I don't think we will be seeing anyone need this anytime soon, at least not in the next 10 or so years.

And memory addressing isn't all what there is to 64bit processing. ACTUALLY that is the least of concern for a home user that can rarely even make use of 2GB today, which is still not even using the full 32bit addressing capability!

The real advantage comes in the now wider registers and the original hammer design (for both 754/939/940), which I assume is still the same basic one on all AMD64s is as follows:
x8 32-bit registers for running in 32-bit mode, which can be extended to 64-bit when running in 64-bit mode.
x8 additional 64-bit registers that can be used ONLY in 64-bit operation mode.
These are general purpose registers (GPR).

So yes as shocking as it maybe 754 is as much a 64-bit as any other 939/940! What a shocker!

 

Wow you two just confuse me a lil, not too much because im taking an A++ course, but a lil lol...

 

Just look at an early athlon 64 and a athlon xp from the same time... they are nearly identical. Its not that they arent 64 bit, its that the technology is built on top of 32 bit... so basically it is a 32 bit processor with 64 bit extensions... thats what i was saying. The real test is if the performance difference between the 64 and a "start from scratch 64" Itanium processor. They run 64 bit beautifully but 32 bit is horrible. So for now the 64 is good because its backwards compatible... But just look at a p4 ht 630.. it has instructions for 64 bit but that thing isnt truly...

 

The fact remains 754 is as much a 64 bit as 939. This was the initial argument that YOU brought up. BOTH 754/939/940 are an 'evolution' of the initial Athlon series, no one claimed they were built from scratch. After all to remain competitevly 32 bit capable AMD64 had to maintain what was working for the AthlonXP.

Now you're changing the topic and are comparing a home user CPU to a CPU that most servers don't even use! I don't get the point you're making! And how good or bad Intel's P4 6xx series is has nothing to do with if 939 is more of a 64bit than 754!

PLAIN AND SIMPLE: AMD64, in all lines (and EQUALLY), is a 64-bit capable processor. The 48bit memory addressing is something that no one would care about for a long long time (especially home users) since it makes ABSOLUTELY no difference when it comes to running in 64-bit mode.

SO, if you buy a 754 and not a 939, your only loosing DC capability, and as someone pointed the decreased HT to 800, which anyway has no negative effect on performance. NO LOSS WHAT SO EVER IN 64-BIT FUNCTIONALITY!

 

^^^ Once again qwester stomps you a new one, scooper. Please stop while you're only a mile behind, and just admit that you made an incorrect assertion (namely: that 64-bit mode on an Athlon64 is somehow different between sockets 754 and 939)

Also, since you seem to love the Itanium so much, allow me to point out what a miserable failure it was in its intended market. Let me also point out what a raging succcess (at least by AMD standards) the Athlon64 and Opteron have been. Sure Itanium was a good concept, but money talks. Beta was better than VHS, too, but we all know how that turned out.

 

I love AMD all the way, havent bought an intel since 99 and dont plan on it... I was just saying that 754 is more 32 bit tchnology built-on than socket 939 (more pins for addressing dual channel Ram. I was just stating some differences, and you guys like to jump all over me. There are so many different definitions of 64-bit.... Its a matter of how you look at "64-bit". Chill guys, i know my stuff too...

So define for me the difference in the 64-bit capabilities of a p4 6XX series which is obviously not as "64 bit" as athlon 64s... or the pentium D for that matter... i guess they just READ 64 bit? Without the performance advantage