*Official*P-7811 FX Info Thread

The P8400 is actually an excellent CPU for this notebook, it is more than enough for any gaming or heavy 3D applications like Autocad. Don't trust the windows experience index on Vista, it is highly unpredictable and has been known to favour certain brands of things over others (irrespective of the actual stats). I think there is something with 2GB Corsair vs 500mb Kingston, where the Kingston always gets a higher score hands down.

Anyway, if you are still that worried about getting the extra few points out of the index, it is possible to (safely) upgrade the CPU to any of the centrino 2 builds in the same series. So for example the P9400 will run fine. I believe the newer P9500 will also work as it is still the same Montevina line of processors, but don't hold me to this. As for quad core support - there is none as yet and unless you really no what you are doing I wouldn't recommend attempting to install one of these. I know a few of the guys on this site managed to put an Intel 2 Extreme X7800 onto their builds and so if you are really looking for a way to get the points up that is the way to go. Replacing the existing one with a P9400/9500 is likely to only increase it by 2 or 3. Whereas one of the extreme chips will take it right to the top.

Check out this for how to install CPU's onto your machine (it is for the older P6831) but they are the same motherboard so it will work fine.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=256839

Once again, I wouldn't be too worried about the Vista experience index, it is far from the best hardware benchmarking tool. High end tools like Furmark and 3DMark are far more accurate.

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Just an update for anyone who has been following the mysterious in game "freeze" bug that occurs on some P7811's. I installed WoW on it this past week and had the same problem with it freezing after a good hour or so while in game. Now, I have been using the laptop at Uni as well and when I do I have been dropping the power saver mode down to balanced while I work on CAD, when I got home a few days ago I thought I would have another go at WoW and made some minor changes to Nvidia settings. I was able to play for around 7 hours straight without it crashing (I had to go to bed in the end) - the interesting thing about this is that it would occasionally freeze for 2-3 seconds and then it carried on as normal. I changed the Nvidia settings back to how I had them and still found it to last for as long as I needed it. It turns out that switching the power save mode to balanced seems to do something, somewhere that stops it from freezing up completely. The fact that I still get this small pauses for 2-3 seconds indicates that the same problem is there, but the fact that it is on balanced means that it is able to fully recover from it, rather than completely stalling the system as per the problem i've been getting.

I'm going to load up Crysis now and see whether it makes a difference there. If it does I may well have found a temporary "solution" of sorts.

 

hey all been using this thing for the past week and having no major issues...got it to crash playing a game one day, sounds like the similar graphics freezing up issue but handful of other games no prob for hours on end so gonna assume its the game for now but my major prob now is the DVD drive. i burn a crap ton of movies and use dual layer disks and the spindle i had been using with the last laptop and got no coasters with, the dvd drive in this laptop doesnt seem to like DL dvds. i get all sorts of errors burning using convertxtodvd or even making an img of the dvd then using imgburn. i thought maybe somehow this wasnt a d/l drive but looking at specs it should be. any of yall have trouble burning d/l media and how have yall been able to fix it. out of 5 disks ive had 4 coasters and the only one that wasnt a coaster was using the widnows explorer burning to just burn 7 gigs of data...i havent actually tested the dvd to make sure it burned right but i didnt get any errors so assume its fine. the disks im using are riteks...i know not the greatest nor the worst..


**edit..after looking around more i saw in the laptop specs that the drive is..."2.4x (DVD+R Double layer) / 2x (DVD-R Double layer)" ive been burning at 4x for disks that are rated at 8x...im guessing this could be part of the prob, just making sure, too bad i dont have any more disks from the same spindle to check with though but would be nice to know its the media not drive before i go buy more dual layer dvds and doing some searching i guess riteks suck...will try some verbatims.

 

Just a quick question:

When upgrading hard drives for the P-78XX, do the two drives always need to be the same speed/capacity or is that only for RAID 0?

Also, are screws included with a new hard drive or do you have to pick them up separately?

 

They only need to be the same size for RAID. (Actually you could RAID with 2 different size drives but you would be limited to the smaller size of the 2).
In regards to screws, the included drive has 4, you could just take 2 off (one from each side) and use those on your new drive.

 

Thanks for the reply. Also, how about hard drive speed? Do those need to be the same too?

 

not unless you want to use raid...
for raid use two of the exact same drives..
if you just want another drive for more storage/space, then use any size and speed you want ^^

 

this RAID stuff has me interested and searching the forums i found the thread about RAID in the 7811 but its fairly old with last post back in 08... sentence, when you talk about it being exact same you mean another 200gb 7200 rpm drive or would i need to be buying 2 new exact same drives...id rather just add a 2nd 7200rpm 200 gig hard drive if that would let me do RAID. but then i was reading about the striping and how the data is written in a RAID 0 array if i have the current drive more then half full is that going to cause issues, or would the raid settings take effect from then on with new data, or would i need to get going with a clean install starting from the OS on? just trying to get more details...

 

For detailed instructions on setting up RAID along with a lot of other great stuff check out Jakamo5's P-7811/7801u/7805u FX Fresh Format Guide

 

you could just find-out what drive you have on your comp and buy another just like it (same brand, speed, size) any 200gb 7200rpm drive would work.. but ther may be some minor differences...
if you want to set-up raid.. you have to start from scratch (re-install your os and start fresh).

 

thanks all...sounds like this will be something ill do when i do my periodic clean install then.

 

Just so it's in the thread for future buyers of the 78XX series. If you want to use a Half-Sized Wifi card in the half-size Mini-PCIe slot you will have to do this mod to cover pin#20 on the card...

 

What is that, just a strip of electrical tape?

 

Yes sir, it sure is.

 

Is it possible to change the current CPU and GPU fan for more effective but less noisy fans? Right now on GPU the fan has DC5v - 1.6W. Which way should i go. The on with more W on same current?

 

The first limitation is going to be to find an enclosed fan at the same size the Sunon one in your laptop is.

After that, you'll have to find one compatible with the CPU/GPU HSF plug (4-pin if I recall).

It's quite a process. You're better off trying a better thermal paste first. After putting ICD7 on my 7811, my fans don't nearly spin up as much due to the better heat transfer.

 

I have applied IC7 already, on both GPU and CPU. My fans are constantly hearable. They are not on full i guess, but my work laptop is bearly hearable compared to this. What bios you have on P7811? I have the latest v12.

 

how do I fix this issue with the GPU downclocking when reaching a certain speed? I hate it when I'm playing GRID or COD4 then after a few minutes my FPS gets halved. I had to do ALT+TAB then the FPS goes back to normal again.
already tried rivatuner -- can't see any fanspeed setting.
tried ntune -- BSOD.
tried Nvidia System tools -- I can see a manual setting for the fan speed.. but it is greyed out.

Anyone else having this issue?

edit: turns out the cause of the severe FPS drop is CPU throttling. checked gpuz log and it was stable at 600/700 max temp 74C
checked core temp.. looks like cpu is clocking down if CPU load is below 50% from 2.2 to 1.5. Max temp is only 51C
I just need to tweak this. I know this has something to do with speedstep. If someone already knows whats the best way to fix this, I'd gladly try it to save time
** checking out RMclock right now **

update: RMclock fixed the issue.

 

If you want speed, you want an SSD like an OCZ Vertex. OMG does it blow RAID away - I get 180 mb/sec sustained read, 130mb/sec sustained write on my old 6860, and that performance shows up in everything I run.

And... you can RAID two SSDs together too Don't be surprised if you peg the controller's throughput though and get less than the SSDs can deliver. 3x RAID and 4x RAID.enthusiasts are buying the fastest RAID controllers they can get so they can get full throughput from their SSDS - I've seen many benchmarks on OCZ's forums pegged at 600mb/sec read (sustained!) because that's all the controller will do.

 

Now if I can just find some dough to get another X-25M then I'm all set...

 

Ow, those will set you back a bundle. I couldn't afford one, and that's how I wound up with the OCZ Vertex. I'm happy though

 

If anyone's still wondering about this model freezing, I have a possible fix. I got mine to stop for a couple of days so far. I'm not sure if it's going to be the solution but who knows! Check out my post on it:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=419094

 

so have managed to deal with the whole game freezing thing since owning this laptop by not playing games for an eternity and im not that hardcore but wake up today and see this nonsense on my screen....




time to call gateway or any of yall here know simple fix...no i havent installed anything new....update any drivers or modified pc any way....went to bed all fine woke up to that crap....ive seen in forums here about the horizontal lines but this is crazy snow ...reboot fixed it but not sure if this is sign of the end of my video card or what

 

Either a bad screen connection or your GPU is dying.

 

Try simple things for now like updating video drivers, clean the fan and vents, monitor the temps. If nothing else works contact Gateway for sure..

 

hey guys, I have a potential customer who has a Gateway P-7811FX with 9800m gts and he is wondering if he can fit a 9800m gtx.

 

simple answer is "no"...
the GPU is soldered on.

 

Okay, don't know if this has been asked in previous posts, as there are 78 pages, so if it has I apologize for asking again LOL

Will the 7811fx support the 25 watt P8700 or P8800 CPU's?

 

Which driver to use?

I uninstalled "P-7800_AUDIO_CONEXANT_8.7.0.1007_64BIT driver"(driver year 2008) sound driver, and ask windows7 to find appropriate driver for my sound card from windows update web site and it installed "High Definition Audio Device" sound driver dated 07.13.2009. This driver works fine and it newer than original Conexant driver.
Should I leave it as it is, or is there any issue? Did anyone try it?

 

I prefer the hardware driver...........

 

can you send me this version of driver please? I can find only old version.
pm with email sent

 

never mind, I found it. installed and works fine.

 

I did exactly the same switch months ago and haven't looked back. I switched because of a gaming/win7/conexant driver issue and the generic MS HD driver has worked fine.