P-7805u Recommendations

After researching and deliberating for a good long while, I decided to pick up a P-7805u laptop. I use computers daily for gaming, 3d modeling, photoshop and autocad, but I'm not that tech savvy.

Which brings me to my question: Any recommendations on what to do for this system out-of-the-box? Updated drivers, hardware, etc?

I'd really appreciate any recommendations and hopefully I'll learn something from them.

 

If it came with a vista disk, i would immediately fresh install to avoid dealing with all the gateway bloatware. Download the dox drivers from the drivers sticky on this board. Buying a second hard drive for the thing is also an option, i bought an identical drive and put them into raid. the stock cpu is par for the course, though upgrading it is also another option if you're looking for performance increases in gaming and cpu intensive tasks like file conversion and data writing.

 

If you don't get a 1920 X 1200 I doubt you'll be using much of autocad..

 

It depends on your budget and what you already have. I got mine a week and a half ago and decided I wanted a dual boot XP and windows 7 system. XP 32 bit is for all my games so I get maximum memory and CPU dedication to the games, and 7 because it's better than Vista in every way, shape, and form, and it's still only a beta. The first upgrade I did was I changed out the default hard drive for a 32gb patriot ssd. It was definitely a good upgrade and worth the price (I got it for free cuz my boss bought it for me but it was $80 at the time of purchase).

If you're going to keep vista and want some good first tips to improve performance, search or run: msconfig and disable the things you don't want from startup. Then uninstall all the extra crap you're not going to use by using Programs and Features in Control Panel. Then once you learn a bit you can do some research and decide what services you want to disable to free up even more cpu and memory. If you want some help with that I can walk you through it, its very simple but you have to know what you're doing.

I'm using the dox optimised 185.20 drivers for the 9800m gts. I didn't do any tests to see a performance increase but everyone pushes them and I haven't had any problems with mine. Getting maximum frames in all my games no matter what resolution I play in.

Other people have done things like undervolting (Which I plan on doing soon), upgrading the processor, using a cooling stand underneath the laptop (I plan to get one as well), and some even upgrade the wireless device.

 

Yes...i reccomend you install DOX 185.20, it makes everygame i play a very smooth and enjoyable experience.

Also do a fresh install and install Avira Antivir, it is a free antivirus and is better then all the other anitivirus's i have used before.

 

Get the P7801 from Newegg for a garunteed 1920X1200 resolution, otherwise make sure to look at the serial number on the boxes at best buy for a *38* in the serial number..that appears to be what is key to getting a 1920X1200 on the 7805u

 

Yeah I use it for pro apps on the go (maya/max) and without the 1920X1200 it would be unusable.

 

I do not see a 38 or 39 on my 7805u from Best Buy.
SN starts with 9
I got 1440 x 900 screen. It's nice, but I want th ehigher one.
Guess I have to bring it back

 

Eh I dunno about that, I used autocad on a 1440x900 19" widescreen for quite a while, heck I'm using a 1280x1024 19" standard aspect screen now for it most of the time. 1920x1200 is definitely preferable, and you may not be able to live with as many toolbars open but if you're old school and use command lines a lot that doesn't matter that much anyways. Obviously it also depends somewhat on the type of cad work you do, but for architectural 2d like I do more resolution is always nice, but it's not an absolute must. If anything I'd be more worried about the resolution for photochop than autocad, I've never used PS on less than a 1680x1050 screen.

 

Avast is pretty good too

 

I suspect that you might be confusing the SNID with the serial number. For the 7805, the latter is 22 characters (alphanumeric) and begins with "LXW430X".