Gateway P-7811 FX

Anyone have any suggestions on what to do to upgrade my gateway P_7811 FX ? I was thinking of adding another 512MB Geforce or the 1 Gb card? can i pair up the 1 GB card to the 512MB card? Also would another 200GB 7200rpm HD in RAID O help performance? What about the cpu? I want the best performance I can get out of this thing lol

 

Hey Well it depends what your looking for, a graphic card update is what I would do. What are the current specs of the system? What are you using the computer mostly for? Meaning do you game? Do you use CPU intensive programs?

 

I added a second 200 gb 7200 rpm drive to mine and its a bit quicker, does run a little hotter. CPU is probably the best thing you could upgrade even though it is pretty decent as it is. You can NOT add a new graphics card nor replace the one you have...1) there is no place/ slot for a second card and 2) the one it comes with is basically welded on it.

 

i dont believe the p7811 supports sli, and there are no drivers that would allow that endorsed by gateway.. upgrading to a 1gb 9800m gts will result in a minimal performance increase, somewhere along the lines of several percent. and it is also not capable of being done due to the type of soldering process involved in connecting the card, as i believe it is soldered to the mobo.
with the cpu you can upgrade to a x9100 and i believe a qx9300
and for the hard drive, you can add a 200gb 7200rpm drive in raid 0...look in the gateway forums for threads by e-wrecked..he pretty much provides information on cpu upgrades, increasing performance, and raid.

 

I am not using this laptop for gaming. I am using flash/ photoshop/dreamweaver etc... So as I understand I can't add a second card to boost graphics? I noticed the newer version has 1 GB, but I can upgrade the CPU? and add a 2nd HD to boost my performance? Any and all advice is greatly appreciated!
What do you guys suggest for me, I want the best bang for the buck.
Gateway P-7811 FX
200GB @7200rpm/ P8400 @ 2.26GHz/ 4GB DDR3/GeForce 9800m GTS 512MB DDR3

 

Nope, you cannot add a second GPU.

Yes, you can upgrade the CPU. The last time I checked out the Gateway forum, I read that Extreme Dual-Core CPUs cannot be overclocked, and quad-cores are not compatible.

You can add a (similar) 2nd HDD, and RAID 0 them. Or get a SSD. Though this will only improve loading times of apps and large files in photoshop, etc.

If you feel that your system cannot handle the current work-load well (?), then getting a more powerful .DTR or QC|SLI machine will be better.

 

what is .DTR or QC/SLI ?/

 

If you want best bang for buck... you already have it. If you want a bit more performance, i am happy with my t9600 (so far no quad support and can't overclock cpu) i'm not sure how far down the t9800's price has dropped but at the time i got mine, it wasn't worth >$100 for the small performance increase over my t9600. Also I am waiting for the right SSD to bve released at the right price. A decent SSD will slaughter and RAID0 notebook HDDs! OCZ Vertex looks promising...

 

Desktop Replacement or Quad-Core|SLI machine -.-

 

Have u updated ur video drivers yet? that will most definitely be best bang for buck! free and can greatly improve your gpu's performance. stock drivers WoW was hanging in there with ~30-50fps (b4 WotLK) after ~60-100+

 

where do I go? what is the web site?

 

where do I find the drivers NVIDA?

 

Extreme Core 2 Duo CPUs CAN be overclocked in the P-series laptops, but they can-t be clocked higher than 3GHz, meaning your best bet is to get a slower Extreme CPU and clock it way up, rather than buy a fast Extreme CPU, since it won't clock much higher.

Furthermore, as I understand it people still think the 7811FX cannot support quad core, but there's a reported upcoming release of a quad core FX laptop, which may or may not share the same components as the 7811, thus the dialogue on that particular topic is not closed yet.

For video drivers I suggest www.laptopvideo2go.com, it has all the drivers you could ever want. DOX's optimized ones are great if you wanna squeeze out all the performance you can.

 

not sure what I'm doing but I'm downloading Vista64_182.05.exe
what do I do after it's downloaded/ Just follow the prompts?
Will this help boost my GeForce9800M GTS? or is there another driver I should download?