Gaming Laptop Roundup

Gateway FX P-Series

We have already looked at the Gateway P-6831 and its replacement, the P-7811. We also looked at performance of the P-171XL in comparison to the other two models. Of those three laptops, only one is still in production: the P-7811. That's good, because it just so happens that the P-7811 is probably the most desirable of those three models. Unfortunately, as we discussed in our first look, there appear to be some bias tuning issues that still need to be corrected. We had hoped to receive an updated BIOS from Gateway by this point in time, but that hasn't happened. For more details, you should refer to our initial P-7811 review.

We don't feel there's any real need to retread old ground here, but we did take some additional time to dissect the P-7811/P-171XL, and you can see the process in the above image gallery. Getting out the hard drive, memory, and CPU is every bit as easy here as it was in the Alienware m15x. We were also able to find a support manual on Gateway's website that allowed us to continue dismantling the notebook, which would be necessary if you want to do something like access the GPU MXM module.

Given that the graphics card modules on all four laptops were looking at today appeared to be identical in terms of layout and size, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine a future where we can actually upgrade laptop graphics cards the same way we upgrade our desktop systems. There are two things holding us back right now; the first is that no one currently sells upgraded MXM modules, naturally. The reason no one does this, however, is that there are apparently enough video and system BIOS changes that swapping modules at present isn't likely to work. We asked and NVIDIA about this and they said they are working on addressing the situation, particularly now that MXM module sizes appear to have standardized. We can only hope that they manage to do this sooner rather than later, because that's one of the holy grails of laptop design: upgradable mobile graphics. We have some two-year old laptops that are able to compete very well in terms of performance in everything except games; all they really need is a $300-$500 GPU upgrade and they could easily match the gaming performance of the m15x and P-7811.

One last area to discuss with the Gateway FX notebooks is the customization options. Essentially, there aren't any; instead Gateway offers several different models that all use the same basic design. The P-6831, 6860, 170XL, 171XL, 172XL, and now the 173XL all use the same basic design, including the GeForce 8800M GTS. (We might have missed a couple other models as well....) Where they differ is in LCD panel, CPU, memory, hard drive(s), and operating system. The P-7811 is the latest addition to the P-series FX lineup, and although it does use the same chassis it has a new motherboard and chipset. We don't know when it will happen, but we can practically guarantee that Gateway will have additional notebooks that use this Centrino 2 platform and feature upgraded CPUs and/or hard drives. Hopefully they can work out any remaining bugs with the BIOS first, but considering how much better the battery life appears to be with Centrino 2, that change is something many people will want sooner rather than later.

The Gateway P-series laptops aren't necessarily the best laptops we've ever tested; in fact, there are aspects of the laptop that we really dislike, for example the protruding battery. The glossy black plastic is also something that we could do without, since it just seems to show fingerprints. While we could come up with other complaints, however, all of these fall by the wayside when we look at the price. You can achieve approximately 93% of the performance of the Alienware m15x in games for one-third the price, and that's a compelling argument.

Update: I decided to go ahead and try changing the graphics drivers. Formerly, I was running 176.02 beta drivers from Gateway, which fixed a problem with DX10 mode in Company of Heroes and the Devil May Cry 4 benchmark. The funny thing about beta drivers is that it's impossible to tell of system instability comes from the drivers or from the system itself. Well, after running all sorts of test scenarios over the weekend, I have not seen any additional crashes on the P-7811 FX, so I'm willing to declare it as stable as any of the other notebooks. I should also note that I used the latest hacked drivers off of LaptopVideo2Go.com, specifically the 177.92 Vista 64-bit drivers. I have not had time to retest performance on all of the games, and it's very possible the hacked drivers have reduced performance in some titles. However, I didn't notice anything off hand, so unless you have other concerns with the P-7811 FX, this is definitely the gaming laptop I would recommend for most people.