Lighting the Flame

Back in March, we reviewed what has to be regarded as one of the most well-balanced and affordable gaming notebooks we have ever seen. The Gateway P-6831 FX offered very good gaming performance, keeping pace with some of the heavy hitting boutique laptop vendors. The truly impressive aspect was that Gateway managed to ship all of this in a notebook that cost only $1300.

Their approach was to mass produce a notebook that offered one of the slower Core 2 Duo processors paired up with one of the fastest mobile GPUs. With most games still bottlenecked by graphics performance - particularly on laptops - this was a great move. Sure, a little bit more CPU power would have been nice (and the follow-up P-6860 did increase the CPU from the T5450 to the T5550), but otherwise the P-6831 FX was an excellent design. Besides, if you really wanted CPU performance, you could always go out and purchase your own T8300 and still come out with a total cost much lower than the competition. The result was that we gave to 6831 our Gold Editors' Choice award.

If there was one serious problem with the P-6831, it was availability. That particular model was only available through Best Buy, and while there appeared to be a reasonable number of laptops at launch, the favorable press and amazing price quickly made it difficult to find any in stock. One alternative was to simply shop online and purchase a similarly configured notebook from Gateway, and although the price was a few hundred dollars more you also got some upgrades. TigerDirect.com also carries many Gateway notebooks, including the P-173X FX for $1350, which bumps the processor up to a T7500.

Six months later, Gateway and Best Buy are teaming up again with an upgraded version of the P-6831. We are still working on a larger laptop roundup, but we felt it would be beneficial to alert our readers to the availability of this amazing value sooner rather than later. We will have additional details as part of the roundup; for now, we present some initial benchmark results and an overview of the upgrades.

Citius, Altius, Fortius

The core of the P-7811 is largely the same as the P-6831, at least when looking at the outside. If you want a quick look at the laptop, the appearance is unchanged from the P-6831. Dig into the internals and we find a slew of changes. For one, this is one of the first Centrino 2 laptops that we've tested. While the Centrino name is largely marketing, there's no arguing with the success that Intel achieved with the brand. Centrino 2 essentially consists of an upgraded chipset, one of the latest Penryn processors with a 1066 FSB, and one of the two new Intel WiFi chipsets. Centrino 2 isn't inherently a major upgrade over Centrino, but the P-7811 does change virtually every internal component compared to the P-6831. Below are the feature lists for both laptops.

As mentioned, the new chipset and processor plus the updated wireless adapter are all part of the Centrino 2 branding, which on its own doesn't mean a lot. What's noteworthy is that instead of the T5450 or T5550 (1.67GHz or 1.83GHz respectively, both with 2MB cache and a 667MHz FSB), users now get a P8400. The letter at the front of the processor model number is an indication of the performance family. Right now, the "T" family is your standard Core 2 Duo mobile processors, "L" models are low power processors, the "U" family are the ultra low power chips, "E" processors are the normal desktop models, and "X" are Extreme Edition CPUs. With the launch of Centrino 2, Intel now introduces the "P" family of mobile processors. At first you might think the "P" in P8400 has more to do with the use of a 1066 FSB than anything else, but there are also 1066 FSB parts in the "T" family; the primary difference between "T" and "P" is the TDP (thermal design power). The P8400 comes clocked at 2.26GHz with 3MB shared cache, with a TDP of 25W compared to the 35W of the "T" series mobile Penryn chips. That means it should hopefully offer better battery life, as well as higher performance due to the faster front side bus (at least where clock speed is equal).

The next major upgrade is the use of the GeForce 9800M GTS instead of the now outdated 8800M. The 9800M comes in three flavors: GTS, GT, and GTX; these chips have 64, 96, and 112 SPs respectively. While there are slight differences in core and memory clock speeds, the net result is that the 9800M GTS is roughly equal to the 8800M GTS, and the 9800M GT is roughly equal to the 8800M GTX.  It's not entirely clear whether there was a process technology shift between 8800M and 9800M, or if the new parts are just rebranded 8800M chips.  Regardless, we do see quite a few performance changes with the 9800M GTS compared to the 8800M GTS, which we will get to in a moment.

Another interesting upgrade is the use of DDR3 memory instead of DDR2 memory. This may not actually improve performance much, but the lower operating voltage should help battery life. One of the major complaints we've had with DDR3 on the desktop is that prices were initially extremely high; desktop DDR3 is now at the point where it is starting to become reasonable for the high-end without breaking the bank, but what about on laptops? Since the P-7811 comes as a complete package, we don't have specific information on the price of DDR3 SO-DIMMs, but the total cost remains largely unchanged compared to the earlier P-6831/6860, so we have little reason to complain. Gateway also ships the systems with 2x2GB memory, so unless you're interested in finding 4GB SO-DIMMs you won't have to worry about memory upgrades.

Going along with the increased memory, the P-7811 also comes with Windows Vista 64-bit instead of 32-bit. There are still a few applications that may have difficulty on 64-bit operating systems (Ed: Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I'm talking about you!), and the difference between 3GB of memory on a 32-bit OS and 4GB of memory on a 64-bit OS is very small at best - the added memory space tends to be offset by the increased memory requirements of 64-bit code. Provided you don't intend to use an application that has difficulty in a 64-bit environment, however, we certainly approve of the move to 64-bit operating systems. Besides, how are we going to start getting 64-bit applications if no one runs 64-bit operating systems? (Ed: Yes, I'm feeling a bit bitter about certain 64-bit trends; Adobe, I would really like a 64-bit version of Photoshop!)

The only remaining change that is likely to be immediately noticeable is the upgrade to the LCD panel. If you're like me and you enjoy running a high resolution LCD, the WUXGA (1920x1200) panel will certainly be a welcome addition. If your eyesight isn't great you might have preferred Gateway stick with their WXGA+ (1440x900) panel, but in that case we'll just have to agree to disagree. Besides, you can always run the higher resolution panel at a lower resolution - albeit with some blurriness caused by not running at the native LCD resolution.

The other changes aren't as significant but are still worth a quick mention. There's a switch from a 250GB 5400 RPM drive to a 200GB 7200 RPM drive, and obviously we have the new chipset and wireless adapter that come as part of the Centrino 2 platform. Wrapping all of the changes up, we have a launch price change from $1350 to $1450. You could've convinced some of us (i.e. me for one) to spend the extra $100 just for the higher resolution LCD, so all of the other upgrades we mentioned are merely icing on the cake.

Going for the Gold

For our first look at benchmarks of the P-7811, we thought it would be best to focus on comparisons to Gateway's other FX series laptops. We have earlier results from the P-6831, but since it has such a slow processor we also added results from the upgraded P-171XL. The P-171XL is no longer in production, but it provides a better indication of graphics performance when the CPU is not a bottleneck, as it has a Core 2 Duo X7900 (2.8GHz, 4MB cache) processor. It also ships with two 200GB hard drives in RAID 0, 4GB of RAM (but a 32-bit OS, so only 3GB is visible), and a WUXGA display. It had an initial launch price of $3000, which quickly dropped to $2500, and now it has been replaced by the $2000 MSRP ($1630 at TigerDirect) P-173XL - the primary difference being the inclusion of a T8300 processor instead of the X7900. Here are the three test configurations for this first look at the P-7811.

Note that we won't have all benchmarks on all three laptops; in particular, we no longer have the P-6831 for testing and so we were unable to run some of our latest benchmarks. We were able to run all of our tests on both the P-171XL and the P-7811. We do expect the P-7811 to perform faster in all of the gaming benchmarks, since the 9800M GTS offers more graphics horsepower because of the increased GPU core clocks. Similarly, we expect the P-171XL to outperform the other two configurations in application benchmarks that depend more on CPU and hard drive performance.

200m Gaming Medley

Arguably the more interesting performance results are going to be in games, so we will start here. We have dropped testing for most of the older titles, as discussing Battlefield 2 or FEAR performance doesn't mean a whole lot when we're looking at modern hardware. We've tried for a more varied selection of games this time around, with selections from most major genres.

For the FPS group, we have Crysis, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and Unreal Tournament 3. Real-time strategy gaming is represented by Company of Heroes. Assassin's Creed and Devil May Cry 4 take care of the action-adventure genre, and GRID covers driving simulations - and all three of these also represent recent console ports/cross-platform releases. Finally, we have results from Oblivion and Mass Effect for the RPG lovers like me.

We use built-in performance tests on Company of Heroes, Crysis, Devil May Cry 4, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and Unreal Tournament 3. For Assassin's Creed, GRID, Mass Effect, and Oblivion we benchmark a specific scene using FRAPS. In all tests, we run each benchmark at least four times, discard the top result, and report the highest score of the remaining results.

We will use resolution scaling graphs to compare the different laptop configurations, as that will allow us to examine how the GPU and CPU affect performance. At lower resolutions we should become more CPU limited, while the higher resolutions and detail settings should put more of a bottleneck on the GPU.

Gaming performance is at least equal to the P-6831 in every test, and in several instances the P-7811 is substantially faster. The games where performance is tied are somewhat surprising, as most are considered GPU limited. Crysis is a virtual tie between all three models, indicating that the bottleneck is GPU memory bandwidth rather than GPU shader performance; Quake Wars is also GPU bandwidth limited. In the remaining games, we see everything from a tie at 1280x800 in Assassin's Creed to as much as an 80% lead in the Devil May Cry 4 benchmark at lower resolutions.

The average performance lead of the 7811 over the 171XL in non-bandwidth limited situations does appear to be around 20%, matching the GPU core speed increase, so the 9800M GTS is definitely an improvement. Shader clocks are apparently 1250MHz on all the 8800M/9800M parts, so we would categorize any differences of more than 20% as coming from the drivers and/or 64-bit OS (or perhaps some other hardware difference).

The significantly slower CPU in the 6831 does limit performance at lower resolutions, and it's important to remember that the 6831 ships with a 1440x900 LCD - the other resolutions were tested using an external display just to show how performance scales at higher resolutions. The 171XL has a faster CPU than the 7811, so the performance leads of the 7811 would actually be somewhat higher if the CPUs were equal. Any way you slice it, though, the performance of the 7811 is very impressive for the price. The 9800M GTS does tend to be slightly slower than the 8800M GTX, but only by about 10%. Considering laptops with the 8800M GTX typically cost $2200 or more, the P-7811 is a great follow-up to the P-6831.

4x200m Gaming Relay

We also ran several of the games at higher detail settings to put more of a load on the graphics cards. Not surprisingly, performance often becomes unacceptable at higher resolutions and detail settings with these laptops, depending on the game. The GeForce 9800M GTS may be one of the fastest mobile graphics chips currently available, but it's still slower than a single desktop 9600 GT 512MB because of the more stringent power requirements and lower clock speeds.

As anyone who plays PC games can tell you, there are plenty of titles on the market that will require more than a single graphics chip in order to provide acceptable performance at 1920x1200 - or you'll need an HD 4870 or GTX 280. We'll also include 3DMark results here for reference; we put a lot more stock in gaming performance than in 3DMark results, but at least 3DMark results are easily generated and easily compared.

The patterns on the previous page are continued for the most part, although we now see that Assassin's Creed DX10 also appears to be GPU bandwidth limited. Company of Heroes tends to be too sluggish at higher resolution with DX10, and Crysis is clearly too demanding at High settings. If you want a laptop that can handle all of these games and provide reasonable performance, you'll have to consider the multi-GPU offerings. A more practical approach would probably be to turn down detail settings until you get acceptable performance. For example, Crysis at Medium detail looks very good, and turning down a few of the settings can easily net you performance of over 50 FPS.

Individual All-Around Application Competition

Wrapping things up with our performance testing, we have results from the Futuremark PCMark testing suites as well as some of our own application benchmarking. Since the P-7811 is more of a gaming laptop than a general use laptop, results on the previous two pages take precedence over application performance. That said, when it comes to running your office, multimedia, and Internet tasks, the P-7811 is certainly more than capable.

The results for the application testing are hardly surprising: faster CPUs result in better performance. PCMark is the only suite where HDD performance also plays a significant role, so the P-171XL gets a double bonus over the other laptops with its RAID 0 HDDs. The result is that the 171XL sweeps the application benchmarks.

The other interesting thing to note is that CINEBENCH and PCMark Vantage both support 64-bit operation as well as 32-bit operation. We did run the 64-bit executables and found that performance improved on the P-7811 in both tests. PCMark Vantage shows a 5% advantage for the 64-bit OS, though when we drill down to the individual scores we find that the 64-bit system leads by 5-13% in the TV and Movies, Gaming, Communications, and Productivity suites while the 32-bit version leads by 11% in the Music suite; the HDD and Memories suites are essentially tied. In CINEBENCH, the difference is around 12-13% whether running in single-core or multi-core mode.

We'd really love to see more native 64-bit applications where the user could experience a consistent 5-10% performance increase. We've seen a few specific instances where 64-bit helps out. Hopefully with more OEMs beginning to ship Vista 64-bit (like Gateway with the P-7811 and some of their desktop systems), that day is fast approaching. 4GB memory configurations are also becoming common, and it's pretty pointless to ship with anything more than 3GB without a 64-bit OS.

Mobility Marathon

Cranking out the fastest performance in applications or games is one measure of a good notebook, but honestly it's not the standard by which many users select their laptops. For many, size and weight as well as battery life are going to be the more important areas when purchasing a laptop. Hopefully it's already obvious that the Gateway P-series FX laptops are not going to be great candidates when it comes to size, and battery life is also generally disappointing. Some of the lower-end models ship with integrated graphics and can offer reasonably good battery life, but they're still a very large chassis to lug around. What's more, the battery protrudes about an inch and a half out the rear of the chassis, making the laptop seem even larger. You will definitely want to pay attention to your choice of carrying case if you want to use it with the P-series; we have a couple 17" notebook bags that can't hold these notebooks (even with the battery removed).

Returning to the question we want to answer, does the switch to DDR3 and a P8400 - both of which lower power requirements - have a noticeable impact on battery life and power requirements? Of course, the lower power CPU and memory may be offset by a more power hungry GPU in some cases, but as long as you're not running a 3D application we expect the P-7811 to surpass the previously tested FX notebooks.

Power Requirements

Power draw (measured at the outlet) does indeed drop with the P-7811 relative to the P-6831. The P-171XL really wasn't in the running, given the second hard drive and X7900 CPU. Particularly in the 100% CPU load test, we see a massive benefit from the P8400 and DDR3; the P-7811 uses 13W less than the P-6831 (a 23% difference). In the maximum load test, where we tax both the CPU and GPU, the 7811 does use 9W more than the 6831; that's somewhat expected, however, as you can't generate a maximal GPU load without a faster CPU. In gaming power draw (not shown) the two systems are pretty much tied.

Battery Life

Of course, power requirements when a laptop is plugged in don't necessarily reflect power requirements when a laptop is on battery power. Hardware can provide better performance when plugged in and better battery life when in power saving mode, and the 9800M and P8400 should both provide such an advantage. For our battery life testing, we have now switched to running all laptops at around 100 nits brightness. Differences between displays and brightness adjustments mean we are not always at exactly 100 nits, but the range is 90-110 nits in all cases. If you choose to run your LCD at maximum brightness, you may lose anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes depending on the laptop - the latter is mostly for ultra-mobile options while the former is for gaming notebooks.

In terms of battery life, the P-7811 shows some significant improvements over the 6831 and 171XL. Clearly, the DDR3 and 25W TDP processor are doing their job, with P-7811 battery life improving by up to 58% over the lower performing P-6831. Our three test scenarios test DVD playback, web surfing (using the wireless adapter), and a best-case idle benchmark where we simply unplug the laptop and let it sit. Keep in mind that even light use of the laptop should reduce the battery life from our idle scenario, so it is purely a high water mark.

With the P8400 (and Centrino 2) offering improved deep sleep states over the previous Santa Rosa refresh, the largest improvements are found in the idle test. DVD playback improves by an equally impressive 50%, and Internet surfing improves by 34%. Two and a half hours of battery life for movies or surfing is certainly nothing exceptional compared to some laptops, but for a gaming laptop it's actually one of the best results we've seen.

False Start or Judging Error?

We've had a lot of good things to say about the P-7811, and on paper there's plenty to like. Clearly performance is also good, and for the price there simply aren't any other laptops that can seriously compete right now. What the previous pages haven't told you is that we did have some difficulty with our test laptop, specifically in regards to stability and graphics drivers.

Two of our gaming tests could not be run on the driver that initially shipped with the laptop because of display corruption. Company of Heroes DX10 and the Devil May Cry 4 benchmark (again DX10 mode only) both had completely corrupted colors. Performance in some other titles wasn't quite where we would expect it to be. Even now, we're still not entirely sure about performance in some of the games - are the games GPU bandwidth limited, or is it simply a case of the drivers not being fully optimized yet? Unfortunately, driver difficulties are something you have to deal with on pretty much every gaming laptop out there, and the Gateway P-7811 certainly isn't any worse than the competition.

Complaints about graphics drivers are nothing new, but the stability problems are much more troubling. We continued to have sporadic lockups throughout testing, but tracing down the cause of the lockups is difficult. You see, Gateway provided us with a beta graphics driver to fix our display corruption issues, but beta drivers could also create stability problems. We had the system crash during a gaming test, during the DVD playback battery life test, and once or twice while it was just sitting idle in between testing. (Note that the lockups were not a frequent occurrence; we encountered perhaps five or six during several weeks of testing.)

Besides the beta graphics drivers, there's another potential cause for the lockups. We are testing prerelease hardware, and despite similarities to previous P-series FX notebooks we are dealing with a new motherboard, chipset, and processor. We definitely got the impression that Centrino 2 wasn't entirely ready for prime time at the official launch last month, so the instability we experienced might be related to that. It's entirely possible - even likely - that Gateway just needs to finish a bit of BIOS tuning. We also noticed that the exhaust port for the GPU tended to get hotter than on other FX notebooks, and the fans never seemed to run at maximum speed. Higher temperatures certainly could have contributed to the lockups during gaming, and a minor tweak to address cooling concerns could easily fix the problems.

Given the above concerns, we are not ready to declare the P-7811 an unequivocal success, but we are still very optimistic. We only encountered a few problems during our couple weeks of testing, and for early hardware we're willing to give Gateway the benefit of the doubt. If you're not willing to take a chance - even a small one - you might want to hold off a bit. Then again, if you hold off too long you may find that the P-7811 is no longer in stock, or even in production. All of the upgrades that Gateway provides compared to the earlier P-6831 provide an exceptional value for users looking for a new gaming notebook. Our only other request for Gateway is that the next time they look to revise their gaming laptop lineup, they need to rework the chassis slightly and get rid of the protruding battery. We would be a lot happier with a slightly thicker notebook that can fit in standard 17" laptop bags.

We can't say with a straight face that anyone actually needs a gaming notebook, but if you're in the market and you don't want to break the bank the P-7811 is our current pick for best overall value. If you can't find it in stock, check the Gateway website and TigerDirect for some other options. You might need to spend a bit more money, or a bit less money as well in some cases, but either way Gateway's P-series FX notebooks have a lot of very attractively priced options for mobile gamers.

We are still at work on our laptop roundups, which should hopefully be posted within the next week. In addition to providing the additional testing and results from Gateway's P-7811, we will also provide any updated information about stability and/or BIOS updates.

Update: As mentioned in our Gaming Laptop Roundup, updating the graphics drivers to the hacked 177.92 Vista 64-bit drivers at LaptopVideo2Go.com seems to have cleared up the stability concerns with the P-7811. While the P-6831 FX received a Gold Editors' Choice upon release, the bar has since been raised. The P-7811 makes a lot of meaningful upgrades to the P-6831, but given it uses the Centrino 2 platform, the lack of Hybrid Power as a feature (and the bulky chassis) is no longer something we can wholeheartedly recommend. The price/performance offered is way ahead of the competition, however, so if you don't mind the design or missing features we have no other remaining reservations.