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Gateway P-6831 FX: Best Midrange Gaming Notebook Ever

 by Jarred Walton on March 28, 2008 6:00 AM EST
88 Comments | Add A Comment
88 Comments

Closing Thoughts

We always enjoy reviewing top-end notebooks, as it's exciting to see just how much performance can be packed into a (reasonably) portable package. It's a lot like eyeballing a sports car that you probably won't buy but you can still lust after, or perhaps being lucky enough to take one for a test drive. Who among us doesn't relish the thought of burning rubber Need for Speed style in an exotic sports car? At the end of the day, however, most of us drive home in our Honda Accords, Toyota Camrys, or — gasp! — minivans. (I myself drive around in a Chrysler Sebring.)

Just because you drive a midrange, midsize sedan doesn't necessarily mean you have to sacrifice in all areas, however. It's possible to get a V6, leather interior, and other upgrades, and even if you will never be able to keep pace with the exotic cars of the world you can at least be reasonably content. If gaming laptops were cars, the Gateway P-6831 FX would manage to attract a lot of attention — and deservedly so. Imagine being able to buy a very nice sports car that could compete with the Dodge Viper at one third the cost, and that's what Gateway has released on the market.

If you've ever been interested in a gaming notebook but have decided that the price/performance just can't be justified, now might be a good time to rethink things. Oh sure, there are compromises made — your gas mileage is going to go down, the car may be a bit bulkier and noisier than you'd like, and in a flat-out drag race you will probably get smoked. But as long as you're only competing against the average business notebook, feel free to rev up your 8800M GTS engine and make some people jealous.

When we first saw Gateway's new FX notebook at CES, we were intrigued. Then they told us the expected price and our jaws hit the floor. We have never seen this much relative graphics performance in a notebook for such a low price. If you're into the LAN party scene and you're thinking it's about time to upgrade your aging desktop, it might be time to finally ditch desktops entirely.

The Gateway P-6831 FX isn't perfect by any means. We don't like the fact that the battery juts out from the rear of the notebook, we really would have liked a 1920x1200 LCD option on some of the less expensive models, the one-year warranty is short, and the LCD contrast ratio isn't very good. Like many OEM systems, it also comes preloaded with a ton of bloatware — that's easy enough to uninstall, thankfully. And would it be too much to ask for four audio jacks so we could use 5.1 headphones with a microphone? But that's just us being greedy.
As far as affordable mobile gaming is concerned, there is nothing else out there that can even come close to the Gateway P-6831 FX. PC design — particularly in the midrange market — needs to be optimized for specific uses. Do you want a powerful CPU in order to handle tasks like video encoding, image manipulation, etc. or do you want a more well-rounded design with the ability to play modern games well? In the case of the latter, balance is especially important in regards to the CPU and GPU; a top-end CPU with a lower-end GPU is not going to provide a great gaming experience, but a good GPU with a less expensive CPU could be the perfect combination. More than any other notebook we have tested, Gateway gets the balancing act required to achieve maximum performance at a minimum price. In recognition of this, we present the P-6831 FX with our Gold Editors' Choice Award. Gateway has seriously raised the bar for what can be achieved in a sub-$1500 notebook, and we're excited to see what they come up with next.

Battery Life, Power Use, Temps, and Noise
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  • teknomedic - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link

    Can anyone who has gotten the T5550 proc go to Gateway and enter your serial number and then check out the documentation and let us know if they only list the T5450 info or if they give you the T5550 info?

    I'm trying to figure out if I've got the T5450 or the T5550 before I open the box... of course the box says T5450 and when I enter my serial at gateway I only get the T5450 documentation as well. I also called gateway tech support and that person basically told me that he showed no records of any of these laptops getting the T5550 proc... but he seemed a little "off" to me though and that's of course an incorrect statement.

    TK.

  • teknomedic - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link

    ^^^ also though, I've read on the net (so take with some salt) that gateway released a patch because vista was incorrectly ID'ing the proc as a faster one... is there any merit to this... could we all have the T5450 but it's being miss-ID'd?

  • Che - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link

    My box does say T5450, but I ran CPU-Z and it does identify it as the faster processor. I'll check the serial number later for ya.

  • Che - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link

    I entered my serial # and it does state it was a T5450. Ship date March 08

  • teknomedic - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link

    Thanks for doing that... I decided to just open my box.. figured I'd be upgrading the CPU anyway later... and... got the faster T5550. ;)

    So I guess there really is no way to know what you've got until you turn on the PC.

    My PC has a ship date of March 13th and I got the T5550 @ 1.83Ghz... of course now my wife is jealous so we had to buy one for her as well. Her ship date was March 4th... haven't opened the box yet... but will report what she has when we do. Both computers were bought at Best Buy.

  • teknomedic - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link

    quick update...

    My wife's laptop with a ship date of March 4th ended up having the slower T5450 proc... Also, both laptops have a strange "buzz" or audio distortion of the right speaker while playing some games (mostly Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath).

    Also, I find the proc debate mute now since the P-6860 is coming out... if you can wait a week or so everyone here should now buy the P-6860... it's still only $1349 but gets a few nice upgrades such as the faster T5550 proc, 4GB RAM and a 320GB HDD with Vista 64bit.

  • JarredWalton - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link

    ASUS makes good notebooks, and the F3kA you linked is reasonable. Still, the 8800M GTS is probably 2 to 3 times more powerful than the Mobility HD 2600. You can run the Quake 4, Crysis, UT3, and Bioshock gaming tests quite easily if you want to compare. Same goes for CINEBENCH, 3DMark, and PCMark.

    I think the ASUS might be a better laptop in terms of battery life (it depends on the battery size), but the GPU, CPU, and LCD are all worse than the P-6831. $900 is a fair price for what you get, though.

  • Fant - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link

    I wished Anandtech would have compared the performance of this gateway to a few other laptops such as the $1500 Dell XPS M1530 which comes with c2d, 4gb, 8600Mgt as well as a MBP running XP (via bootcamp) since it also comes with c2d and 8600MGT.

  • ap90033 - Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - link

    Wow 8600M GT? I had one of those Dells, I SENT IT BACK. It was HORRIBLE for gaming. Seriously, it would be embarrassing for the Dell...

  • predatorramboxxx - Sunday, March 30, 2008 - link

    all of them now have 1.83 or 1.86 check notebook review if you do not believe me.
    mine came with 1.83 from bestbuy

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