Gateway P-6860FX Laptop

I bought this computer as a refurb from Tiger Direct and have been nothing but impressed by it. It plows though all my gaming on max settings and barely ever hicups. Some applications can be slightly delayed on opening, especially when running multiple apps, most likely due to the processor. This however is a very minor quibble and is the obvious trade off for a powerful graphic card. A major plus is the CPU is easily upgraded, but you must ensure you get the right processor for the job, such as a T9300. However this would also void your warranty so beware!! Overall a very impressive machine

I have been using both PC and MAC for years. I had a macbook and wanted a bigger laptop. Looked at the Macbook Pro and a price tag of $2700.00, No way. I got lucky and got this at my local Best Buy for $892.00. 1/3 of the price of Macbook pro .
I must admit, the first thing I did is to reinstall Vista w/o any gateway crap. Some tweaking to Vista and laptop is super fast and stable. You can even upgrade the processor on this laptop in the future. If you want to play games, disable vista aero and your antivirus. also use a USB disk drive or SD card for readyboost and this thing will run all your games.

Caught on sale for $300 under retail. More expandability than even my initial research showed, including a additional hard drive bay and empty mini-PCI slot.

Gateway has been terrible. Never again will I buy a gateway. Gave me the run around took my money and gave me a terrible computer that didn't work from day one. BEWARE OF GATEWAY!!!!!!!

I’ve done my Research on the Gateway p-6860FX Gaming laptop. I hoping this review will help anyone else looking to buy this awesome laptop.

I will go with the Pros first:
1. 17 Inch Screen
2. Geforce 8800m Gts
3. B,G,A,N and Bluetooth 2.0 Wireless
4. 4 GB Ram
5. Maybe not the fastest Processer at 1.83 GHz, but at least as fast if not faster than my 2.8 GHz PD
6. Webcam and Mic
7. 320 GB Hard drive
8. Esata, HDMI, Vga, Gigabit Ethernet, Media Card Reader
9. Not very heavy if you carry in backpack
10. Number Pad next to keyboard
11. Hard switch for Wi-Fi
12. Large Track Pad with up and down and left to right scroll
13. It stays relatively cool because it has a large heat sink for both CPU and gpu.
14. The bottom does not get hot for regular use, but when playing Crysis or any other intensive game it can start to get hot.
15. Even when you are playing Crysis there is not much CPU heat, but there is tons of gpu heat. (Outside the laptop, not inside)

Now for Games:
1. COD4: Everything Maxed Out (never below 30 FPS)
2. Crysis: With first patch

DX10 1024x768, AA=No AA, Vsync=Disabled, 32 bit test, FullScreen
VolumetricEffects=High
Texture=VeryHigh
ObjectDetail=Medium
Sound=VeryHigh
Shadows=High
Water=VeryHigh
Physics=High
Particles=VeryHigh
Shading=High
PostProcessing=Medium
GameEffects=High

If you upgraded the processer to the 2.5 GHz then you probably could get everything at very high next to shaders and object quality and maybe shadows.

With all of those settings turned on I get 25 – 35 FPS (Frames per Second) in open and 15 to 25 Fps in Fights.


Word in Conflict Demo:

With the resolution set to highest and everything else set to very high I would get around 25-30 FPS unless you zoom down into the fight then you get around 10-15 FPS.

Any other game you play will be on max graphics unless you go to a super high resolution like 1920x1200.

Hard drive Speed:
31.2 MB/s (Min) 60.4 MB/s (Max) 48.2MB (AVG) for around 3 min testing using HD Tune.

Super Pi: (1)1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU against (2)2.8 GHz Pentium D CPU

128K: (1) 2 sec (2) 4 sec
1 Million: (1) 31 sec (2) 46 sec
32 Million: (1) 27 min 35 sec (2) 38min 18 sec

Wireless Range with D-Link DIR-625 N Router:
40 Feet away though a floor and two walls. 4 Bars sometimes changing to 5, but I think this is not connected to N. So if it was then it would get even longer range.

Battery Life:
Battery Life is okay considering what’s inside this laptop. Playing the game Warrock lasted 1 hour and 15 min on max performance. Surfing the web would last over two hours depending on performance level and screen brightness.

Power usage: Max Performance / Screen brightness all the way up / Wi-Fi on

Just typing a Word Doc: (48 watts)
Playing Crysis: (102 watts)

Now For the Bad:
1. The Keyboard: (The shift key is too small and the arrow keys are right next to it; so when I type, I push the up arrow instead of shift. Also the Fn key is where the Ctrl key should be and you can’t reprogram the Fn key for games.
2. The Screen: Compared to my Dell 2007FP 20 inch monitor, its does not look very good. All of the colors are washed out and the screen seems too bright.
3. Has to be polished to keep looking nice. Attracts finger prints easily.
4. Web Cam: Color is off and is laggy using Skype.
5. Microphone: Needs to be more sensitive
6. Mic Jack: Even though it recognized something being plugged into the Mic jack, it did not work. (Would just use internal Mic.)

Overall this laptop is great and half of the problems can be easily fixed as long as you’re not on the go. For $1250 with free game and 2 years no interest you can’t beat it.
For some more great info on the laptop similar to this, go here: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mobile/2008/gateway-p6831fx/gateway-p6831fx-view-back.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx%3Fi%3D3273%26p%3D3%26cp%3D2&h=493&w=1920&sz=103&hl=en&start=139&sig2=6f_-zjnsFdHIYqKLV_xl9g&um=1&tbnid=SOtMcvsYAUL_wM:&tbnh=39&tbnw=150&ei=gsgoSP7RMoaWigHdrdTtCA&# 38;prev=/images%3Fq%3DP-6860FX%26start%3D126%26ndsp%3D21%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dcom.google:en-US:official%26sa%3DN:

I just bought this laptop today and although I haven't gotten the chance to install too many games on it, I can say that the games that I did manage to install ran very smoothly. However, I found that starting the computer up was very tedious. It took a long time to load and there was a ton of bloatware from NetZero to a freaking eBay shortcut on my desktop... But all this can be removed easily of course. It's got a fair price and Best Buy offers you a free game when you buy it (I chose Crysis). I thought Vista was very confusing though. I didn't like how the Add/Remove Programs was taken out of the Control Panel.

After trying to run World Of Warcraft on a non-gamer laptop for much of a year, with 16FPS on a reallly good day, I just bought this laptop last week. In WoW, at 1400 x900 with everything turned up, I'm getting 60FPS.. better than my desktop! I love it. Good gosh I hate those red numeric keys though. Not enough contrast, hard to see them unless in fully-lit room. I'm going to either swap them out, or get a little bendy USB light for now to shine down on them.

I doubt you're going to get 90-125 FPS in Crysis w/"Very High" settings, but what I did load, and benchmark, are:
3DMark 06, Default settings = 7424 3DMarks (that's only 1000 less than my 2.5Ghz, 8800GTS 640MB desktop!)
Supreme Commander:
1400x900, All settings on high, 4X AA, averaged 24 FPS.
On the default settings, resolution @ 1400x900, same
result; 24FPS. Seems to be CPU limited.
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts:
All tests done at native resolution of 1400X900.
DX 9, default settings = 58.8 PFS.
DX 9, all settings high except for low shadows = 55 FPS.
DX10, All settings at default = 36.9 FPS.
DX 10, All settings on high except for low shadows = 27 FPS
Could be a driver issue with DX 10
Though CPU limited, for $1350 (as of May 08), it's a darn good performer. I did some looking and for that price I could get a faster processor, but would have to sacrifice the graphics to a 2nd or even 3rd tier card. That you can upgrade the processor yourself only adds to the value.