After looking around in the market for a gaming laptop and having looked at the Alienware site numerous times (and sighing every time coz of the price tag), I finally found this beauty being talked about on a forum.
Looking the specs, reviews etc, this machine seemed like the perfect combination of features/price.
Finally I could resist no more and gave in to my urge of owning a gaming laptop (Yahooooo).
The package that I received was pretty large, and had all sorts of manuals, pamphlets etc along with a restore disk as well… hurray to that.
Looks :
After receiving my laptop, I was amazed by this glossy beauty and worried at the same time coz of the thought of being gentle with it and avoid scratches/smudges etc.
(Already smudged
)
The laptop looks cool but in a different sort of a way. It definitely is not alienware cool, but the colour combination of black and orange with blue LED’s does make it stand out from the normal laptops, which it definitely needs to!
The battery standing out from the behind may seem like a point of concern to many, but it does not make any difference to me whatsoever.
Weighing a not-very-light 9 pounds and being a 17 incher, this is NOT an ultra-portable, but it definitely can be carried around with both hands. The FX should appeal to gamers that require a degree of portability without having to sacrifice too much in terms of game play performance.
Keyboard :
It feels like a good full sized PC keyboard, which is great for a laptop. The keys are responsive as well. The only thing which struck me was the placement of the Control key and the Function key. I found myself pressing the Fn key more often than not while playing FPS games. It is a minor annoyance, which one can get used to after a while.
The touchpad is pretty nice as well unlike some of the glossy HP touchpads I’ve seen lately, where using the laptop without a mouse is super-difficult.
Features :
The machine specs are :
· Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T5550
2 MB L2 Cache | 1.83 GHz | 667 MHz FSB
· Intel® PM965 Chipset
· 4096 MB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (2 × 2048)
· 320 GB 5400 RPM SATA hard drive
· NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800M GTS
With 512 MB of GDDR3 Discrete Video Memory
· 17-inch Ultrabright™ WXGA+ TFT (1440 × 900) Display panel
· Windows Vista Home Premium
· High definition audio - 2 channel
· 1.3 Megapixel Webcam
· 8x Multi-Format Dual Layer DVDRW
· 9-cell Lithium-ion battery
Also contains other goodies like 802.11n wireless LAN, Bluetooth 2.0, SD/MMC Card reader etc.
In short, it is full loaded!
Software :
It does come with some bundled trial-ware (crap-ware), like Norton trials and Bigfix security stuff, all of which I uninstalled on the 2nd day (all I did on the first day was drool!)
The OS is the 64-bit version Vista Home Premium. Had thoughts of switching to XP, but for the time being everything seems to be running fine at Max settings, so I haven’t touched anything as yet.
Performance :
Battery : Lets start with the battery life on this one – with continuous gaming, the battery died in around 110 mins. In any case, I never try to run games without connecting the laptop to the power outlet since I don’t want to see any drop in the framerate.
Gaming : Now we’re talking! Here are the stats for some of the
Crysis ( res 1280 * 800, 8x AA, most medium ) : FPS : min 3, max 62, avg : 23.16.
World in Conflict ( res 1440 * 900, med to high) : FPS : min 17, max 64, avg : 52.26
PES 2008 ( 1280 * 720, all maxed ) : FPS : min 59, max 61, avg : 60.30
NFS Pro Street ( 1440 * 900, all maxed) : FPS : min 27, max 42, avg : 36.387
Farcry ( 1440 * 900, all maxed) : FPS : min 55, max : 150, avg : 77.07
All these figures are measured by playing the game for around 5-10 minutes, so for some levels on some games, these numbers might go for a toss. But I can say that except Crysis, none of the other games stuttered even remotely.
Apart from gaming, I haven’t really had time to test other features of the laptop like the webcam, cd/dvd burning etc, so will do that soon. Detailed benchmarks for specific areas like battery life etc can be found on the Zdnet review.
Conclusion :
Apart from a slowish (not entirely slow) processor, the rest of the laptop is just unbeatable. The plus point is that the processor is upgradeable (yet another hurray). Guides for doing that can be found after googling a bit.
Gateway have not been very famous for their gaming laptops, but with the P-6860FX, they have surely set the ball rolling. This is one VFM laptop. Watch out Alienware!
Looking the specs, reviews etc, this machine seemed like the perfect combination of features/price.
Finally I could resist no more and gave in to my urge of owning a gaming laptop (Yahooooo).
The package that I received was pretty large, and had all sorts of manuals, pamphlets etc along with a restore disk as well… hurray to that.
Looks :
After receiving my laptop, I was amazed by this glossy beauty and worried at the same time coz of the thought of being gentle with it and avoid scratches/smudges etc.
(Already smudged
)The laptop looks cool but in a different sort of a way. It definitely is not alienware cool, but the colour combination of black and orange with blue LED’s does make it stand out from the normal laptops, which it definitely needs to!
The battery standing out from the behind may seem like a point of concern to many, but it does not make any difference to me whatsoever.
Weighing a not-very-light 9 pounds and being a 17 incher, this is NOT an ultra-portable, but it definitely can be carried around with both hands. The FX should appeal to gamers that require a degree of portability without having to sacrifice too much in terms of game play performance.
Keyboard :
It feels like a good full sized PC keyboard, which is great for a laptop. The keys are responsive as well. The only thing which struck me was the placement of the Control key and the Function key. I found myself pressing the Fn key more often than not while playing FPS games. It is a minor annoyance, which one can get used to after a while.
The touchpad is pretty nice as well unlike some of the glossy HP touchpads I’ve seen lately, where using the laptop without a mouse is super-difficult.
Features :
The machine specs are :
· Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T5550
2 MB L2 Cache | 1.83 GHz | 667 MHz FSB
· Intel® PM965 Chipset
· 4096 MB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (2 × 2048)
· 320 GB 5400 RPM SATA hard drive
· NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800M GTS
With 512 MB of GDDR3 Discrete Video Memory
· 17-inch Ultrabright™ WXGA+ TFT (1440 × 900) Display panel
· Windows Vista Home Premium
· High definition audio - 2 channel
· 1.3 Megapixel Webcam
· 8x Multi-Format Dual Layer DVDRW
· 9-cell Lithium-ion battery
Also contains other goodies like 802.11n wireless LAN, Bluetooth 2.0, SD/MMC Card reader etc.
In short, it is full loaded!
Software :
It does come with some bundled trial-ware (crap-ware), like Norton trials and Bigfix security stuff, all of which I uninstalled on the 2nd day (all I did on the first day was drool!)
The OS is the 64-bit version Vista Home Premium. Had thoughts of switching to XP, but for the time being everything seems to be running fine at Max settings, so I haven’t touched anything as yet.
Performance :
Battery : Lets start with the battery life on this one – with continuous gaming, the battery died in around 110 mins. In any case, I never try to run games without connecting the laptop to the power outlet since I don’t want to see any drop in the framerate.
Gaming : Now we’re talking! Here are the stats for some of the
Crysis ( res 1280 * 800, 8x AA, most medium ) : FPS : min 3, max 62, avg : 23.16.
World in Conflict ( res 1440 * 900, med to high) : FPS : min 17, max 64, avg : 52.26
PES 2008 ( 1280 * 720, all maxed ) : FPS : min 59, max 61, avg : 60.30
NFS Pro Street ( 1440 * 900, all maxed) : FPS : min 27, max 42, avg : 36.387
Farcry ( 1440 * 900, all maxed) : FPS : min 55, max : 150, avg : 77.07
All these figures are measured by playing the game for around 5-10 minutes, so for some levels on some games, these numbers might go for a toss. But I can say that except Crysis, none of the other games stuttered even remotely.
Apart from gaming, I haven’t really had time to test other features of the laptop like the webcam, cd/dvd burning etc, so will do that soon. Detailed benchmarks for specific areas like battery life etc can be found on the Zdnet review.
Conclusion :
Apart from a slowish (not entirely slow) processor, the rest of the laptop is just unbeatable. The plus point is that the processor is upgradeable (yet another hurray). Guides for doing that can be found after googling a bit.
Gateway have not been very famous for their gaming laptops, but with the P-6860FX, they have surely set the ball rolling. This is one VFM laptop. Watch out Alienware!
