(Credit:
Best Buy)
We don't normally concern ourselves with what big retail stores put on sale every week--after all, they spend enough money to advertise their wares, they certainly don't need our help.
But while flipping through the Sunday sales circulars in the New York Times, we spotted the recently reviewed Gateway P-7811FX laptop in the Best Buy ad. We loved the latest version on Gateway's bargain-priced gaming rig enough to give it an Editors' Choice award--but we did grouse that at $1,450, it was about $100 more than previous versions.
For this week, at least, the P-7811FX is on sale for $1,249, which is a great deal for an Intel P8400 CPU, 4GB of RAM, a 1,920x1,200 17-inch display, and Nvidia's new GeForce 9800 graphics card.
The ad even promises a free PC game (up to $49.99), so you can show off Crysis on a laptop that can actually play it. That being said, we'd avoid the PC game bundled in the newspaper circular--we probably don't need a GeForce 9800 to play James Patterson's Women's Murder Club. ... Read more
Gateway's P-7811FX.
We've just crowned Gateway's P-7811FX the favorite $1,000-plus system in our Back-to-School roundup of laptops available on retail store shelves. Its particularly strong showing reminds us that every once in a while, a new product comes along that forces you to reconsider the conventional wisdom about what computer hardware should cost. (A prime example being how the new netbook category has redefined small, low-power laptops from $2,000-plus executive toys to sub-$500 impulse purchases.)
PC gaming, despite the lack of action on the software side lately, has been the one reliable area where manufacturers could get away with charging premium prices for premium products. Gaming rigs easily hit the $5,000 mark, but were stuffed with high-end components that delivered unbeatable performance.
Earlier this year, we saw a few 17-inch gaming laptops that managed to offer a decent gaming experience for a lot less than we'd been used to paying. Gateway's 6860FX and the 6831FX both included the then-new Nvidia GeForce 8800 graphics card for around $1,350 -- which we found more than a little mind-blowing at the time. Of course, there were some serious compromises to be made. The older CPUs in those systems were far from high-end, and even the 17-inch displays were cheap -- using a lower 1,440x900 resolution.
We expected more of the same from the latest budget Gateway gaming laptop, the $1,449 P-7811FX, which was just released (and reviewed) this month. Instead, we found that most of our issues with the previous models in the series had been fixed.
Besides sporting a new Nvidia GeForce 9800 graphic card, the processor has been upgraded up to a Centrino 2 Intel Core 2 Duo P8400--not the very top of the line, but close, and more importantly, the screen resolution has been bumped up to 1,920x1,200. Taken as a whole, that makes this new Gateway an excellent value for even high-end PC gamers (it pumped out around 60 frames per second in Unreal Tournament III at 1,920x1,200).
This leads us to wonder if there's room for high-end expensive gaming laptops any more. Are marginal increases in frame rates worth paying three or four times as much?
The only system we've looked at recently that comes close as a gaming rig is one we're testing right now. The new Alienware m17x, at well north of $5,000, pulls out all the stops, going for twin GeForce 9800 cards, the very top-of-the-line Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 CPU, and two 500GB hard drives. But beyond that, you're mostly paying for extras such as a light-up keyboard and fancy flush touchpad.
To be fair, the Alienware m17x topped 100 frames per second in the same test, and also beat the Gateway (and everyone else) in our other benchmark tests (but not by a huge margin). But can most gamers tell the difference between 60fps and 100fps at 1,920x1,200 resolutions? Do they even care? Or are specialty gaming laptops doomed to become rare, ultra-expensive status symbols, produced in extremely limited numbers?
The Gateway P-7811FX is a deal of a desktop replacement.
Students can certainly find a suitable laptop for general campus use for less than $1,000. Of the retail models we've reviewed this summer, we'd point you to the $979 Dell Studio 1535, the $799 Gateway T-6836, or the $679 Sony Vaio NR430 . Of course, with Apple's education discount, the entry-level MacBook costs only $999--a campus favorite and one we endorse (we reviewed the higher-end black MacBook after the last update). The higher-priced laptops you'll see on retail shelves are a specialized lot, by and large. You'll see big, feature-packed 16- and 17-inch models that are better bets for consuming media at your desk than tossing in your backpack as you head to class, while the addition of a Blu-ray drive turns the otherwise mainstream 15-inch Pavilion dv5-1015nr into a tony $1,249 system.
Therefore, choosing an overall favorite among this high-end group isn't has clear cut as it was with the budget and mainstream back-to-school laptop groups. Yet, the Gateway P-7811FX stands out. You simply won't find a better deal on a desktop replacement. For a very reasonable $1,449, this 17-inch laptop serves up a very fine 1920x1200-pixel resolution and combines Intel's latest Centrino 2 mobile platform with high-end Nvidia GeForce graphics. It offers all-around excellent performance, including very playable 3D framerates. Our only gripes are minor: it lacks Bluetooth, and, well, given its native resolution, a Blu-ray drive would be nice.
Runner-up: the HP Pavilion dv7-1025nr, another fully loaded Centrino 2 desktop replacement. It trades some graphics horsepower for a slightly better look than the Gateway P-7811FX, while knocking $150 off the price.
See more laptops in CNET's back-to-school gift guide.
Gateway's new P-7811FX.
We've been waiting for August 14 to roll around so we could tell you about Gateway's new budget-minded gaming rig, the P-7811FX.
After all, we're big fans of the high-power, low-price 17-inch laptops Gateway's been putting out this year as Best Buy exclusives, offering Nvidia's powerful GeForce 8800 GPU for a mere $1,350 (or less, depending on retail discounts). Even though new products like this usually leak beforehand, it was a surprise to see the new system posted on Best Buy's Web site today, a day early.
It's a good thing, too, as the new P-7811FX manages to fix most of the issues we had with the earlier Gateway budget gaming laptops. It bumps the processor (previously a middling Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 or T5500) all the way up to a Centrino 2 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo P8400, adds Nvidia's new GeForce 9800M GTS graphics card, and takes the screen resolution from 1,440x900 to 1,920x1,200.
The new P-7811FX does cost a about $100 more than the previous models (the 6860FX and the 6831FX), and is currently listed at $1,449 on Best Buy's Web site, but it still seems like a bargain, and is easily on par with the high-end gaming laptops Gateway has been offering recently (such as the $3,000 P-171XL FX).
We don't know how they do it, but for PC gamers on a budget, we can't think of a better deal on laptop right now. Stay tuned for a full review of the Gateway P-7811FX.
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