Gateway P-6831FX Gaming Notebook

Name: Gateway P-6831FX Gaming Notebook - Page 8
Brand: Gateway

by Michael Lin — Wednesday, July 02, 2008, 12:00 PM EDT

Gaming Performance

For our first gaming-related benchmarks, we'll look at the Gateway P-6831FX's performance in Futuremark's 3DMark06. We also briefly looked at the P-6831FX's performance in Company of Heroes and Prey.

Performance Comparisons with 3DMark06

Details: www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06

3DMark06

3DMark06 is the most recent addition to the 3DMark franchise. This version differs from 3Dmark05 in a number of ways, and includes not only Shader Model 2.0 tests, but Shader Model 3.0 and HDR tests as well. Some of the assets from 3DMark05 have been re-used, but the scenes are now rendered with much more geometric detail and the shader complexity is vastly increased as well. Max shader length in 3DMark05 was 96 instructions, while 3DMark06 ups that number to 512. 3DMark06 also employs much more lighting and there is extensive use of soft shadows. With 3DMark06, Futuremark has also updated how the final score is tabulated. In this latest version of the benchmark, SM 2.0 and HDR / SM3.0 tests are weighted and the CPU score is factored into the final tally as well.

Here we see a very different story compared to our PCMark Vantage results. The GeForce 8800M GTS finally gets a chance to show us what it can do and it doesn't disappoint. The P-6831FX came in second for the overall score and it also secured the highest score for the Shader Model 3.0 test. The single GeForce 8800M GTS managed to outperform the Toshiba X205, which is equipped with dual GeForce 8600M GTs in SLI. This is just a preview of things to come.

Real-world Gaming Performance

Prey & Company of Heroes Performance

Company of Heroes and Prey were both configured to a high graphical detail setting. Every graphics setting was either turned on or set to "High". Anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering were disabled. The P-6831FX was tested with an external monitor using the HDMI output. This was done since the P-6831FX's screen does not support the resolutions we needed for comparison with the other notebooks. Check out the next page for benchmarks of the P-6831FX at it's native resolution of 1440x900.

Prey is our first real-world gaming test and the P-6831FX posts an amazing score, coming in at first place at both resolutions. Even at a resolution of 1680x1050, the P-6831FX managed to crank out nearly 90fps. Needless to say, Prey is definitely playable on the P-6831FX.

The P-6831FX performed very well in Company of Heroes. It significantly outpaced all of the other notebooks at 1680x1050, including the dual GeForce 8700M GT equipped XPS M1730. While the stress of the higher resolution causes the dual 8700M GTs to take a steep performance hit, the GeForce 8800M GTS is barely effected. Keep in mind that the P-6831FX has the slowest processor of the lot, to really appreciate how powerful the GeForce 8800M GTS under its hood is.

These tests were all conducted with the P-6831FX hooked up to an external monitor to achieve the resolutions we are testing at. Next, we'll see how it performs at it's native resolution.