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FAQ/Mod/Upgrade/Support Thread: GATEWAY P-6831 FX\ P-171S/X/XL FX - Page 2

post #21 of 165
2/14/08 at 5:14am
Thread Starter 
I put in a Samsung WUXGA LTN170WU-L03
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post #22 of 165
2/14/08 at 10:26am
What did you pay for it and where did you get it?
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post #23 of 165
2/14/08 at 1:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by BuZZfgo View Post
Said the hell with it and canceled my order... went to best buy and picked up my own P-6831FX. Best Buy does price matching and it goes on sale this weekend for $1199.

I would like to say the screen is really bad however. Ton of light leakage. What screen did you replace it with? I think that will be my first upgrade. It's so bad the windows task bar looks all washed out. But for $1199.......
Yes , but, for $1199, with that kinda problem (the Screen Leakage) $1199 is WAY over priced, and a rip-off as far as I'm concerned , you shouldn't have to upgrade or replace ANYTHING for that price tag, in about 6 months to a yr. it will probably be sold for around the $800 to $700 price tag range, witch is probably all it's worth anyway
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post #24 of 165
2/14/08 at 2:50pm
For the GPU alone it costs probably $500 already. So, I don't think it's going to go for that low anytime in the future.
And, this is not a rip-off. It's a great bargain. Where else can you find a 17" with a 512MB 8800GTS lappy that costs this much? Show me, I'd appreciate it.
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post #25 of 165
2/14/08 at 3:56pm
I agree - the only reason I bought this model was for the great GPU. Everything else in it is socketed or replaceable anyway.

I've already replaced the hard drive with faster drives (2x200gb, 7,200 rpmers), and am about to replace the CPU with a faster one (T9300).

I have a 1,920x1,200 Dell screen that I have laying around (pulled from a Dell Inspiron 9400) that I might to try swapping out as well to fix the screen issue (the stock screen isn't really that bad - It's not great - but it's not that bad).
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post #26 of 165
2/14/08 at 4:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DVSman View Post
I agree - the only reason I bought this model was for the great GPU. Everything else in it is socketed or replaceable anyway.

I've already replaced the hard drive with faster drives (2x200gb, 7,200 rpmers), and am about to replace the CPU with a faster one (T9300).

I have a 1,920x1,200 Dell screen that I have laying around (pulled from a Dell Inspiron 9400) that I might to try swapping out as well to fix the screen issue (the stock screen isn't really that bad - It's not great - but it's not that bad).
The point I was trying to make is: you shouldn't have to upgrade or replace ANYTHING , the fact that you do ,makes it LESS of a value
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post #27 of 165
2/14/08 at 4:28pm
He's right about the GPU though. Find the next cheapest laptop with an Nvidia 8800GTS and you're going to spend $1,000 more for it. Unless the leakage is horrible I can live with it for $1,000!
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post #28 of 165
2/14/08 at 4:37pm
The point is, for $280 to buy a screen added to the $1190 say... $250 to up the cpu. Thats $1720. The same laptop to buy from Gateway would be well over $2k and Dell... $3k easy.

This is the perfect laptop for people that want to upgrade things. Yeah the lcd that it came with sucks, but I'm sure if I pushed I could have a one that doesn't bleed so much. But I never wanted to keep it anyway. So why bother.
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post #29 of 165
2/14/08 at 4:55pm
It's the same with my Gateway 22" LCD. A lot of reviews I read complained of bleeding, but when I got mine it was fine. Frankly I'm not anticipating any problems with mine at all. And if I do I'll make Gateway fix it.
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post #30 of 165
2/14/08 at 5:35pm
Thread Starter 
This laptop just begs to be upgraded. I kind of see it as a barebones laptop straight from Best Buy and it is a lot more fun building your laptop to the specs you want rather than going to a website and having it built for you. As far as I know Gateway doesn't do custom configs and if you want to make it a cheaper upgrade, you can sell the stock parts to get some money back.

For those to plan on doing all the upgrades like me, make sure you stress test the hell out of all the stock components first to make sure everything is fully stable since you will be out of warranty. If you do sell your stock parts, you won't be able to return it back to stock for a warranty claim if necessary.

By the way, the wuxga screen I have now is from a Dell so they should work fine. I'd also appreciate it if we keep this thread about modding and upgrading and support about modding and upgrading so we can extract the full potential of these laptops for the enthusiasts. Everything else probably doesn't belong in this specific thread so people can use it for info only.
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post #31 of 165
2/14/08 at 5:42pm
Thread Starter 
For those who are looking for a reputable store that sells CPU upgrades, newegg has a selection of Socket P CPUs. For now they currently stock Merom procs but I'm sure they'll get the Penryn series soon. You can check with them until they do.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&name=Socket+P
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post #32 of 165
2/14/08 at 8:04pm
Well put. Are you running Vista or XP? If XP where did you get drivers? Vista is quickly pissing me off.
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post #33 of 165
2/14/08 at 8:42pm
Thread Starter 
To be honest, ever since Vista came out a full year ago I haven't looked back to XP. I guess if you play around with vista and do some tweaks it runs without excessive problems.

I would think XP would piss you off more with the lack of drivers with this machine.
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post #34 of 165
2/14/08 at 9:09pm
They've got XP drivers for everything but audio at this point, correct? I guess if Vista pissed me off too bad I could always get a PCMCIA slot Audigy card or something. I'm going to try to give Vista an honest try though. Which could be tough given I've been using Leopard...
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post #35 of 165
2/14/08 at 9:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spinitch View Post
To be honest, ever since Vista came out a full year ago I haven't looked back to XP. I guess if you play around with vista and do some tweaks it runs without excessive problems.

I would think XP would piss you off more with the lack of drivers with this machine.

True that. Any sites you like with tweaks for vista?
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post #36 of 165
2/14/08 at 9:25pm
Thread Starter 
One of the first things I do is to change the performance options under system properties/advance. I have everything unchecked except:

-Slide taskbar buttons
-Use a background image for each folder type
-Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop
-Use visual styles on windows and buttons

That basically takes away the aero feature but it still looks good without.


Then I remove the most annoying feature, I turn User Account Control off. Some other tweaks I do is to turn off remote access, system restore and I reduce the size of the recycle bin to 1GB/1000MB.

I then install ccleaner to clean up the startup programs. Only thing I have on startup is my antivirus, touchpad driver (synaptics), and intel storage manager.

Tweakvista.com has a good services tweak guide:
http://www.tweakvista.com/article38662.aspx

These are all my personal preferences so I won't say it's the best setup but so far Vista has been running great for me. With the right video drivers I score the same as XP on most benchmarks.
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post #37 of 165
2/15/08 at 10:16am
Are you using stock drivers for your FX?
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post #38 of 165
2/15/08 at 5:02pm
Thread Starter 
I'm using laptopvideo2go.com 169.09 drivers
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post #39 of 165
2/16/08 at 5:10pm
I got the 160.28 running... seems to be pretty good.
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post #40 of 165
2/20/08 at 9:31pm
Upgrades done - 15 minutes of work yeilded a TON of performance. 3dMark06 at 1280x800 scored 8500 flat. Upgrades from stock listed in sig, and next upgrade will be to a WUXGA screen.

I'm still bound by memory score in the Windows Experience Index - mem is 4.8. CPU is next lowest at 5.3, disk and graphics are all 58 or 5.9. All in all, awesome performance from a sub-2k laptop.

I'll still be working on the full conversion to 64bit, just to see what happens,

Spinitch, thank you for all of your trailblazing on this system. I would have missed the numbering on the CPU screws if you hadn't pointed them out.
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