Digital Trends

Gateway P-171XL FX Edition January 14th, 2008 | by Josh Norem

Features and Design

Gateway has had FX-series desktops for some time now, and they are the company’s line of gaming products. The FX notebook is new however, and is the company’s first attempt to compete in the gaming notebook market.

The Chassis

The chassis is made of plastic and features a burnt orange and black motif with hints of faux carbon fiber sprinkled around for effect. The faux carbon is on both the lid and the palm rest, with a burnt orange colored ring encircling the middle of the chassis.

The CPU (processor)

Mobile processors are now starting to become clocked up to speeds similar to those found on the desktop, and that’s definitely the case with the P-171, which has a Core 2 Extreme processor running at 2.8GHz. For those at home, this is the fastest mobile processor available and runs on an 800MHz FSB with 4MB of L2 cache. And since it’s an “Extreme” processor, it can even be overclocked since its multiplier is unlocked!

The GPU (video card)

The P-171 sports NVIDIA’s newest mobile processor, which is the first GPU for notebooks to support DirectX 10. It’s called the 8800M GTS and has 512MB of GDDR3 memory. Before you get your hopes up too high though, keep it in mind it only has 64 stream processors, but then again this is a mobile part so some performance neutering is required due to thermal considerations.

Wireless

Since this is a “Santa Rose” chipset system, the P-171 has the latest in wireless tech, including Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth support and of course, Draft-N Wireless. Though the N spec isn’t totally set in stone yet, we’ve already seen it deliver amazing improvements in file transfer speeds both wired and wirelessly. 

Storage

Like the Alienware M9750  we recently reviewed, the P-171 sports two hard drives striped together into a 400GB RAID 0 array. The drives are the 7,200rpm variety too, which are the fastest notebook hard drives available. RAID 0 theoretically improves data transfer rates since both drives work in tandem, which cuts each drive’s workload in half. The bad news is each driver has exactly half the data so if one drive fails, all the data is lost.

The Display

The P-171 features a gorgeous 17” display that runs at a sky-high 1920x1200 native resolution. It has a widescreen 16:10 aspect ration and a matte finish (non-glossy) to reduce glare. 

Image Courtesy of Gateway

Fancy Buttons

There is a row of quick-access media buttons that glow orange below the keyboard. They handle media functions such as stop, start, fast-forward and so forth. You can also mute and un-mute the volume, and adjust the volume using touch-sensitive buttons.

Touch-sensitive Media controls

Ports and Connectors

The P-171 has a slew of connectors, including our old favorites and some new ones.

Here we see a 5-in-1 media reader, headphone, mic, FireWire, USB, Ethernet, HDMI, eSATA and VGA-out.

The left-side includes an HD DVD combo drive, two more USB, and a Kensington lock.

The rear of the unit simply holds the extra-large 9-cell battery, AC adapter and 56k modem.

Software

The P-171 comes with Vista Home Premium for the operating system. As for pre-installed software, you get the standard Gateway fare of BigFix, Napster, Google Desktop, MS Works and CyberLink software for burning CDs and making CD labels. You also get a bunch of trialware including AOL, Norton, Office 2007, and Netzero.