Digital Trends

Gateway FX7020

January 24th, 2008 | by Josh Norem

Windows

This system’s Windows Experience Index score is a surprising 5.7, which is almost a perfect score as the scale tops out at 5.9. With its quad-core processor, 3GB of RAM and 8800 GT it’s obviously an extremely capable machine for day-to-day computing tasks, and we experienced no slow-downs or issues using Windows. 

One thing we liked very much is how quiet the system is when not under an extreme load. The CPU cooler and lone case fan are dead quiet and totally inaudible. As soon as we put a load on the processor the CPU fan spins up a bit, but a few seconds after we reduced the CPU usage the fan would spin back down and resume its quiet state.

As far as the pre-installed software goes, our main beef is this “gaming” system has the same software payload as any other Gateway PC, which is unfortunate. Gateway should know that gamers don’t want a bunch of pre-installed “craplets” on their PCs, and ship their gaming machines with just Windows and anti-virus software other than Norton.

Miscellaneous Cool Stuff

Yes, we know we just got done complaining about pre-installed software, but we did like the Labelflash program, which lets you create custom labels for CD/DVDs and their cases. We made a label for a DVD but couldn’t burn it onto the disc since we didn’t have any Labelflash media lying around.

You can burn images and text onto the tops of special Labelflash media, if you have said media.

Also, the 15-in-1 digital media reader has a “copy now” button on it that is very cool. You insert the media, press the button, and it begins copying all the photos from your card directly into the Pictures folder. It’s a very useful feature, and one that we had not seen before on a PC.

Also, the 15-in-1 digital media reader has a “copy now” button on it that is very cool. You insert the media, press the button, and it begins copying all the photos from your card directly into the Pictures folder. It’s a very useful feature, and one that we had not seen before on a PC.

Conclusion

The FX7020 is certainly a better-than-average computer, and its pricing is extremely competitive. This is essentially the same pattern we saw with the FX notebook, which was also very powerful and aggressively priced. Our only major gripe with the FX7020 is that although Gateway took the time to make this system look like a gaming machine on the outside, it took no effort whatsoever to differentiate it from any other Gateway in terms of the software installation. As it stands its an extremely capable machine with a very attractive price tag.

Pros:

• Quiet
• Great performance for the price
• Very affordable
• Media Card Reader

Cons:

• Doesn’t stand apart from other Gateway systems
• Videocard gets extremely hot
• Keyboard and mouse are boring
• Comes with too many pre-installed programs