Gateway FX6800-01e

By Joel Santo Domingo

The Gateway FX6800-01e ($1,249.99 list) is clearly going after the gamer on a budget. It's a bit more expensive than sub-$800 gaming boxes like the , but the FX6800-01e can play today's games a whole lot better. There are a few tremendous innovations in the FX6800-01e, and its performance is stellar for its price. A couple of niggling details keep it from besting the $2,000 gaming PCs, but if you're someone who upgrades by buying a whole new system every few years, the FX6800-01e will rock your world.

The FX6800-01e is equipped with one of the new Intel Core i7-920 processors, a quad-core processor with Hyper-Threading technology. In practice, this means that the i7-920 is capable of processing up to eight streams simultaneously, a plus when you're doing multimedia work or playing multithreaded games when they are available (games are only now just starting to support dual-thread; future games will be much more multithreaded). The Core i7 family is Intel's latest set of CPUs, with the second iteration of 45nm technology (code-named Nehalem). Along with the Core i7-920, the FX6800-01e is equipped with a single 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card. The Radeon 4850 is ATI's most recent mainstream gaming card, so both the CPU and graphics card can be considered "gaming/performance oriented."


The system has the same chassis as the Gateway XL series, but in a different color (silver and blue as opposed to orange with bronze accents). The FX6800-01e's chassis includes a pair of externally accessible hard-drive sleds, so you can easily add up to two SATA hard drives without opening the side door. This innovative feature (unique among the cheaper gaming PCs) is similar to the hard-drive compartment in the $2,199 Acer Aspire G7700 Predator. Both have access to the outside, though the Predator holds the C: drive in one of its three sleds, while the FX6800-01e's C: drive is inside the chassis. There's also space inside for one additional hard drive, though you'll have to open the case to get to that one. You can also fit another optical drive, a PCIe x4 card, another PCIe x16 graphics card, and three more RAM sticks inside the case. As with the Predator, you can set up RAID 0, 1, 5, and 1+0 with multiple hard drives. Just make sure to use identical hard drives if you do.

The sleds themselves feel a bit flimsier than the ones in the Predator (or the internal sleds on the HP Blackbird 002 Exhilaration Edition—the best ones out there so far), but they'll do the job. I wish there were a better locking mechanism for the drives as well: There's a slide-down door on the front panel, but I like the security of locking sleds in case you need to move the system. Since I'm nit-picking, the hide-away pop-up panels for the media card reader, USB, and FireWire ports in the front and on top of the case also feel a bit cheap. The quality of plastics and doors seems to be where Gateway has cut a few corners. Again, functionality is excellent; there are just a few cost-saving measures that are readily apparent in a hands-on evaluation.

One last nit relates to the OS: Why install 64-bit Vista when the system comes with only 3GB of memory? Any benefits of 64-bit don't come into play until you have more than 4GB for RAM. I guess Gateway put Vista 64-bit on the FX6800-01E on the assumption that you'll add another 3GB to the system at some future point.

Like other Gateway computers, the FX6800-01e has some crapware on it. There's the usual 60-day trial of Microsoft Office and the 60-day trial of Norton 360. There's other stuff, like ads for eBay, Napster, and ISPs, too. I just wish there were a way to reinstall Vista without also installing all the superfluous programs. That's the best solution for a gaming box, since new graphics drivers and extra files associated with games can often make the system unstable. The best way to play a new game on an unstable gaming system is to wipe the system to bare-bones Windows, without all the performance-robbing extras.

Along with very good functionality, the system offers performance that's excellent for the price. The FX6800-01e can hold the "Can Play Crysis" banner high. Thanks to the Core i7 processor and Radeon graphics, the FX6800-01E gets a smoothly playable 58 fps on Crysis at 1,280-by-1,024, and a very smooth 760 fps on World in Conflict at the same resolution. This performance is similar to or better than that of the iBuypower Paladin 998 and the Acer Aspire G7700 Predator, both of which cost over $700 more. Out of these three, the Paladin is the only one that can play WiC at 1,920-by-1,200, and none of the three can play Crysis smoothly at that high a? resolution.

The FX6800-01E is also very speedy at multimedia tasks: 37 seconds for Windows Media Encoder and 26 seconds for Photoshop are impressive even for a quad-core system. All this makes FX6800-01e a performance bargain.

Basically, the FX6800-01e provides enough gaming power for the serious gamer, with a little bit of headroom to expand and improve 3D performance. The more expensive Paladin 998 and Predator also have enough gaming chops, and they both have a lot more room for expansion. Buy the Paladin if you have the extra $700 to spare and like to tinker and improve your gaming by buying and installing more components. Buy the Gateway FX6800-01e if you're the type who improves performance by buying a new gaming system a few years down the road, and recycles by giving the old system to your younger sibling.