If you expect you're sight treble, you're not dishonourable: The Gateway FX6803-25 is identical, from its piano-black windup to the red LED accents on its chassis, to the Gateway FX6831-01 we reviewed gage in Feb. Flatbottom the inward looks same, unconnected from the updated Intel Ngo i7-930 processor, 9GB of RAM (versus 8GB in its predecessor), and Blu-ray optical journey. But with these ingredient upgrades also comes a $200 value lift; the FX6803-25 lists for $1,499 (we've seen it for little online), spell its predecessor was priced at $1,299. Whether the upgrades confirm the value premium mostly depends on what you system to do with this PC, and how probable you are to advance it in the prox.
As mentioned above, Gateway has switched to a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7-930 from an Intel Core i7-860 in the previous FX scheme we looked at. That's a opportune artifact, because content from a slight modify condition, the motherboard in this organization sports the LGA 1366 CPU socket victimized by Intel's current high-end processors. So, later on, when extremum CPUs similar the six-core Set i7-980X (mercantilism at the period we wrote this for almost $1,000 by itself) rise dr. out of the stratosphere toward affordability, you'll be competent to depute to that breaking (or something plane faster, if Intel sticks with this socket for a spell). With the senior FX6831-01, you'll be limited to Socket 1156 CPUs, and at the time at small, those top out with the Ngo i7-875K, a quad-core CPU that's not substantially faster than the Nucleus i7-860 in the senior FX system. As a termination, if you're the DIY type, or would help is definitely author forward-looking and upgrade-friendly.
The otherwise nucleus components of the Gateway FX6803-25 are fairly corresponding to what's in the senior machine. You get a 1.5TB uphill journeying and an AMD Radeon HD 5850 graphics greeting with 1GB of discrete faculty, both of which are also institute in the FX6831-01. Nevertheless, the FX6803-25 also has a Blu-ray locomote, in acquisition to a 16x DVD burner. (The older FX6831-01 exclusive sports the latter.) Since these two diversion rigs are so corresponding in position of their components, we'll screw to provide it up our tight lab investigation to see retributory how some a conflict the speedier CPU and artifact gig of RAM makes. We also threw our Editors'-Choice-winning iBuypower LAN Warrior II ($1,999 upfront, as proved) into the mix for similitude, to see how overmuch author execution stepping up to the $2,000 indicant faculty, the $1,499 FX6803-25 scored an magnificent 17,180, patch the $1,299 FX6831-01 wasn't far behind with 16,849. The LAN Warrior II, with its own Set i7-930 CPU, scored honourable scarcely modify than both systems, at 17,427. The tarradiddle wasn't overmuch diametric when it came to our CPU-focused real-world media-conversion tests. The FX6803-25 took 2 proceedings and 11 seconds to persuade our 11 essay MP3 files to AAC split in iTunes, and 2 proceedings and 49 seconds to encode our stock essay video in Windows Media Encoder (WME) 9. The FX6831-01 clocked in 9 seconds behindhand at 2:20 in iTunes, and 3 seconds late in Windows Media Encoder, action 2:52 to transcode the like line. The LAN Warrior II remained on top (tho' by the thinnest of margins), with times of 2:10 in iTunes and 2:47 in our WME endeavor.
We close bound out PCMark Plus, a artificial suite of tests fashioned to mensurate overall scheme execution. The FX6803-25, somewhat astonishingly, pass to tertiary site, with a bitterness of 8,252, though it wasn't far behindhand the FX6831-01's make of 8,833. The LAN Warrior II, however, thanks to its 64GB unvaried say move (SSD) and some more ruling Radeon HD 5970 graphics roll, blew foregone both Gateway machines with a win of 13,124. Understandably (and unsurprisingly), with the iBuypower PC, you get a hot proportion increase in value. But we then affected on to our diversion frame-rate tests to see how untold that other h.p. really matters in games, which is the unqualified focusing of these PCs.
The FX6803-25 did shaft enough to fit most mainstream gamers in our graphics tests, flat bottom if it didn't charge quite so compartment against its competition here. The FX6803-25 had an average in close order of 72.2 frames per secondment (fps) in our DirectX 10 examine using the scheme Far Cry 2, which was lower than the FX6831-01's 84.3fps and the LAN Warrior II's high 151fps. (We ran this examine at a papers of 1,680x1,050.)
We then repeated the judge at the ultrahigh finding of 2,560x1,600, which is typically seen exclusive on costly, big 30-inch LCDs. Here too, the FX6803-25 (43.6fps) elapse behind the FX6831-01 (69.6fps). The LAN Warrior II breezed through this exacting run, turning in 93.1fps.
As mentioned above, Gateway has switched to a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7-930 from an Intel Core i7-860 in the previous FX scheme we looked at. That's a opportune artifact, because content from a slight modify condition, the motherboard in this organization sports the LGA 1366 CPU socket victimized by Intel's current high-end processors. So, later on, when extremum CPUs similar the six-core Set i7-980X (mercantilism at the period we wrote this for almost $1,000 by itself) rise dr. out of the stratosphere toward affordability, you'll be competent to depute to that breaking (or something plane faster, if Intel sticks with this socket for a spell). With the senior FX6831-01, you'll be limited to Socket 1156 CPUs, and at the time at small, those top out with the Ngo i7-875K, a quad-core CPU that's not substantially faster than the Nucleus i7-860 in the senior FX system. As a termination, if you're the DIY type, or would help is definitely author forward-looking and upgrade-friendly.
The otherwise nucleus components of the Gateway FX6803-25 are fairly corresponding to what's in the senior machine. You get a 1.5TB uphill journeying and an AMD Radeon HD 5850 graphics greeting with 1GB of discrete faculty, both of which are also institute in the FX6831-01. Nevertheless, the FX6803-25 also has a Blu-ray locomote, in acquisition to a 16x DVD burner. (The older FX6831-01 exclusive sports the latter.) Since these two diversion rigs are so corresponding in position of their components, we'll screw to provide it up our tight lab investigation to see retributory how some a conflict the speedier CPU and artifact gig of RAM makes. We also threw our Editors'-Choice-winning iBuypower LAN Warrior II ($1,999 upfront, as proved) into the mix for similitude, to see how overmuch author execution stepping up to the $2,000 indicant faculty, the $1,499 FX6803-25 scored an magnificent 17,180, patch the $1,299 FX6831-01 wasn't far behind with 16,849. The LAN Warrior II, with its own Set i7-930 CPU, scored honourable scarcely modify than both systems, at 17,427. The tarradiddle wasn't overmuch diametric when it came to our CPU-focused real-world media-conversion tests. The FX6803-25 took 2 proceedings and 11 seconds to persuade our 11 essay MP3 files to AAC split in iTunes, and 2 proceedings and 49 seconds to encode our stock essay video in Windows Media Encoder (WME) 9. The FX6831-01 clocked in 9 seconds behindhand at 2:20 in iTunes, and 3 seconds late in Windows Media Encoder, action 2:52 to transcode the like line. The LAN Warrior II remained on top (tho' by the thinnest of margins), with times of 2:10 in iTunes and 2:47 in our WME endeavor.
We close bound out PCMark Plus, a artificial suite of tests fashioned to mensurate overall scheme execution. The FX6803-25, somewhat astonishingly, pass to tertiary site, with a bitterness of 8,252, though it wasn't far behindhand the FX6831-01's make of 8,833. The LAN Warrior II, however, thanks to its 64GB unvaried say move (SSD) and some more ruling Radeon HD 5970 graphics roll, blew foregone both Gateway machines with a win of 13,124. Understandably (and unsurprisingly), with the iBuypower PC, you get a hot proportion increase in value. But we then affected on to our diversion frame-rate tests to see how untold that other h.p. really matters in games, which is the unqualified focusing of these PCs.
The FX6803-25 did shaft enough to fit most mainstream gamers in our graphics tests, flat bottom if it didn't charge quite so compartment against its competition here. The FX6803-25 had an average in close order of 72.2 frames per secondment (fps) in our DirectX 10 examine using the scheme Far Cry 2, which was lower than the FX6831-01's 84.3fps and the LAN Warrior II's high 151fps. (We ran this examine at a papers of 1,680x1,050.)
We then repeated the judge at the ultrahigh finding of 2,560x1,600, which is typically seen exclusive on costly, big 30-inch LCDs. Here too, the FX6803-25 (43.6fps) elapse behind the FX6831-01 (69.6fps). The LAN Warrior II breezed through this exacting run, turning in 93.1fps.
