Comments on: Review: Gateway M-6864FX

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 02:42:53 +0000

I had this laptop over a year now (M-6864 FX) . It has done everything I needed it to do . It plays wow and crysis well for the price and has alot of other applications . I have dropped it twice on the wood subfloor from three feet high accidentally and it worked fine after. It was off at the time though. If I get another laptop ..I’d buy another FX . Their also easy to upgrade I hear.

By: nonamebrand

nonamebrand — Tue, 26 May 2009 08:47:40 +0000

Asus is also bringing out bang for buck laptops. I’ve seen them at Best Buy USA website, but not the Canadian one. I’m talking about the
($800US) Asus X83Vm-X2 & G50Vt-X5 ($900). There’s the lower end X83Vb-X2 ($650) which has the Nvidia 9300M GS, but the M-6864FX’s ATi 2600M is the better vid card. I would skip out on the lower end Asus. The X83Vm-X2 trumps the M-6864FX, check the specs yourself. And well the G50Vt-X5 has a
9800M GS…’nuff said.

Just thought I’d post that for anybody looking for budget laptop alternatives.

By: nonamebrand

nonamebrand — Tue, 26 May 2009 08:32:45 +0000

I bought my M-6864FX refurbished from Canada Computers for about $780CDN including taxes in about mid-January 2009. I got the last unit in stock at the time and it had a red stuck pixel. I googled all over and tried all the remedies suggested, but to no luck. I decided I’d keep the unit regardless as I had really taken a liking to it. The screen is pretty decent though, made by AU Optronics, who also make some of Samsung’s LCD panels. The LCD is bright, the back-light is fairly uniform and the colours are accurate enough for my tastes.

The DVD-Burner does seem flimsy. The only thing I really use it for is backing up data to DVDs, which is not too often. So far it’s holding up for me.

The keyboard has a bit of flex, but I actually like it as it is practically the same keyboard as my old Asus laptop’s. I feel quite at home. As a bonus the lettering on the keys has not started to fade or mark up yet and I might use my laptop for 6+ hours daily including some heavy gaming.

After about a month my touchpad started showing signs of wear. It has a shiny mark on it now. Which makes me surprised once again, how the keyboard seems unfaded, as I usually use my mouse rather than the touchpad, but I of course use the laptop’s keyboard all the time.

I’ve tried XP, XP64, Vista64 and Windows 7 RC on this machine. I was an XP man, but Win7 RC is taking the cake. Especially with the new ATI Windows 7 video drivers I installed the last day. Call of Duty 4 is running as smooth as I’ve ever seen on this laptop in Windows 7. Quite surprising as I expected XP to spank Windows 7 in COD4. With the new Win 7 vid drivers, my temperatures have dropped up to 10C while gaming too. Windows 7 all the way.

The webcam is useful and works well with Skype, MSN and flash games which I’ve used for many hours.

I’m also undervolting my cpu and have removed the stock thermal grease on the cpu/heatfan contact area in favour of Arctic Silver 5, which I may replace with MX-2.

So far, so good, this is a great budget laptop, let’s see how it holds up down the line.

By: Perry L

Perry L — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:52:59 +0000

Yes, Gateway was bought by Acer. The acquisition has been good for Gateway – they are more focused now and their stuff is a lot better.

By: hakeem

hakeem — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:13:25 +0000

im planning to buy one, just curious, is Gateway has partnership with ACER company?

im staying in the Philippines, are there any computer stores accredited to fix or sell gateway parts in the event it will cause some unexpected????

any body can give me some inputs re: 3D aspect?

By: Perry L

Perry L — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:07:13 +0000

Thanks, I’m a vegetarian so what do I know about cows.

By: Nancy

Nancy — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:23:18 +0000

Uhhm…Just a heads up…the old gateway box design was a Holstein cow print, not a Jersey. Holsteins are black and white, while Jerseys are solid, usually a tan color.

By: Mrayak

Mrayak — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:10:19 +0000

Got this $750 in BestBuy in the summer, and I have to say, that there is a high level of satisfaction. At the time there were no similar deals in the US and here, in Europe there aren’t any even now.

The processor runs fast enough and along with the exceedingly powerful HD2600, which seems to be the best ATi Mobility HD2600 out there, it gives you a very decent performance in games, all new games are playable up to mid-high details, and in the future, there will be still some decent gaming with this after a year or so.

By: Perry L

Perry L — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 22:41:42 +0000

@JD: One correction, the 2600 is comparable to the 8600m series. It isn’t even remotely close to an 8800 Ultra.

By: JD

JD — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 22:14:34 +0000

Compliments on an excellent review. We’re now into our third month using this Gateway machine designed by Best Buy. Originally, we bought it for $750 as a desktop replacement for our HP Blackbird which we sent in for some upgrades – we figured it’d be cheaper than renting a machine for the duration, which turned out to be a correct decision. The ATI 2600 PRO @ 512MB has been customized for Gateway by ATI for this unit – we find its actual specs closer to the 2600 XT. In either event, it’s a superb GPU fully the equal or better of the Nvidia 8000 series GPU’s, excluding only the 8800 ULTRA. As this GPU is soldered to the mobo, we can forget about upgrading it to the 3670. But you’re not losing much – functional improvements in the 3870 vs the 2600 are not many : DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1, and also interface DisplayPort support. The number of stream processor in the 3870 remain as in the 2600: 120 with 16 textural units, 8 textural filtration units, 4 blocks of ROPS. ATI tends to be more conservative than Nvidia in new product releases so they’re taking their time configuring a mobility 4870 – I suspect heat is the issue they’re hammering out. We have dual 4870′s on our Blackbird and they do get very hot! Anyway, some warnings on the Gateway FX series like this one designed for Best Buy. It comes with lots of bloatware, so we wiped the disc and did a clean install of Vista alone. You have a one-year warranty from Gateway, but trying to get something fixed is a task worthy of beating *Crysis* – beware. The chintzy plastic cover which accesses the DVD drive is extremely delicate – if you’re running more than a couple movies a week, this plastic cover will break, rendering your drive unusable. After jumping through the hoops with Acer (Gateway’s owners), they’ll offer to send you a new drive and all the tools / screws etc needed to install, which is wonderful (a) if you needed a new drive (b) if you’re an adept hardware tech. After jumping through some more hoops to communicate the specific problem, they’ll give you an approval number and an address in Texas to send it in for repairs, so you’re on your own hook for shipping/ins. One other caution because of the cheap plastic build – it does not hold USB and other input devices securely. You’re on your own as to how to secure these – all this means is that it is truly a mobile laptop and not meant to withstand the normal pressures a solid desktop unit would. I gather Gateway’s just released a new $1,500 FX series machine with a completely remodeled and stronger casing material (and the 3850), which is good news. I have nothing against Best Buy – they’re great for the quick buy, but you can do much better for yourself from any of the self-builder outfits like CyberpowerPC, iBuypower, etc.