Gateway LT3100 @ Best Buy for $399!

So who thinks the single-core Athlon 64 in the new Gateway LT3100 running at 1.2Ghz will wipe the floor with the Atom Z530 running at 1.24Ghz? And RMCLOCK should work with it, meaning the voltage and FSB (?) should be tweakable to some extent.

The Radeon X1270 is a huge improvement over the GMA500 in general usage, but I'm not sure how well it would handle video decoding compared to the 500. 99% of the videos I'd ever watch on this thing are Flash-based anyway, so it hardly matters to me. No netbook can handle HD Flash yet.

And when you figure in the 6-cell battery which allegedly gives you over five hours of use, it looks even better (compared to the 3-cell 751 at the same price). The chassis is apparently very similar to the 751's, too.

Needless to say, after work I'm going straight to Best Buy to check these things out.

 

i saw that my bestbuy have it in stock, but no display, so i couldn't test it.. i would want some details about the cpu and video performance on that compared to the acer aspire one 11.6" w/ intel Z520 and GMA 500

 

Yeah, I wish someone would do a review. But, clock-for-clock the Athlon64 is faster than the Atom, but how much? The Atom is single core but supports hyperthreading, the A64 in the Gateway is single core with no hyperthreading. I'd love to see some benchmarks. The GMA 500 in the 751 is just awful at anything 3D (the Ribbons screensaver in Windows 7 bogs it down!!) but the X1270 in the Gateway has enough juice to run Aero with no problem. But the GMA 500 decodes HD video and I'm not sure about the X1270. Docs on it are sort of sparse.

I'm thinking I might buy the Gateway and test it if there isn't one on display to mess around with. Since Best Buy did away with restocking fees a few months ago it's not that big a deal. Then I could test it head-to-head with my 751 on Windows 7.

I'm also curious to know if the Gateway is overclockable at all. That's one thing I loved about the Wind: press a key and get a magical 25% performance boost on the CPU. The screen on the 751 is awesome and the keyboard isn't horrible, but my Wind makes the 751 feel like a real dog sometimes.

 

I´d think about it. The X1270 GPU has no Hardware HD-Decoding capebilities like the GMA500, which is able to playback every HD-Content. More and more Websites make use of the GPU Power for their Videos or how could you explain this screenshot:

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/1082 ... ailer2.jpg

HD Apple Trailers or WMV-Streams like on gametrailers.com working like charm, while having 9 Browser-Tabs open and only using 50% CPU Power. The whole thing about Netbooks is, not to have the most horsepower, but use them efficent.
Compared to the Acer 751, the Gateway offers only old technologies.

Greetings,
Felix

 

Actually it seems the X1270 can do some decoding:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 ... 214,00.asp

On my iPhone, but going to do some more reading later.

 

meh.. let's just wait and see wonder who will be willing to buy that gateway and test it?

 

Well, the Best Buy down the street has 4 of them. I'm going to pick one up and see what it can do.

 

i don't want to get it yet, but my best buy only has 2 .. i bet no one knows what that is anyways.. so i'm safe i guess
i'll just wait for some news on it

 

Just bought one. They aren't on display and no one knew what they were. He said they'd be putting all the new stuff out by Sunday.

I'm going to get some dinner but I'll let you guys know how it goes later. Probably tomorrow.

 

heh.. they usually put new stuff up on a new weekly ad i guess.. but i saw them put new stuff up on tuesday

 

Okay, some quick initial thoughts:

The Gateway LT3103 and the 751 are like twins separated at birth. There are a few cosmetic differences but overall the two are very similar. The packaging is identical, even.

The keyboard from the 751 is back but much better. The small amount of flex and mushiness I hate about this keyboard on the 751 is nowhere to be found on this machine. It makes the whole machine feel more solid and substantial when the keyboard isn't bouncing around under your fingers. It's a small detail, but some people find mushy/springy/flexy keyboards unbearable (I'm in the middle, I guess).

The palmrest area is textured and doesn't seem to pick up smudges and fingerprints and general oily residue as easily as the 751, but the 751 (I had the white one) doesn't show fingerprints on the back of the screen too much and this thing is shiny shiny shiny everywhere. And then there's the "buckle" on top of the screen that almost makes the netbook look like a latched diary when it's closed, which is ... unusual? But not really that big a deal.

The 6-cell battery is chunky and sticks out the back. I often find myself holding a netbook in my left palm, scrolling and surfing with my right hand. My 6-cell Wind is perfect for this, the 751 is maybe even more perfect with it's 3-cell battery and this Gateway is a little heavier but no worse than the 751 with a 6-cell. I haven't checked yet but I'm pretty sure the batteries are interchangeable. This thing really is just a 751 with a few cosmetic alterations and new internals.

Also, I point out yet again that this keyboard is much, much better than the same keyboard on the 751. But keyboards are such a subjective thing ...

This machine feels much faster than the 751. It's "snappier."

Random tidbit: no free upgrade to Windows 7. Apparently only Vista Home Premium and above qualify. Vista Home Basic users seem to be out of luck. I haven't used Vista enough on this machine to know if it's awful yet. It feels much better than Vista on the 751, subjectively, in the small amount of time I've spent with it.

Vista scores:

CPU 2.8
Memory 4.5
Aero 4.6
Gaming 3.0
Hard Disk 5.7

For fun I installed 3DMark01 and set the ATI drivers to "Maximum Performance." The score? A whopping 3010 3DMarks, which would have been stunning ten years ago! Then, because I love slideshows, I installed Aquamark 3 and scored a blistering 8900 points. There's something almost zen about watching "Massive Overdraw" render at 2.4 FPS.

To put these scores in perspective, my Unibody Macbook Pro (2.53Ghz, 512MB 9600M GT) scores about ten times higher in those benchmarks and while the 9600M GT is a nice enough GPU it's no monster.

So, some VERY OLD games might be playable (the original Half Life or Unreal Tournament?) but anything even remotely recent is a no go.

And the "Ribbons" screensaver? Totally fluid, unlike on the 751 (even with the new drivers) where you can watch the ribbons creep across the screen.

Haven't tested any videos or anything yet. Going to do some more testing and compare the two (and my Wind, too, I suppose).

I have until next weekend to decide which of these I'm going to keep ...

 

got any pictures? and please do some video testing on it, my main point of getting a netbook is for video on the road basically.
right now, it is kind of a pain to get the 751 to play HD video without lag, unless i'm using a specific format, other wise, the gma 500 lags more than the gma 950 in vidoe playback x.x

 

No pics yet but it looks like a 751. It looks/feels a bit more substantial. Hard to explain I guess. I will take some pics tomorrow of the two of them side by side.

 

could you do some video testing right now? x.x any kind of hd video test or tell us that what kind of video would lag..
maybe do some hulu hd or youtube hd testing also? x.x

 

Okay, I just tried the 720p version of this Fray video:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd ... nd_me.html

No tweaks or anything, no special codecs, etc. and ...

It's almost watchable, but dropping some frames. Going to try some other stuff.

 

what programs are you using?

 

Just Quicktime player for that. I wanted to see what it would be like without doing anything special.

 

o.. cyberlink should work better? x.x
try 1080p without any tweaks? x.x lol

 

Just had a very frustrating morning.

The Gateway clobbers the 751 in pretty much every way. It feels much faster in general usage. 720p plays fine in fullscreen at native resolution. Some very old games are even playable at low res and low settings.

1080p is a slideshow for the most part. The 751 can be tweaked into a decent enough video device but is a real drag to use generally -- especially mine, which is about as overclockable as your average wristwatch. So, once again the compromises made in the name of size and cost leave me with a choice between two machines that are almost okay. With hardware video decoding the Gateway would be awesome.

Oh well. A local store has the DV2 for $499. It's not THAT much bigger than the 751, right? But then there's that spectacular two hour battery life ...

 

meh.. so it isn't worth returning the 751 and getting the lt3103u?