Gateway Releases FX6800 Core i7 Gaming Desktops

By Steve Seguin
published

Just in time for the holiday season, Gateway has announced the availability of two new high-performance gaming desktops featuring the new Intel Core i7 platform.

The Gateway FX6800-01e and Gateway FX6800-05 are among the newest batch of desktops announced today featuring a new Intel Core i7 processor and Intel X58 Express chipset. The Gateway FX6800-01e is the more affordable of the two systems, offering a good mix of performance and value, while the Gateway FX6800-05 places emphasis on premium performance.

The Gateway FX6800-01e comes equipped with an Intel Core i7-920 quad-core processor (2.66 GHz | 8 MB L3 Cache | 130 W TDP), an ATI Radeon HD4850 graphics card with 512 MB video memory and 3 GB of triple-channel DDR3 1066 MHz RAM. The Gateway FX6800-01e also comes with a 750 GB 7200 RPM HDD, an 18X DVD burner, a 15-in-1 media card reader with Smart Copy Button, HDMI, eSATA and Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit. Already we can tell that this system should be able to handle modern games with ease, but more than 3 GB of memory would have been nice to see considering the included 64-bit operating system.

For those consumers who are not content with mainstream performance, the Gateway FX6800-05 takes things up a notch, but at a cost. The system features an Intel Core i7-940 quad-core processor (2.93 GHz | 8 MB L3 Cache | 130 W TDP), an ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card with 2048 MB video memory and 6 GB of triple-channel DDR3 1066 MHz RAM. The system also comes with a 1000 GB 7200 RPM HDD, an 80 GB SSD, an 18X DVD burner, HDMI, eSATA, a 15-in-1 media card reader with Smart Copy Button and Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit. Both systems can be included with Blu-ray optical drives, if desired.

The Gateway FX6800-01e and the Gateway FX6800-05 are available now from leading retailers with a MSRP of $1,249.99 and $2,999.99, respectively.

Steve Seguin
6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Pei-chen
    FX6800-01e is reasonably priced.
    Reply
  • one-shot
    That does seem very reasonable. Gateway selling a high performance "reasonably priced" PC sounds odd. I bought a Gateway once, haven't bought one since then.
    Reply
  • ubergeetar
    The funny thing, though, is that I just pieced together a "wish-list" on Newegg, maxed out a machine, i7 Extreme, 3 GTX280's, 6GB DDR3, BluRay drive, 7200RPM 1TB HDD, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 mobo, XCLIO windtunnel full tower, for only 550 more than Gateway's high end......
    Reply
  • Pei-chen
    ubergeetarThe funny thing, though, is that I just pieced together a "wish-list" on Newegg, maxed out a machine, i7 Extreme, 3 GTX280's, 6GB DDR3, BluRay drive, 7200RPM 1TB HDD, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 mobo, XCLIO windtunnel full tower, for only 550 more than Gateway's high end......I think the 80GB SSD is what drove up the price.
    Reply
  • hellwig
    If the new i7 is so much better than the old Core 2, I can't see either of these machines benefitting from the more expensive processor and motherboard (save for the fact that Gateway is not overclocking the processors). You would need at least 2 4870x2's or 3 GTX280's before your old Core 2 becomes the bottleneck. If I recall TomsHardware did a review to this effect recently. And tripple-channel memory? We haven't even seen the benefits of the increased speed brought to us by DDR3, and now Intel adds a third channel to the mix.

    I guess I'm getting a bit off-topic. Didn't Gateway move to an all-retail distribution model within the last year or so? Interesting to see them play to the upper-mainstream market with these new machines. I like the new cases, their old grey/beige machines were butt-ugly.
    Reply
  • strider209
    Can the gateway 6800 be overclocked?
    Reply