Gateway rolls out new FX, LX series desktop PCs

Gateway isn't exactly breaking the mold here, but we're guessing it'll still move quite a few of its new FX and LX series desktop PCs, which each pack some pretty high end specs for more than reasonable prices. Like others in the FX series, the new FX6710 is aimed directly at gamers, and includes a speedy Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 processor, 6GB of RAM, a 750GB hard drive, ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics, Creative X-Fi audio, and other suitably high-end specs, all for a $1,199. The all new LX6200 model, on the other hand, is targeted at more multimedia-minded users, though gamers will probably find quite a bit to like as well, including an AMD Phenom X4 9500 quad-core Processor, ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics, the same 750GB hard drive, and 8GB of RAM standard, all for just $779. According to Gateway, both should be available at all the usual sources right now.

Read - Gateway FX6710
Read - Gateway LX6200

[JoeyM @ Oct 15th 2008 7:31PM]

Posting from my LX6200 that I purchased this past Sunday.
Works great.

Really digging the parts that pop out on the tower.

[Lowest Ranked @ Oct 15th 2008 7:35PM]

Yes, Joey loves when the parts pop out of the tower...

[bob e @ Oct 15th 2008 8:19PM]

What pops out of the top?
Those are insane prices - 64 bit with 8GB RAM and 750GB HD for $779 - WTF !

[HOOPER @ Oct 15th 2008 10:27PM]

Lowest Ranked, what were you saying about pop tarts?

[Lowest Ranked @ Oct 15th 2008 10:46PM]

Tarts pop out of the power.

[Chuuchdizzle @ Oct 15th 2008 7:34PM]

Standard????

[schtum @ Oct 15th 2008 7:36PM]

Apple really innovated themselves into a corner with that iMac, didn't they?

[Jordan @ Oct 15th 2008 7:42PM]

"Apple really innovated themselves into a corner with that iMac, didn't they?"


wat?

[Ruben @ Oct 15th 2008 8:18PM]

Hes trying to say that they picked the iMac as their general casing for their mainstream PC, which can never contain the same specs as the FX or quite frankly the LX PC, let alone offer the featurs of the LX or FX PC at the price points they are asking for them.

The only way to get close to the FX PC here is via the Mac Pro if you go Apple, and look at the starting cost for those.

But his way of saying it is funnier.

[schtum @ Oct 15th 2008 8:30PM]

Thanks, Ruben!

[aDancingHobo @ Oct 15th 2008 7:41PM]

Just thought id add that I just picked up their M6862 Laptop. Great laptop at a pretty damn good price, looks like they are carrying this on to the desktop market.

[kr @ Oct 15th 2008 9:23PM]

You can tell system manufacturers are taking advantage of the fact that Vista needs more memory to perform than XP in order to sell ridiculously unnecessary amounts of RAM. Really, all you should need is 2GB and Vista will run smoothly, depending on your other specs. I know someone who just bought an HP laptop with a 4GB RAM upgrade, but the CPU and hard drive held the computer back, not the amount of memory.

[Kimleng @ Oct 15th 2008 10:20PM]

Tell me I only need 2GB to run smoothly when I'm applying a gaussian blur to the 10th layer in Photoshop to a 16 bit TIFF file at 21 megapixels. Even XP would come to a complete crawl.

Give me a break. The 8GB is not there to tell you Vista is a RAM hog. It's there to allow power users like me the ability to utilize 8 freakin' GB of RAM when it's necessary while keeping the price affordable so I can buy a more expensive DSLR.

[Jeremy K. @ Oct 15th 2008 7:48PM]

Those are pretty good prices. I'm happy Gateway is including that much RAM standard. 8 GB of ram can be got for under $100 now.

[Blondie @ Oct 15th 2008 10:43PM]

Yeah. And two-hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money. We're gonna have to earn it.

[Jeremy K. @ Oct 15th 2008 10:53PM]

Blonde!

You know what you are?

Just a goddamn sonofa.......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ed T @ Oct 15th 2008 8:16PM]

Fuugly stuff. Prices? Who cares? Dell and HP will undercut them if they have to in their race to the bottom.

[aznofazns @ Oct 15th 2008 8:20PM]

Why the hell would gamers like the LX? Unless they dish out another 150+ dollars for a nice graphics card, that desktop is not going to churn out playable framerates at all in the latest games.

[Abuzar Baloach @ Oct 15th 2008 8:23PM]

It has a 4850...

[thethirdmoose @ Oct 15th 2008 8:24PM]

I imagine it would be excellent for video editing.

[noyp @ Oct 15th 2008 8:24PM]

Not everyone is a gamer though.

[aznofazns @ Oct 15th 2008 8:26PM]

I'm talking about the LX with the HD 3200 IGP. I know it's not intended for gamers, but I just don't understand the part that says "gamers will probably find quite a bit to like as well"

[chris @ Oct 15th 2008 8:37PM]

even so, paying 150 for a better card only just puts it above 1000, which is still a pretty good deal

[Abuzar Baloach @ Oct 15th 2008 9:05PM]

Oh you were talking about the second computer. Yeah, that part is a bit weird. But let's get real. Most Engadget bloggers use Macs and I doubt they know much about video cards.

[Jason @ Oct 16th 2008 10:32AM]

While the specs are nice, the motherboard does not support crossfire, it has an AMD 780G chipset, the 780GX supports crossfire not the G so there will be no real high end gaming performance. That said, unless you want to play Crysis or other similar games at super high resolutions on 22" screens, this box will do perfectly fine.. for example Warhammer online works just dandy.

BTW, free plug for Bestbuy, I actually went in last night to pick up the lx6200 as a replacement desktop so my wife can work from home and I can have my laptop back, they had the lx6200 with monitor and printer for 879, but I ended up leaving with 2 8800GT's that I shoved in my current sli box at home. They had them on clearance for $100 a piece instead of the usual $260ish price tag. While I did want to get the LX, in the end I will pass because I will play games on it, and it does not support sli or crossfire, which although is not a deal killer, I am an nvidia person over the radeons, atleast for now.

[ozzer @ Oct 15th 2008 8:40PM]

is 400 W really enough power for the 4850 and quadcore?

[aznofazns @ Oct 15th 2008 8:54PM]

Yes but just barely. 400W is really pushing it for such a system, especially if you overclock. I wouldn't be surprised if the PSU died before long.

[0megapart!cle @ Oct 15th 2008 8:44PM]

God, they are so close! If they could just put a 4870 in that FX tower, it would be pretty much perfect, for so cheap (about $1399)

As is, 6 GB and that relatively high end quad core paired with a 4850 is stupid.

[aznofazns @ Oct 15th 2008 8:58PM]

That's just what I was thinking... a 4870 would give some decent future-proofing, which is something you don't quite get with a 4850, but the problem is the underpowered PSU. And don't even think about Crossfire.
6gb of ram is really useless for gaming, which is what the FX is intended to do. I can understand putting loads of ram into a multimedia PC like the LX.

[0megapart!cle @ Oct 15th 2008 9:01PM]

I was thinking the Ram was a little overkill, but ram is so cheap nowadays, they might as well beef up in that category. The 4870 doesn't use that much more power than the 4850, does it? I'm sure it could handle it.

[Abuzar Baloach @ Oct 15th 2008 9:09PM]

The 4870 is not THAT much better. Maybe 20% better.

Also, the 4870 takes 2 6pin power cables. The 4850 uses one. So, yeah, it takes up a bit more power than a 4850. A GOOD 400W PSU could handle a 4850 and that whole setup. I doubt this one is that great, and it probably cant handle a 4870.

With that being said my friend runs a Quad Core system with a 4870X2 on a 520 Watt PSU. But it's a high quality Corsair.

[aznofazns @ Oct 15th 2008 9:25PM]

Wow Abuzar, your friend is really pushing it with a 520W. I know Corsair makes great PSU's (I have an HX620) but a 650W PSU is recommended for a system with a 4870X2. I've seen reviewers push their systems' power consumption just shy of 500W with a Quad+4870X2 so you never want to cut it that close to the PSU's rating.

[Abuzar Baloach @ Oct 15th 2008 9:50PM]

Yeah he is cutting it pretty close. He says he measured it and is using up 85% of this PSUs rated capacity. Of course it IS a Corsair and they DO last even more than they are rated for. It works fine for him and he is pretty much running his dream computer. He has a 30" Dell and plays all his games maxed out so I dont think he wants to change up his components anymore lol.

[Adam @ Oct 15th 2008 8:46PM]

I know that I don't know all that much technically about these computers, but what is the benefit of having 6 and 8 GB of RAM if Vista can on recognize and work with 3 GB??

[rick @ Oct 15th 2008 8:49PM]

Vista 64 can use all 8GB; it's Vista 32 that wouldn't be able to use it all.

[Tiptup300 @ Oct 15th 2008 10:05PM]

Vista 32 can spoof it. So certain programs can use the extra gigage.

[Mel @ Oct 15th 2008 8:57PM]

If only the LX ran on an intel processor, it'd be perfect

[Itsuru @ Oct 15th 2008 8:56PM]

Surely just throwing more gigabytes of ram at a computer isn't going to make it better, what about the speed bottleneck? A lot of people are going to be hard pushed to utilize that ram effectively.

[Shinigami @ Oct 15th 2008 8:56PM]

You can build something similar with a better graphics card and sound card yourself if you are a gamer. Even occasional gamers would want better graphics at no cost. But if you never play anything harder than solitare, you can get a decent $600 solitare PC - dual core, with build-in graphics, 2gb ram, 500gb HDD. Toss in another $200 and you can have that 4850 for occasional high-res videos, HDMI out to use PC as a media center, connected directly to your TV, some 3d gaming ability. Want it to be quiet or near silent? Ready another $100-200 (depends on budget and hearing ability), but it will be much quieter than what most companies build and sell.

Google is your friend, you just have to learn how to use it.

[Justin Laster @ Oct 15th 2008 9:04PM]

Alright, what's the catch? All this for around or under 1k? That's a damn good deal, unfortunately I'm in the market for getting a laptop right now and not necessarily a PC.

[Ruben @ Oct 15th 2008 10:54PM]

Building this PC on your own with the same parts comes out less than what it costs to get it here, OS and all.

Not that that is a bad thing for Acer, since you get a warranty and you don't physically have to set everything up. That is all it costs for such hardware. Look it up. Prices have dropped drastically to the point that a quad core with 4+ gigs of ram (on sale of course) and a 4850 would only cost you 800 bucks shipped and taxed for all the parts, if not less depending on your deal hunting abilities.

[Apple Fan @ Oct 15th 2008 9:16PM]

Apple just came out with the New Macbook Pro and Macbook with brand new graphics technology, up to 5x faster than before...perfect for gaming. Check that out and then see what you think about a PC.

[ai.scorp @ Oct 15th 2008 9:28PM]

The 9600 doesn't even come close to the 4850 though and really, macbooks, perfect for gaming ? Haha.

[aznofazns @ Oct 15th 2008 9:32PM]

I'm going to label this as spam. That "5x faster" statement is really quite ridiculous. First of all, only the Macbook (not the Pro) has had a major overhaul in the gpu. The Pro just updated from the 8600M GT to the 9600M GT + 9400M with possible Hybrid SLI which is definitely not even a 2x increase in performance. The MBP's system isn't that great for gaming. Its power wouldn't even compare to a real gaming system like the FX (which costs way less).

[apple Fan @ Oct 15th 2008 9:34PM]

it stands obvious that the only reason one would get a laptop is not ONLY for gaming. computers are so much more than that. SO even if what you say is true, which it isn't, any Mac offers way more, other than its new graphic tech, than any PC would dream of offering. Have you used one? I've used a PC for most of my computer using years and I love Macs. So unless you have used a Mac, given it a fair chance, then there's no depth to your argument.

[The Walrus @ Oct 15th 2008 10:00PM]

At nearly twice the cost and not really close at all in performance. I'm not saying the new Mac laptops are bad products, you just can't expect them to do everything though

[Erik @ Oct 15th 2008 10:01PM]

Alright, I'll bite.

I've used computers for all my life, and with the time spent on my sister's Macs comparing to the XP, Vista, and Ubuntu computers I've been using, I prefer the non-OSX machines. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of the operating systems (except, in my opinion, the artificial hardware limitation in OSX), but I prefer the range of software available for Linux and Windows.

This may be hard to believe, but people (several of my friends included) will buy a laptop based upon its gaming abilities. And in my experience with them shopping around for said laptops, the Mac did not offer any benefit over other machines to make the increase in cost easier to stomach.

[Evangelion @ Oct 15th 2008 10:39PM]

I used a Mac before, thats why I have a PC.

[aznofazns @ Oct 15th 2008 10:55PM]

Apple fan, you just owned yourself by ignoring your original statement. You said to check out the new Macbooks and MBPs because they are "perfect for gaming." Thus, you are implying that they are better than the Gateways for gaming. Why else would you even mention Apple laptops when this article is about new Gateway desktops?

[vvtopkar @ Oct 15th 2008 10:57PM]

Like I always say....

Games on a Mac = Oxymoron

(Maybe not even oxy ;) )