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Gateway LT3103u Netbook

really??

I'm using that new CAS3 memory and I'm overclocked, using setFSB to 1.43 GHZ.

Which PLL do you have? I have the good one, variable, and it clocks fine as well.........

Also how is the stick, have you noticed a difference?
 
I can't OC mine with the CAS3 memory installed either. I was able to increment it to 1.43 with the factory memory. I've noticed very little difference with the CAS3 RAM, but I'm now considering installing Win7 on it because of some performance issues with Vista that have cropped up in the last few days.
 
Vista is a huge HDD hog, the memory would be taxed to show a difference as the HDD resources being used. There would be a difference but a 5% improvement on a really slow OS is still going to be slow. Since Windows 7 is alot less of a HDD resource hog the faster memory gets to shine..........
 
Vista is a huge HDD hog, the memory would be taxed to show a difference as the HDD resources being used. There would be a difference but a 5% improvement on a really slow OS is still going to be slow. Since Windows 7 is alot less of a HDD resource hog the faster memory gets to shine..........

uhh..what?

installed win7 home premium using one of my keys from my technet sub. i didn't need to download any drivers for the wireless chipset, windows update had them available.
 
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Which PLL do you have? I have the good one, variable, and it clocks fine as well.........

Also how is the stick, have you noticed a difference?

the stick is alright I guess, I haven't noticed that big of a difference just using it every day.

PLL that I'm using is ICS9248BF-96 (I think).
 
installed win7 home premium using one of my keys from my technet sub. i didn't need to download any drivers for the wireless chipset, windows update had them available.

Same here for my w764 pro. Windows update found the driver without issue along with the gpu driver.
 
I have the ICS932S421BGLF that alows slow increments to full overclock. In my shortcut I use the target as............

For 1.4 GHz
"C:\Program Files (x86)\SETFsb\setfsb.exe" -cg[ICS932S421BGLF] -w0 -s234 -q -i15 -b

For 1.44
"C:\Program Files (x86)\SETFsb\setfsb.exe" -cg[ICS932S421BGLF] -w0 -s240 -q -i15 -b

Again while no miracle upgrade I definately see a difference at all speeds with the cas3 1T memory. Faster boot, less lag in opening programs, Everything a bit more responsive. Not alot more reposive but a bit more. even multiple tabs open seem to be handled better.

Vista is hugely dependent on your hard drive being fast. Much more so than Windows 7 or better yet XP. 7 is also more RAM demanding than XP but less demanding of the foot print of Vista.............
 
Vista is hugely dependent on your hard drive being fast. Much more so than Windows 7 or better yet XP. 7 is also more RAM demanding than XP but less demanding of the foot print of Vista.............

The disk in the 3103u is reasonably fast for a notebook. In fact, it's faster than my core 2 duo HP's factory 5400RPM fujitsu 120GB disk. A bigger factor in the performance difference between win7 and vista is the fact that the kernel and all underlying services have been better optimized and streamlined.

at any rate, back on topic. the installation of win7 on the 3103u was totally painless. i used an x86 version of win7 because i had no reason to use x64. i grabbed the vista touchpad driver from gateway's site and installed it and windows update had the graphics adapter and wireless drivers available already.
 
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I'm thinking of picking this up. Has anyone tried 4gigs in this ?

also it seems like msi has the new wind 210 which has the 1.6 ghz neo and a x1250 along with 2 gigs and an hdmi port and of course ddr2 667. I'm trying to figure out if the 400mhz speed increase along with the faster fsb will make a diffrence in performance of 720p video

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152141

Trying to figure out what I should pick up or if I should just wait. I mainly want to surf the web and watch movies on the go. I was thinking a few older games but nothing crazy , mostly from around the time half life came out which i'm guessing should be the dx 7 and 8 generation.

Any advice or info would be awsome. Thanks
 
If you are talking 720P from a file go with a 1410T. The 4500MHD will naitively do the video. If you are talking on line flash 720P you need CPU horsepower.............
 
the acer 1410T ? I found it. Seems like the gateway is still better for gaming though.
 
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This is slightly off topic
But would there be any reason to choose 64 bit windows 7 over 32 bit on this computer?
Would there be any difficulty with drivers or something?
 
it'd be awesome if a few more of you guys who have the LT3103u would chime in with cases/sleeves that you've found that work/don't work for the device. thx.

I received the sleeve linked below from Amazon the other day. I ordered it based on someone else's experience with it and I gotta say, it fits absolutely perfectly IF you put the netbook in front first(with the battery end going in last). Otherwise the corners of the thing proturde just a tick and it makes it tricky to zip. If you put the other end in first, since the battery isn't as wide as the netbook itself, there are no corners to get in the way when zipping.

I gotta say I love the sleeve. The padding inside is nice and it fits like it was made for it. It looks good too(IMO). Just a note, this is purely a sleeve. There are no extra pockets for anything...

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-11-...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1252687998&sr=8-1

Also, one more note about the LT3103(and 3114). The thing DOES support wireless N. However, it only supports it in the 2.4ghz band, not the 5ghz band. I am running this on my home network now, which is running N only on the 2.4ghz band. Why they don't list N as part of their specs, I dunno.

I also have a question for anyone who has used the 9-Cell battery. How far back can you tilt the screen with it on? I know the 6-cell one stops the screen from tilting flat. How much does the 9-cell hinder the tilt?

Thanks.
 
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Has anyone here bought a nine cell battery for their 3103? If so how do you like it? Can you post a URL where you bought it?

Thanks
 
I have not had the guts to open up the 3130 to see what the chips are. I am pretty savy when it comes to hardware. I just have not used setfsb b4. I've oc'd other motherboards, but I would like to try out 1.4 on this machine.

Thanks for the help.
 
I've had almost no luck with any kind of gaming on my LT3103. What settings have you guys been able to use and which games have worked for you?

I've tried a few, including some really old games (Kingpin, Tribes, a few others) and they all stutter really badly even at 640x480. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm missing something. With the factory RAM and the CPU overclocked to 1.4GHz, I didn't notice much (if any) performance improvement in any of the old games I tried.

The only games I've gotten to work well are ones that use a regular 2d framebuffer like Fallout, Fallout 2, etc.
 
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I've had almost no luck with any kind of gaming on my LT3103. What settings have you guys been able to use and which games have worked for you?

I've tried a few, including some really old games (Kingpin, Tribes, a few others) and they all stutter really badly even at 640x480. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm missing something. With the factory RAM and the CPU overclocked to 1.4GHz, I didn't notice much (if any) performance improvement in any of the old games I tried.

The only games I've gotten to work well are ones that use a regular 2d framebuffer like Fallout, Fallout 2, etc.

There are several youtube videos showing the gaming performance of this netbook. All I've tried so far is WoW. It runs at native resolution on minimum settings. Overclocked to 1.44GHz, I get about 30 fps in the overworld, half that in cities. Something sounds wrong with your current configuration. Perhaps try cleaning out and reinstalling your video drivers?

I've got a question, though. In this thread, many people are mentioning that 64-bit Win7 "feels" faster than 32-bit. Why is this? I've got a Dell e1705 I'm about to install Win7 on, and it's always had 32-bit OSes, but the T5600 merom it's got is 64-bit capable. Despite that, it seems like most people have always recommended just sticking with the 32-bit OS because it's got less than 4GB RAM, and unless running 64-bit specific applications, the 32-bit OS is actually faster, because the 64-bit OS has to emulate a 32-bit OS.

Additionally, my e1705 is BIOS-limited in regard to RAM to 3.xGB.

Considering this, wouldn't 32-bit Win7 be faster on this device for those reasons, or is there some other factor?
 
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There are several youtube videos showing the gaming performance of this netbook. All I've tried so far is WoW. It runs at native resolution on minimum settings. Overclocked to 1.44GHz, I get about 30 fps in the overworld, half that in cities. Something sounds wrong with your current configuration. Perhaps try cleaning out and reinstalling your video drivers?

I've got a question, though. In this thread, many people are mentioning that 64-bit Win7 "feels" faster than 32-bit. Why is this? I've got a Dell e1705 I'm about to install Win7 on, and it's always had 32-bit OSes, but the T5600 merom it's got is 64-bit capable. Despite that, it seems like most people have always recommended just sticking with the 32-bit OS because it's got less than 4GB RAM, and unless running 64-bit specific applications, the 32-bit OS is actually faster, because the 64-bit OS has to emulate a 32-bit OS.

Additionally, my e1705 is BIOS-limited in regard to RAM to 3.xGB.

Considering this, wouldn't 32-bit Win7 be faster on this device for those reasons, or is there some other factor?

With the default unmodified Vista install, games ran like ass for me. I upgraded to Win7 x86 RTM and they run exactly the same (like ass). In Win 7, I have the WHQL drivers that Windows Update grabbed after the clean install.

I would also assume that the native 32 bit codepath is likely faster to execute since the only real 64 bit components most machines will ever see is the core of the OS. All 32 bit applications (games, browsers, email programs, etc) are all gonna run in that 32 bit emulation layer. also, memory use in 64 bit environments is usually higher (albeit insignificantly in most cases) My logic behind using 32 bit instead of x64 versions of Win7 was threefold: 1. i'm not likely going to upgrade the memory to 4GB; 2. 32 bit instruction sets will likely be faster since it's already sort of a slow cpu and 3. x64 requires signed drivers, which makes it harder to use modded drivers and stuff.
 
With the default unmodified Vista install, games ran like ass for me. I upgraded to Win7 x86 RTM and they run exactly the same (like ass). In Win 7, I have the WHQL drivers that Windows Update grabbed after the clean install.

I would also assume that the native 32 bit codepath is likely faster to execute since the only real 64 bit components most machines will ever see is the core of the OS. All 32 bit applications (games, browsers, email programs, etc) are all gonna run in that 32 bit emulation layer. also, memory use in 64 bit environments is usually higher (albeit insignificantly in most cases) My logic behind using 32 bit instead of x64 versions of Win7 was threefold: 1. i'm not likely going to upgrade the memory to 4GB; 2. 32 bit instruction sets will likely be faster since it's already sort of a slow cpu and 3. x64 requires signed drivers, which makes it harder to use modded drivers and stuff.

the athlons had extra registers for 64bit mode. So it will be faster in general

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1884&p=2

32 bit apps under a 64bit OS

The second benefit the Athlon 64 could offer in this scenario comes from the availability of additional registers. Although the 32-bit application would still only be compiled to use the regular set of 8 general purpose registers and standard set of FP and SSE2 registers, the 64-bit OS would be able to reference and use all of the registers at its disposal. The performance benefits that you would see here exist in any sort of task handling that the OS would be doing (switching between applications) as well as just regular Windows performance. Granted that the performance improvements seen here should be negligible, considering the extra overhead that does exist when running 32-bit applications in a 64-bit environment (more on this in a bit).

64bit apps under a 64bit OS

The performance improvements developers are expecting to see under this final scenario has been estimated to be in the 10 - 20% range in tasks that are not memory bound, meaning those areas where the application is using less than 2 - 4GB of memory in the first place will still see sizable performance gains courtesy of the availability of more registers. We will investigate a few of these scenarios to substantiate (or refute) these claims later on in the article.

Performance improvements where you are memory bound will be even more impressive; just think about how slow swapping to disk is and how much faster keeping everything in memory makes your computer
 
Awesome, thanks for the responses. I'll be putting x64 on the LT3114 and x86 on my E1705, then. It's nice to know the reasoning behind this. I had no idea the Athalons were a bit of a special circumstance.
 
I've had almost no luck with any kind of gaming on my LT3103. What settings have you guys been able to use and which games have worked for you?

I've tried a few, including some really old games (Kingpin, Tribes, a few others) and they all stutter really badly even at 640x480. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm missing something. With the factory RAM and the CPU overclocked to 1.4GHz, I didn't notice much (if any) performance improvement in any of the old games I tried.

The only games I've gotten to work well are ones that use a regular 2d framebuffer like Fallout, Fallout 2, etc.

I've tried WOW and LOTRO and they are both "playable" on low settings IF you stay out of the graphically intense areas like cities and places with lots of players in view. I can solo just fine on low settings, but I can't see myself doing any serious groups. As for the resolution, have you tried setting it to it's native resolution of 1366x768(or whatever the native res is)? I found things seemed to run a bit better on that res(and of course it looked better too).

As an FYI, I have the -96 PLL, so I'm limited to only the 1.43 overclosking. I'm also overclocking the memory to 5-4-4-1T, but that didn't really change things all that much.

Oh how I wish I had gotten the other PLL version. That one with it's 1.6+ overclocking ability is definitely better if you wanna try gaming.
 
the athlons had extra registers for 64bit mode. So it will be faster in general

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1884&p=2

32 bit apps under a 64bit OS

64bit apps under a 64bit OS

on my desktop and laptop, both of which have 8 and 4GB of RAM respectively and both of which are constantly used for heavy multitasking and often run native 64 bit applications, it's a no-brainer. i've run an x64 version of windows since 2005 and under the right circumstances and capable hardware it's easy to see why it makes sense. on a device whose intended use is web browsing and email-checking (and will likely rarely if ever see a single x64 app outside of core OS features) the performance difference between the two versions is not significant enough to warrant the time it would take for me to reformat again :)

re: native res, i tried several of the game at native res and they ran identically bad under native, 1024x768, 800x600 and 640x480 (where capable). i'm gonna need to dick around a bit more and see if i can't figure out what's going on.
 
Thanks for the clarification. I heard that the 3rd antenna is overkill and is most likely not utilized even in today's modern wireless technology. I might get a 3rd antenna later and add it in. Where should I put in? Where is it usually located? Is under the keyboard a good idea?

I'm about to pick up one of these Intel 5300 cards for my laptop and hopefully one for my netbook if I ever get one.

Did you ever put one of these into the machine. I bought an Intel 5300 533AN_MMW and my machine won't even boot with it installed. I'm not sure this one is compatible or just a bad card. I bought it on Ebay for cheap, so not sure.

Anyone have any luck with the 5300's and if so where did you get yours.

Thanx
 
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To have to run fluidly I ran it some weird custom resolution which I had to do via registry editing. I don't recall at the top of my head. I had everything at low as well.

In terms of gaming capability for a netbook, it is definitely better than the intel GMA950. But the problem is the native resolution in comparison to most GMA950 netbooks is a lot sharper.

So in terms of the "look", if you played DotA on say... an Asus 1000HE and then the Gateway LT, it will very much look the same. Even though the Gateway will run at a higher resolution (i think i had DotA running at 1067x600 resolution), it looks just as crappy as when I run it on an Asus netbook (which i run dota at 820x480). Now if the native resolution was like other netbooks (1024x600), then i'd venture to guess that DotA would look great with the gateway. I don't run FRAPS on my netbook to check the FPS because (sadly) it will hog the performance and will give you an inaccurate FPS. But at the resolutions I mentioned, it was fluid enough to play. Usually in big battles inside a base (where there are a ton of creeps... like the kind you get during the end of a game) then I think it drops to around 18-22 fps

The best SSD? that is a hard call, the problem is that the chipset will hinder most (if not all) SSDs, at least in terms of read/write.

I personally am using a OCZ vertex 30gb on my 1008ha. The performance of the OCZ vertex is identical to my girlfriend's netbook (msi wind u100) which is using a Patriot V2 32gb SSD. The only real difference I see between the two was in XP. When I ran the Patriot V2 under XP, I would experience stuttering (even after applying all tweaks), because it uses the jmicron controller. The stuttering wasn't really as bad as I thought (split second usually), but it was common if you tried to multitask and all the temporary files go to the ssd.

I found the best way to remedy the issue was using a portion of RAM as a small drive (roughly 256mb) and have the temporary files (like web files & etc) be written there. Under windows 7, the stuttering is non-existant. Is it "fixed" via these tweaks? i doubt it, I'm sure I can enduce a stutter if i tried, but you don't really do much multitasking with a netbook.

With the vertex, you don't have to apply any tweaks to get smooth performance. i do these tweaks anyway to preserve as much writes as possible since SSD are limited in how many times they can be written into (and yet I know that I will probably not reach that limit, but I figure I might as well preserve them if I can).

The difference is I got the Patriot V2 32gb for $45, while I spent $85 for my vertex 30gb. What it comes down to is how much do you really want to spend to improve the performance of a netbook before it defeats the purpose of buying a netbook, which is the low price.

If you really require a netbook that can game, I would really wait for the ion netbooks to come out, and if you can't wait then I'd just go with the Asus N10j. That will play DotA easily without any compromises.

Where did you find those SSD for so cheap ?
 
can anyone comment on the heat or fan noise of this model? If anyone can compare the heat/noise to an eeepc 4g surf that would be even better. thanks
 
can anyone comment on the heat or fan noise of this model? If anyone can compare the heat/noise to an eeepc 4g surf that would be even better. thanks


I personally can't hear the fan when its no going full blast, but you can hear it if it is fairly quite and the fan is going full blast , but it isnt near loud enough to ever overpower anything you would want to listen too
 
The HP mini 311, released today with the nvidia ION LE, looks pretty awesome.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/24/hps-ion-infused-mini-311-netbook-now-on-sale-starts-at-400/

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=notebooks&a1=Category&v1=Mini&a2=Display%20%28diagonal%29&v2=11.0%26quot%3B%20-%2014.9%26quot%3B&series_name=mini311_series&a1=Category&v1=Mini&a2=Display%20%28diagonal%29&v2=11.0%26quot%3B%20-%2014.9%26quot%3B

A video of it playing COD4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq3viL3EysU

It looks pretty interesting. Further reviews pending, it looks like I may have purchased this instead of the LT3114, were it available a month ago. That said, ohwells, school had started for me and I desperately needed something. The tests I've taken with aid of notes taken on my LT3114 have already justified its worth. ;) And of course, I'm sure by the time I'm looking at replacing this netbook, even more impressive models will be available.

Apparently it comes with XP, which of course means it only comes with 1GB RAM, though, so maybe it's not a clear cut ahead of the 3114 in all regards. Plus, that atom N280 is an additional $25. I'll be watching for reviews. :p
 
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The fact that the hp ion comes with a smaller hard drive, less ram, and a weaker cpu ( the atom 270 or 280 are both weaker than whats in the game way as long as you arent using duel threaded applications) makes it a close call, although the ion graphics probably more than makes up for everything the gateway does better.
 
has anyone using win7 on their LT3013u tried using any OpenGL applications or games?

i get really bad flickering in every OpenGL based game that i've tried. since the win7 catalyst legacy drivers won't install, nor will the gateway-branded vista drivers, i'm not sure how to work around this. it sort of points to the windows update supplied driver either fully lacking or having extremely limited OGL support.
 
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did you modify the INF or something to have the hardware id of the x1270?
 
Just in case anyone runs into the problem I had with opengl not working, I just ended up taking the x1270's hardware/deviceid info from the official gateway drivers and pasted it into a file in the extracted official catalyst legacy driver package for win7. i'm at work so i don't have the filename handy, but it allowed me to use ccc and opengl.
 
Hm? Could you be more specific? I'm having no problems with the drivers installed through Windows Update.

Maybe thats all i need to do ?
But what i was referring to is that when i try to install the legacy drivers from ati's website, the OS wont install it.

The ati catalysts center drivers is what im talking about
 
Maybe thats all i need to do ?
But what i was referring to is that when i try to install the legacy drivers from ati's website, the OS wont install it.

The ati catalysts center drivers is what im talking about

it's because ATi doesn't actually make mobility drivers for vista/win7.

you have to modify the legacy drivers with the hardware ID from the "official" gateway vista driver in order to have the catalyst installer detect and install the legacy driver.

also, the win7 drivers via windows update don't fully support opengl, so if you plan on using anything needing opengl acceleration, you need the legacy ones.
 
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