Gateway 9310 review: Gateway 9310

Gateway 9310XL
Editor's note: We have changed the ratings in this review to reflect recent changes in our rating scale. Find out more here.
On the outside, the latest top-of-the-line consumer desktop from Gateway, the 9310XL, doesn't look like much. Its standard tower case, traditional silver-and-black Gateway aesthetics, and matching peripherals cut a fairly run-of-the-mill profile. But don't be fooled by its bland exterior. The system we tested came tricked out with plenty of firepower and cost a competitive $2,479.

First, the entire 9310 line, of which the 9310XL boasts the best default configuration, features the new BTX case architecture, which we first saw from Gateway in its 7200XL, designed for better cooling and quieter operation. The design reserves the middle horizontal third of the 9310XL for processor and airflow only and uses bigger 120mm fans that move 40 percent more slowly than old 80mm fans. The result is a nearly silent machine.

The Gateway 9310XL's 3.2GHz Pentium 4 660 is a member of Intel's Pentium 4 600-series processors. This new line of CPUs offers the benefits of a 64-bit architecture, 2MB L2 cache (double the 500 series' 1MB), power-management features designed to reduce thermal wear and tear, and better security. If and when Microsoft releases its 64-bit version of Windows later this summer, any 9310 machine will be prepared to make the upgrade. Until we see supporting applications, however, it will be hard to say just what kind of performance gain the wider bit stream will deliver.

Either way, CNET Labs' benchmarks report that with current 32-bit apps, the 9310XL performs well enough to handle any day-to-day tasks with aplomb; it scored 194 on our SysMark 2004 test. This number isn't as high as the 206 we saw from Gateway's older 7200XL and its 3.6GHz Pentium 4 560, however, illustrating that 64-bit or otherwise, raw processing speeds seem to make more difference than a larger L2 cache, at least with current 32-bit apps.

In our test system, Gateway coupled the CPU with 1GB of RAM (the minimum for the 9310XL), upgradable to 4GB. Our system also included dual 250GB hard drives, a double-layer DVD burner, and an eight-in-one media-card reader. (Also, just to be clear, you can configure the bottom-of-the-series 9310S exactly like our 9310XL, but it's more expensive to do it this way.)

You wouldn't expect a system with such high-end core components to skimp on multimedia, and the 9310XL doesn't. By the time you read this, the model will come standard with one of the most powerful graphics cards, Nvidia's PCI Express 256MB GeForce 6800 Ultra. This almost instantly makes the 9310XL a powerful gaming system, which it demonstrated on our benchmarks by scoring 122.7 frames per second on our higher-end 1,600x1,200-resolution Unreal Tournament 2003 test. Sixty frames per second is considered the sweet spot for gaming. By more than doubling that score, the 9310XL shows that it can handle whatever 3D games you care to throw at it. For the quoted price, you also get a very bright Gateway FPD1950 19-inch LCD monitor.

Leading-edge sound should come standard in a higher-end PC, and the 9310XL doesn't disappoint on this score either. Gateway throws in the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS card, with its 24-bit high-resolution playback, low signal-to-noise ratio, and THX-certified, Dolby-Digital 7.1 surround sound. To go with this state-of-the-art audio subsystem, Gateway includes its almost laughably large GMax 5100 surround sound speakers with their huge, desktop-case-size subwoofer, (a $214 extra), which delivered skull-crunching power and exacting crispness (but were too loud even at volume-level 2 for comfortable listening). A wireless keyboard-and-mouse combo rounds out the package.

The price of our review unit included only the standard 9310XL software package: Microsoft Windows XP Home, Microsoft Works Suite 2005 for basic word processing and productivity, and a 90-day trial of Norton AntiVirus 2005. Gateway also backs the 9310XL with a respectable support package, including one year of parts-and-labor coverage (which you can extend in various ways, starting with $109 for a year of onsite service) and 24/7 phone support, although the call is not toll-free. If you want to read any documentation, you'll likely need to refer to Gateway's Web site, as the included documentation sadly goes only as far as a quick-setup guide. Online, there's more written info, in addition to driver downloads and other resources.

To measure application performance, CNET Labs uses BAPCo's SysMark 2004, an industry-standard benchmark. Using off-the-shelf applications, SysMark measures a desktop's performance using office-productivity applications (such as Microsoft Office and McAfee VirusScan) and Internet-content-creation applications (such as Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver).

To measure 3D gaming performance, CNET Labs uses Epic Games' Unreal Tournament 2003, widely used as an industry-standard benchmark. We use Unreal to measure a desktop's performance with the DirectX 8.0 (DX8) interface at a 32-bit color depth and at a resolution of 1,024x768 and 1,600x1,200. Antialiasing and anisotropic filtering are disabled during our 1,024x768 tests and are set to 4X and 8X respectively during our 1,600x1,200 tests. At this color depth and these resolutions, Unreal provides an excellent means of comparing the performance of low-end to high-end graphics subsystems. We report the results of Unreal's Flyby-Antalus test in frames per second (fps).

System configurations:
Gateway 7200XL
Windows XP Home SP2; 3.6GHz Intel P4 560; Intel 915GSE chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB ATI Radeon X800XT (PCIe); WDC WD2500JD-22HBB0 250GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA
Gateway 9310XL
Windows XP Home SP2; 3.2GHz Intel P4 640; Intel 915GSE chipset; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra (PCIe); two WDC WD2500JD-22HBB0 250GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA
MPC Millennia 940i Dream Machine
Windows XP Professional SP2; 3.8GHz Intel P4 570; Intel 925X chipset; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra (PCIe); Hitachi HDS722525VLSA80 250GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA; two Hitachi HDS724040KLSA80 400GB Serial ATA 7,200rpm; integrated Intel 82801FR SATA RAID controller
*Overdrive Torque 64
Windows XP Home SP2; 2.0GHz AMD Athlon 64 3000+; Nvidia Nforce-3 250 chipset; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT (AGP); Maxtor 6Y200M0 200GB, 7,200rpm Serial ATA
Velocity Micro Vector SX-V
Windows XP Home SP2; 3.4GHz Intel P4 550; Intel 915G chipset; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 128MB Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT (PCIe); WDC WD2000JD-00HBB0 200GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA

Note: *Overdrive Torque 64 CPU and graphics card are overclocked.

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