A notebook catering to the gaming set is sure to deliver a flashy design and good horsepower. And Gateway's latest racer, the P-172X FX, doesn't disappoint on either of these points.

Design highlights include a 17-inch display, a glossy black hard-plastic exterior with copper-colored detailing, and glowing backlit shortcuts atop the keyboard. Backing up the fleet looks are a 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo T8300 Intel CPU, 4GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and nVidia's GeForce Go 8800M GTS graphics board.

Sure enough, in our WorldBench 6 performance tests. the P-172X FX finished right behind the powerful Micro Express IFL9025, with a score of 96. At the display's native 1920-by-1200-resolution, however, neither Crysis nor World in Conflict--two extremely demanding games--got out of first gear. Crysis ran at slide-show speed, slogging along at 11 frames per second, while World in Conflict managed 16 fps. When we ratcheted the screen resolution down to 1024 by 768 pixels, each game reached 23 fps--decent performance for a discrete notebook graphics card.

This laptop hosts a slew of useful outputs, including a FireWire port, three USB ports, and eSATA and HDMI outputs. The trayless optical drive lets you feed the disc into the slot.

The P-172X FX's keys feel sturdy, are well spaced, and have good response; and the keyboard doesn't dip when you start hitting the keys (except the multimedia shortcut keys) with mounting enthusiasm. Also, Gateway seems to have treated the keys to resist spills and detritus. Even the numeric keypad is large enough to use easily.

Unfortunately, though the trackpad is reasonably big and has a handy scroll zone, the touchpad is positioned too far to the left side of the wrist rest. In most games the player uses the W, S, A, and D keys for movement and uses the mouse to control the camera). But the P-172X FX's configuration crams all of the essential controls into one uncomfortable zone.

The worst feature of the P-172X FX is its execrable audio. The two top-mounted speakers sound as tinny and hollow as an empty Campbell's soup can. Two words: Buy headphones. 

Battery life is another shortcoming. In our tests, the P-172X FX ran for just 2 hours, 42 minutes on a charge; the average I've battery life for laptops in this category is about 3 hours.

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