Toshiba Satellite X205-S9359 Take Two: Displays and Drivers
by Jarred Walton on September 6, 2007 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
General Performance, Revisited
We looked at performance using SYSmark 2007 and PCMark05 in part one, and we have now completed benchmarks using other applications. Using the updated NVIDIA drivers did have a small impact on PCMark05 performance, but fluctuations between benchmark runs in that particular application are large enough that outside of the 3D score everything else was within margin of error. For the other benchmarks, we decided to finally make a break from older software versions and introduce testing with the latest releases of several multimedia applications. We upgraded from DivX 6.1 to DivX 6.6 and from iTunes 6.0.5 to version 7.3.2. The latter also brings along an upgrade from QuickTime 7.1 to 7.2. Naturally, that invalidates all of our results from previous laptops.
We also ran into some odd results in terms of encoding times, with some scores being significantly faster than we expected. Our QuickTime 7.1 result for example was consistently around 70 seconds, which is less than half the time the same task took on any other laptop. We repeated the same test a dozen times with all scores falling between 68 and 72 seconds, so we are at a loss to explain what's going on. Our QuickTime 7.2 result is also significantly faster than what we've seen on other laptops, although the margin of victory has been narrowed quite a bit. For these new benchmarks, we only have scores for the Alienware m9750 and the Toshiba X205, but future laptop reviews will build on these results.
Other than the oddities with QuickTime, everything basically falls out as we would expect with the faster processor in the Alienware m9750 giving it the advantage. These are all CPU intensive tasks, so other applications may benefit more from the split hard drive vs. RAID 0 configuration or the GPUs.
We looked at performance using SYSmark 2007 and PCMark05 in part one, and we have now completed benchmarks using other applications. Using the updated NVIDIA drivers did have a small impact on PCMark05 performance, but fluctuations between benchmark runs in that particular application are large enough that outside of the 3D score everything else was within margin of error. For the other benchmarks, we decided to finally make a break from older software versions and introduce testing with the latest releases of several multimedia applications. We upgraded from DivX 6.1 to DivX 6.6 and from iTunes 6.0.5 to version 7.3.2. The latter also brings along an upgrade from QuickTime 7.1 to 7.2. Naturally, that invalidates all of our results from previous laptops.
We also ran into some odd results in terms of encoding times, with some scores being significantly faster than we expected. Our QuickTime 7.1 result for example was consistently around 70 seconds, which is less than half the time the same task took on any other laptop. We repeated the same test a dozen times with all scores falling between 68 and 72 seconds, so we are at a loss to explain what's going on. Our QuickTime 7.2 result is also significantly faster than what we've seen on other laptops, although the margin of victory has been narrowed quite a bit. For these new benchmarks, we only have scores for the Alienware m9750 and the Toshiba X205, but future laptop reviews will build on these results.
Other than the oddities with QuickTime, everything basically falls out as we would expect with the faster processor in the Alienware m9750 giving it the advantage. These are all CPU intensive tasks, so other applications may benefit more from the split hard drive vs. RAID 0 configuration or the GPUs.
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johnscott - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
this fixes the screen from not coming back after idle and lets youDL from nvidiahttp://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&...">http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi...amp;ssPa...
Inkjammer - Saturday, September 8, 2007 - link
I remember Anandtech running an article on the 2GB issues people were running into on Vista. While the X205 comes with 2GB of memory, 256MB of that memory are taken by the graphics card by default. Between Vista's overhead and the Turbomemory, the system runs with a memory hit, which may affect games like Oblivion.I ultimately broke down and bought 4GB of memory for the laptop to make up for this "gap", as you hit memory limits faster. It's something to take into consideration on systems shipping with Turbomemory enabled gaming cards.
Inkjammer - Saturday, September 8, 2007 - link
While I had previously recommended the 164.33 drivers in the first review, I did discover something interesting: the HD-DVD drive would refuse to play video when using them. THe only way to re-instate the HD-DVD video was to revert back to the OEM drivers Toshiba ships with, which was... dissapointing.So, I guess there are pros and cons to the drivers that I hadn't noticed after all, and it went back to what you said about incompatibilities. But the HD-DVD playback was NOT a compatibility problem I'd have thought of. I've been running the 163.44 so far and have had no game problems. The HD video is the only issue thus far.
customcoms - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
http://anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3085&am...">http://anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3085&am...,I believe you are speaking about the Toshiba X205 in this sentence, as it has the lowest black level and achieves a contrast ratio of 874:1.
JarredWalton - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
I mean that I want the option for the brighter whites, like the ASUS G2P. I'll edit for clarity. :)SpaceRanger - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
Oblivion 18.19 18.01 -4.04%How is that a -4.04% reduction???
JarredWalton - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
It is an average of all three tested resolutions (1280x800, 1440x900, and 1680x1050). I left out the lower resolutions in the table, but they are present in the scaling charts. Here are the specifics for Oblivion:Oblivion,v101.68,v163.44,%Change
1280x800,26,24.4,-6.19%
1440x900,21.1,20.1,-4.92%
1680x1050,18.2,18,-1.01%
,,,-4.04%
(Sorry - no good way to do a table in our comments, so cut and paste that into a CSV file for proper viewing of the columns if you need to.) Basically, there was a sizable performance drop at 1280x800, which counterbalances the small drop at 1680x1050.
Take care,
Jarred