Toshiba Satellite won't run DDR2 at correct speed

Hey Guys,

I've been into tweaking my desktops and overclocking for maximum performance on my budget, and this weekend my laptop became the target for the first time.

It's an L25-s1216 which means it has the 200m chipset, a 1.6 Celery M, and 256 mB of ram from the factory. I have a 1 gig stick of GSkill DDR2 533 installed as well.

Since the CPU is FSB 100 (400) by default, I started out by removing the factory installed ram, giving me 1 GB of ram that should be recognized at DDR2-533 or 133 FSB. It wasn't-stayed at 100 FSB and DDR2-400. So, I figured that since I was going to pin mod anyway, maybe the new FSB of the CPU would cause the motherboard to increase the memory bus as well.

Took it apart, pin modded, put it back together, CPU now runs at FSB 133, but the memory is still stuck at DDR2-400. So now I have the FSB running faster than the memory bus, even though the specs say that the memory bus should run at ddr533 by default.

I have used Everest and CPU-Z to back up the findings that the memory on my laptop currently won't run any faster than DDR2-400. The SiSoft synthetic benchies put memory bandwidth on par with a KT266a chipset, which of course runs DDR133. I guess that's not the end of the world because it's a laptop, but I'm trying to tweak around this limitation.

So, here's my questions. Does anybody know where to get a hacked bios that allows for more tweaking?

What are the odds of a successful bios flash if I get the bios for a Toshiba laptop with identical hardware to mine, except it had a Pentium M from the factory and thus should run DDR2-533 by default?

Does anybody know for certain that dual-channel is or is not possible in the L-Series with the Radeon 200m chipset? The ATI support site says some are and some aren't, the Toshiba specs say that dual channel is possible on the model that I have yet googling finds users that say dual channel is not working.

I know that it's an older, cheap laptop and that I have to have some reasonable expectations for it, but at the same time, getting 533 memory and dual-channel (which the Toshiba website says it should already have both) would probably add a good bit of performance versus single-channel 400 MHz DDR2.

Thanks in advance for the assistance!

 

Most of what you are doing is beyond what I can answer. But as far as Dual Channel goes, does CPU-Z say it is Dual it should tell you. Second run the "memory bandwidth" benchmark in SiSoft look for this.

Logical/Chipset 1 Memory Banks
Bank 0 : 512MB DDR2-SDRAM 5.0-5-5-15 (tCL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS) CR1
Bank 1 : 512MB DDR2-SDRAM 5.0-5-5-15 (tCL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS) CR1
Shared Memory : 8MB
Channels : 1
Memory Bus Speed : 4x 333MHz (1332MHz data rate)
Width : 64-bit
Performance Acceleration Technology : No
Memory Controller in Processor : No
Maximum Memory Bus Bandwidth : 10656MB/s (estimated)

In Red 1 Channel 64bit is single channel

Logical/Chipset 1 Memory Banks
Bank 0 : 512MB DDR2-SDRAM 5.0-5-5-15 (tCL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS) CR1
Bank 1 : 512MB DDR2-SDRAM 5.0-5-5-15 (tCL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS) CR1
Bank 4 : 512MB DDR2-SDRAM 5.0-5-5-15 (tCL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS) CR1
Bank 5 : 512MB DDR2-SDRAM 5.0-5-5-15 (tCL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS) CR1
Shared Memory : 8MB
Channels : 2
Memory Bus Speed : 4x 333MHz (1332MHz data rate)
Width : 64-bit
Performance Acceleration Technology : No
Memory Controller in Processor : No
Maximum Memory Bus Bandwidth : 21312MB/s (estimated)

2 channels 64bit 2X64=128=Dual channel also look at Maximum Memory Bus Bandwidth that also tells you.

Benchmarks courtesy of John Ratsey.

 

No, the L series don't support dual-channel. The Xpress 200m revision used on L-series laptops is the RC410, which doesn't support dual-channel

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/8232

 

So, has Toshiba officially accepted any responsibility for lying/misleading about specs?

Secondly, any hope for me with regard to getting the memory to run at 266 MHz? It's still running at 400, which is a bigger problem than the dual channel.

 

To answer my own question, Toshiba doesn't think there is anything inaccurate about saying that the L25-s1216 uses DDR2-533/PC4200 in dual-channel mode, as it says on the product page. At one point, they told me that it's "impossible" because there is research done before releasing the product and that they are incapable of making the mistake.

They just told me to check all my power settings and make sure they are maximized. What a joke.

 

Well, I did spend an hour checking the properties of every device in the device manager to ensure that Windows was not slowing down my ram to save power . Obviously it wasn't. Maybe today I'll go for the prize and ask for a pre-production bios or an outright fix. I have a feeling that will be a huge no-way, but it does suck that they're out there lying about the specs of this laptop.

If anybody has a Toshiba L-Series laptop using the ATI 200m chipset and can run either Everest, CPU-Z, or Sandra and confirm that they are only getting DDR2-400 I'd appreciate it. If any of you have a Pentium M and meet the above criteria, that would be even better for my argument, since it's native 133 FSB.

 

It may just be that that particular chipset doesnät support faster than DDR2-400. Just because the FSB is 133MHz doesn't mean the ram runs ath 133MHz (look at Santa rosa).

 

Thanks for the response.

Unfortunately, the chips supports quite a bit more than DDR2-400. It was also released for the desktop, and supports up to DDR2-667 in both versions.

http://ati.amd.com/products/radeonxpress200mIntel/specs.html


The real problem is that the Toshiba site says it should run DDR2-533, so if the chipset didn't support it, that would be an even bigger lie than the one they are already telling. I'm not even really complaining about the dual-channel support that Toshba's specs says the laptop offers, despite the fact that this version of the 200m doesn't support it.

http://static.tigerdirect.com/pdf/satellite_L25-S1216.pdf

 

Well, my L20 originally came with a Celeron M 370 (1.5GHz) ran on a 400MHz bus, and memory at 533MHz. When I swapped it for a Pentium M 730 (1.6GHz), the processor ran on a 533MHz bus, but the memory downclocked to 400MHz. I have found no way of changing the memory clocking.

 

I have an L100 which has a Celeron-M 380 1.6GHz (400MHz FSB) and runs the ram at 533MHz as the slower sodimm is 533.

 

The irony of this whole situation with Toshiba and the incorrect specs on their website is that my 2x512 MB of DDR2-667 showed up in the mail yesterday.

I thought I had done my research and I was going to upgrade to a dual-channel DDR2-533 setup that had pretty low latencies from the ram SPD.

It's really too bad that my research was flawed because I thought the manufacturer would know what they were talking about and/or make a correction if it came to their attention that the website was inaccurate.

My low latency dual-channel setup is just a joke now unless I can work a trade for a laptop that would actually support what it says it would. Not to mention the time and frustration that preceded my situation......

My advice for anybody else in the future with a similar issue, especially on this particular laptop:

1. Go out and find a program called Clockgen. Do not pin-mod the CPU, because the 100 MHZ FSB is to your advantage.

2. Clockgen will allow you to overclock the FSB of your CPU, if you set clockgen at 133, it's the exact same effect as the pin mod.

3. The [potential] advantage is that if the CPU boots with a 100 FSB, and the RAM running 100 (DDR2-400) as well, the ram [should] stay 1:1 with the FSB and by overclocking the CPU, you should be able to get the RAM to the correct speed.

3a. At this point, this is theory, because I now have to take my whole lappy apart again and remove my perfectly beautiful pin mod and use dirty, lame software overclocking. If the chipset strap can dynamically adjust ratios and keep the RAM at 100 even when the CPU is being overclocked, I'll be one unhappy camper (this is unlikely).

The only reason I'd even spend another hour gutting this thing again is because I've become obsessed with getting it to work as advertised and I won't let the fact that Toshiba doesn't want it to work stand in the way of me getting what I paid for.

The good news is that with my overclocked CPU and other tweaking, I was able to get the fully shared RAM version of the 200m integrated graphics up to almost 3900 3DM01 marks. 4000 should be easy once I get the RAM straightened out.