mobile 945gm vs 945pm

im currently tossing up between a dell inspiron 6400 and a toshiba tecra a7. i just noticed that the dell uses the945gm chipset while the toshiba has a 945pm. the only difference i could find on the intel website was that the gm runs lower voltages, and the pm has no integrated graphics... the toshiba website claims up to 4GB ram, is this possible on either/both chipsets? are there any major differences im missing???

i know the tecra has an x1600 compared to the dells x1400...but we all know the pick of the litter there .

 

The chipset is the same - the designations "PM" and "GM" do have signifigance:
-The GM designation means the laptop has an integrated graphics solution (GMA950 in the case of the 945)
-The PM desig. means that the laptop uses an external graphics solution (dedicated, seperate card) such as the Radeon X1400 in the Dell.

The 945 supports 4GB of RAM, but it depends on the motherboard for how much it actually take. Some are two, some four.

Chaz

 

so would that imply the GM "is better"? or does the GPU negate the usefulness of integrated graphics. i thought i read in one of the forums that if a computer has both it can just utilize the integrated graphics when doing simple stuff therefore saving power. any truth to that?

also, finding motherboard specs seems quite difficult, dell only has up to 2GB options so i would assume that motherboard only supports that, but im in the dark about toshiba...


ill probably call the sales people to double check

 

The GM is put into ultraportables (for heat concerns dedicated cards produce more heat) and budget notebooks that do not have a dedicated graphics card - for non-gamers, etc. It is much cheaper to put integrated graphics into a notebook versus the PM because with the PM you also need to put in a seperate gfx card.

There are a select few notebooks that have both integrated graphics and a dedicated card, where you can switch between them for power saving, etc. They use the GM chipset I believe. The Sony SZ is the only 945-based notebook I know of that does that.

Yeah, I'd contact them. They might not offer the maximum RAM for the notebook - there's a lot of notebooks that support 2GB, but the manufacturer only offers 1GB as an option, maybe because the target audience for that notebook isn't going to need that much or somoething.

Chaz