Compare Tecra M3 and Portege S100

I think I understand most of the data sheet differences between these two laptops. The biggest ones being PCMCIA Express and nVidia 6600 128mb on the M3, and SATA drives and nVidia 6200 64mb on the S100. I don't care about the new PCMCIA form factor, so are the GPU differences that much? Has anyone seen an S100 and an M3 and can perhaps comment on ergonomics, or build quality or anything else that might not be so obvious from the data sheets?

I know that other companies sometimes design/build Toshiba's laptops (like every other laptop company). Does anyone know who builds each of these models?

TIA

 

If you plan on playing games, go with the 6600, it's noticeably better, it has its own 128mb of video memory. The 6200 64mb is actually called TurboCache, because there is only something like 16mb (if I'm not mistaken) of dedicated RAM and the rest is shared. The drawbacks of shared memory are not as bad with the PCI Express architecture, but nonetheless, the 6600 is a much better piece of GPU.

I cannot tell you about the rest of the notebooks, as I haven't tried either of them.

EDIT

I went to check on Toshiba Canada's website and both these models are said to have a GeForce 6200 TE 64mb. The M3 is not said to have a 6600. Perhaps these models are different for your country, if you're not from Canada.

Toshiba Satellite M40 - Pentium-M Sonoma 1.6ghz - 512mb DDR333 - 60gb 4200rpm - GeForce 6600 128mb - 15.4" BrightView WXGA TFT LCD

 

From the US Toshibadirect website the max GPU config for the Tecra M3 is nVidia 6600 128mb dedicated RAM, and for the S100 is nVidia 6200 with 64mb of dedicated RAM. (As far as the spec sheet indicates none of the GPU RAM in the S100 is shared, unlike the 6200 implementation in the Sony S380 which is 32/64 dedicated/shared)

Certainly there are differences in the GPU between these Toshibas. The only review here on the M3 has the user stating that he thought he would get better benchmark performance with the 6600 128mb GPU, than he got. That may not be a thorough enough test, but it may indicate that the differences between both GPUs may not be so great. Anyway, that's basically why I asked my original question to see if there are any other significant differences, (that can't be seen from the spec sheets), between the laptops.

 

Okay, for the differences between the two models, 6600 and 6200, I searched the net a little, because I admit I was a little late on the details. You can check that article, it shows the main differences, it's about the desktop parts, but they're mainly similar.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2238

Here's a quick run-down of the 6600 and with a little comparison tables of the specs for all the Go series.

http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-x-1485-x-x-x

As a whole, the 6600 has 8 pixel pipelines, while the 6200 has 4, and some other minor features that are absent from the 6200...


Toshiba Satellite M40 - Pentium-M Sonoma 1.6ghz - 512mb DDR333 - 60gb 4200rpm - GeForce 6600 128mb - 15.4" BrightView WXGA TFT LCD

 

Thanks..

Those were both interesting pieces to read. I have to admit that the smaller power consumption of the 6200 really stands out (Peak usage). Without the benefit of actually seeing it tested, I'm tempted to think that the S100 will fit my usage needs..