Question for Any X205 SLI owners...

I think the sli3 has a different process thats the only idfference i think. Google it

 

You are basically paying $600 more for a slightly faster cpu 2.2Ghz on the sli3 instead of 2Ghz on the sli1 and Vista Ultimate on the sli3 instead of Home Prenium on the sli1, I got the sli1 as I don't see the justification for the sli3 price just for those 2 things that are the only differences.

 

yea and it comes with vista ultimate which i favor much more....

also with a higher resolution choice, bigger harddrive, and built in tv tuner for the sli3.

 

So We need to mention; Dell 1730 SLI 512MB combine but is really 256MB, Sager 9261 SLI 1G combine but really 512MB and AW m9750 SLI 1G combine but 512MB. So that fact it applies to any of this brands too, and they are getting announce with the big numbers too. The confusion is not only from Toshiba, I think they really forget to explain the real meaning of SLI in that way some people don't get confuse. Like the Raid 0 some people think it doubles the sizes when it really do is work together as a faster one example: 160 + 160 7,200RPM they will work together like a 160 at 14,000RPM which means it doubles the speed not the space. So on the GPUs they double the VRAM when the game support SLI, but in normal uses will be single VRAM...

 

the cpu is faster with 4mb cache, larger hard drives, higher res screen(yes it is a beauty), vista ultimate (the only os ms should be selling)
Costco is THE BEST place to buy this thing because if you decide you dont like it within 90 DAYS they will take it back plus they automatically extend the warranty to 2 YEARS. Its where I bought mine, Free shipping too or for about
$20.00 bucks you will see it in 3 days.;>) Costco's price was cheaper than Newegg for the same machine (surprized me cause I buy alot from the egg)

 

I need to eat some crow as Jesse just posted pics in other thread that shows the
TWO 2 vid cards tied together.
Great pics BTW

 

I forgot about those other things, well maybe it's worth the price but I really don't care about Vista Ultimate or the TV tuner, I am running XP on mine, I just swapped my 2 x 160 Gig hard drives and T7700 cpu from my X205-9349 to the sli1 and gave the 9349 to my son, so now I have the 2 x 160Gig hard drives and the T7700 cpu on my sli1 and since I am running XP this thing is very fast.

 

Yep, and I took both cards apart to verify and to put some Arctic Silver paste on the gpu's and memory as well to help the cards disipate heat a little better than with the goop they put on there and indeed each card has 4 memory chips of 64MB each.

 

Well, ulitmately what I'm really concerned about is the fact that this supposedly kick-ass gaming machine flickers when I play a game like Hitman which I downloaded from the nVidia site. I mean...what the heck is that all about? Shouldn't this 'gaming rig' not have flicker and be able to handle a game like this? Can somebody please explain what is wrong here? I've also tried to increase the refresh rate but there are no options other than 60 Hz.

 

Your findings make you question Toshibas " engineer "
according to the engineer I talked to, he pulled the parts lists and it showed Samsung 256 MB Modules on VGA 1 and 2, for a total of 2

 

nikkidawg that MUST be some other issue I have a older emachines with vista and 2 gig of ram running an ati 9600 and it plays hitman quite well NO Flicker.
I'd check your drivers=reinstall and ck ms NB for latest hotfixes

 

Thanks x3baddad for the reply. Pardon my 'newbieness' but what is "ck ms NB"?

 

alright ic ic so i gess il buy the sli3 tonight through costco...thanks guys helped me decide alot in a short amount of time.....

hey x3baddad where r you located? if you dont mind me asking. i live in the los angeles county and by their shipping information, they say i will recieve it in 1 day. but i was wondering if i have it shipped express will it make a difference?

 

Check Microsoft Knowledgebase.

 

I see why the sli1 8600M GT cards run hotter than the 8700M GT on the 9349 laptops look at the following pics i took of both earlier today. I know what you guys are gonna say!! I am crazy taking both of my laptops apart again, ohh and I switched the motherboards to see if the robson turbo cache will help speed my sli1 system a bit but who knows, I will know when I decide to reinstall Vista.

http://img209.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cimg0146iw5.jpg

http://img220.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cimg0147xq5.jpg

http://img225.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cimg0154xw7.jpg

You will notice he heatpipe and cooler at the end of the heatpipe are bigger on the 8700M GT, the sli card is the one on top of the picture and the 8700M GT is the one on the bottom of the picture, I guess they had to do this because of lack of space for bigger heat pipes. The last link is a picture of the Intel robson turbo cache memory circuit that is missing on the sli1 models.

 

I'm testing an X205 SLi3 at the moment and I'll have a review of it out soon (1 - 2 weeks). It will mainly be a gaming review since we already reviewed the standard X205 with the 8700M-GT.

So far I am really enjoying the SLi3. I installed the Nvidia 169.09 drivers with no problems:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=187742
169.09 are recommended for SLI setups running Crysis. If you aren't SLI then go for the 169.04:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=187219&highlight=169.04

I don't hang around the Toshiba forum that often so if anyone replies and I don't see it within a few hours, private message me and I'll check out what I missed.

 

I just came accross this thread be777solo. I tried to register as well with nVidea and when it did the hardware scan, I got the same result as you.

Have we been duped by Toshiba here?

 

I'm in Washington north of Seattle, Express just means they get it out of their warehouse quicker. and ship it 2nd day, if you are in LA don't bother

 

Yeah, if you are anywhere within 500 miles of LA, the only thing Express shipping does is give you very good tracking through the express tracking number.

Costco is a top notch seller of electronics, particularly computers. Very often lowest price on the market, always seem to have immediate stock (they use large volume depot direct purchase contracts with Toshiba), you get the 2nd year warranty service, with their Concierge Customer Support as well, and the 90 day return (walk into the nearest Costco) cannot be beat. Return it for any reason, even a bad hair day, no questions asked.

 

I'm using the SLi3 right now and it is an awesome machine. If you have the extra money I say go for the higher-end machine. As noted, the extra money gets you:
-WSXGA+ screen vs WXGA+
-320GB hard drive space vs. 240GB
-External TV tuner
-Vista Ultimate vs. Premium
-T7500 2.2GHz/4MB vs. T7250 2.0GHz/2MB

Prices for those upgrades on top of what the SLi1 comes with (as if the X205 were customizable, the pricing would be something like this):
-maybe $50 or $75 more for the screen
-$20 - $40 more for the hard drives according to aftermarket prices for the drives
-USB tuners are $75 - $100
-Vista Ultimate $70
-$50 for the CPU upgrade

So, add that up ($75 + $40 + $100 + $70 + $50) = $335. So you're getting what you are paying for.

You can upgrade to Ultimate easily and also get a tuner with ease . . . the hard drives can also be upgraded if needed. The real reason to spring for the SLi3 is the WSXGA+ screen and the faster CPU. The faster CPU doesn't make that much of a difference but depending on what you like, the screen might make it worth getting the SLi3.

 

Well, just for fun and as some people like 3DMark 06 Scores, I just reinstalled Vista and installed 3D Mark 06 and ran it on my X205-SLI1 and here is the score I got with stock speeds on cpu and both gpu's:

http://img57.imageshack.us/my.php?image=x205sli13dmark06scoredt2.jpg

This one is at 1440x900 resolution

http://img157.imageshack.us/my.php?image=x205sli13dmark06score1dw4.jpg

 

jesse what driver's did you get those with??

 

I was using 167.26 drivers, cause for some reason the 169.09 driver would not work, but I am downloading the 169.09 driver again and will reinstall that and see what happens.

 

Originally Posted by be77solo
"Hey, quick question... trying to get the whole SLI thing figured out... was messing around the Nvidia SLIzone and was gonna join the forum over there to get some other info for the SLI and best settings for games, and ran across this... It's the Nvidia Club SLI; what intrigued me was it does a quick test of your system to see if you have SLI enabled and working... and for some reason it says I don't? Not sure why... drivers, or hardware... just curious, would anybody else mind clicking the link and seeing what it tells you? I don't even really care about actually qualifying for the club, but was curious if SLI isn't setup right on my machine somehow."
____________________________________________


Has anybody got an explanation as to why the nVidia website's hardware scan indicates that the X205-SLI1 does NOT have SLI?? This is puzzling to me. Can somebody here expain please?

 

Chaz, what tweaks did you do to your SLi3? Right now, mine stalls on Age of Empires III. When I scroll around there is some very weak response times.

 

The only 'tweak' I did was install the 169.09 drivers. Other than that I let it go. I recommend updating the game you're playing with the latest patches and see if that helps. Also, if you could post a screenshot of your settings I can take a look at those.

Regarding Toshiba's site not saying the SLi1 is SLI - it's a mistake.

 

Has anyone else noticed?

 

yeah, it's normal... both the SLi1 I've got and the Best Buy model that I demo'd were the same as you desribe, and as Ingvarr said

 

Chaz let us know what you get for battery life on the SLi3. I believe Dcxv was only getting a little over an hour which was quite a difference from the 2 and 1/2 hours you tested the non-Sli x205.

 

I have a question, Why the heck do I have to restart in non SLI mode to play
an HD DVD Then i have to restart again to turn it back on. Is there a work
Around that I'm missing or is that the way it is??

 

That is really annoying, I agree. It's not an issue specific to this Toshiba (any SLI + HD DVD system would have this issue I assume). I haven't been able to find a workaround, let me know if you do.

 

Hey, just a side note, I installed Cyberlink Power DVD, and it works with SLI enabled... it only use single GPU mode, BUT you don't have to actually disable SLI... it runs beautifully with it still enabled in the control panel, unlike the Toshiba player.... also, did note with newer drivers i'm playing HD DVD's with only around 25% CPU usage for what that's worth, so something is working right!

 

Is that with oem (toshiba ) drivers only or can I use 169.09 and play HD with the cyberlink player, if that works I'm going to go buy power dvd today

 

It is the way they modified WinDVD for toshiba's use, I just installed Vista Ultimate on my sli1 with the toshiba nvidia drivers and I would get the same message then I uninstalled it and installed the retail version of WinDVD and it works fine without disabling sli as I type this on my FZ180E I am watching Transformers on my sli1 and it is playing just fine.

 

jesse is that with toshiba vid drivers or the 169,s

 

This was with the latest Toshiba drivers for the sli1 and sli3 models, I think it is version 156.64.

 

I'm using the 169.09 drivers and they work great, BUT you do still have to modify the .inf as mentioned in prior posts to enable the driver to work with PowerDVD as you do with the Toshiba player, big difference is you can leave SLI enabled.... I agree, having to swap that just to watch a movie got OLD fast! Once ya know what to do it only takes a minute or two with each driver update, but you do still have to do it. But, once you do that you can watch HD movies with SLI enabled and use the latest drivers.

 

I just installed the drivers by modifying them but I still get the message from vista that it cannot determine the creator of the drivers and asks me if I really want to install the drivers, do you get the message too???

 

You talking about when you install the newer Nvidia drivers from Laptopvideo2go and it brings up that red box to install or not? If that's what you are talking about, I get that too, think it's because they aren't windows certified drivers like the Toshiba ones.

 

Does it say that in a window that comes up? Always hit 'Continue Anyway' - it's giving you that message because the drivers are not digitally signed, which doesn't matter.

 

Just got PowerDVD ultra from Newegg and can now watch a HD DVD or play hellgate without having to restart the computer, will work on modding the inf in the morning but just wanted to thankyou for the cyberlink tip it works better than the stock ones and lowers cpu usage too

 

hey, glad it worked for ya! I was very impressed with it as well, good player! Let me know if ya need any help moding the .inf, but it's fairly straight forward and written out in several posts... good luck!

 

Yes that is what I was talking about and I just told it to install the drivers anyway like I always do, I haven't installed Power DVD again but I might do that here shortly and see if I can play Transformers that is the movie that gives me the most problems. Thanks!!

 

So, I have run out and bought the Cyberlink Powerdvd Ultra as well in hopes of this all falling into place and have hit another speed bump. Apparently, I modded the 169.01 drivers to work with Powerdvd but when I try the same thing with my crysis drivers, 169.09, the install for the new drivers doesn't install them correctly. It seems as if it does a half install, not copying all the drivers and again, Powerdvd tells me I don't have the right drivers. Can someone walk thru how to get it to work with the 169.09 drivers? Thanks

 

How do you mod the inf file? ([please if you can, be specific as I'm new to this)

 

I'd try deleting the drivers, running a driver cleaner program such as Driver Sweeper to remove what you have now, make sure you've got a good copy of the drivers you want to use from Laptopvideo2go, modify the .inf from the Toshiba file like you did for the .01's, and then reinstall everything, and you should be good to go. I'm running the 169.09's with the modified .inf and Power DVD runs great with them... Try that and you should be good to go, it does help to make sure you have all the previous files removed. Good luck!

 

Here's a link to the page that talks about what to modify, page 3 in this thread.... lemme know if you can't figure it out

This is what to do to get the HDDVD software players to work with the newer drivers that aren't from Toshiba


http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=155445&page=3

 

You know I uploaded the modified inf and cat files on another thread so he can just copy them into the drivers folder and be able to install the drivers to use PowerDVD, I used your trick and it works great!!.

 

Sweet! Removed old drivers with Driver Sweeper and installed fine. Plays on PowerDVD without taking off Sli...Now it's on to figuring out how the heck to use RivaTuner to overclock my gpu. Haven't tried watching HD DVD thru HDMI out but will try that soon. Thanks again.

 

Ok, i was interested in this and read up to page 5 of the thread about how its not 512mb and all kinds of technical numbers and stuff, im not sure if anyone has said this after pg 5,(and im no genius and putting together a few things i have read from various places) but there is 2 256mb cards. I think the way SLi works (and im fairly certain i read this from alienware a few years back right when they introduced using 2 Video cards) is that when needed< ie. while playing powerhungry games, the 2 seperate cards will get a dedicated half of the screen to do their Video card stuff.... Pretty much 1 takes the right half, the other takes the left half, and a bunch of different things even it out, and make it match up. That system makes the work each card has to do easier... Now, as I said, im no tech guy and everything i said could be wrong, but i think thats how the SLi technology is used..