Right, im getting me a X205. What should i do with it first?

Okay, after much deliberation, I have decided to purchase a Toshiba X200 (its a X205, but I live in the UK so its called the X200 here). There is only one model available, the higher end X205, so it has the 2ghz CPU, 512mb 8700gt and the nicer screen.

I have heard that it comes filled with bloatware. I hate when companies do this. I currently have a sony vaio which was filled with sony crap like sonicstage, etc. anyways, whats the best way to get rid of all the junk? Should i just go uninstalling, then defrag, or is just a clean vista installation the best way? Although, are there not any special toshiba programs that you should leave?

Oh, and whats the best way to get going on overclocking the GPU. I dont plan on getting into bioshock anytime soon, so im not going to install the crappy dx10 drivers. Hopefully by the time i do, overclocking will be allowed on it.

Cheers for any help. Cant wait to get the new lappy. My vaio has been starting to annoy me lately, being too damn sluggish

 

Yes toshibas usually comes with a lot of stuff you don't need, but since im not a toshiba user i don't if there are actually anything useful included.

Reformating would be the best way to go about removing all the usesless stuff i owuld say.

Congrats on the new laptop btw!

 

Wipe it clean.

I've got an x205 myself, and it came with huge amounts of bloatware. Mine took near ten minutes to load up on first boot (no exaggeration!), and subsequent boots took three to four minutes. I wasn't too happy about that.

I tried to wipe it clean, and it took about an hour and a half to un-install everything (the "games" it comes with took far longer than they should have). In the end, it was faster to just wipe it and start from the ground up.

I used a Vista DVD to re-install the software (Vista DVDs have all versions on the software, and can be installed from "new" or "upgrade" DVDs), downloaded the bare minimum drivers from Toshiba (nvidia, audio, Robson and wireless). Once it booted, I connected to Windows Update which downloaded almost every other driver I needed, and made recommendations for other Toshiba drivers it felt I should have installed and provided me to download links from Toshiba's website (which is most nifty!).

While downloading drivers, I noticed Toshiba's site had different drivers for wireless cards (Aetheros, Intel, Intel Proset Utility). The Intel+Intel Proset drivers were all I needed for wireless. The Atheros may be for particular variants of the X200 series (e.g. European model). I didn't install them, and have had no issues.

Once I let Windows Update do its multiple download/install passes, my boot times went down to about 50 seconds. Nice boost.

I've since upgraded the primary HD from the standard Hitachi hybrid-HD the system comes with to a 200GB Hitachi Travelstar 7K200, one of the single fastest notebook drives around, and it shaved off a few more seconds off the boot time (and games load uber-fast!).

As far as special Toshiba applications... mmm, no, there's nothing you REALLY need. I'd install the fingerprint drivers (it's useful) and the HD-DVD software, but that's about it. The rest of it is bloated and not really that useful.

 

Oh, and keep in mind the GeForce 8700 series are simply highly overclocked 8600 cards. There's no real difference.

You should be able to use nvidia's ntune software to crank it up, but I've not tried it, and considering the card is an pre-overclocked in a manner of speaking, I'm not sure cranking it higher would yield too much more benefit.

Mind you, I've not tried it yet, so I don't know how effective it may or may not be, but keep in mind pre-overclocked cards are pretty close to their limits from the get go.

 

Just see what an 8700M GT is capable of:

 

Now you can use the 163.44 drivers an overclock you GPU, just use Riva Tuner 2.03.

Download it here: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163

 

Overclocking the 8700 proves to be VERY beneficial.

An 8700GT at 775/938 scores 5194 at 1280x1024 in 3dmark06.
A comparable 7950GTX scores 5400-5600 at 1280x1024 in 3dmark06.

The 8700GT is similar in stats to the 8600... but does have a dual-rank 128-bit memory interface as well... who knows what this actually means, but frankly the 8700 defeats even the GDDR3 version of the 8600 quite easily and overclocks insanely well over and above what the 8600 can even dream of...

 

Do you need the new notebook for the next month or two? If I'd bought one three days ago like I was very close to doing, I'd probably be returning it right now and waiting for the 8800M model.

 

If you play that game, then you will be waiting forever. New NBs are constantly in development. By the time a company put out a new NB they are probably already working on it's replacement. You will only have the latest and greatest NB for a couple weeks. Then the industry will shift and a new line of NBs comeout that make yours old news.

The X205 is still a great NB. I'm typing on it right now and I have to say that it is a joy to work with. I really enjoy this NB.

 

haha no its not, its built off of a different card, plus it has a dual rank 128bit mem bus, which i guess counts as having two, so it is NOT the same as 8600gt, it can perform on par with a 7900gtx at a reasonable res.

 

Grabbed Rivatuner 2.03, Still won't OC with 163.44...

How did you get it to work?