Toshiba Gaming Performance (x205)

I'm going to be buying a gaming/multimedia laptop in the next few weeks and am running through my options. My current laptop is a zd 8000 so I'm looking for something along those lines with better gaming performance. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with a Sager 5790 but I'm also exploring some other options.

I don't really know a whole lot about toshiba's but I was examining the X205 laptop. That seems to be exactly what I'm looking for but I have a couple problems with it..

Windows Vista - That's the main problem. IR eally don't want it but I'm sure I'll be stuck with it anyway

Gaming Performance - What's the gaming performance like on this particular laptop? The scored don't look terribly bad. I'm, not a hard core gamer but I would like to play oblivion, nwn 2, and guildwars (2) at high levels of graphical details.

One of the bonuses of the sager system is its expandability. If I buy a toshiba I'm stuck with that particular video card and I've not heard a lot of very good things about nVidia's DX10 cards.

Does anyone have any real world experience gaming on this machine?

Edit: I also wanted to mention that multimedia is a big issue as well. I live in a hotel 10 months out of the year and jack into the hotel's cable port so a tv tuner (preferable integrated) is a must and decent sounding speakers.

I also use my laptop for business - and I really like the style of the toshiba keyboard and Multi function keys. Actually - they seem to have the best keyboard of all the laptops I've looked at - not a small issue.

 

Take a look at this first look review and i think Chaz is doing an indept review on the X205-S9349 that he will post next week that should include gaming performance. I would PM him and see what games he will test.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3836

 

Thanks - I read that and watched the "First Look" video. That's actually what made me consider the Toshiba.

I'll wait patiently for his review. I'm trying not to get into a super big hurry.

 

Another quick question about this computer -

Is the 8700 GT Video card soldered on or is it a user upgradeable part? I've heard some mixed reviews and it'd be nice to upgrade later on to the mythical 8800. I understand that its almost impossible to answer this question about a card that isn't even out already... but in theory.... is this video card soldered on?

 

You cannot upgrade the Toshiba and never will be able to because they make their own proprietary cards. This was the case for the P105/P100 series. while the cards are removable (7900 gs/gtx) they are unuiquely built that they cannot be interchanged with other cards.

 

THanks for the information - I Figured as much. How would they sell new laptops if you could simply upgrade what you have...

 

I bought the X205-S9359 from Compusa last Thursday night. It went back to the store this morning. Had a bit of a wrestling match with the manager to avoid the 15% restocking fee!

Right now i'm using a Dell XPS M170 with an Intel Pentium M 2.1ghz, 2gb ram, Nivida Go 7800 GTX. XP PRO SP2. 6755 is my 3dMark05 with stock speeds.

I've played WOW, Fable, Oblivion, Supreme Commander on this laptop either 1920x1200 or 1680x1050 at 30+ FPS easy! Fable and WOW were close to a smooth steady 60fps.

The Toshiba Laptop running Vista Ultimate was not even close. Fable was terrible. WOW was terrible. Oblivion was terrible. seems like a took a 30% to 40% hit in frame rate in each game. Vista? the drivers? Dunno.. dont care.


Just ordered a Dell XPS M1710 w/ Core2Duo 2.3ghz, 1gb ram (4gb from mushkin already ordered), 80gb 7200 Sata HD, Nvidia GO 7950 GTX, XP Pro SP2 for $2,688.00 w/ tax $2,889.62. Those nice folks at Dell applied a $500 savings if i paid with a Dell Prefered Account.


Soooo.. It came down to smaller HD space, no numeric keypad, and no HD-DVD drive. But i've gained a way better core laptop thats going to be upgradable.


Helm

 

Wow - That sucks - Especially since those are some of teh games that I'm interested in . I think we can blame pretty much everything on Windows Vista...

 

Configure your XPS with XP. I have a XPS M1710 with XP and it screams. It's really heavy though so clearly it's not ideal for travel. But it runs real quite but I would get a cooler for it. But to save money, you may want to look at the Sager 9260. You could get a more powerful computer at the same price.

 

Hi all

I bought an X200(same as X205 in Europe), with an T7700 2.4Ghz, 1,680 x 1,050 screen. In the next few days it will be in my ands...

It´s an kick ass notebook, the quality of the sound is just the best that I ever listen in an notebook. The quality of the chassi is nice, good plastics, no twist, rigid feeling. The screen is just superb, WSXGA+ is not the best, but it´s nice, very vivid colours...

The 8700M GT is equivalent to an Go 7900GTX +/-, in some cases outperforms the 7900GTX and hit near Go 7950GTX.

My version will have an T7700, so plenty of precessing power. I hope with that processor I can hit and hopefully outperform the Go 7950GTX... Time will tell.

 

Hi

You just need to wait some time, the actual drivers are not very optimized for 8700M GT. Just wait for nVidia releases a good set of drivers for that card...

Try to remove all the bloatware, you system will became mutch more faster...

 

I'm typing on the X205-S9349 right now - so far I really enjoy using this machine. I'll have the full review submitted tomorrow so expect to see it posted before the end of the week.

A note about the 8700M-GT - it does not compare to a Go7800/7900. It is not in the same class and does not have close to that kind of power. It is a top-shelf midrange card that handles most games well. So far I have been rather impressed with its performance. For only having a 128-bit memory bus the performance is quite good.

These games I have or will be testing with the X205:
-Star Wars: Battlefront II
-Counter-Strike: Source
-Half-Life 2: Lost Coast HDR Demo
-Lost Planet DirectX 10 Demo
-Call of Duty 2 Multiplayer
-F.E.A.R. Combat

I urge anyone interested in this laptop to wait for the review before final judgment!

 

This is the lower base model with the T7100 1.8ghz 2MB proc correct? I'm sure the video card is the same though.
I don't suppose you have a copy of NWN 2 or Oblivion?
Can't wait to read your review of this machine - You're the man

 

Not that I'm speaking from experience or that its an excuse..... But I agree with you - Its the way business is done these days - Things are rushed out the door just so they can be "first to market" and the worry about updating and optimizing later on. Of course, part of this is the nature of the beast... but I would rather wait for a finished product...

 

You want to know the reality? Nvidia does not create drivers tailored for notebooks (although they did for a bit some 7800/7900 series). Toshiba will NEVER update their stock drivers because they never do so. Basically your stuck trying out modded drivers which sometimes bring unprecidented results. (No powermizer, etc.)

 

It will be interesting to read your review.

If you compare the Go7900-series with 8600M and 8700M it seems like the 7900 is still better for gaming? But what about heat and the fan noise (that follows)?

I am more and more considering buying a laptop with some 7900 instead of 8600M/8700M but am concerned about noise and heat. Is there a big difference?

 

One thing I should mention is that the notebook has the best sound i've ever heard coming out of notebook speakers! Not worth the price of admission though

I'm sure Vista and the drivers are the reason for the sucky performance. I'm just not going to wait around for months on end with my fingers crossed to get the performance I think I should out of the hardware.

The Dell M1710 has a TON of support and very mature drivers for XP Pro. I'm sure i'll get the gaming experience i'm looking for out of the laptop. It's the best fit for me at this time.

With Santa Rosa and the 8800 go on the horizon for the next gen XPS 17" laptop Dell is going to give you a great deal on the m1710 right now!

 

Unfortunately I don't but I have the Chronicles of Riddick which is a very demanding game, so I may load that up. Right now I am downloading FEAR.

The Go7900 series is definitely a superior card for DirectX 9 gaming. However that is for mainly older games . . . games coming out in the next few months should really like the shading power of the 8700M so we might see it catch up.

Check this out if you haven't already seen it:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3849

 

Chaz, you said that two days ago. Now you see, I have no life and I've been sitting here the whole two days waiting on that review.:GEEK: I haven't eatting or taken a bath for those two days 'cause I'm waiting on that review.

Okay back on track, it'll be real interesting to see your results for those games. It will give us a good ideal of how good the S3949 & S3959 is at gaming. :yes:

Many post are coming up with conflicting views and it would be nice to hear some an expert review. I can't believe CNET and PC World haven't reviewed or at least talked about it. I guess Toshiba didn't give them enough money.

 

I think its a tough call. THe Toshiba includes some awesome multimedia features, full size keyboard, 4 speakers with sub, hd dvd drive and a decent gaming card... the SAGer 5790 that I'm also considering is an awesome machine as well - a full out performer without any of the crap that toshiba includes - and when I buy a machine the first thing I do it remove all the bloatware.

From what I've read the 7950 is the superior card EXCEPT for DX10 gaming - I guess you just have to make a decision how important gaming is to you.. Of course all this is speculation...

What I'm kinda worried about is that some of the bloatware will be required to use some of the Toshiba's features.

Also, with the TOshiba you're pretty much stuck with VIsta (though I've read its possible to go back to XP) where as with the sager you have choice....

CHoice means a lot to me...

 

do not worry about vista as a deciding factor as all you do is just format the hd and install xp on it and it will scream! I you have a copy of xp, then yes you can do that - might take a bit of surfing to find all drivers but xp will put like 60-70 percent of em in and the rest are available. There are programs on the net that will even search for drivers that are having conflicts in your machine, show you right where to go to get the driver - often even point you to the actual manufacturer's web sight. Take a look at the threads for doing this to the satellight a135 series and there is a prog that you can download ( infi... exe or something along that name) that will put all the tricky little gadget button drivers in even. I did it on my sattellight and took like 2-3 hours to get all my drivers for xp, installed/

 

Frankly, I haven't found a release game the x205 won't play quite well at medium-high settings.

Yes, I still have Vista installed.
(blew away factory install, installed Ultimate, then the useful utilities.)

Play is smooth as glass in most DX9 games (Oblivion, Lineage2, NWN2) with most of the eye-candy turned on.

Can't get more than 27-29fps or so average in Lost planet DX10 (770x400)and no more than 10 in Call of Juarez test, but honestly I think its the 8xxx Go DX10 Vista drivers and implementation more than anything else.

Note that I haven't done any hardware tweaking.
That is no overclocking of any kind.
It's just stock hardware and drivers minus the bloatware.

The x205 really is a solid performer as long as you aren't expecting miracles from it.

 

Its interesting that people get such different results with the same machine - I bet it has a lot to do with ditching the factory Vista install.

ON a side note.... I was at Staples today to get a feel for the Toshiba notebooks and I have to say I was not impressed. The keyboard felt incredibly cheap with a lot of flex to it.

 

I've only been able to do some minimal gaming so far, but here's what I got so far;

Halo: All settings at Max, highest resolution (1600 or so, I forget). Frames never dropped below 75.

UT2004: Max settings, 1680x1050 res. Avg of 50 frames on Convey with 15 bots.

Far Cry: Max settings, 1680x1050 res. 2x AA, 4xAF. Frames generally over 50, sometimes drop to around 27+ in extremely dense foliage.

 

Picking my S9359 up from Fedex this afternoon. I left the house for 10 minutes and they tried to deliver it of course.

 

Have you gotten it yet? You're going to have to post some photos and first impressions!

 

I don't know what you're talking about. The S9359 is extremly built well. The keyboard doesn't feel cheap at all. And the sound on it is just unbelivable. I played CC3 on it and it plays it on ultra high settings and ask for more. The graphics on it is not as good as my XPS M1710 cause the XPS has the King 7950 in it and has a higher resolution but still the X205 screen looked great!. This NB comes highly recommended by me for anyone that want to get the X9359. This NB is awesome.

 

Just tried FEAR with Extraction Point today, all settings on MAX with Medium shadow (Soft shadow OFF). Average FPS is around 55-60. Extremely smooth gameplay even during heavy combat.

 

That's good to hear. I had no worries that my S9359 wouldn't be able to handle FEAR. And I know that it will sound great with these awesome speakers. I'm tying on the X205 right now and it is a joy. It's a great NB!

 

I was looking at another Toshiba 17" laptop so maybe the x205 has better quality components. I'm used to my zd8000 which has no flex whatsoever and the keys are particularly solid.

At the store they had an hp dv9xxx and it seemed much more solid as well.
I've heard a lot of good things about the speakers though - That's a big deal to me as well. 4 Speakers and a sub - AWESOME!

 

i have owned the x205 for about 3-4 weeks now, i love it. previously before buying this laptop i was unfortunate enough to run into problems with other laptops, but that gave me all the more reason to love this one. the first laptop i had was an alienware -- it just got TOO HOT!!! they even made me send the system back so they could repair, i told them to get lost and give me my money back. then the hp dv9500t i was hoping would be the laptop for me, it worked wonderful and was a delight.. until it CRASHED. i have no idea why and neither do the people at hp. the customer service (i know its supposed to be #1) was horrendous, it took them a week and a half to get an empty box to me so i could send my laptop out for them to fix.. and with that came about 1,000 other lies from supervisors and the sort. i got fed up with the lies and told them, once again like alienware, to screw off. so now im here with my toshiba x205 and it has been great to me. the games i play perform better than the alienware and the hp. i love the look of the laptop and the most impressive thing about this is how they dealt with heat problems on gaming laptops - they positioned the fans (CPU and video card) seperately at different ends of the laptop and it works incredible. i have monitored the heat that comes from this and it doesn't go beyond 56 celcius. so although you may not like the thickness of the laptop, its a beast that stays cool! i hope something i said helped, just reporting on my experience so far with this laptop. goodluck

 

I agree ! The cooling/air flow design is really impressive on this one ! The machine is very quiet even during heavy gaming.
When I play BF 2 , the temp goes up to 58c and it seems to be the cap. However, playing FEAR, STALKER on High settings 68c is the cap !!

 

Yeah, here's a picture. I'm pretty disappointed with the screen. The colors are washed out and the whites have a blue tint. The max brightness is pretty disappointing as well. Viewing angles are bad. Every TruBrite screen I see in retail stores is gorgeous yet somehow this $2500 laptop ends up with a dud.

On a positive note, every game I threw at it (Far Cry, Halo 2, COD 2) ran great at native resolution and max settings. The sound is unbelievable for a laptop. It easily fills the room and sounds great. As others mentioned the notebook manages heat perfectly and the notebook runs quiet.

Bottom line, I can't justify spending $2500 on something that I'm not completely happy with. The screen is a deal breaker for me.

 

Wow - That's not cool. Have you tried to adjust any of the settings such as contrast? If I remember correctly, Chaz posted some similiar comments in his review. I agree with you that for $2500 that laptop better be near perfect. I know its not the 3 or 4 grand that one can spend on an AW - but $2500 is still a lot of money.

What other laptops are you looking at not?

Edit: I was looking at the screen in the link.... kinda hard to tell from here but it doesn't look so bad...

 

Must be the bigger screen, the 1440x900 of the lesser model hasn't given me one stitch of trouble. Its bright, beautiful and the colors rock.

I agree about the viewing angles, but it seems like a design limitation.
Given what it looks like at the right angle, I think I can give up perfect viewing for my friends watching me play for the amount of positives this laptop brings to the table...

 

View angles from Above is pretty bad. However, angles from left and right seems to be acceptable.

 

Guys, got a question. What drivers do you use? I tried to benchmark Call of Juarez but there was an error (no DX10 installed :]). So I wanted to change the drivers and that was big mistake. I uninstalled them but the new one doesn't want to work with X205? Any suggestions? I don't have cd with original drivers (got X205 only for tests).
cheers

 

I've got 163.11's and scored 9130 in 3dmark05. Lost Planet performance test(default): snow-18fps, cave-26fps avg.

 

163.11 doesn't want to work But I downloaded drivers from Toshiba website. They're from June or July so quite new. Besides now I see 8700GT in Windows NOT 8800GS

 

Someone from Toshiba or nVidia noticed your thread!

I ordered mine from Amazon this morning.... It ships out tomorrow so it should be here by Friday (ordered two day shipping) I'm going to wait till the GOTY edition of Oblivion comes out so I can get all the expansion packs at once. I'll probably go find NWN 2 as the local wal-mart.....The only games that I have with me are Simcity 3000 and Empire at War .. oh and Zuma

 

get them from laptopvideo2go, and you need to download and install the inf file too.

 

I know some people have said that their screen on the S9359 looks dark and not bright with bad viewing angles.

Well mine looks great. It looks almost as good as a Dell M1710 with a 7950GTX in it but not quite. But I don't see any bad angles on it either.

Very good NB. I'm enjoying it very much.

 

Wish I could say the same about my display, but I can live with it.

 

Glad to hear the good news ! Enjoy it !

 

Thanks I'm excited.

 

I second this experience.
I paid whopping 1800 for p105s9337 , which would not even play DVD's properly. After Upgrading to XP ( Thanks to Toshiba UK. ) I could make some use of this worthless junk..

 

Hey! I'm still using this POS laptop libran. I'm still waiting on Toshiba to fix this issue so I'm making the best of it. Too late to return it

 

Excuse me, I am a bit confused by those different impression:

Now I am really worried about the screen of X205-9359. Is he a killer or deal breaker? Hope you owners could give a hand to boost my confidence. Thanks in advance!

P.S. In Charles's review ( it is a 9349 instead of 9359), he also mentioned the visual effect of the screen as,

" Overall I am slightly disappointed with the display. While the resolution is very comfortable for general tasks and gaming, it could use a contrast boost and the viewing angles need to be improved, especially from above and below."

 

I compared it to my XPS which it sits right next to. And it's screen is a little darker but still bright and vibrant. I constantly look at the other NB when I'm testing them to see whose better (So far the XPS is winning). But I don't see lost of color or anything when I look at it from a different angle. But when I'm gaming or watching a movie, I'm sitting right in front of the NB and at that position the screen looks great!

 

I stand by what I said above about the screen. I used an $800 Toshiba P205 today at work and the screen was considerably better (brighter, better viewing angles, richer whites) than the screen on my $2500 X205.