Toshiba P50t-B gaming 4K with AMD R9 M265X

Toshiba P50t-B with a 4K panel is the world first 4K laptop, what better than to start a gaming thread just for this model, and attempt to compile a list of what can be played particularly at 4K resolution of 3840 x 2160 with the use of the R9 M265X GDDR5 graphics adaptor, which is really just a 8850M rebrand.

Pretty much don't expect to play new games at 4K resolutions (if so then at very low settings).

I have tested 1920 x 1080 which is half the resolution of 4K, and it does look really good. Therefore a single pixel at 1920 x 1080 is made up of a block/group of 4 pixels, so there is definitely hope for the R9 M265X GDDR5 (2GB) with some really nice looking colours, and frame rate is actually pretty good. Although some game uses exact pixel mapping, therefore presents the 1080p not scaled, and seen as tiny quarter size screen in middle on panel

Keep in mind, there is no need to even use any kind of anti-aliasing at 4K, as it is simply not required due to the resolution being so high, jaggy edges can't be seen unless you look very hard.

Be patient as this stage, as will take awhile for me to get through games that I have to test out (will be general quick play, estimates when no fps counter is available, no benchmarks). I am aiming pretty low, just to see what it can do at first. Then maybe some overclocking later, if that will help, as the machine handles heat well and fan noise isn't not to bad.

4K gaming performance (3840 x 2160 native):

• Unreal Tournament 3 - over 30 fps typically, rare drop to 25, high of 38 fps, settings are low
• Portal - fluent speed, no drop in performance - settings on high.
• BioShock Infinite - playable guessing around 20 fps maybe slightly higher, very low settings.
• Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed - very playable frame rates, setting custom, anti-aliasing off, ambient occlusion on, water medium, texture high, model high, shadows medium
• Serious Sam HD - The Second Encounter - plays excellent, default settings, 33 fps title screen, 50-60 fps in game
• Half-Life 2 - silky smooth fps, all settings on high v-sync enabled, anthropic filtering x4
• Call of Duty Black Ops 2 - barely playable, guess 5-15 fps, very choppy, a slideshow at times, settings low
• Toki Tori 2+ - very smooth, settings high, check 30 fps setting box
• Crysis Warhead - plays well generally around 25-35 fps, settings minimum
• Battlefield Bad Company 2 - very smooth on low settings, playable on medium
• Wolfenstein - looks great on medium with few adjust down settings, mouse control lags strangely and over shoots somewhat
• Thief - unplayable, settings very low, does not matter if DX or Mantle is used, both ~7 fps
• War Thunder - playable mostly at ~30 fps, settings normal, AA off, texture normal
• Batman Arkham Origins - unplayable, settings default, slideshow frame rate
• Doom 3 BFG Edition - plays great and looks nice, high settings

1080p gaming performance (1920x 1080 down scaled, full screen edge to edge):

• Thief - playable, settings normal, DX11, 14.6 low fps, 19.9 avg fps, 29.6 high fps
• Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed - super smooth, settings all on highest
• Mini Ninjas - plays smooth, settings maxed out
• Wolfenstein - smooth, settings max

Does not down scale less than 4K resolution (cannot pixel double, no edge to edge fullscreen)

• Call of Duty Black Ops 2 - uses exact pixel mapping, therefore seen as tiny quarter size screen in middle on panel
• Batman Arkham Origins - defaults to windows mode is lower resolution than 4K is used

 

Saved this 2nd post for GPU details.

Before updating the drivers directly from AMD the GPU is shown as 8800M series with Toshiba version 13.351
After an update from AMD, downloading and installing of mobility drivers v14.4, the real name appears as R9 M265X



Overclocking

Overclock can be achieved with Sapphire Trixx. This cannot not be done with MSI afterburner
The stock clock are listed below of the two R9 mobile GPU's which have the same GCN (Graphics Core Next) architecture from AMD.

The Radeon R9 M265X can easily overclock to the nearly exactly the same clocks as the Radeon R9 M270, which is a nice boost and effectively bring it near the same performance of the Radeon R9 M270 (or aka rebrand of 8870M). Although result will vary, as my memory is not stable at 4500MHz memory and locks up after about a couple of minutes of play (required force power off), and has to be scaled back. However the GPU core overclocks very well, and I am able to get to 825MHz, which is a 200MHz increase!, after that there is not much remaining as at 850MHz the GPU core started to lockup but I was able to recover to desktop with crashing completely.

I have found the memory overclock to make the biggest impact with frames per second (holding them up high), but with that said I have only used UT3 to test with in a particular map that I always use.

Radeon R9 M265X = 625MHz core, and memory 128 Bit @ 4000MHz (64 GB/s)

Radeon R9 M270 = 725MHz, and memory 128 Bit @ 4500MHz (72 GB/s)


Can reach R9 M270 for very short periods of time, but not stable with the memory clock




R9 M265X @ 725MHz (100% of R9 M270 core speeds) and 4400MHz (98% of R9 270M memory speeds)





Overclocks GPU core very well to 825MHz, this one is done with the memory at stock 4000MHz

 

Very useful info, never thought I could overclock the GPU! Thanks.

 

With the original UT3 game I noticed huge improvement when overclocking memory. When at 1125MHz that was enough give an extra 5-7 fps, which is a lot to bump well over 30 fps and make for mostly smooth play (depending on map area).

If you have a look at my GPUz, you will see after I updated the drivers it now reads the correct model of the GPU. Strange thing is, wasn't till I run a few games all fields in GPUz populated properly.

GPUz reports that I have Hynix memory, which I have found usually isn't that great with GDDR5 (could be just my luck), yours is showing Micron which may overclock much higher.
My memory overclock is pretty poor, I can get 10% out of it at most. Never know your Micron could overclock 20-30%, and if it does then the normally strangulated memory bus may get some air and get those frames moving.

I feel fairly happy with my GPU core overclock, I have nearly a 33% overclock and that pretty impressive, as the voltage would be pretty toned down in this machines so they don't overheat.

Yeah this is defiantly no rubbish GPU, especially for a machine of this build type that is fairly thin with a single cooling system for CPU and GPU. Absolutely no reason why gaming on this notebook is not feasible when using 1080p, as the down scaling on this panel is one of the best I have ever seen. Down scaling usually looking really bad on any other panel I have used, but though as not this small and have this resolution.

 

with everything this laptop comes with it should play The Sims 3 at max correct?

 

Only one way to find out

 

I was seeing if 4K gaming was even possible at all, I am actually pretty surprised it can even do anything, considering it is have to drive 4x the amount of pixels at 4K when compared to 1080p.

If you game at 1080p, then its going to have little trouble driving games with medium to high settings, it is a decent GPU and uses GDDR5, not only that a Haswell quad core is still cutting edge.

 

this is my on the go laptop if i decide to keep it... my alienware laptop will be my gaming laptop so I shouldn't really put The Sims on it.
But I think I'll at least just put Plants vs. Zombies on it and yeah I know plenty like that should work just fine on this laptop.

 

I have an Alienware also, difference is I have no space for a desktop in the house. I actually game on my lap, the Alienware 17 is way to heavy, the Alienware 14 is actually a heavy little beast too and it is very noisy for the size. The toshiba has a brilliant screen and bit larger at 15", does not run to hot and the fan is not excessively loud, which makes for a great alternative gaming laptop.
Another great thing is no CPU or GPU on left side so there is no chance for the WASD keys of ever getting hot.

 

I will be not be adding any more gaming updates to this thread, as returned the laptop due to shimmer effect, similar to that of older Dell IPS desktop monitors that have an aggressive anti-glare coating.

To sum up I will say the graphics card in this machine runs reasonably cool considering the very small single solution to cool both the CPU and GPU. The GPU will over clock a good decent amount on the core and just a little bit on the memory. I feel the memory speed is where it needs the most drive 4K of pixels, seems that even small bumps on memory clock produced big jumps in performance or holding up higher frames pre second when compared to the core.

4K gaming is possible, although you will be limited to certain engines that favour AMD for newer games, and even that will be at lowest settings. Other newer games will be impossible to run even at lowest. There are a great deal of older games that will run good enough to be playable, even some at high, but then again the textures are still going to look pretty blocky due to the age of the game.

1080p gaming is fully possible, and there is not much settings that needs to be turned down. The biggest problem here, was I found that almost half of games I set to 1920 x 1080 even at full screen, ran at full screen in a small box that is exactly 1/4 quarter of the physical screen size, right smack bang in the middle of the screen.

I would rate this machine very well for how it it built, the cooling is away from your left hand with no heat around the WASD keys, although be prepared to be blasted with hot air at your right hand if you use a mouse, which you will want to move a good distance away. There is much work that is needed to allow scaling to fit to full screen when trying to run 1080p as running 4K is just not cutting it for speed.