Toshiba X205 SLI 8600m GT vs Toshiba X205 8700m GT ?

i'm going to buy Toshiba X205 for gaming, there are 2 choices 4 me now : Toshiba X205 SLI1 8600m GT or Toshiba X205 8700m GT, Can somebody tell me which one is better ? is 8600m GT SLI more powerful than a single 8700m GT ?
plz tell me yr experience playing DX10 games with this laptop, especially Crysis & Bioshock ( fps, setting , ....)
The more detail, the better,
Thanks

 

does anyone have 3dmark score of 8600m GT SLI ???

 

Not delving into details, SLI submodel is significantly faster

On stock settings 8700 gives about 4000+ best, 8600 SLI - about 6000+

 

Check a couple of my previous posts, but I actually had a X205 with 8700 and X205 SLi1 sitting side by side trying to decide which to keep... kept the SLi1, it proved to be a bit faster, for scores and whatnot check my posts, some good info we went through in a couple of the driver threads. Bottom line though, SLi won me over, it's not the end all smash all other machines out there by any means, but for half what you'll pay for the Dell, it's a steal in my opinion.

Direct X10 in my opinion is not where it's at right now... Crysis runs slower for, in my opinion, with the settings you gotta run, weaker graphics in DX 10 versus DX9. You can run it, but I'd recommend not... hopefully future drivers and updates will help DX10, but for now I don't consider it a factor, but that's just my opinion.

I'll post some scores later if you can't find the other posts, but I'm on a different PC and my chart with SLi scores I've gotten are on that machine. Will say the SLi with the 2 8600mGT's and ddr3 memory does overclock very well... stock 3dMark06 scores I was getting around 6800 at 1280x854, and overclocked was getting over 8000 without any other tweaking except bumping the clock and ram speeds. This is at 1280x854 though, so will be a touch lower at the default 1280x1024 res, but, without an external monitor i can't run it. As a comparison at stock speeds the 8700 was getting around 42-4400 marks at same res without overclocking, ran outta time to try that before I had to take it back.

So, bottom line, I'm really happy with the X205-SLi1, so far haven't had any problems with SLI in Vista as I was warned, and every game I've thrown at it has run really well. Do think the SLi1 is the better buy over the SLi3, as I prefer the 1440x900 screen, and will probably upgrade the CPU in a year or so when the faster ones get cheap, so didn't see the need for an extra $500. You'll be happy with either I'd say though.

 

and as a side note, Crysis running in DX9 mode, 1280x800 (can't get it to even show 1440x900? Need to investigate further), texture and effects on high, rest on medium, game looks freakin' beautiful and totally smooth... haven't run FRAPS yet, ran outta time as I was having too much fun playing, but plays better than I thought it would... good gameplay though, very impressed with the vegetation and feel of the jungle

 

I have an SLi3 and I love it.......if that tells you anything.

 

Ok, posted part of this in another thread, but here's my latest testing with 3Dmark06 and the newest drivers:

3DMark06
Toshiba X205-SLi1
1280X854

6611 stock speed 163.75 drivers (Stock speeds from Toshiba are 475/950/700)
7055 stock speed 167.26 drivers
7864 625/1250/850 167.26 drivers
7981 650/1300/925 167.26 drivers
6858 stock speed 169.01 drivers
8047 650/1300/3925 169.01 drivers

So far, just as happy with these drivers, systems running good. And just for comparisons, the X205 with 8700GT I had running the 163.75 drivers was getting 4200-4400ish at stock speeds at that res. Never had time to overclock it though, but you can surf the other pages and find some scores that show overclocking, think some guys with some pretty aggressive overclocking are getting good scores, think i've seen upper 5ish to 6000 or so. I back mine down most of the time to play games as nothing really needs it yet, but good to know atleast there's some good head room. Basicly, the SLI 8600GT's with their DDR3 run decently faster at the conservative stock Toshiba speeds than the single 8700GT does at it's fastest overclock, which depending on each system will vary on what speed is stable to actually game at without artifacts or over heating.

Of course, as it always has been and always will be i suppose, the next big thing is always around the corner, ha.

 

My X205-9349 gets 5179 with the 169.01 drivers running the default benchmark. Only change I made is a slight memory overclock to 800 since Toshiba actually underclocks it to 700.

mario64

 

Hm. How stable are your overclock settings? Also, I am realitively new at overclocking (I did try my first on my X205-SLi3), what is the risk of buring the card out?

 

The settings I listed have been totally stable... actually tested with higher settings, and not sure if it was memory or core clock, but did eventually get some artifacts in the tests.... haven't really investigated which was the problem, but I've been playing the Crysis demo for over an hour last night, and noticed an improvement with an overclock of around 600 for the core and keep the memory around 900... That's where I'm running it fairly regularly, as I'm of the school of thought not much point pushing the hardware any harder than I have to, and like knowing that there's still room to improve when the time comes... One good thing is that we do have DDR3 memory, so that lets us run the memory alot faster than the DDR2 8600's. Temp wise, so far I haven't seen it go any higher than the low 70s, which from what I've played with in the past and what I read, is pretty good.... These things do seem to have good cooling, much better than my previous Sager, that thing you could harldy touch after a decent gaming session!

As with everything fun, too much is bad.... usually you'll start to see artifacts on screen (wierd colors or random pixels, lines, etc), or it'll freeze up. Whenever I start to see any artifacts I back it down... like i said, at these settings listed I haven't had any problems in any games or 3dMark, but did at around 700 core and over 1100 memory start to get some, so I just stopped and backed it down some, and all was good again... obviously, when pushing it harder you'll get possibly shorter life out of it, but, so far from past pc's i've played with, I'm plenty tired of the hardware and ready to move on long before I wear it out from overclocking. Also, each chip is different, so what works for me might not work for you, or you might get even more out of yours. Guess, as they say, you're mileage may vary. The improvement in my opinion though is plenty worth it, as overclocks in the 600ish range and 900ish memory range make very noticable impvorments, and don't seem to rasie my temps enough to worry about.... but, this is all only my opinion

 

Okay, so you recommend the 650/1300/925?

 

On my system that works and is stable, but that doesn't mean that it'd be perfect for your's.... try it lower and work your way up if you need the extra performance, it's easy to experiment with different settings in Rivatuner as you can change the clocks on the fly... your core or memory might overclock better than mine, or one might not as well.... with whatever settings you try, just look out for any signs of artifacts or anything unusual, and immediately back it down if you see anything... like I said, each system will react a bit differently, but for mine, those settings don't show any problems. For normal use though I bump it down some as nothing I'm playing requires me to overclock that much.... I usually lower the core to around 600ish and the ram to around 900.... and granted, I haven't done any all day gaming sessions with these settings, usually not playing more than an hour or more at a time without some kind of break, so keep an eye on your temps or for any kind of glitches in games when playing for an extended period. Basicly, I can't recommend them for your system since I have never touched your system, and obviously have no idea what might happen in the worst case scenario, but, thus far I haven't had any problems with those settings on my machine. So there's my disclamer, have fun ha

As a side note, did notice from stock clock speeds to overclocked to 575 core (with the shader linked to core clock in Rivatuner, can't remember what that made it exactly) and 900 memory a nice improvement in Crysis performance

 

Well truth to be told i was thinking to buy sli or regular and i went with regular and here are mine 3dmark 1280x1024 6100 score(x200-15k overclocked 8700Gt to 760/1700/960). And people for overclocked sli3 got max staible 7500 with same res. So it is not that big of difference and you have to bear in mind that games support sli but not all of them and that ones that support sli it is not allways in that scaling like in 3dmark so instead of 2x faster when you check sli from nonsli you get like 1.5 or 1.7x so i think when it all came down 8700m gt overclock = 8600 sli overclocked for games anyway (and i am tallking for this sli3 ver.)

 

Yes, the difference isn't as much as you would think. You have to look at the 3dmark scores at the same res for a good comparison. There's about a 2k(give or take) difference between the 2, in 3dmark05 and 06.
I play Pacific Fighters, and it runs good at 1680x1050(max res) all settings at max(no aa) on the 8700. The 8600 sli runs it great also at 1440x900(max res), all setting at max(no aa)and I thought with the extra power of the sli I could use aa, and nope, not at all, would not do aa smoothly.
I tried Crysis with the sli1 and at 1280x800 all settings med, it was borderline(not really smooth enough for me). If the game was tweaked more, or I could o/c the cards it would help.
But, in the end, which one i faster? the sli1.

 

Oh I'd go for the SLI if I had to do it all over again... But the 8700GT is enough HP for me for now. Hopefully Toshiba will release an X205 with the 8800GTX when/if it comes out (hearing November now though ). Maybe we can all go for that 'spare' part in the near future ;-).

Regardless, SLI 8600GT's with their OC headroom is a nice setup for a gamer laptop. I am certain battery life suffers some, but I'm sure it blows my OC'd 8700 out of the water.


Btw... 3dmark06 - 5666 after initial 700/800 OC'd on the one card with the 169.01 drivers. Decent drivers, and decent OC

 

just curious, how do you enable directx 9 in the crysis demo?

 

Easiest way if you're using Vista is when you go to the Games menu where it shows all the games and their ratings, right click on the crysis icon and select play DX9 mode.... otherwise, you can modify the shortcut and include a -dx9 modifier, but not sure exactly what it is, it's listed in a several threads in the games and hardware section of this site... easiest is though just using the link in games and clicking DX9 mode there.... it''ll run and look better for ya on these machines

 

Got it to work, thank you. The game runs A LOT smoother with dx9.

 

Im curious if it is possible to put a 2nd 8700 gt in the x205 if you were to find one

 

No you can't... there is only one pci-e slot. But there is a possibility that you can put this 8800gtx card cause it gona use 35w power consumation and that is same for 8700gt, so there is (for now) no more obstacles to use that in the future.

 

would there me in soldiering with the x205 if you wanting to upgrade int he future, i ordered an x205 sli1.