Upgrading X505 q894

Toshiba Qosmio® X505-Q894 18.4" widescreen Laptop | Laptops | Computers | us.toshiba.com

This my current laptop I bought it almost a year ago and like everything else technology related its already showing its age. I'm looking to upgrade my cpu to a i7-920XM and was wondering what peoples experiences were and if I should go ahead and do it.

Overall I am very happy with my laptop and it suits my needs but unfortunately some of the games I play seem to get bottle necked by my i7-740QM. Most of the games coming out today recommend having at least a dual core clocked over 3.0 ghz. The 740 is only rated at 1.73-2.93ghz compared to the 940xm's 2.13-3.33ghz(before OC). Can I expect a big performance in gain in games that are calculation intense?

To give an example I can run Dawn of War 2 on high settings almost ultra with a constant 30fps through the games performance tester. But when it comes to games like these Battlefront.com - DEMO or Battlefront.com - Demo i hit 10 to 15 fps on the lowest settings because my cpu cant keep up with the caculations. Yet I can play Men of War and other games on full settings.

I know that a lot of it is due to how well the games are coded and whether or not they are written to take advantage of multi-core processors but regardless if I had a faster cpu I know it would help regardless.

If anyone who has made this upgrade could download one of those demos (especially Korea) and let me know how the game plays on a better processor that would be fantastic. These are the target games I'm having problems with and I would hate to go through the hassle of upgrading my cpu and it not even help resolve the problem.

And as far as power supply do I have enough? what about cooling will i over heat? I never really got into OCing but would like to get into getting the most out of my laptop with out frying it. The cpu's are affordable now so I'd like to grab one ASAP.. who would you recommend for me to purchase from I have seen a bunch on EBAY and don't know if they can be trusted.

Sorry for the long winded post just wanted to put out as much info out there so you guys can help me better.

Thanks, Dan


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q894 is a great laptop! I had one before returning it (within my purchase return date), and exchanging it for the q8102X (Sandy Bridge equivalent to the q894).


I know you can upgrade to the 920XM (and probably higher). A fellow Toshiba Qosmio member named "Scanner" successfully upgraded his q898 with a i7-740QM to the i7- 940XM; probably over 6 months ago.

He comes one every now and then and hasn't expressed any problems with it as of yet [temperatures still contained high 70s low 80s]. I think he still uses the standard 180W power supply.

As for OC`ing I have no idea.


Only downside to upgrading to the 920XM is that it is still slower than the Sandy bridge CPUs. Even the lowend i7-2630QM will rip the i7-920XM a new one. Maybe save the money and buy a new laptop within the next year or so.

Here's some links you should look at:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/toshiba/550493-opreation-successful-new-i7-940xm.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/toshiba/544627-ram-x505-q894.html



Good luck and keep us posted with any results.

 

Hey Alex thanks for the reply, I'm guessing from the lack of responses that not a lot of people have done this type of upgrade to their laptops. I would have really like to have seen how these demos would have run on my future specs but I have decided to just go for it. I'm just gonna take this laptop to the max and hold on to it for as long as I can. I dont have another 2000 to drop on a laptop.

I went ahead and ordered more RAM Newegg.com - G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Laptop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBSQ and am submitting an offer on the 940xm. Depending on how long everything takes to get here I will let you guys know how it goes.

I'm assuming that the 940xm is the end of the road for this laptop since they have already moved on to sandy bridge huh?