Opinions on this laptop?

fifth

Hi all,

Thinking of buying one of these next week to replace my old HP Pavilion which is definitely showing it's age now.

Here are the specs - if someone could give thumbs up or down:

Toshiba Satellite P300 €1400~
Intel Core 2 Duo (T9300) 2500MHz
Mobile Intel PM965 Express

RAM 4GB (2GB+2GB) DDR II SDRAM - 667 MHz
6MB L2 Cache

640GB HDD

17ins TruBrite TFT WXGA+
[Max Resolution 1440 x 900 ( WXGA+ )]

Harmon Kardon 24-bit Stereo Toshiba Bass Enhanced Sound System
HD Audio support / HDMI

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium

Wireless LAN 802.11 a/b/g/Draft N (WiFi Compliant)
Bluetooth

DVD Super Multi Drive (Double Layer) +/-

1 x integrated 1.3 Megapixels Web Camera with built-in microphone
5 in 1 card reader

And the warranty - 12 months - if hardware fails - toshiba will replace laptop and refund price paid.

Now I'm ok with that - but here's where I can't really tell whether its decent or not:

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 HyperMemory up to 1279MB
Video Memory 512mb
Total available memory graphics memory 1279mb

I don't game on my PC as I've an Xbox, but is that a crappy graphics set up?

Cheers..

AlmightyCushion

The graphics card is mid range card. It's not the best but it's still pretty good. Ignore the "Hypermemory up to 1279MB", it's utter codswallop and it won't even use it. If you're not gaming then that graphics card is more than enough. Very nice laptop by the way. Does that warranty cover anything that breaks? As in if the charger goes you get a new laptop and your money back?

gamer

well vista 32bit can only use 3gig ram ,it seems expensive to me ,just google the graphics card, for reviews of it.
if i was spending 1000 on a laptop i,d expect an upgradeable card.you could buy a dell laptop dual core intel cpu,for 500, and buy a pc with 8800 card,2gig ram for another 500 if you want to play pc games.OR google gaming laptop uk ,to see whats avaidable .or buy a fast pc from adverts.ie ,with a fast graphics card installed.
the dell 1720 is 1000 euro,with 8600 geforce card,256meg graphics ram,3gig ram, 17inch screen ,for example.

fifth

What does hypermemory up to 1279mb even mean? I was told that the warranty covers any kind of hardware failure - so I guess that includes chargers and batteries, hopefully anyway.

I heard vista uses 3-3.5gb of ram, something to do with hardware address space or something?

Kinda pointless to have 4gb maybe?

Overheal

hypermemory means shared memory means it eats up your RAM for more video memory. Its really not a technique meant for gaming, its more for stuff like photo editing, because the transfer speed between the ram and gpu - not so great. In a game just accept you have 512mb - most of which is taken up by your Texture Quality and read by Texture Filtering: turning that setting up beyond what your 512MB can handle will force the card to use hypermemory, and you will notice the hit to performance when it happens. The solution is simply to play at lower texture resolution/quality and lower texture filters, like tri/bilinear.

fifth

Wow that's pretty bad. So all I can do is play at lower quality, that kinda ruins the purpose of the powerful processor etc.. thanks for the help though.

AlmightyCushion

In gaming the processor wouldn't be as influential as the graphics card. Like I said it's a decent card. Seeing as you don't plan on gaming on your laptop, it won't make a difference.

Overheal

not really, the processor and gpu pipielines still handle most of the crunch in gaming: Espescially things like lighting, that can do a lot for the look of your game (more than textures can, tbh) - all of that is fairly cpu and gpu intensive for things like particle effects and pixel shading. Just because your card cant remember as much data as you like isnt a direct measure of how fast it performs: you have to look at other stats like the Shader clockspeed and the texel transfer rates.

Honestly for most current games 512mb is plenty of memory to work with: I run with 128 myself and get average/low texture qualities, but still run lighting and shading. you should be able to push into the higher qualities with 512. For a laptop, its still pretty shnazzy. Doubtless you'll get Crysis running with that, with reasonable settings (though probably not insane). Just remember its a laptop: high grade cost-performance ratio is reserved for desktops.

fifth

Just an update.. Decided against the Tosh and went with a Dell XPS m1530 instead..

Specs';


InspironTM XPS M1530(N07X5308)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 including Media

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T8300 (2.40 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 3 MB L2 cache)
4096MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x2048]
15.4" Widescreen WXGA+ (1440x900) TFT Display with TrueLife™
NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 8600M GT with 256MB dedicated graphic memory
320GB (5.400rpm) SATA Hard Drive
Fixed 8x DVD+/-RW Slim Slot Load drive
Intel® Next-Gen Wireless-N
Dell™ Wireless 355 Bluetooth + Bluetooth Mouse
Primary 9-cell Lithium-Ion Battery (85 WHr)
Biometric Fingerprint Reader with BLACK accent
2.0 mega pixel Camera & Tuxedo Black for CCFL Display
Dell™ Travel Remote Control

€1168 inc vat/delivery..

Overheal

funkyflea wrote: »

Just an update.. Decided against the Tosh and went with a Dell XPS m1530 instead..

Specs';


InspironTM XPS M1530(N07X5308)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 including Media

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T8300 (2.40 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 3 MB L2 cache)
4096MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x2048]
15.4" Widescreen WXGA+ (1440x900) TFT Display with TrueLife™
NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 8600M GT with 256MB dedicated graphic memory
320GB (5.400rpm) SATA Hard Drive
Fixed 8x DVD+/-RW Slim Slot Load drive
Intel® Next-Gen Wireless-N
Dell™ Wireless 355 Bluetooth + Bluetooth Mouse
Primary 9-cell Lithium-Ion Battery (85 WHr)
Biometric Fingerprint Reader with BLACK accent
2.0 mega pixel Camera & Tuxedo Black for CCFL Display
Dell™ Travel Remote Control

€1168 inc vat/delivery..

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055333078

fifth

Overheal wrote: »

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055333078

Yeah I just saw that actually..certainly does worry me.