Introduction

Last week we took a first look at the Toshiba Satellite X205-S9359, a laptop sporting NVIDIA's fastest current mobile DirectX 10 offering. We took a look at gaming performance and general application performance and came away relatively impressed, but we weren't finished testing just yet. We're here today to wrap up our review of the X205, with a look at the LCD, additional performance benchmarks - including DirectX 10 results for a couple of games - and some commentary on other features of this laptop.


Jumping right into the thick of things, let's take a moment to discuss preinstalled software. Most OEMs do it, and perhaps there are some users out there that actually appreciate all of the installed software. Some of it can be truly useful, for instance applications that let you watch high-definition movies on the included HD DVD drive. If you don't do a lot of office work, Microsoft Works is also sufficient for the basics, although most people should probably just give in and purchase a copy of Microsoft Office. We're still a bit torn about some of the UI changes in Office 2007, but whether you choose the new version or stick with the older Office 2003 the simple fact of the matter is that most PCs need a decent office suite. The standard X205 comes with a 60 day trial version of Office 2007 installed, however, which is unlikely to satisfy the needs of most users. If you don't need Office and will be content with Microsoft Works, there's no need to have a 60 day trial. Conversely, if you know you need Microsoft Office there's no need to have Works installed and you would probably like the option to go straight to the full version of Office 2007.

There is an option to purchase Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 for $136, but it's not entirely clear if that comes in a separate box or if the software gets preinstalled - and if it's the latter, hopefully Microsoft Works gets removed as well. As far as we can tell, Toshiba takes a "one-size-fits-all" approach to software, and we would really appreciate a few more options. In fact, what we would really appreciate is the ability to not have a bunch of extra software installed.


Above is a snapshot of Windows Vista's Add/Remove Programs tool for the X205 we received, prior to installing or uninstalling anything. The vast majority of the extra software is what we would kindly classify as "junk". All of it is free and easily downloadable for those who are actually interested in having things like Wild Tangent games on their computer. We prefer to run a bit leaner in terms of software, so prior to conducting most of our benchmarks we of course had to uninstall a lot of software, which took about an hour and several reboots. If this laptop is in fact intended for the "gamer on the go", which seems reasonable, we'd imagine that most gamers would also prefer to get a cleaner default system configuration. Alienware did an excellent job in this area, and even Dell does very well on their XPS line. For now, Toshiba holds the record for having the most unnecessary software preinstalled.



Driver Questions

Besides the preinstalled software, there's another aspect of software that we need to discuss: drivers. Drivers on Windows Vista are still a bit hit and miss, but for the most part any modern computer should have up-to-date drivers available. That's partially the case with the Toshiba X205. Why only partially?

Given that the Toshiba X205 uses NVIDIA's latest and most powerful mobile DirectX 10 graphics chip, the 8700M GT, you might expect that the drivers have been updated recently. If you go to NVIDIA's web site, of course, you're instructed to go to your notebook manufacturer's web site for drivers. Unlike their desktop GPUs, NVIDIA doesn't release reference drivers for laptops. So head on over to Toshiba's web page, and what drivers do you find for the graphics chip? The last update was in mid-June, which doesn't seem too bad, except that the actual version number is 101.68. NVIDIA has moved on to versions 15x.xx and now 16x.xx with improved performance and features, so it's not too surprising that the older drivers do not offer optimal performance.

Slightly reduced performance would be acceptable, but we actually ran into a bigger problem. Bioshock refused to run on the official 101.68 drivers - we could watch the opening movies, but as soon as the 3D engine tried to initialize the game would crash. So what do you do when the official drivers don't work and NVIDIA hasn't released any beta drivers? You turn to the Internet, naturally.

One of the best places to get unofficial laptop video card drivers is LaptopVideo2Go, a site that regularly releases updated laptop drivers with modified INF files so that NVIDIA's latest reference drivers can be used on any laptop chipset. Of course, this doesn't always work perfectly, and in many cases the hacked drivers will not be properly optimized for laptop GPUs. We picked up the latest 163.44 "Bioshock" driver release and the necessary INF file from that site and were eventually able to get everything working properly - yes, we even managed to get Bioshock to run.

While it's good that we were able to work around the problem, it would be even better if we didn't have to result to hacked drivers. It seems likely that NVIDIA is at the mercy of the OEMs in terms of releasing reference drivers, as there are many OEMs that don't want to have extra features enabled. If that's the case, we would definitely encourage Toshiba and other OEMs to relax this restriction, since it's only causing problems for end-users. If that's not a viable option, then NVIDIA and the various notebook OEMs really need to work on getting more regular driver updates released. This is particularly true for anyone running Windows Vista, because there have been quite a few performance improvements over the past few months and we expect to see additional improvements in the near future. With Windows Vista being the only DirectX 10 platform currently available, and considering the early nature of DirectX 10 titles, it becomes even more important for users to be able to get regular driver updates.



Driver Performance Comparison

Having managed to install the 163.44 drivers, we were also curious to see how they compared in terms of performance to the official drivers. We tried using hacked drivers on the Alienware m9750 with pretty disappointing results, but the use of SLI on that notebook may have been a significant contributing factor. Our test system is unchanged from the previous article, other than using the newer graphics drivers.

Toshiba X205-S9359 Tested Configuration
Processor	Core 2 Duo T7300 (2.00GHz 4MB 800FSB)
Chipset	Intel GM965 + ICH8-ME
Memory	2x1024MB DDR2 SO-DIMMs (Hyundai HYMP512S64CP8-T5)Tested at DDR2-667 5-5-5-15
Graphics	NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT 512MB w/255MB TurboCache
Display	17" WSXGA+ TruBright (1680x1050)LG Philips LP171WE3 (Jan 2007)
Hard Drive	2 x 160GB 5400RPM 8MB SATA(Toshiba MK1637GSX)
Optical Drive	Toshiba HD DVD TS-L802A
Audio	Realtek ALC268 HD Audio
Battery	9-Cell 65WHr
Operating System	Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit

We'll provide benchmark charts with additional details about the performance in various applications and games in a moment, but for those looking for a quick overview of how the 163.44 drivers affect performance on the X205, here's the average performance change for a number of games; we tested that 1280x800, 1440x900, and 1680x1050.

Toshiba Satellite X205-S9359 (8700M GT 512MB) Driver Performance Comparison
Game	1680x1050 101.68	1680x1050 163.44	Average Change
Battlefield 2 0xAA	69.71	71.28	1.61%
Battlefield 2 4xAA	36.53	39.39	7.20%
Far Cry 0xAA	49.19	48.87	-0.20%
Far Cry 4xAA	34.49	34.43	0.19%
FEAR	48.00	51.00	8.25%
FEAR 4xAA	26.00	27.00	3.96%
HL2: Lost Coast 0xAA	47.41	42.39	-14.39%
HL2: Lost Coast 4xAA	28.49	31.67	25.46%
HL2: Episode One 0xAA	71.20	65.25	-7.68%
HL2: Episode One 4xAA	43.55	49.85	14.51%
Quake 4 0xAA	66.40	65.40	-1.10%
Quake 4 4xAA	37.80	37.10	1.35%
Oblivion	18.19	18.01	-4.04%
Supreme Commander	14.04	15.01	2.94%
STALKER	15.40	16.94	8.74%
Company of Heroes DX9	29.50	30.60	3.09%
Average Performance Change			3.12%
DX10 Comparison
Game	1680x1050 101.68	1680x1050 163.44	Average Change
Company of Heroes DX10	4.20	11.90	117.91%

Many of the titles show insignificant performance changes - anything less than 3%. The overall performance change averages out to 3%, which may at first seem like the hacked drivers aren't worth the trouble. However, we didn't include the Company of Heroes DirectX 10 result in that figure, as it seriously skewed the overall performance change. If that particular game is any indication of the status of DirectX 10 drivers and games, there's clearly a lot of potential for future improvements.

Looking at the remaining titles, most show moderate to slightly noticeable performance increases. Antialiasing seems to benefit more from the updated driver in several applications; however, it's also important to mention that in several titles enabling 4xAA simply isn't practical without dropping to a much lower resolution. F.E.A.R. for example only averages 26/27 FPS with 4xAA at 1680x1050, versus 48/51 without it. Some people might actually feel that antialiasing is more important than a high resolution, but we would strongly disagree - especially when using LCDs where running at the native resolution is optimal. Battlefield 2 and the Half-Life 2 games on the other hand are easily playable with 4xAA, making the results pertinent. Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Half-Life 2: Episode One are interesting in that both show a significant performance drop without antialiasing, but they also show an even larger performance gain with antialiasing enabled. We would expect that trend to continue with other HL2 engine games like Counter Strike: Source and the original HL2.

The bottom line, of course, is that at least one game - Bioshock - simply refused to run without using the hacked/updated drivers. We can be pretty certain that it won't be the last game to require something more recent than the official 101.68 drivers. Will NVIDIA and/or Toshiba manage to release updated drivers before other titles encounter difficulties? More likely than not the answer is yes and no: yes, they will get new drivers out, but at some point even those new drivers are going to have issues and require another driver update. For anyone using a laptop that isn't part of a corporate environment, the ability to install updated graphics drivers rather than waiting a few extra months for WHQL certification could certainly be helpful.



HD DVD and Multimedia

One of the potential selling points of the X205 is that it includes an HD DVD drive. It also includes an HDMI output, so if you need a portable HD DVD player as well as a laptop, it can fulfill that need. We tested the laptop with our HDTV using the HDMI output, and it worked pretty much as you would expect. You can of course also simply watch HD DVDs on the laptop, which brings up an interesting question: how does the more demanding format affect battery life?

We decided to put that to the test, so we picked up a copy of Babel, a recent HD DVD release that uses H.264 encoding with a high bitrate. In other words, this is more of a worst-case scenario for HD DVD playback, but considering that this should also be a reasonable representation of the highest quality possible using HD DVDs we feel the use of this particular title is fair. So how did the X205 do on battery while playing an HD DVD?

On the one hand, the net loss in battery life compared to playing a DVD isn't as bad as it could be. In a worst-case scenario, watching an HD DVD results in about 35% less battery life than watching a DVD. Unfortunately, the starting point for DVD battery life on this particular laptop is only 105 minutes, which isn't long enough to get through most movies. At 78 minutes, battery life for HD DVD playback clearly isn't long enough to make it through any full-length films. For the time being, users definitely should not plan on watching HD DVDs on plane flights using this notebook - at least not without an extra battery.

We also wanted to take a look at CPU utilization while playing Babel, and it's pretty obvious that the 8700M GT is doing its job and handling much of the work. CPU utilization hovers around a relatively constant 15%, ranging from 10%-20%. Of course, DVD playback can be provided with less than 10% average CPU use, and ranges from around 5%-15% CPU use. Having the GPU offload some of the work for doing H.264 decoding is good for achieving smooth frame rates, but that doesn't necessarily mean the GPU isn't using just as much power as a CPU might require. Considering that we've already shown that battery life is reduced by watching an HD DVD, it shouldn't come as a surprise that power requirements are higher when playing high definition content. The following table summarizes the results.

HD DVD vs. DVD Playback
	CPU Usage	Power Draw	Battery Life
DVD	5-15%	~45W	105
HD DVD	10~20%	~55W	78

None of this means that having an HD DVD drive in your laptop is a bad thing, but considering the added cost and the fact that watching high definition movies on battery power isn't feasible, we can't really say it's a good thing either. Toshiba is one of the major backers of the HD DVD format, so it was pretty much a given that they would include an appropriate optical drive in their latest laptop. Unlike a PS3 that tends to be hooked up to the HDTV in the living room all the time, laptops like to roam free and we figure anyone likely to be purchasing HD DVD movies probably already has an HD DVD set-top player. If you want to take your HD movies on the road, having an HD DVD drive in your laptop might be a nice feature, but around the house we don't see it as being all that necessary.

One final note is that Toshiba's HD DVD player software can also be used to enhance the output of regular DVDs. The overall difference in quality wasn't dramatic, but it did appear to be better. Power use and CPU use also went up, however, nearly matching the requirements of playing Babel (52W and 20%-30% CPU use) so if battery life is a concern users will be better off sticking with the Windows Media Center interface.



General Performance, Revisited

We looked at performance using SYSmark 2007 and PCMark05 in part one, and we have now completed benchmarks using other applications. Using the updated NVIDIA drivers did have a small impact on PCMark05 performance, but fluctuations between benchmark runs in that particular application are large enough that outside of the 3D score everything else was within margin of error. For the other benchmarks, we decided to finally make a break from older software versions and introduce testing with the latest releases of several multimedia applications. We upgraded from DivX 6.1 to DivX 6.6 and from iTunes 6.0.5 to version 7.3.2. The latter also brings along an upgrade from QuickTime 7.1 to 7.2. Naturally, that invalidates all of our results from previous laptops.

We also ran into some odd results in terms of encoding times, with some scores being significantly faster than we expected. Our QuickTime 7.1 result for example was consistently around 70 seconds, which is less than half the time the same task took on any other laptop. We repeated the same test a dozen times with all scores falling between 68 and 72 seconds, so we are at a loss to explain what's going on. Our QuickTime 7.2 result is also significantly faster than what we've seen on other laptops, although the margin of victory has been narrowed quite a bit. For these new benchmarks, we only have scores for the Alienware m9750 and the Toshiba X205, but future laptop reviews will build on these results.







Other than the oddities with QuickTime, everything basically falls out as we would expect with the faster processor in the Alienware m9750 giving it the advantage. These are all CPU intensive tasks, so other applications may benefit more from the split hard drive vs. RAID 0 configuration or the GPUs.



Synthetic Gaming Performance

We've already seen that the performance change between the driver releases isn't particularly significant in many games, although overall we do see an average and improvement in frame rates. What about 3DMark? Do updated drivers help more in these benchmarking tools or do they also average around 3%? Here are the results.






3DMark03 shows a 13% performance improvement, matching the improvement seen in Half-Life 2 games with 4xAA enabled. 3DMark05 gets a more sedate 3.7% improvement, and 3DMark06 also shows a 3 to 4% improvement. Given that the only significant improvement comes in 3DMark03, which is no longer as popular given its age, it does appear that NVIDIA didn't spend any particular extra effort to improve 3DMark scores, which is nice to see. These are, after all, only benchmarks; actual gaming performance is far more important.



Gaming Resolution Scaling Charts

We've already discussed how the 163.44 drivers impact overall performance, but for those who like to see the details we've got the following graphs. We've also got our first look at Bioshock performance.
















The only charts that we haven't discussed so far are the Bioshock and Company of Heroes comparing DX9 and DX10 performance results. In the case of the latter, it's quite clear that discussing DirectX 10 performance with this particular GPU in this particular game is merely an academic exercise. The GeForce 8700M GT simply doesn't have enough power to run Company of Heroes in DirectX 10 mode - not surprising considering even an 8800 GTX can struggle at higher resolutions.

Bioshock is our latest benchmark addition, and we use FRAPS to measure performance. We gather frame rate results for the sequence where you first enter Rapture in the bathysphere (not counting the time watching the "filmstrip"). Initial results indicated that DirectX 9 mode was slightly faster, but with the updated NVIDIA drivers and the latest patch applied to Bioshock we get essentially identical performance. The DirectX 10 mode supposedly provides slightly enhanced visuals, but we didn't immediately notice the difference. If you have a DirectX 10 card, we see little reason not to use the DirectX 10 mode, but we also don't see any need to upgrade operating systems and graphics cards for this particular title.



LCD Brightness, Contrast, and Viewing Angles

The only remaining aspect of this laptop that we haven't reviewed yet is the LCD, and as usual we like to take a closer look at notebook displays to see how they measure up to the competition. Our standard disclaimer follows: we use ASTRA32 to probe for details about the LCD panel. However, ASTRA32 merely reads the information directly from the LCD panel using the VBE/DDC standard. Some LCD panels contain the wrong data, for example serial numbers, manufacturing dates, etc. so we cannot guarantee all of the details are 100% accurate. Likewise, we cannot guarantee that the LCD panel used in our particular sample will be the same as that used in other notebooks of the same model. Note: The LCD in the X205-S9359 is not the same as the LCD in the X205-S9349, so what we have to say here does not apply to both X205 models.

ASTRA32 reports that the LCD panel in our test unit is an LG Philips LP171WE3 (LPL 0060), manufactured in January 2007. We're quite happy to finally have a laptop LCD reporting a 2007 manufacturing date, but as we'll see in a moment that doesn't mean that the results are strikingly better than what we've seen in other laptops. The LG Philips website does not list any information about the LP171WE3, but it does have some specs on the LP171WE2 (presumably the previous revision of this particular panel). Noteworthy details include the fact that this is a 6-bit panel (like pretty much all laptops short of those that use IPS panels) and it has a 25 ms response time. The viewing angle is listed as 100° vertical/130° horizontal, it has a maximum brightness of 300 nits (dependent on the backlight being used), and it has a 600:1 contrast ratio. It's possible that the WE3 has improved specifications, but our objective testing more or less agrees with the above specifications.

Moving on to objective testing, we'll start with brightness and contrast ratios along with viewing angles. We'll conclude on the following page with an examination of the color accuracy, before and after hardware calibration. For color accuracy, we are including results using ColorEyes Display Pro in addition to Monaco Optix XR Pro. Monaco Optix XR Pro uses the older ICCv2 profile specification and it may not be as accurate as software that uses the more recent ICCv4 specification. In testing we have discovered that there are certainly differences between the two software packages when it comes to color calibration, but neither one is universally better. We use a Monaco Optix XR Pro colorimeter (which is the same as the DTP-94) with both software packages.




The calibrated white level is about the same as most other laptops, coming in right around 150 nits. Brighter backlights require more battery power, so most laptops unfortunately forego that feature. Considering that users can always turn down the brightness level if they need more battery power, we would like to see more laptops follow the example of the ASUS G2P, which is about 66% brighter than most other laptops we've tested.

While the white levels weren't particularly noteworthy, the black levels are the darkest we've encountered on a laptop so far, and the result is a higher than advertised 874:1 contrast ratio. That doesn't make this LCD noticeably better than other laptop displays, but the dark blacks did make viewing movies more pleasing, which fits with the inclusion of an HD DVD drive and other multimedia functions.

So far so good, but while contrast ratio is a nice number to quote, realistic viewing angles tend to have a far greater impact on how we feel about a particular display. Here's a look at the LCD panel from our standard 30° viewing angles. Images for the other laptops can be viewed using the links below.


Alienware m9750
ASUS A8Js
ASUS G2P
Dell M1710
HP dv6500t
Gateway E-155-C
MSI S271
PC Club ENP660

While the high contrast ratio and darker blacks offered by the X205 are clearly apparent, the viewing angles are quite bad. In side-by-side comparisons with other laptops, both the vertical and horizontal viewing angles are measurably inferior. It's a shame, because most of the other aspects of this display are quite good. The reality is that TN panels really just don't provide good wide-angle viewing. Of course, if you want to keep other people from snooping over your shoulder, that can be a good thing.


Taking a quick look at response times, we don't really see anything different than what we've seen on other laptops. Using a 1/80s shutter speed, we can see remnants of at three (and perhaps slight traces of a fourth) screen updates in the above image. The stated 25 ms response time is therefore pretty accurate.



LCD Color Accuracy

Poor viewing angles are usually a bigger problem with LCDs on laptops than color accuracy, especially since the color accuracy results we've recorded so far have at best been decent but certainly not up to the level of desktop LCDs. The LCD panel on the X205 doesn't break any new ground here either.



Uncalibrated Delta E ranks towards the bottom of our charts, although subjectively we would rate it a little higher. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but we were generally okay with viewing movies or playing games on the laptop. That might be because frame rates have a lot more of an impact on games, but the dark blacks in movies were definitely pleasing.



Calibration helps out quite a bit, moving the Toshiba X205 into a solid third place when using Monaco Optix XR.



ColorEyes Display Pro improves on the numerical results, and although in terms of absolute ranking the X205 drops one position to fourth place it's basically still tied for third.


As a final look at the X205 LCD panel, here's a chart showing calibrated versus uncalibrated Delta E with both Monaco Optix XR Pro and ColorEyes Display Pro. ColorEyes also reports a lower Delta E prior to calibration (6.9 vs. 11.4). As always, calibration can help out a lot if you need more accurate colors, but even the best laptops are unable to match the majority of the desktop LCDs we've looked at when it comes to color accuracy. We're still waiting to get any IPS based laptops in for testing, unfortunately. Very likely, however, users will have to make other compromises in terms of overall configurations in order to get one of those laptops.



Final Thoughts

Running more tests hasn't dramatically changed our opinion of the Toshiba Satellite X205. It remains a generally well-equipped laptop, and the price on Toshiba's web site is now $2400 - down $100 since last week, although whether this is a permanent price change or a temporary sale is not clear. Let's recap the noteworthy aspects of this desktop replacement system.

Out of box, the overall gaming experience is pretty good; you can turn up most of the image quality settings, but you'll probably need to stay away from antialiasing in newer titles. As we've seen in the past, graphics drivers can have a pretty dramatic effect on performance. Older games didn't benefit much from the hacked 163.44 drivers, but minor performance boosts and the ability to run Bioshock (and likely other games) make it easy for us to recommend any owners of this notebook look into installing these beta drivers. Even without the updated drivers, though, gaming performance is still acceptable.

While we didn't attempt it, adventurous users could even try to overclock the 8700M GT a bit further. We're not sure how much headroom is available, but the X205 doesn't get nearly as hot as other desktop replacement notebooks we've tested, likely because of the larger chassis. An additional 10% to 20% performance boost on the graphics side might be possible, but considering warranty concerns and the cost of getting a laptop repaired we would probably just stick with stock performance. If the 8700M GT isn't fast enough, a laptop with a GeForce Go 7950 GTX would be faster in gaming performance, but those usually cost a bit more money and a lack other features like the HD DVD drive, full H.264 offload, and of course DirectX 10 support (not that this last really seems to matter right now). Which is more important is going to be an individual choice.

The multimedia aspects are definitely one of the highlights of this notebook. If you want to try out high definition movies on a laptop, this is a good place to start. The inclusion of an HDMI output to go with the HD DVD drive means that you can even take this laptop over to a friend's house to show off the latest high definition movies - provided your friend has the requisite HDTV, of course. The integrated speakers are also much better sounding than what you would expect to find in a notebook, although in most instances you will still be better off using external speakers, headphones, or the audio from the HDMI jack.

Not everything comes up roses, however. While the LCD panel does offer improved contrast ratios compared to many other notebooks, the viewing angles could definitely be improved. We know of several laptop manufacturers that are using LED backlighting as well as some that use IPS LCD panels, and we can't help but wonder what combining both of those into a single laptop would do for overall display quality. It would probably increase the cost a fair amount, but we aren't talking about an inexpensive notebook in the first place so another $100-$200 wouldn't be the end of the world.

Battery life is the only other major concern, which shouldn't be much of a surprise. The inability to watch a full-length movie on a single battery charge is unfortunate, given what we just said about the multimedia capabilities of the X205. Users looking for a truly mobile desktop replacement will be disappointed, regardless. However, if all you really need is a transportable workstation, or something you can plug in a while you sit on the couch instead of at your desk, the X205 fits that usage scenario quite well.

Laptops continue to be one of the fastest growing markets in the computer industry, from ultraportables and UMPCs all the way up to desktop replacement and mobile workstation designs. With actual performance requirements starting to level off in many applications, more and more people are looking at moving to a laptop just for those times when they want to take a computer on the road. There are definitely areas where a laptop can't keep up with a desktop system, and even as one of the fastest DirectX 10 capable notebooks currently available the Satellite X205 remains an order of magnitude slower than many desktops when it comes to gaming performance. With 180W power bricks, however, notebooks like the X205 and Alienware m9750 should easily be able to handle a faster GPU. All we need now is for someone like NVIDIA to step up to the plate with a mobile GeForce 8800 chip - something we're sure they're working on releasing. If you don't want to sit around waiting for the next big thing to come out, however, you could do far worse than the Toshiba Satellite X205 when it comes to getting a reasonably priced gaming notebook.