Toshiba Satellite M645: The Steady March of Progress
by Dustin Sklavos on April 29, 2011 12:50 AM ESTGaming Performance Should Be Better
As a refresher, the NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M with 1GB of DDR3 beating at the heart of the Toshiba M645 is specced to run at 600/1200MHz on the core/shaders, but instead Toshiba runs 21% slower at just 475MHz on the core and 950MHz on the shaders. This not only puts it well below spec, it puts it below even the GeForce GT 420M. It may seem like I'm harping on this way too much, but it oftentimes means the difference between playability and stuttering. Take a look at our "low" preset scores.
In most situations the M645 doesn't fare too bad, but at these settings there is a tendency towards being CPU-limited that allows the i5-2410M in the M645 to stretch its legs. Still, the clocks claim their first victim in Mafia II, dipping that game below the 30fps mark. We also see the L501x with a GT 420M claiming leads in Left 4 Dead 2, Mafia II, Metro 2033, and STALKER. When we bump settings up to our "medium" preset, watch the tumble the underclocked GT 525M takes.
Once we get to Medium detail, the underclocked GT 525M loses ground in a hurry. Situations in more heavily GPU-limited games only get worse; any game where the M645 can't leverage its faster processor in takes a serious hit. The older L501x now leads in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, plus the other four games where it had a lead at Low settings.
Another point of reference is the GT 540M in the L502x; it should be at best about 12% faster than the GT 525M (except when the quad-core CPU in the Dell can help out, e.g. BFBC2), but the leads range from around 20% (DiRT 2 and StarCraft II) up to 55% (Metro 2033), and a maximum lead of 67% in BFBC2. The M645 still manages playable framerates in most of our test suite at medium settings, but the green bar should have been a lot closer to the black bar in the above charts.
Again we note that Left 4 Dead 2 at our medium preset requires you to set "Paged Memory Pool Available" to "Low" on Optimus systems—this appears to be a problem with the Intel HD 3000 drivers, as we had the same issue on the SNB IGP notebooks. It appears to degrade performance about 10-20%, though we can't test with the setting on "High". At over 50FPS, it's not a major concern, but the game does seem to have more HDD thrashing with this setting at Low.
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Jmegapac - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
If you don't mind a Dell, I'd consider Dell Vostro 3450. It has the same configuration as the Toshiba laptop mentioned above except for a) Radeon HD 6630M, b) 320GB 7200RPM HDD, c) DVD writer instead of Bluray drive.It does have backlight keyboard and a fingerprint reader.
I believe the total cost is around $780 or so excluding tax. If you can find a Dell coupon, you should be able to reduce the price even further.
JarredWalton - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
Thanks -- I've added a mention in the conclusion. Not seeing the $780 price for those features, though; where did you find that? I'm coming up with $964 at the time of writing, though perhaps you're talking about using a Dell business account to get a lower price?Eidorian - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
I remember Laptop Magazine had a link through Logic Buy that discounted $220 the Vostro 3450 back in early April. It was rather tempting to get one of those with a Radeon 6630M and a three year warranty for $779.ekerazha - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
About upcoming 14-inch notebooks with Sandy Bridge and a more powerful NVIDIA GPU (I've had too much issues with ATI GPUs), I'm aware of:- Acer Aspire TimelineX 4830T (GT 540M), but some reviews say that it has overheating/throttling issues and poor build quality.
- Lenovo IdeaPad Y470 (GT 550M), but only 4 hours of battery life?
- Asus U41SV (GT 540M)
Unfortunately I think that they lack backlit keyboard.
Did I miss any other notebook?
LoneWolf15 - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
You missed the main trifecta of business laptops, though they are now available for order.Dell Latitude E6420
Lenovo ThinkPad T420
The HP EliteBook 8460p has ATI Radeon Mobility 6470 graphics, but to me it qualifies as well. nVidia isn't without its issues on the mobile graphics front either.
Both the Dell and Lenovo can have Optimus graphics. The Lenovo is lighter, and smaller; the Dell probably has better customer support. Both are built toughter than the models you mentioned, though. The Dell can have a backlit keyboard, and the ThinkPad has its ThinkLight which can shine down on the keyboard to illuminate it, and works well.
royalewihcheese - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
It's a pretty frustrating time to be in the market for a notebook. My previous one just bit the dust, and I'm on a five year old Acer now during the search. They're really dragging on getting Sandy Bridge notebooks to market, and when trying to browse for them, they're all grouped in with the older Core i3/i5/i7 models. It seems like there's a total lack of interest in putting out new notebooks.How much stock do you guys put in the Squaretrade reliability ratings? I've been happy with my two Acers, the last failure being the result of four years of pretty rough use, and they're rated pretty dismally there. Is it worth holding out for an ASUS (which I have a good impression of from using their motherboards for decades) or Toshiba (decidedly less favorable impression) to put out the dream-specced notebook?
jabber - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
...all the stickers?Note ot manufacturers (including Microsoft) I really dont care or want them on my laptop!
Just makes your products look cheaper out on the shelves, not smarter or better.
Joe Average user doesnt have a clue what most of those "Turbo Boost" "Sonic Tunnel" i5" strickers mean anyway.
Ushio01 - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
WD40 is your friend here, it easily removes the loathsome sticky residue after you peel off all those annoying stickers.jabber - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
Oh its not the taking off that bothers me its just they look so damn ugly and tacky stuck all over the chassis.You dont see that crap stuck all over Macbooks so why do it on non Mac kit?
A simple spec sheet on the store shelf will do.
Also most kit is probably bought online so it makes them even more pointless.
erple2 - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
Perhaps that's part of the Macintax - no labels costs a little bit more?