Toshiba A665-3DV: 3D or Not 3D?
by Jarred Walton on October 6, 2010 12:05 AM ESTThe Rest of the Story: Application Performance Compared
Besides all the 3D stuff, we ran our usual suite of benchmarks. The i7-740QM is a newer CPU with slightly higher clocks than the 720QM it replaces. In fact, other than a slightly lower maximum Turbo speed and 6MB rather than 8MB L3 cache, it's about the same as the i7-820QM (which has since been superseded by the i7-840QM). Overall application performance is thus plenty fast, and if you happen to have a multi-threaded application that you run regularly, quad-core Intel CPUs are the fastest mobile option right now—by a large margin. Here are the results of our application testing.
PCMark ends up being a case of six of one, half a dozen of the other in terms of which laptop is fastest. Higher-clocked dual-core processors can compete with the i7-740QM, but all it really takes to bring in an extreme score is the addition of a good SSD. The Toshiba ekes out a victory, with the ASUS N82Jv coming in just a fraction behind in our "midrange" notebook comparison, but it falls slightly behind the Gateway ID49C and Dell Studio 17 in PCMark05 (which is very long in the tooth these days). Peacekeeper also has the 3DV "tied" for the lead, and as a single-threaded benchmark that's something worth noting. Incidentally, we're looking to retire Peacekeeper and replace it with a more relevant benchmark, so if anyone has a recommendation, sound off in the comments!
Moving to the more strenuous CPU tests, the i7-740QM comes into its own in Cinebench and x264 encoding, scoring clear victories in both. As expected, second place in these tests goes to the other quad-core Intel CPU, the i7-720QM, with the heavily threaded Cinebench SMP and 2nd pass x264 outpacing even the faster dual-core parts by 30-40%. If you're looking for a notebook that can do heavy multimedia work—power requirements notwithstanding—the Clarksfield processors are the clear choice. Or at least they are until Sandy Bridge shows up later this year/early next year.
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EnzoFX - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
Seems like another product on Anandtech that's not for the power users here =p. I still know people with 1280x800 on 15" laptops...nubie - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
I admire that this is being sold, but am disappointed by the choice to use active glasses to display the content.This stems from the limitations of LCD refresh and the extra complexity associated with a Stereo-mirror or head-based stereoscopy system.
I admit I have dabbled in CAD and modeling, where a 3D display is very useful. Many on the internet are quick to poo-poo 3D for gaming, perhaps they are correct, for both the casual and enthusiast or professional gamer it isn't attractive. I find it quite immersive and useful myself.
I don't know if a laptop is quite the place for 3D gaming, but then laptops aren't really a good gaming platform anyway.
I wonder if you can retro-fit a 120hz panel into a higher-quality laptop with a better video card than this system? If you did could you get nVidia Vision to work? I don't really trust nVidia in this regard because they have locked down their support. Ideally to make it simpler to use for the consumer, but this makes it useless for those with "unsupported" hardware that in reality has decent specifications for 3D use.
Sabresiberian - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
I guess it must be a good decision for a manufacturer to put one in instead of a 7200 RPM one, because a lot of manufacturers of laptops do it, but when the price difference is a couple of dollars, literally, it doesn't impress me and it is one of the things that puts a laptop in the "no" column, for me. Okay for a $500 machine or less, I suppose, but not one in this price range.;)