Toshiba X305-Q725: Quad-Core Gaming Notebook

Subjective Evaluation

Listing all of the components and specifications inside of the laptop is easy enough to accomplish, but that doesn't really tell you much about what it's like to really use the laptop on a day-to-day basis. Before we get to the objective benchmarks, we wanted to start with our subjective opinion of the X305. Naturally, there are some good points and some bad points to bring up.

Overall performance is very snappy, easily fast enough for anything that we do on a regular basis. Then again, outside of gaming and a few specific benchmarks, and processor made in the past three years would meet our requirements. The quad-core CPU does keep things running smoothly even when there are lots of applications open, helped out by the 64-bit OS, SSD, and 4GB of memory. It's a good thing too, because the default system configuration has a ton of running processes. Even after trimming out the fat (we really dislike running Internet security suite and antivirus software, because they can make a system feel extremely sluggish), we are still left with 60 running processes, which is far more than usual. Quite a few of these are driver related: modem, GPU, audio, Intel chipset and RAID utilities, touchpad, and five Toshiba specific processes related to power saving and keyboard shortcuts. A clean installation on a desktop would usually involve about 40 processes, but most laptops have at least 10 extra processes for the integrated components.

Once we start loading up games, differences between other laptops become apparent. As fast as the system is, demanding games require even more graphics power, and SLI notebooks begin to show their muscle. We still see some annoying delays on SLI notebooks, apparently caused by the system switching between various GPU modes and resolutions. The latest universal mobile drivers from NVIDIA have made things better, but the experience still isn't as seamless as desktop solutions. If you don't absolutely require maximum 3D performance, a single GPU can be a more pleasant experience, but we suspect most people looking at this sort of laptop are going to be interested in 3D performance. We can also run into situations where we are CPU limited, since very few games take full advantage of four processing cores. In most instances, a higher clocked dual-core CPU like the 2.66GHz P9600 is going to provide a better gaming performance than the 2.0GHz Q9000. Faster quad-core parts are available, which would help matters, but the Q9000 simply wouldn't be our processor of choice.

We are somewhat split on the topic of SSDs at AnandTech; some of us think they're great, and others feel they're just too expensive for what they offer. For better or worse, Toshiba includes a 64GB SSD in the X305-Q725. That adds at least a couple hundred dollars to the price, and we can think of other ways to spend that money (like a second GPU). Perhaps more importantly, however, is that Toshiba shows some seriously brain-dead reasoning when it comes to partitioning hard drives. As shipped, the 64GB SSD only has 50 GB of usable space, with 15 GB already occupied by the operating system and other utilities. Where did the remaining space go? We were astonished to see that Toshiba had included a 12 GB recovery partition - yes, on the SSD! The whole point of having dual hard drives, one for performance and one for storage, is that you don't use the performance drive to store less important, infrequently accessed data. A recovery partition is the ultimate in infrequently accessed data, and Toshiba used 20% of this expensive media for that purpose. Um, yeah… this needs to be corrected on retail models as soon as possible.

We encountered a few other problems during testing, with the system fully crashing and requiring a hard reset. Toshiba solved one of these problems by having us uninstall the Intel AHCI drivers - for whatever reason, those drivers caused PCMark Vantage and 3DMark Vantage to hard lock during the system information detection. Uninstalling those drivers also degraded performance in a few tests by at least 5%, unfortunately. We also experienced regular lockups in Oblivion and Mirror's Edge, typically within the first 15 to 20 minutes of playing. Reducing the resolution helped, but that's a less than perfect solution as well. Finally, Crysis would routinely lockups during the benchmarking process, but we didn't experience any problems with playing the game.

These instability issues are certainly a major concern, particularly on a notebook that costs over $2000. They do not seem to be heat related; instead, it's more likely there's a conflict with the graphics drivers, the system/BIOS, or some other software. Speaking of graphics drivers, we really appreciate NVIDIA's mobile driver initiative, since it means we won't be entirely dependent on Toshiba or any other manufacturer when it comes to future GPU driver updates. However, the NVIDIA drivers continue to be somewhat limited based on manufacturer requirements, and we think manufacturers should lighten up. Specifically, resolution support needs to be expanded, and we would love to see the return of the custom resolution dialog. At present, the X305 has a 1680x1050 display, but it only "officially" supports resolutions of 1680x1050, 1280x1024, 1280x720, 1024x768, or 800x600. Noticeably absent are standard 16:10 aspect ratios like 1280x800 and 1440x900, and unfortunately we were not able to hack in support for those resolutions.

Overall, our general opinion of the X305-Q725 is rather ho-hum. It's fast, but it's also heavy and expensive, and unfortunately for Toshiba there are similarly priced notebooks that are faster, offer better battery life/features, and/or are much more practical from a price/performance standpoint. Toshiba's own X305-Q708 is more promising, at least from the pure performance perspective, with 9800M GTS SLI and a QX9300 CPU; admittedly, that's at an even higher price point. We simply don't see a lot of need for this type of laptop at present - i.e. with a lower clocked mobile quad-core CPU. If you're in the market for a powerful desktop replacement notebook - or perhaps a mobile workstation - you might as well go all the way. Saving a couple pounds but getting similar battery life and lower performance hardly seems practical; weight just isn't a critical concern with a 9+ pound notebook.