Ok, so I just got a new personal laptop, a Toshiba Tecra M4 Tablet PC.
It's got some interesting features and quirks that may be of interest to the general silent computing crowd.
I got this model despite normal people on various sites noting that the fan noise was noisy. I already knew that Toshiba had it's own Power Saving utlity that could get the model to run passively; failing that, I could always use RightMark or Crystal CPUID to achieve that result myself.
A few general thoughts on some of the technology:
LAPTOP HARD DRIVES ARE GREAT!!
This unit is equiped with a 40gb Fujitsu 5400rpm drive. IT IS VERY QUIET and FAST. It's been awhile since I've heard any new laptop hard drive so I'm comparing to what I've been used to: older 4200rpm models. I can really see how using a 2.5" drive for the desktop can be very tempting as in this notebook it is extremely difficult to hear any hard drive noise in both idle and seek. There's no chirping, grinding, or whine. And it's not like they did anything special in the mounting of it.
This drive also seems very fast, subjectively as zippy as my 7200 rpm 8mb cache desktop drive, although I can't do any benchmarking to that affect. Now it's a newly formatted, uncluttered drive so that has an affect but I am impressed by the perceived speed of this drive.
Notebook Graphics
Notebook Graphics power usage is configurable now.
This tablet pc has 1400x1050 resolution and is equipped with a GeForce Go 6600 TE (the "TE" Toshiba Edition designates that it is actually a lower clocked edition vs the normal Geforce Go6600. So says a disclaimer in the Tosh spec sheets that most people overlook). It comes bundled with NvIdia's management tool that includes a feature called PowerMizer. You've got three settings: Power Saving, Balanced, Performance. On artificial benchmarks the numbers really show the difference
My idly curious testing gave this:
Power Savings: 3dmark2001 about 3700
Balanced: 3dmark 2001 <Actually don't remember>
Performance: 3dmark2001 about 12500
But my more important test was actually playing a game, in this case Guild Wars, a brand-spanking-new game. Using the same settings (Fairly high quality) for all tests, I actually did not notice any differences in quality or framerate using any of the three modes.
In terms of noise, the Full Performance level gave me a very loud system noise, while the Balanced and Power Saving modes both gave me a less loud but still very noticeable fan noise while playing. For now I've set my default setting to Balanced since I don't see any reason not to. I also ran the game with an underclocked cpu to reduce noise , using Toshiba's "Battery Optimized" setting which I'll get to one section after this next one...
Pentium M's are undervolting wonders
As most of us already know, the Pentium M architecuture is a great under and overclocker. This machine came with a 2ghz processor with a default voltage of 1.35 volts. It also tranistions down to 800 mhz @ 0.98 volts default.
I've burn tested the following configurations
2ghz @ 1.068 volts
1.6 ghz @ 0.942 volts
800mhz @ 0.840 volts (and haven't bothered to lower the voltage further)
Theoretically the 800mhz @ .84 volts puts out something like 3-4 watts which should make this compouter not only cool, but dead silent right??
Toshiba's Power Saving techniques are just plain weird (AND bad for the serious user)
Okay as I noted in the beginning, Toshiba has a power saving utlility built in. You can set the Cooling method, which are: "Batttery Optimized", Performance, or "Max Performance"
This sounds great, right? Well, not exactly.
Although I can manually change my voltages using RightMark to achieve amazing power consumption and heat output numbers, Toshiba's Cooling Methods seem to have hardcoded fan behavior.
If you use Performance or Max Performance, no matter what Temps you are actually getting the fan has a Minimum fan speed that is NOT QUIET. It's ridiculous how cold the fan air is and yet there it is, still chugging away...
So what happens if you use Battry Optimized? Hey, the fan instantly STOPS!! great, let's test things: if I start running Prime95, the fan will kick in sometimes depending on Temperature so I guess now I've got the best of both worlds right?
Hmmm... wait a second, what's happening over here in cpu-z? Cpu Z is telling me my Front Side bus = 70 mhz and not the usual 133mhz (533 quad pumped)? What's going on here? Turns out the Batttey Optimized setting lowers the FSB down to 100mhz or 70mhz, depending on load. However, even if you max out your cpu, it will never raise it back up to 133mhz!! So basically the 2ghz processor is capped at 1.5ghz and typically runs at about 1.2 ghz
This isn't actually bad since the fan DOES shut off in this mode. However, I find it frustrating to have the FSB controlled in this manner. I cannot see a good reason why they would lump in FSB control with Fan control, unless there's something magical about running a 133FSB that requires them to run the fan.
That's it. It's a great machine and at some point I'm sure someone will figure out how to control the fan speed directly. Yes it IS a tablet pc. Tablets are great for me but until this model came out there wasn't a suitable work/travel tablet that fit my other requirements (play games at hotel when not working).
EDIT ADDENDUM: Just when I think I've figured out Toshiba's power utility, here I am running it on Battery Optimized with no cpu resources being used BUT the FSB is at 133mhz and the fan is constantly whirring. Either the Tosh utility is flakey, the combiniation of it + RightMark is flakey, or some of the utiliies that I've stopped have some impact on this. I guess I'll spend some more time trying to figure out how to get this to work in a consistent manner.
New Laptop, some eye-openers for me...
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