Tweaking a Toshiba Satellite A70 Please help

Hi.

I have the same laptop as you (typing from it right now). I really love it! The main problem is the video card. It's integrated. Integrated cards aren't nearly as good as cards with dedicated memory if you're gaming.

I, like you, also upgraded my ram. Except that I went from 512 MB to 1 GB. Any games that I've thrown at this machine have actually ran better then I thought they would (runs Doom 3 on medium settings). I'm sorry to say, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, but there's really not much you can do, unless you want to take a chance overclocking, which isn't such a great idea on a laptop.

I think that you're probably stuck with playing games on the lower settings to make them more playable.

Hi Brian.

Did the 3dMark benchmark and got a score of 3155. Like you said, I don't think that is a particularly high score.

It doesn't affect me too much, as the only resource intense game that I play right now is Need For Speed Underground, and I can run it smoothly on highest settings.

Brian, I don't usually turn off my anti-virus, wireless, etc when playing games...

Brian,

Yes I am having those sound problems sometimes.

I will start my laptop up, and occasionally there will be no sound. I tried reinstalling the drivers but that hasn't helped..

Thanks for the tip though.

I have this model of laptop and I use ATITool to overclock the core memory to 375 Mhz. It's a slight improvement and it runs safely while stable. I have not upgraded my RAM, however, still have the factory 512.

Hi MadeInCanada,

I would like to overclock the Ati 9000 on my A70, it's just that I am very paranoid and have no experience whatsoever with overclocking.

I downloaded the ATITool. How exactly does it work? If I tell it to find the maximum core, will it keep testing until artifacts come up on screen?

I would like overclock, but at this point I am very hesistant to do so. Would you say overclocking has made a noticable difference?

RADEON9000IGP is a poor graphics card when it comes to games. Because it is not using its own memory you get crappy perfromance. Overclocking the graphics core will give you a perfromance improvement, but no the best. The tweak that will help your memory is to lower the memory latency, so you will improve the video memory too.
A software tweak would be to lower your virtual memory as low as you can.
Update your video drivers to omega 4.9. DON't go to 4,10 they are slower on IGPS and 64mb cards.
Hope this helps

The ATITool's "find max mem" function only went up to 317 or something for me. There is lots of help on the web about overclocking with our model of graphics card. I read somewhere that you find max mem with the tool, then move the slider up 5 mhz. Scan for artifacts for awhile, if it's fine, move up another 5. I don't get artifacts on 375, but on 400 the whole card quits on me. So I left it at 375 for safety.

As for a noticeable difference, I thought it did. I can play Doom 3 on medium settings with minimal lag in "busy" areas.

THe omega drivers you download from www.omegadrivers.net I don't have a toshiba laptop, i have a gateway m505X with a radeon 9600 with 64megs. The omega drivers will increase your shader performance, or another alternative would be downloading mobile modder from driverheaven.net and combine then with ATI CATALYST4.8
DO the overclocking with care, and lower the virutal memory as low as stable.

Just wanted to let you guys know there is a fix for the sound problems. It is on the Peer to Peer forum and under the post "No sound on wake-up". Its one of the last five posts.

There is a serious issue with the Toshiba A70 / A75 laptop notebooks

There is a serious issue with the Toshiba A70 / A75 laptop notebooks that is responsible for random freezing and/or rebooting of the system.

After reading many posts on various forums and newsgroups throughout the web in which Toshiba A70 /A75 owners search for a reason to explain this seemingly random freezing and/or rebooting of the system I have discovered what is causing this and it is reproducible so A70 /A75 owners can do this themselves and can then contact Toshiba and demand a recall or compensation.

Turn on the Toshiba Satellite A70 S256 or A70 S259 models or the Satellite A75 models as normal and let it boot up. Once windows has finished loading completely, stand up and walk around on a carpet for a minute or less. Touch either metal speaker cover but the left speaker cover is much more sensitive than the right for some reason. Now try and move your mouse or type on the keyboard. When conditions are ripe for static electricity build up you will not even have to walk around on a carpet. Just moving your hands from the touchpad to the keyboard is often sufficient to create the freeze or reboot. Sliding your finger over the case between the touchpad and the left speaker cover will also freeze and/or reboot the system.

I have several of these models at my disposal and can readily reproduce this issue on every one. In an office setting in which a forced air heating system is present (this is the most common heating system for medium to large office buildings) the problem renders the laptop un-usable. Data is often lost and when a reliable running laptop with reliable running software is the difference between working and not working or getting paid or getting fired this model Toshiba is a definite drain on your ability to get paid, not get fired and to work without constant freezing and reboots.

Those of you who live in a part of the world in which you do not experience cold temperatures and forced air heated buildings should be lucky enough to experience this design flaw very infrequently if at all. Static electricity is funny. Sometimes you can discharge it from your person my holding the desktop as you seat yourself in a chair but at other times it builds until you come in contact with something that will conduct it and the metal speaker covers on the A70 /A75 are just the sort of thing that can and will and does conduct static electricity to your laptop.

Static electricity is nothing new. There are standards manufactures should adhere to in an effort to minimize the dissipation of static electricity through a laptop frame into the motherboard and other ungrounded components.

That's why hardware technicians (the good ones) always stand on a static pad that is grounded and wear a wrist strap that is grounded to a static pad under the laptop. Static discharge will damage memory, motherboard circuits and other wiring harness components.

In MHO the average consumer should not be expected to wear or stand on static dissipation equipment to engage in normal everyday use a laptop.

If you do not believe me check the various newsgroups and laptop forums on the Internet. Look for how many messages are posted in regards to the A70 / A75 Toshiba Satellite models freezing. Some owners of this laptop have been updating the BIOS, disabling tapping on the touchpad and setting the touchpad to the lowest sensitivity possible, turning off hyperthreading and more in an effort to resolve this issue.

If you own a Toshiba Satellite A70 or a Toshiba Satellite A75 laptop and you are experiencing random freezing and/or rebooting, please contact Toshiba and tell Toshiba you have discovered the source of your problem. These laptops have been designed in such a way that normal everyday static electricity levels in the user will cause the system to freeze and/or reboot when the left speak is touched and sometimes when the right speaker is touched and sometimes when you move your hands from the touchpad to the keyboard and sometimes when you slide your finger over the frame between the touchpad and the speaker covers.

This is a serious and potentially damaging situation for the laptop. Do not delay. Try it yourself and then contact Toshiba if you can reproduce the issue.

just say no

in other words....
if you machine is running well....and stays running.
dont tempt fate and mess around with "overclocking".
....not with this machine.



r|z

Lowering Virtual Memory

So did you say you should lower the virtual memory as low as possible? I thought I knew what you meant by this, but am a little confused. Please explain. Right now I have 128mb memory allocated to the video card. Do you mean I should lower this to 32mb or 64mb? And why would that help, if it does? I currently have two 512mb cards in, and UT2004 seems to run pretty well (over my WiFi connection at home).

Thanks for any info you can give.
-Ransom

I think he was refering to the paging file, not that memory used for the video card.

I've had mine as low as 500 MB or so without any problems.

However I haven't really noticed any significant improvements with respect to games.

Paging file

Ok, thanks for the info. I didn't know what he was talking about, and didn't want to look stupid, but sometimes it can't be helped.

I keep mine at 800 minimum and 800 maximum. I've been told that 256 is fine, but I just left it this way.

Oh, and Univercity, it sounds like we have just about the same stats on our machines (except for the clock speed). Very cool.

-Ransom

Yep my machine is pretty much the Canadian equivalent of your machine.

But just to let you know, 3066 MHz = 3.06 GHz, so the clock speeds ARE the same.

I just got the 3066 MHz from a program called Everest, which lets you know every single piece of information one would want to know about his/her system.

It's kind of weird why Toshiba decided to round the number down though, considering that 3066, in essence, is 3.07 GHz.

But there must be a reason...

Information

Wow, thanks for the info. I thought, by what you said, that you had yours overclocked. But I see what you mean. And that explains why, when I look at my system information and my computer is plugged in, it says "3.07GHz!"

I was wondering about that. Guess I'll have to change my sig.

(and just so you know how I checked this, I right-clicked on My Computer, left clicked on Properties, and there it was.)

-Ransom