Toshiba Satellite A660D-ST2G01: AMD's Quad-Core Phenom II P920 Joins the Mobile Party

Toshiba A660D-ST2G01: AMD's Danube is Better, Now Fix the Design

AMD notebooks have really been difficult to recommend on any metric other than pricing for the past few years. Thankfully, the new Danube platform looks like it addresses the performance and battery life shortcomings. Intel laptops are still faster and offer better battery life, but AMD has areas where they can compete…if the price is right. For the price it's difficult to match what Toshiba offers in the nearly identical A665D-S6059; if the retail pricing of the A660D can get closer to $800, this becomes a reasonable system. The features like eSATA, ExpressCard, a backlit keyboard, and switchable graphics put it ahead of notebooks like the Acer 7740G. Most Intel laptops with competing features and performance generally go for closer to $900, which is why Toshiba needs to keep the price down on this one. That's especially true when we consider the ways in which Toshiba handicaps the A660D with some bad—or at least questionable—decisions.

One concern is the graphics driver situation. Even if Toshiba releases an updated driver, that will only address our concerns for the immediate future. Any laptop with a reasonable GPU really needs a guarantee of regular driver updates, and both AMD and NVIDIA (and even Intel for that matter) offer that service. The problem is that Toshiba chose to opt out of AMD's mobile driver program. They now participate in NVIDIA's Verde program, and they really need to do the same for AMD notebooks. The other odd GPU decision is the choice of a 450MHz clock speed on the 5650, where other notebooks have the same GPU clocked at 550MHz. The A660D runs moderately warm, but it's certainly no worse than other midrange gaming notebooks. Perhaps the lower clock speed of the GPU will improve longevity, but we don't have any data suggesting 550MHz wouldn't have worked just as well.

As far as the design, the new Fusion X2 finish is definitely an improvement over the old Toshiba Fusion, but we'd still like to see more rigidity in the build. The plastic feels too thin and shows some flex, which is a concern for long-term durability and reliability. We'd also like to see some other coating on the keys besides glossy plastic; you can type fine, but it's not the most comfortable surface. On the plus side, the connectivity options are above average and you get a backlit keyboard with a good layout. If you like the design, we didn't encounter any showstoppers other than the GPU drivers.

Looking at the AMD processor side of the equation, we again have concerns. The Phenom II P920 packs a quad-core 25W processor into a notebook, which is a first for AMD, but this is counteracted by a slow 1.6GHz clock speed. Intel's i7-720QM has the same base clock speed, but clock-for-clock Intel cores look to be around 33% faster, and Turbo Boost kicks performance up substantially. Sure, Clarksfield also uses more power, but if we look at Intel's mainstream Arrandale parts, Hyper-Threading allows them to perform quite well, to the point where even the slowest non-ULV Arrandale (i3-330M) manages to match multi-threaded performance of the P920, with single-threaded performance clearly besting AMD. And they manage that with similar power draw. What you're looking at then is a quad-core AMD P920 being approximately the equal of Arrandale i3-330M at best; at worst, even Arrandale ULV outperforms the P920 in single-threaded workloads.

The final concern is pricing; $950 is simply too much for what's being offered, and even $850 would be pushing things. We can find Intel's i5-430M with HD 5650 in the Acer 7740G, but it's a 17.3" chassis and it lacks switchable graphics. For those looking at overall performance, such a notebook is superior to the A660D. If you're more interested in eSATA, ExpressCard, a backlit keyboard, and decent battery life (at the cost of raw performance), the Toshiba A665D at $800 is a viable option. Another option at nearly the same price is the Toshiba A660-S6057. Judging by the name, you might suspect that it's the same core laptop as the A660D-ST2G01, and you'd be right. The difference is that it uses an Intel i5-450M with GeForce GT 330M graphics, for a price of $830. Tiger Direct lists a battery life of up to five hours, though it's not clear how they're getting that result. It doesn't look like the S6057 supports NVIDIA's Optimus technology, but if that's what you'd like the A660-S6058includes Optimus and costs just $20 more.

Ultimately, we're looking at overall value; while the A660D-ST2G01 delivers a reasonable set of hardware, it doesn't truly excel in any area. Personally I'd recommend spending the extra money to go with an Intel i5 + NVIDIA Optimus GT 335M solution like the ASUS N82JV or K42JV, but at least the A665D-S6059 is able to do just about everything you'd need. We'd like to be more enthusiastic, but ultimately the low 1.6GHz CPU clock leaves us wanting something else. In some workloads, the P920 ends up being roughly as fast as the ultraportable T235D, and that just doesn't feel right. Also, this is clearly a gaming capable laptop that doesn't have the necessary driver support. We complained about this in the A505D review, so this is a familiar refrain. It's something Toshiba needs to fix, period. And if you don't care much about gaming, you probably don't need an HD 5650.

What we'd really like to see at this point is something like the A660D, only with a dual-core Turion II P520 or N530 and the same HD 5650 (or faster) graphics. In an ideal world, we could get that with switchable graphics and mobile driver updates and keep the price close to $700. Unfortunately, the number of notebooks with P520 or N530 is very limited right now, with the best GPUs topping out at the rather anemic HD 5470 (i.e. Acer 5551G or Lenovo Z565). You can see how the 5470 performs in our Dell Studio 14 review; the short summary is don't plan on bumping up graphics quality. A balanced platform is the best approach to mobile gaming, and pairing a slower clocked quad-core processor with a faster GPU doesn't make as much sense as a higher clocked dual-core processor with the same GPU (at least not without something like Intel's Turbo Boost). The Acer 7551G may be the best current AMD option for midrange gaming, as it uses a tri-core N830 clocked at 2.1GHz and keeps the HD 5650. With a 35W TDP processor and 17.3" display, however, it will also take a battery life hit. [Sigh.]

Frankly, it just doesn't seem like anyone has yet come up with an ideal AMD-based laptop—not that they can't, but more like they won't. So to help, here's what we want. First, give us more than a 48Wh battery—look at ASUS' U-series laptops with 84Wh batteries for inspiration here. Second, keep the CPU clock speed above 2.0GHz, because when Intel's i3-330M beats a quad-core 1.6GHz part in virtually every benchmark you know there's a problem. Third, give us a decent GPU (5650 or faster), but don't force us into 16" and larger notebooks; P520, 5650, and a 63Wh battery (at least) should all fit in a 14" chassis—heck, Alienware manages to put most of that into a 13" M11x chassis, and ASUS definitely fits similar components into some of their 14" designs (K42Jv/N82Jv). Bonus points for the first laptop to provide all of the above and not use a cheap LCD (and we'd even pay an extra $50-$100 for such a display). Considering the competition on the Intel side of the fence, realistically all of this needs to fit into a budget of around $800, since an extra $100 brings Core i5 parts into direct competition. It looks like ASUS comes dangerously close with their K52DR, but the HD 5470 falls short on the graphics front.

Given the timing, what we'd really like is to see such a laptop make the move to AMD's upcoming Llano (AMD Fusion) processor and arrive just in time for the Sandy Bridge showdown in early 2011. Number One, make it so!