Toshiba M60 notebook with wrong video card?

[Kuroyama]

A few days ago I ordered the Toshiba Satellite M60 with 17" widescreen & ATI Mobility Radeon X600 GPU. Soon after I noticed that the spec sheet on Toshiba Direct says that the M60 has the X600SE as an option, but no X600. The customization page however lists X600 and no X600SE. Checked around and found someone who bought this a month ago with X600, but when I mentioned this he ran a system check and it reports X600SE. Toshiba customer service is clueless and has no idea what I'll get. Anyone out there know about this issue, or even better anyone have an M60 that came with X600? Thanks a lot.

 

[corkyg]

As near as I can tell, the X600SE is only available on Toshiba laptops - reading ATI's specs, it seems to me to be a specially configured X600 just for Toshiba.

X600

X600SE

 

[Kuroyama]

Compaq also offers it (see here)

 

[fbrdphreak]

I actually talked to ATI about this card when I saw it. I could never get a 100% straight answer from them, but here's the gist: as ATI's mfr process got better and GPU's got cheaper, they are able to offer GPU's with "very similar performance" at a reduced price. As far as I can tell, the physical specs (pipelines, shader units, etc) are all on par with the X600 (data bus width too). Clocks might be different but that is adjustable. My best guess is that it is kind of like the desktop X800GTO cards: X850XT core marked as a value card because they are able to make the cores a lot cheaper (the X800GTO's were actually the result of an overstock of cores; could be the same with the X600SE, but ATI told me it is cheaper 'cuz it is now cheaper to make).

If that makes any sense

 

[corkyg]

Makes sense to me. I guess the bottom line is, don't sweat it.

 

[fire400]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
I actually talked to ATI about this card when I saw it. I could never get a 100% straight answer from them, but here's the gist: as ATI's mfr process got better and GPU's got cheaper, they are able to offer GPU's with "very similar performance" at a reduced price. As far as I can tell, the physical specs (pipelines, shader units, etc) are all on par with the X600 (data bus width too). Clocks might be different but that is adjustable. My best guess is that it is kind of like the desktop X800GTO cards: X850XT core marked as a value card because they are able to make the cores a lot cheaper (the X800GTO's were actually the result of an overstock of cores; could be the same with the X600SE, but ATI told me it is cheaper 'cuz it is now cheaper to make).

If that makes any sense

As far as I know, if I had the chance of choosing a 9800pro or a 9800se, I would choose the pro.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: fire400

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
I actually talked to ATI about this card when I saw it. I could never get a 100% straight answer from them, but here's the gist: as ATI's mfr process got better and GPU's got cheaper, they are able to offer GPU's with "very similar performance" at a reduced price. As far as I can tell, the physical specs (pipelines, shader units, etc) are all on par with the X600 (data bus width too). Clocks might be different but that is adjustable. My best guess is that it is kind of like the desktop X800GTO cards: X850XT core marked as a value card because they are able to make the cores a lot cheaper (the X800GTO's were actually the result of an overstock of cores; could be the same with the X600SE, but ATI told me it is cheaper 'cuz it is now cheaper to make).

If that makes any sense

As far as I know, if I had the chance of choosing a 9800pro or a 9800se, I would choose the pro.

I would agree, but ATI assured me this was not like the desktop cards where SE indicated a crippled card (smaller data bus, slower RAM, etc).