The results of our observations leads us to conclude that the Toshiba Encore 2 WT8 is not suitable for desktop multitasking, desktop gaming or heavy, multi-tab web browser usage. We removed the Google Chrome background application (which appears to keep a lot of memory tied-up.) and Toshiba's Service Station application which we also saw active in the background but even after a fresh boot, committed memory rises to nearly 1GB with a proportion of that residing on disk. Application switching becomes slow, web pages can hang and performance drops to unacceptable levels. During that time the Pagefile was continually in use and disk activity rose as a result. During a session where multiple applications were loaded we saw committed memory (total memory in active use across physical and virtual memory) rise to nearly 3 GB. By observing memory use and Pagefile use we were able to determine that system performance does drop when too many applications are loaded at the same time. 1 GB of physical memory is a small amount for a modern PC/Windows-based product and we can confirm that it impacts performance on the Encore 2 WT8. While benchmarks provides single-application and single-component performance figures there's a question that can't be answered by looking at those results. The Intel Gen 7 GPU is integrated into the SoC along with video decoding hardware (Intel Quick Sync support is not included on this platform as it was on the Z3740) and audio hardware. The platform does not include the capability to create power profiles that can provide 'battery saving' or 'performance' scenarios and there's no noticable difference between battery power and mains (USB) power unless the battery level is at or below 10% at which point the CPU is throttled to 800Mhz. Dual-core operations are capped at 1.5Ghz according to our tests.
#Toshiba encore pro 2 tear down full
A base clockrate of 1.33 Ghz is the same as the Z3740 seen on previous Windows 8 tablets but there appears to be a slight change in Turbo Boost algorithm with only single-core operations going to the full 1.8 Ghz clockrate.
#Toshiba encore pro 2 tear down series
The Intel Atom Z3735G is, in comparison with mainstream PCs, a very low-end SoC but the architecture has already proved itself as capable enough for consumer computing in other devices based on the same series of SoCs. The 'Modern' environment in Windows 8 includes additional security features over apps running in the desktop. SecurityĪ TPM 2.0 module included and disk encryption is available if the user logs in via a Microsoft Live account. Color representation is poor, there's a lot of noise and high levels of light-bleed. (2Mbps from a NAS in this test configuration is above average.) CameraĪ 5.0MP auto-focus rear camera is included but results aren't good enough for anything more than scanning a business card or basic record-taking. In a subjective test, 2 walls and 10 meters away from a 2.4Ghz 802.11 N hotspot the Toshiba Encore 2 WT8 showed a 100% (150Mbps) connection signal and in practice transfer speeds across a local network were better than average. B and G networks are supported but there's only 2.4Ghz support for up to 150Mbps throughput. With no ethernet port available on the Toshiba Encore 2 WT8 Internet connectivity is left to a Realtek RTL8723BS 802.11n WiFi adaptor.