The search for the ultimate Thinkpad T4x - The start and end

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RS_003 · #31 Post by **RS_003** » Wed May 11, 2005 1:59 pm

asiafish wrote:I prefer privacy over flexview

Well, i must admit the flexviews do have superb colors.
(while the top half is a just a tad more yellowish)
And its really a pefect screen for watching movies.

But I also don't really care for the extreme viewing angle.
I am the only one who uses the laptop.

Not that i game much, the 64mb card isn't fast enough anyway for CS:S @ 1400x1050. So i dont even game at all. but 20ms reaction time would have been nice instead of the 35ms or so

mlykke · #32 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 4:00 am

A small update here - According to the UPS trackingsystem the machines should be on their way and i should receive them sometimes today as planned.

ian · #33 Post by **ian** » Thu May 12, 2005 4:48 am

mlykke wrote:A small update here - According to the UPS trackingsystem the machines should be on their way and i should receive them sometimes today as planned.

Ok, but I'll be late back from lunch, so please let me know if there's going to be a problem, and I'll move my car so there's more room.

Frankly I'm very impressed that you were able to get all the three cars so quickly...

mlykke · #34 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 4:51 am

ian -> Still the jokester

*GG* The cars will still have to wait till i get to the states or maybe south of france where the prices is also quite nice. I just need to decide where to move

mlykke · #35 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:26 am

Update:

I just received all three computers and will begin to unpack them now and get them setup for starting the testing.

It seems i've made both the UPS guy and the people at the central quite curious. They were all sure that it was a mistake due to the high price i had to pay

Oh well - They are here now so now the fun begins

danny_isr · #36 Post by **danny_isr** » Thu May 12, 2005 7:46 am

mlykke wrote:Update:

They were all sure that it was a mistake due to the high price i had to pay

so ...was it ?

mlykke · #37 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 7:47 am

No im afraid i had to pay all 8000 and some euro

mlykke · #38 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 10:43 am

Ok i went to my local EB games store with the intention of buying a few games to test the computers with.
Im afraid i got struck by the insanity gene again so i got the following games to test with:

Doom 3
Splinter Cell - Chaos Theory
Prince Of Persia - Sands of time
Half Life 2
Return to castle wolfenstein ext. version
Call of duty - deluxe ed.
Max payne 2
Need for speed underground 2
Street racing syndicate
Battlefield 1942 + secret weapons of WW2
Medal of honour allaied assault
C & C Generals

RS_003 · #39 Post by **RS_003** » Thu May 12, 2005 11:14 am

\o/

you got a lot to do

Could't you test like 2 games? instead of every popular game?

JHaislet · #40 Post by **JHaislet** » Thu May 12, 2005 11:26 am

Holy crap, that's like $500-$600USD in PC games!

asiafish · #41 Post by **asiafish** » Thu May 12, 2005 11:53 am

Max Payne rocks!!!

#42 Post by **RonS** » Thu May 12, 2005 12:32 pm

mlykke - please check your PM. I'd like to send you a small program I wrote that benchmarks 2D performance. I'm especially curious how it performs on the T43p.

Thanks!

mlykke · #43 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 12:41 pm

Dont worry - I dont plan on testing all games on all machines. That would take to long

Im gonna mainly use Doom 3 since it is so demanding, and then some Half life 2 and splinter cell maybe.

But [censored].... I just forgot to buy Far Cry. Wanted to play that game as well.
Gotta order it then.

mlykke · #44 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 12:45 pm

Well right now Doom 3 is being installed unto the first machine but it takes ages to do so. Yawn

I noticed something funny about the machines. The quality is excellent, but the "lid" on the T43P seems to be able to flex alot more than the one on the T43 and T42P. Kinda weird isnt it?

Also i noticed that the best keyboard is on the T42P - The others are not nearly as good. The main keys are all fine but the small grey keys like Pause and so on are pretty firm on the T42P, but on the others the keys kan woble a bit. Hope you understand what i mean by this

Later on all machines will take a trip on a scale to see the true weight of them. I will also measure to see if there is any difference between the thickness of them.

I also noticed that just from starting and running the machines for 10 minutes that the T43 is the noisiest one. Actually by quite a lot so far. Both P models are VERY quiet. At least in my opinion.

mlykke · #45 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 2:08 pm

Just testet doom 3 a bit on the T42P as expectet the graphics card in that machine isnt the most powerfull out there.
BUT when playing at 1024x768 at medium quality the game is quite playable with something like 25-30 frames a sec being the norm. When there are more people/monsters at one time it ofcourse drops.
I testet with the testmasp lotsaimps which is one huge room FILLED with monsters.
Initially i got like 4-6 frames a sec with but after i shot some of the baddies it slowly climed towards the twenties again. And when the room was all clear i got around 65-70 frames a sec while just walking and jumping around.

All in all quite playable at that machine unless you want everything at the highest possible quality, but if thats the case - DONT BUY A LAPTOP!

But while playing i noticed that the T42P gets VERY hot on the bottom of the machine. Not something i would have sitting on my LAP. But i guess thats to be expectet when the laptops get so small and thin.

So far im pleased with the performance in that game. It's good enough for me anyway for playing games once in a while. But ofcourse these machines where never ment to be bigtime gamer machines.

mlykke · #46 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 2:11 pm

I forgot to mention that this test was made with a COMPLETELY standard T42P - No configuration changes of any kind. The only thing that was done was to disable the active protection from Norton Antivirus.

danny_isr · #47 Post by **danny_isr** » Thu May 12, 2005 2:12 pm

are all of then have the wirless on ? all conected ?

mlykke · #48 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 2:56 pm

The bluetooth was turned of - wireless was on, but not connected to the network.

vageetasjn · #49 Post by **vageetasjn** » Thu May 12, 2005 3:27 pm

I'm interested in seeing these results. Do you plan on doing all the testing and posting all the results at once or a little at a time?

cubensis · #50 Post by **cubensis** » Thu May 12, 2005 3:39 pm

vageetasjn wrote:I'm interested in seeing these results. Do you plan on doing all the testing and posting all the results at once or a little at a time?

Yeah me too! gogogogo!

mlykke · #51 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 3:51 pm

Im posting bits of info as i do the tests but i think i might take everything and package it up as a short article of some kind. But dont expect me to go all mad in my writing.

But i just tested Max Payne 2 and it runs PERFECT. It can easily keep up no matter how fast i scroll the mouse around.

And [censored] its a great game. Whoever sugested it at some point just got me hooked.

This test was also done on the T42P.

So far this machine seems very fast for just about anything i throw at it.

dukajoe · #52 Post by **dukajoe** » Thu May 12, 2005 3:57 pm

Yeah, im ordering a T43p in the next couple of days, so I am very interested to see its performance. An article ect. would be nice

mlykke · #53 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 4:20 pm

well then i will throw something together when im done playing

That should be sometime around the end of the weekend or the start of next week.

I just tested Doom 3 on the T43P and the performance was very much the same as far as i could tell.
Maybe a tad better but its hard to tell.

So far this could indicate that the real world graphics performance between the T42P and T43P is more or less the same and not enough to clearly choose one as winner.

But lets see what further testing tells us.

cubensis · #54 Post by **cubensis** » Thu May 12, 2005 4:33 pm

So i'm assuming that the P at the end stands for premium or professional?

JHEM · #55 Post by **JHEM** » Thu May 12, 2005 4:47 pm

cubensis wrote:So i'm assuming that the P at the end stands for premium or professional?

P = Performance.

P series machines normally have upgraded HDs, displays and base memory vs. "standard" machines in the same model series.

Regards,

James

dukajoe · #56 Post by **dukajoe** » Thu May 12, 2005 5:14 pm

yeah, one of the best things to do would be to run 3dsmark05, or whatever its called on those pc's. I would expect around 1000 for the t42p and somewhere between 1000-1500 for the t43p, based on the video card specs

mlykke · #57 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 5:33 pm

Any testprogram i can download either for free or that somebody can supply me with a copy of i will be more than happy to test with.

I've just completed a full test of all three machines with a 2D graphics testing program sent by Ron Schaaf.

The results will be published later - But i can tell you that the T43P is the winner in this test. But remember that this is a benchmark and not real world performance - By playing doom 3 i couldnt really tell if there was a difference or not.

JHEM · #58 Post by **JHEM** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:52 pm

mlykke wrote:Any testprogram i can download either for free or that somebody can supply me with a copy of i will be more than happy to test with.

PCMark04 There's a truncated free version: http://www.futuremark.com/download/?pcmark04.shtml

One of my T41p: PCMark 04 = 3133
Project ID: 2940427
No tweaking, 1/2 a dozen apps running in the background.

Regards,

James

mlykke · #59 Post by **mlykke** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:55 pm

I will try that tomorrow - Its in the middle of the night here

Anyway - Is there a way to install english versions of the IBM utilities on a german machine? I downloaded some IBM software from their webpage by selecting the matching US version of the machine but when i install it it somehow detects that its a german version cause everything is in german.

I would like some english language at least for the IBM utils so i have chance of configuring the machines correctly before running all the benchmarks tomorrow.

tomc · #60 Post by **tomc** » Thu May 12, 2005 7:21 pm

It would be nice if you can run benchmarks like one said, the PCMark 2004 and 3DMark 2005, they are very good and I think is a good way to compare the performance of this tp's, and much faster than install and play games in each one.

In this link http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html you'll find a lot of benchmarks.

The search for the ultimate Thinkpad T4x - The start and end

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