GPU upgrade for T42

[Andrew479]

Hi,
I got myself IBM T42, new in box, but as I found out Ati Radeon 7500 does not provide any sort of video acceleration at all and doesn't support anything newer than DX7.
So I'm in need of a new motherboard with Radeon 9600 - found one with P/N 27K9981.

My laptop is 2373Y3L and 14.1 XGA screen, no TPM or fingerprint.
Is the 27K9981 mobo physically compatible with it?

PS: I may need new heatsink for it as the one in T42 does not extend to the GPU, but have one T40p laying around, which does extend and looks very similar to the one in T42 - can I use that one?

[RealBlackStuff]

Yes, all T40/T41/T42 and R50/R51 will fit in each others case, regardless of 14.1" or 15".
Intel fans are different from ATI fans.
Your T40p (ATI) fan will fit in your T42 with ATI.

[that1nerd]

If it was new-in-box, I couldn't fathom tearing it apart like that. I'd rather use it as-is or sell it as a collector's item.

[Andrew479]

If it was new-in-box, I couldn't fathom tearing it apart like that. I'd rather use it as-is or sell it as a collector's item.

It is still new in box, but it was Christmas gift from me to myself, so yes, I'm going to open it.
Yes it has a historic value for sure, but what use does a laptop have when one don't even use it?
I'm way past hoarding things just for ancient value...

Also I got the T42 for a clear purpose - to run Win 98SE games and software, no longer compatible with Win2000 or XP.
And 7500 just can't get those things done well...

Thanks for the replies.

[that1nerd]

I didn't say leave it in the box. I'd rather see it being used for something than rotting away in a corner somewhere.

I just couldn't bring myself to rip out the motherboard for the sake of "upgrading" it.

[Andrew479]

It wasn't my intention, but I couldn't choose the GPU and without upgrading, the laptop is useless to me. The seller had just this model available, and in fact I wasn't able to find any T42 with 9600 on sale.

[that1nerd]

I was just voicing my opinion, is all. Hopefully you'll find what you need to upgrade it.

Good luck with your project.

[Andrew479]

Thank you for your opinion.
And thanks RealBlackStuff for the compatibility check

[Cigarguy]

I didn't say leave it in the box. I'd rather see it being used for something than rotting away in a corner somewhere.

I just couldn't bring myself to rip out the motherboard for the sake of "upgrading" it.

I agree. I wouldn't spend to much time and $$ upgrading any T4x series laptop. At this stage enjoy it for what it is. At least that's why I do with my T42. T60 or newer is the minimum hardware specs for daily use for me. A SSD in a T60 with X1400 can be had for only a few $$ more than a T42 but is still usable as a daily driver.

[Andrew479]

T60 or newer is the minimum hardware specs for daily use for me. A SSD in a T60 with X1400 can be had for only a few $$ more than a T42 but is still usable as a daily driver.

T42 is the last Thinkpad (not counting T42p) compatible with Win98SE and WinME, with all the drivers provided by Lenovo. For normal usage (wi-fi, media, gaming), any newer and cheaper laptop is way better alternative, for sure. I had R60 myself few years back, and it was the best laptop I have ever known. However as far as compatibility with those ancient OSes goes, T42 is only logical choice.
Especially with games - Win98 3D accelleration is close to impossible to emulate, no virtualization software can do it as far as I know. And 9600 is among the most powerful graphics adapters with Win98 drivers still available.

In another words, agreed, T42 isn't suited for daily tasks in 2015.

[vivaelt42]

Hi,
I got myself IBM T42, new in box, but as I found out Ati Radeon 7500 does not provide any sort of video acceleration at all and doesn't support anything newer than DX7.?

I thought Ati Radeon 7500 did support DX9... I have a T42 with Ati Radeon 7500 and it has DirectDraw, Direct3D and AGP Texture acceleration with DX7, 8, and 9 (according to dxdiag).

If I'm wrong please correct me.

Thanks!

[systemBuilder]

Thinkpad T42/T42p:
- Windows98, WindowsME, etc.
- with some difficulty it can be made to run Windows-7
- You want to run firefox because the video decoding is way faster than in Chrome.

The T42/T42p (I have several see my .sig) runs about 500 on the "passmark" benchmark, which is about the speed of today's Atom CPUs, but there is only 1 CPU. The memory bus is just too narrow and there is no hardware video decoding, and so 480p is about the highest resolution video you can expect to watch on these machines.

Also, DirectX 9.0b is the furthest you can going in the gaming realm (it won't run Shader Model 3.0), even though there are several newer games that it has the horsepower to run. When new we ran "Far Cry" and "Half Life" just fine. I think it's also good for "Portal", "Team Fortress", and "Counterstrike", perhaps, as all these last 3 games use the same game engine. Minecraft and League of Legends will suffer from performance problems and you'll need to be on minimum settings, and even then you can expect maybe 20 fps at best, with the ATI 9600 or FireGL v2 (= ATI 9600 with 128MB of RAM) graphics accelerator. Minecraft crashed a lot under Windows-XP. The CPU also lacks the XD (execute-disable) bit and therefore you cannot run windows-8 without special hacks to get rid of the dependence upon this security feature.

We are using a Thinkpad T60p with an ATI FireGL v5200 accelerator and a core-2 dual T7600 CPU (the fastest CPU available) and 7200 rpm 750GB SATA drive. It score about 750 on cpubenchmark.net and about 6000 on the Octane benchmarks. Compared to our chromebooks (Acer c720p with Celeron 2955U, and Toshiba CB2 with Celeron 3215U), the T60p struggles a great deal - maybe 20-40% slower on graphics and everyday use, and it still cannot stream 1080p video because there is no hardware decoder and the memory bus has lower throughput (by at least 2x) than a modern processor. The Atom chromebooks are about as fast as our max'ed out T60p.