Does my T61 Support a T9300 CPU?

[hoax32]

OK!
I know that not every motherboard supports a upgrade to a 9300 without a Mod-Bios....
So i looked up my config on lenovo (7665VBU - CTO August 2008 Motherboard).

Here the results:

41R0594

40Y8403

1GB PC2MEM

Yes



42T0580

42T0581

FLT PNL DS FRU 14.1 WXGA

Yes



42V9635

0000000

BOMS, NOT SHIPPABLE ACROSS BORDERS; 14.1

No



42W9760

0000000

T61(MALIBU1):PUBLICATIONS MISC

No



93P8979

44W4800

IDATAPLEX 2.5 INCH PAPOOSE BACKPLANE CAR

No



39T2733

39T2685

DVD/CD-RW

Yes



42T3241

42T3273

KYBD US

Yes



39T7209

0000000

-

Yes



42T1110

0000000

M5400.4S-80:HARD DISK DRIVES (HDD)

No



42T5276

42T4435

Delta90W20V2P

Yes



44C4142

44W4800

IDATAPLEX 2.5 INCH PAPOOSE BACKPLANE CAR

No



91P8421

0000000

-

Yes



42W2427

0000000

LABELS; FCC LABEL FOR WLAN:LABELS

No



41U5400

42W7654

1.8GHZ CPU

Yes



41W4528

0000000

-

Yes



42T0852

42T0853

GOLAN MOW1

Yes



42T5265

42T4678

BATT 6CELL

Yes



42X4075

0000000

ENERGYSTAR4.0:PUBLICATIONS MISC

No



42X4525

0000000

-

Yes



44C3932

0000000

:SYSTEM PLANAR

No



39T0494

39T0495

ADONIS MDC

Yes



41V9757

41V9756

HDD RUBBER

Yes



42V9533

44Y4175

VB32 US

Yes



42W2802

0000000

LABELS; PRODUCT LABEL 7665 CTO:LABELS

No



42W3415

44C3933

PLANAR DIS

Yes



45R6131

0000000

COA LABEL:LABELS

No



!!!TOP NUMBER = Mfg #!!!
!!!BOTTOM NUMBER = FRU!!!

It's strange that my T61 motherboard is not compatible, although it's one of the later models produced and a nVidia performance version....strange.....what do you guys think about this?

[ajkula66]

You can install a Penryn but a modded BIOS is required.

Proceed at your own risk.

[rumbero]

[ pointless excessive information removed ]
42W3415

44C3933

PLANAR DIS

No need to apply any patched BIOS to run a Penryn CPU is required.for this machine. It supports the T9300 out of the box. This planar (=mainboard) has FRU 44C3933, which is designed for Penryn capability out of the box. Check out the table at the bottom of thinkpad-wiki.org/T61#Mainboard-.2FSystemboard-.2FPlanartausch for a listing of the different mainboard possibilities for a T61.

Code: Select all

ThinkPad T61 (7665-VBU)
Based 7665-CTO: T7100(1.8GHz), 1GB RAM, 80GB 5400rpm HD, 14.1in 1280x800 
LCD, 128MB nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M, CDRW/DVD, Intel 802.11abg wireless, 
Modem, 1Gb Ether, UltraNav, Sec Chip, FPR, 6c Li-Ion, WinVista Business 32

While your machine was only equipped with a Merom CPU at the time of delivery, the mainboard is capable by design to run the Penryn, including the T9300. Also, any T61 Penryn capable mainboard is fully backwards compatible and allows for the operation of Merom CPU's. Your T61 7665-VBU is not the only one which was delivered with this strange combination.

[TuuS]

Since Lenovo removed all old boards from manufacturing in July 2008 that had nvidia, it's a safe bet that any 08/08 or newer nvidia unit does have penryn support, regardless of the cpu it shipped with. I've also seen units from prior months that shipped with Meron, but with penryn boards. I suspect production of meron boards stopped in January when the first Penryn cpu's hit the market,

[miro_gt]

they all do.

some dont support the different temp sensor of the Penryn chips, but no biggie, just press ESC at start up and your computer continues to boot. If you're tired of pressing ESC then just flash with middletons BIOS, ah priceless

[TuuS]

they all do.

some dont support the different temp sensor of the Penryn chips, but no biggie, just press ESC at start up and your computer continues to boot. If you're tired of pressing ESC then just flash with middletons BIOS, ah priceless

I have seen no evidence that a Meron board can take full advantage of the Penryn cpu. You're definitely losing at least some of the advanced temp enhancements, but there may be other shortcomings.

Sure you can get it to work, but I think it's wise to caution someone that you can't have full penryn support unless the board is designed with it. If anyone has any credible evidence showing that there is nothing lost in doing so, then I'd like to see it, but until I see something convincing and credible, I'll assume that the penryn chip has some of it's features disabled if forced to run on a meron board.

[rumbero]

they all do.

TuuS is perfectly right: I wouldn't either trust running a Penryn on a mainboard for which it was never designed, even if you can force the warning signals to disappear. And i do even less trust "fixing" this thermal sensing error issue by applying a patched BIOS which only suppresses(!) a possibly valid warning. Who knows if there is any long term harm for any of the involved components? Let's see who will be the first one to find out...

[Raceboy]

T43/X41/R52 also had warning with Error 2010 about the HDD compatibility but there is no evidence other than some IBM employee words that using non-whitelisted HDD would cause any problems. Patched BIOS works perfectly and disables the annoying error.

With Penryn support, early board and patched BIOS, there has been many-many success stories and no facts other than speculation that Penryn CPU or system board would get damaged, data lost etc when using this CPU.
If you want to seek high and low and/or want to pay substantial premium over correct board, fine. But I don't think it's fair to say it's wrong to use the board to others unless you have proof of problems it may cause. The fact that "it was not designed for that" is not enough. Tualatin PIII's were also not designed for Intel 440X chipset, yet there was many wasy to make it work and there was more incompatibilities than between Merom and Penryn. I know this because I have performed at least 40-50 mods.

[rumbero]

But I don't think it's fair to say it's wrong to use the board to others unless you have proof of problems it may cause.

While speaking of being fair, please note that i didn't write "it's wrong to use the board", but that i instead stated that "I wouldn't either trust" and also "i do even less trust", in both cases referring exclusively and only to myself. Also, while i do have no proof of any problems, my main concern is related to the fact that there is also no proof to the contrary other than the absence of any issues, so far.

For me personally there are far too many obscure elements in the equation and therefore i do prefer to buy matching parts, even if only for my own peace of mind. I may sound overly mistrusting, but have been bitten before by false optimistic assumptions, and therefore prefer to stay a bit more realistic and sober in these matters. Said that, i dearly hope that i am completely wrong in this very regard and that my leery assumptions prove to be without any merit whatsoever.

[miro_gt]

I have seen no evidence that a Meron board can take full advantage of the Penryn cpu. You're definitely losing at least some of the advanced temp enhancements, but there may be other shortcomings.

Sure you can get it to work, but I think it's wise to caution someone that you can't have full penryn support unless the board is designed with it. If anyone has any credible evidence showing that there is nothing lost in doing so, then I'd like to see it, but until I see something convincing and credible, I'll assume that the penryn chip has some of it's features disabled if forced to run on a meron board.

-> me is going to find evidence now..... ops, I'm actually typing on it right now .... while loosing some other advantages of the Penryn CPU. But what could those advantage be, mmmmmm ... maybe the SSE 4.1 instruction set that cpu-z shows on my laptop and not on the other T61 with T7300 sitting next to me..... Or could it be the lower temperatures of the penryn chip that I'm experiencing right now compared to the merom ...

so I think you should keep trying to sell your T61 computers/parts without actually spreading confusion, and possibly leave the 08/08 date for the nVidia chips away as well since there's no evidence of such, just a rumor spreading around since the past 3 years or so.

the ONLY "feature" that you dont get with Penryn CPU on a Merom-shipped board is that the Penryn line CPUs use DTS temperature sensor instead of the regular temp sensor, i.e. the temperature in the penryns while increasing is counted towards 0 from the DTS sensor, rather then increasing value with increasing temperature. What that means is that the Penryn CPU will experience thermal shut-down when the DTS is 0 (i.e. at ~105 deg C) while the merom sensor will show value that equals 105 (or actually close to 100 for merom chips). Therefore the thermal sensing error pops up, i.e. the MB can not reliably read the temp from the CPU.

But for our convenience, lenovo laptops happen to have variety of temp sensors all over the laptop (like 8 or so), and one of those sits next to the CPU socket and is perfectly readable with TPFanControl, which on the other hand should control how you want your laptop to run temperature-wise. So with a Merom chip it is pretty visible that the mentioned sensor shows pretty close temp of the actual CPU temp (can be visible with HWMonitor on core 0 and 1, or with ThrottleStop, or others), thus could consider that sensor reliable. The most it could be off a degree or two, but no biggie, with Penryn chips you never actually go above 90 deg C, which if happens then TPFanControl should take care of (cough .. the 64 fan setting ... cough)

so to refresh some memories, the Santa Rosa platform supports Penryn chips, such as some other platforms supporting CPUs that came after those (or rather those CPUs are made to be compatible).

... good luck with finding other evidence ...

P.S. you could start arguing that the cores could increase temperature much faster then that sensor would show, but then I'm going to ask you how long do you think it would take for the heat to actually do damage (because it's not instantly), with the sensor catching up behind quickly ... Or yet how fast do you think the sensors inside the CPU react, lol.

[miro_gt]

rumbero, I could tell you for example how much better the 5300abgn wifi card runs compared to the 4965agn that I had before, but you could probably not understand since it's not a matching part that came with the laptop.

good luck in whatever upgrade you decide to do, if you do so at all.

[TuuS]

TuuS is perfectly right: I wouldn't either trust running a Penryn on a mainboard for which it was never designed, even if you can force the warning signals to disappear. And i do even less trust "fixing" this thermal sensing error issue by applying a patched BIOS which only suppresses(!) a possibly valid warning. Who knows if there is any long term harm for any of the involved components? Let's see who will be the first one to find out...

Thanks rumbero, I agree. I hesitate to say it's risky, and I'd do it myself and not be overly concerned with it, but I'd need to see some proof to consider the patch as being anything close to equal to a penryn board. I was among the first to get a Penryn T61 in January 2008... and had to wait for the new boards to be manufactured. I'm sure if a bios fix could have done it, lenovo wouldn't have designed a new board, but hey, I'm not an engineer.

In regards to the 08/08 boards, it's a fact that all boards were replaced in July, I'm not spreading confusion, I've got this direct from Lenovo, and there is no need to get confrontational about this, I wasn't calling you a liar, or disputing what you said, I was only stating my opinion that I haven't seen any evidence that a Meron board can take full advantage of a Penryn chip, the fact that you can do it isn't disputed.

[rumbero]

People like me frequent forums like this one here in first place to learn, and only in second place to share their own knowledge with others. Therefore it is preferable to not waste any of one's limited life time participating in public discussion areas only in order to argue or even childishly try to "win" any kind of debate.

Personally, I really do appreciate any corrections of any factual errors of mine, as it is my main objective to get my very own facts straight, in order to deepen my eternally limited knowledge. But at the same time there really is no point in missing what i actually tried to say, and then to be derisive about it, especially if it is based on inadequate understanding of what i actually stated.

But then again, thanks a whole lot for the technical information about the thermal sensors provided in one of the former replies. This is the kind of information i am mostly interested in, as it definitely adds to my own limited understanding.

I could tell you for example how much better the 5300abgn wifi card runs compared to the 4965agn that I had before, but you could probably not understand since it's not a matching part that came with the laptop.

Even if i may be equivocated, my point was (and still is) that a CPU and a motherboard are the very heart of a computer, and that they are very sensible components especially in regard to their thermal requirements. Like in heart surgery, one definitely has to be very sure that used parts do properly match each other. Therefore i do think it is only fair to be very careful in this very regard, while it obviously is also fair to find out about and explore the capabilities of any hardware by informed trial and error (if you can afford the error).

For other peripheral devices any such concern is most probably just overkill, but for the mainboard and CPU i really wouldn't want to be the one who is going to find out that a combination which in the public opinion appeared to be harmless is going to be fried at some unknown later stage of the future. I've already had my share twice with an unexpectedly fried nVIDA GPU, and this was definitely not even caused by any actions on my behalf.

I just happen to need that hardware for my work, and not as a means in itself. So, in the long run, it is probably cheaper to perform any technical modification in a way which doesn't leave any such nagging doubts, even if possibly without any real foundation. In this context it surely is much better being wrong than being sorry.

good luck in whatever upgrade you decide to do, if you do so at all.

My sig almost says it all, but omits some minor technical details. I actually built two of these wonderful T61+, and both are equipped with a new BOE Hydis UXGA IPS/Flexview display, powered by a T9300 and a T9500, respectively, and with 2x4=8GB of RAM on a carefully chosen Penryn-capable mainboard with Intel graphics. They run very cool and quiet, and i expect them to be usable for a few more years to come, as i do require their superior display for my own work. I am typing these lines on one of these machines right now, while the other one is properly wrapped up and stashed away in a safe place as a future fallback. These are definitely the best Thinkpads i ever had, and which Lenovo never built!

[robert213]

Check out the table at the bottom of thinkpad-wiki.org/T61#Mainboard-.2FSystemboard-.2FPlanartausch for a listing of the different mainboard possibilities for a T61.

Code: Select all

ThinkPad T61 (7665-VBU)
Based 7665-CTO: T7100(1.8GHz), 1GB RAM, 80GB 5400rpm HD, 14.1in 1280x800 
LCD, 128MB nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M, CDRW/DVD, Intel 802.11abg wireless, 
Modem, 1Gb Ether, UltraNav, Sec Chip, FPR, 6c Li-Ion, WinVista Business 32

Rumbero,

How did you determine that Hoax's 7665-VBU has 42W3415/44C3933 motherboard?

When I look at the table you referenced, I arrived at 41W1489.

14.1" 16:10
Nvidia NVS140
41W1489 Merom
44C3933/42W7867 Penryn

[rumbero]

How did you determine that Hoax's 7665-VBU has 42W3415/44C3933 motherboard?

Not exactly by rocket science, but simply with a bit of detective work based on the already given information.

In his very own initial posting, hoax32 listed the complete parts list for his own machine, which can be retrieved from either Lenovo at support.lenovo.com/en_US/product-and-parts/partsLookup.page, or also still from IBM at www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/parts by filling in the basic machine type and specific serial number of the machine in question. In the subsequent parts listing, the mainboard is usually specified, often two times, by the term "PLANAR", with the second number from the left usually being the respective FRU. You may want to try that with your own Thinkpad's type and serial number in order to see how it works.

So the respective FRU was already posted by himself as being:

Code: Select all

42W3415

44C3933

PLANAR DIS

Yes

Check out the initial message.

[richk]

On a used machine, the only sure way to know is to look at the sticker. (under the memory or under the main battery)