Thinkpads Forum

Hi all!
I want to upgrade the T7300 CPU to a T9300 Penryl Core.
Benchmarks show a %27 increase in performance and since I convert files, play games and watch HD on it, it should be of great benefit!
It will also be part of my project: Maxing out a Thinkpad T61.
So here is my question:

The T9300 has a 800FSB....does the T61 Chipset (Intel 965 I believe) really support a 800MHz FSB?
And If yes, then If I buy 800MHz RAM, will both CPU and RAM run @ 800MHz???
-cause people say it does and it does not...

Also will I need a custom BIOS for the T9300?
Or will ma August 2008 T61 support it by default?

-hoax

I am really not qualified to answer your question, but I think your next step is to determine which motherboard that your machine has...

Intel GM965
42W7648 Merom
42W7872 Penryn

If you have the 42W7872 Penryn motherboard, then you are good to go.
If not, you will need a modified bios to bypass CPU temperature issues.

You will need your machine's serial no to obtain build sheet. More info here...
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=101664

You will need to search the T61 board to resolve CPU temperature issues.

thanks for the wuick reply!
Here is a screenshot of what i got:

hoax32 wrote:The T9300 has a 800FSB....does the T61 Chipset (Intel 965 I believe) really support a 800MHz FSB?

Yes.

hoax32 wrote:And If yes, then If I buy 800MHz RAM, will both CPU and RAM run @ 800MHz???

No.

hoax32 wrote:[be]cause people say it does and it does not...

Indeed it is confusing. The Santa Rosa 965M chipset in T61s DOES have an 800MHz FSB, but runs the RAM at 667MHz. See this article for further edification on the matter.

hoax32 wrote:Also will I need a custom BIOS for the T9300? Or will [my] August 2008 T61 support it by default?

Your system board supports Penryn, no hacks required. If you plan to upgrade beyond your 5400rpm hard drive, I'd encourage you to run Middleton's BIOS anyway in order to unlock SATA-II.

If you continue running 32-bit Windows, you're limited to 3GB of RAM. If you switch to 64-bit Windows, you can run 8GB of RAM, providing you can find 2x4GB DDR2 sticks... 800MHz sticks should work, but they will run at 667MHz.

If you really want to "max out" your T61, Lenovo did squeak out a few CTO units with T9500 processors, running at 2.6GHz. Further there's a 2.8GHz variant available which fits--I believe it's called the X9000. Cooling becomes a problem with the 2.8GHz processor. You'd certainly want to upgrade to the T61p heat sink assembly, and make sure you use Arctic Silver 5.

Thanks for all the usefull info!!!
1 more thing: Where can I find the gaming optimzed driver for the NVS 140m?

Tanks!!

If you want to play games on a T61, sell yours and get a T61p. The FX 570M *smokes* the NVS 140M.

JeffCullen wrote:If you want to play games on a T61, sell yours and get a T61p. The FX 570M *smokes* the NVS 140M.

I probably does....literally!!

I wont go through the long process and pain of finding a late production T61p that looks brand new.... it was exhausting and expensive enough to find this T61 August unit!
ANd I play Resident Evil 5 with 45FPS on this one and BlackOps with 30FPS - just wanna tweak a lil!! ^_^

You don't necessarily need to find a whole other machine that looks brand new -- just a 08/08 T61p system board, then install that in your existing chassis... then sell your T61 board which, being an 08/08 model, would have considerable value... more than my April '08 T61p board, for sure!

There's a fair amount of info on Google about getting GeForce drivers to run on these machines.

JeffCullen wrote:You don't necessarily need to find a whole other machine that looks brand new -- just a 08/08 T61p system board, then install that in your existing chassis... then sell your T61 board which, being an 08/08 model, would have considerable value... more than my April '08 T61p board, for sure!

There's a fair amount of info on Google about getting GeForce drivers to run on these machines.

I think that +$100 for a better motherboard used is a little pricy - i can get a nice SSD for that! :/
Thanks though man!!

JeffCullen wrote:Your system board supports Penryn, no hacks required.

In case anyone wonders how JeffC determined that his system board supports Penryn CPU(s).

Using 44C3933 from OP's buildsheet, JeffC searched a table like this one...

http://thinkwiki.de/T61

14.1" 4:3
Intel GM965 Nvidia NVS140 Nvidia Quadro FX 570M (T61p)
42W7648 Merom, FPR 42W7649 Merom 42W7650 Merom
42W7872 Penryn 42W7873 Penryn 42W7874 Penryn

14.1" 16:10
Intel GM965 Nvidia NVS140
41W1487 Merom 41W1489 Merom
42W7866 Penryn 44C3933/42W7867 Penryn

15.4" 16:10
Intel GM965 Nvidia NVS140 Nvidia Quadro FX 570M (T61p)
42W7651 Merom 42W7652 Merom 42W7653 Merom
42W7875 Penryn 42W7876 Penryn 42W7877 Penryn

Actually, I have to admit I didn't do that--I knew that a August '08 machine would unquestionably have a Penryn board in it.

Looking at that table, actually, it appears that they didn't do a 14.1" T61p, which invalidates my earlier suggestion to hoax32 that he consider throwing a T61p board in his T61! AFAIK, you can't fit a 15.4" board in a 14.1" case.

They didn't do 14.1 T61p after 08/08 you mean, right? Because I've seen and held personally several 14.1" 4:3 T61p's in my hand...

I had always thought they did T61p in 14.1" until 08/08, but the table on the link robert213 posted seemed to indicate such a machine didn't exist. Glad to hear that it does!

thanks for all the usefull info guys!!!
BTW: Will the T9300 run hotter than my current T7300?

Nope, cooler.

JeffCullen wrote:
If you really want to "max out" your T61, Lenovo did squeak out a few CTO units with T9500 processors, running at 2.6GHz. Further there's a 2.8GHz variant available which fits--I believe it's called the X9000. Cooling becomes a problem with the 2.8GHz processor. You'd certainly want to upgrade to the T61p heat sink assembly, and make sure you use Arctic Silver 5.

or you can run Dual IDA on the T9500 just like me and still get 2.8GHz on both cores.

cooling does not become a problem at 2.8Ghz. It becomes a problem past 3.2Ghz with CPU that has 6MB cache, just like the X9000. If you overclock the T8300 to 3.2 GHz it will run a bit hotter than Dual IDA on the T9500 at 2.8GHz while yielding the same performance.

Do not upgrade the heatsink, and Arctic Silver 5 is not required. I use Noctua N1, but almost whatever else paste you find will be just fine.

JeffCullen wrote:If you want to play games on a T61, sell yours and get a T61p. The FX 570M *smokes* the NVS 140M.

not really, my overclocked 64 bit 140M performs just like the standard 64 bit 570M while keeping same temperatures, yielding somewhere at 2400 3DMark06 score. The 128 bit FX performs better than the 128 bit 140, and fails more often as well.

hoax32 wrote:thanks for all the usefull info guys!!!
BTW: Will the T9300 run hotter than my current T7300?

undervolted both run at the same temps, with the first one obviously smoking the second one in performance. I have two other T61 laptops with same T7300 cpus, thus I can confirm the temps.

P.S.
hoax32, why so scared to flash the Middletons BIOS .. lol ?

miro_gt wrote: why so scared to flash the Middletons BIOS?

Suppose that I run the Middleton BIOS update on CD under Windows 7.

I download the BIOS update program and "burn" it to a CD.

Since I am inexperienced in "burning" CD's, suppose that I created a "bad" CD that starts running but locks up Windows.

At the end of the day, suppose that I corrupted the BIOS on my machine.

Do I simply purchase another T7300 chip, install it, and my machine is back running again?

Instead of using a CD, make a bootable USB stick with the BIOS update and boot/update from that.
Much less chance of it going wrong.
Replacing the CPU makes not a blind bit of difference, as it is not connected to the BIOS.
If you brick your BIOS, you could send it in to http://www.aqstech.com/ for a price ($100-129 + shipping).
Or send it to me , I'm looking for a mobo with bricked BIOS to tinker with (see my post in the Marketforum).

robert213 wrote:
Suppose that I run the Middleton BIOS update on CD under Windows 7.

I download the BIOS update program and "burn" it to a CD.

Since I am inexperienced in "burning" CD's, suppose that I created a "bad" CD that starts running but locks up Windows.

At the end of the day, suppose that I corrupted the BIOS on my machine.

Do I simply purchase another T7300 chip, install it, and my machine is back running again?

you cant really mess up the update, unless you're like really bad with computers or something ... and happen to unplug the laptop from power with no battery running during the update, lol.

I've updated BIOS from USB stick and I would not recommend it. What happened with mine was the files got corrupted after storing on the USB (crappy one I guess), and thanks to the BIOS update program being sophisticated enough - it popped up error of BIOS file being corrupt, and did not flash it. Those files have to match checksum, or else it wont do the update ... which is good for us the users. Using a CD would be better if you insist. I used portable USB HDD to load the BIOS into all 5 T61 computers at the time.

you dont have to burn the BIOS update program on a CD and run it under windows, it does not make a difference. What you can do on a CD is create a bootable CD so that windows is not required for the update. What it will do is boot the computer with that CD and update BIOS, that's it - useful for users running 64 bit W7, as the BIOS update program is for 32 bit windows only.

updating from within Windows has its advantage - if the BIOS update fails, you could run the update program again without rebooting the computer. I'm not sure if that is possible when updating from bootable CD, and the computer may not be able to reboot anymore. Of course, your Windows could crap out during the update as well and that would be bad, so usually I make sure the OS runs stable without any issues before I go for the update.

I've updated many laptops (over 10) and none has failed. Different brands too. So as I said unless you're pretty bad with computers or something, all should go fine.

P.S.
CPU has nothing to do with BIOS update. The BIOS itself is loaded in a different chip on the main board. If you somehow manage to screw things up, you can brick your laptop. That is a rare case these days however.