Thinkpads Forum

Cards that have been tested to work with the setup (from this thread http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... &start=210):
- Zotac Nvidia Geforce GT 520
- Radeon HD 5450
- Sapphire Radeon HD 6570 -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCco69x20Jo and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXzCGBQ0dKY
- Sapphire hd 5570
- Sapphire ATI HD4550 Silent, 512 MB (DVI + HDMI)
- Sapphire RADEON HD 5450 - PCI Express 2.0 x16 low profile, 512 MB DDR3 (DVI + HDMI)
- Asus Radeon EAH6450 SILENT/DI, 1GB DDR3 (DVI + HDMI)
PM me if you have others that work

I have a few older 61's pre-08/08 with NVS140M chips that haven't failed yet (knock on wood). I also have a couple of the Radeon cards and 2503 docking stations. It's a reasonable fix that you propose, but I can't bear the fan noise of that dock with with a Radeon card in it. In fact, with some ThinkPads the fan runs all the time even without the Radeon.

So this bypasses the internal card for the external?

crashnburn wrote:So this bypasses the internal card for the external?

Yep.

You can just as well mod the dock to either remove the fan or replace it.

jcvjcvjcvjcv wrote:You can just as well mod the dock to either remove the fan or replace it.

I would like to know of a replacement fan for the 2503 that is silent and yet prevents the docking station from cooking.

Was looking through cheapest existing cards - GT 720 based. 36$

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

Should this work?

crashnburn wrote:Was looking through cheapest existing cards - GT 720 based. 36$

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

Should this work?

The only problem with this card is that it is made by the SAME cabrons who caused all the problems in the first place. Why give them even 1 penny after what they caused?????

What's the deal with Raedons being branded AMD and Asus? AMD is the one who acquired ATI. Is Asus just re-branding the AMD cards for their systems, sort of like the way IBM branded the Adaptec SCSI controllers back in the late 90s? Are the Asus and AMD cards of the same model identical except for the branding?

What's the deal with Raedons being branded AMD and Asus? AMD is the one who acquired ATI. Is Asus just re-branding the AMD cards for their systems, sort of like the way IBM branded the Adaptec SCSI controllers back in the late 90s?

Most of the differences boil down to:

1. different cooling system, using axial fans instead of a single blower-type fan in the AMD reference design.
example: Asus R9 285 vs AMD reference R9 285

Blower fans are powerful but quite noisy. Replacing them with axial fans results if a quieter system, which many owners prefer.

2. Slightly faster base and boost clock speeds compared to the reference design.

I cut the fan cord a few years ago on both the PSU and graphic cards fan enclosure. Not had any problems with heat but then again I do run a low profile card of just 35watts. (Gt 610 for high resolution monitor only really as not much of a gamer.)

It's amazing how silent my whole setup is.