Thinkpads Forum

I have a barebones T61p on the way which I am going to replace the screen with a 1920x1200.

Of course, the first thing I do on it will be to flash Middleton BIOS and install a Intel 6250!

Now I do not have it in my possession yet but I do know it is a 6459-CTO dated 11/07. The previous owner did buy an additional 4 years of warranty almost after the original 1 year warranty expired so I will be curious to see if it has a later date motherboard in it.

Now what I would like to do is to replace the T7500 in it with a E8135. Aside from the obvious reasons, it has a TDP of 35W which is the same as the T7500, but most importantly I am extremely sensitive to high frequency noise - I hear CPU whine on 100% on Meroms but have better luck with Penryns

Will I have to wait until it arrives to attempt a CPU swap from Merom to Penryn or is the information above enough to deduce whether or not the swap can be done?

I have no problem waiting until it gets here and ripping the board out to see the FRU is that is the only way.

EDIT: My question is really if you can know what a FRU will or will not be given the original manufacturing date? If not I will wait for the FRU and do some cross checking before I get a E8135 or other Penryn

The T61p mobo is made for 667 and 800 MHz FSB, and runs with Socket P CPUs.
AFAIK Socket P only supports 800MHz.
I am not sure if the E8135 will work properly, as it runs at 1066 MHz FSB, but has a big advantage: it is rather cheap!
The comparable T9300 and T9500, which are the standard top-Penryn CPUs, run at 800MHz.
Even the Core 2 Extreme X9000 runs at 800 MHz!
I have my doubts that the BIOS will recognize that CPU.
Also, there are no CPU-settings in the BIOS available, not even in Middleton's!

If it works, THAT WOULD BE GREAT! Please let us know!
If not: find out if there is a pin-mod.
The link might be helpful, but is not for the CPUs mentioned here...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardwar ... dders.html
If this does not work: get a T9300, which is very close performance-wise and reasonably priced.

Thanks RealBlackStuff,
I might take the risk and see if a T61p motherboard can handle a 1066MHz FSB,

Thank you for the link though!
I have that bookmarked now!
The CPU can still fit in with the pin mod?

I remember for a fact I had a friend with an iMac which had one of these Apple-specific Penryns in it but had slow RAM and it said it ran at 800MHz. Could have just been the System Profiler lying to me though.

I found this thread where someone claims to make it work in a machine that has a T9800 in it.
I think I'll take the risk and report back, for only $18 shipped it's so tempting

You *will* need a pinmod to get a 1066 MHz CPU to run in a T61/p.

That being said, I still don't think that the first CPU will work. I recall reading about someone putting a T9600, but can't remember where. I know that X9100 works with a pinmod.

Good luck.

Just noticed this while re-reading the pinmod page RealBlackStuff posted.

List of laptops that have been successfully modded:
...
Toshiba Satellite L305: Chipset Intel GL40 - Modded by Formula with a T9550 and E8135, FSB 1066 -> 800MHz.

Great, so it should absolutely be possible! Now I just have to wait and see if my board can even take a Penryn. If it even does I will see about busting open the socket and doing the work in there.

Do any of the 25W P8*00's work?

Heres more about a 1066MHz CPU in T61s: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=110620

CPU pin mod is the easiest way
The better way is to modify the PLL

Guys I don't see a orange ? anywhere or anything like that, but my mobo FRU is 44c3928 and there is a sticker on the heatsink that says "08 10 09" on it.

Is it one of the good replacement motherboards? I tried searching but couldn't find a date for this FRU.

Not all FRUs have a date.
44C3928 is a newer/newish Penryn-motherboard for a 15.4" Widescreen T61, I think with nVidia NVS140M GPU (not T61/p).
The heatsink dates from 2008-October-09.

banhammer420k wrote:Guys I don't see a orange ? anywhere or anything like that, but my mobo FRU is 44c3928 and there is a sticker on the heatsink that says "08 10 09" on it.

Is it one of the good replacement motherboards? I tried searching but couldn't find a date for this FRU.

That motherboard was first used in mid 2008 and production stopped and was restarted using new GPU chips around july 2008. The FRU number was also used for refurbished boards. It's a 15.4" board with nVidia NVS140m graphics.

Determining if yours has the old or new GPU design is complicated because the update was classified as a "quality control" update not a proper revision, probably to avoid admitting the old design was faulty and avoid classifying billions of $$$ of inventory as defective.

Strange - I had not checked it myself yet but the machine type # on the bottom indicated 570M. Good to know then. I guess I will have to tear it apart a little more to see the date code on the GPU and see it for myself!

here's what i'm on ATM:

T61 Nvidia 1,400 x 900
came with a not that fast 2.0 c2d

running middleton bios

aida says:

Field Value
CPU Properties
CPU Type Mobile DualCore Intel Core 2 Duo T8300, 2400 MHz (12 x 200)
CPU Alias Penryn-3M
CPU Stepping M0
Instruction Set x86, x86-64, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1
Original Clock 2400 MHz
Min / Max CPU Multiplier 6x / 13x
Engineering Sample No
L1 Code Cache 32 KB per core
L1 Data Cache 32 KB per core
L2 Cache 3 MB (On-Die, ECC, ASC, Full-Speed)

Multi CPU
CPU #1 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T8300 @ 2.40GHz, 2394 MHz
CPU #2 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T8300 @ 2.40GHz, 2394 MHz