Thinkpads Forum

Hello,

I have been pouring through loads of forum posts about this topic. But I cannot seem to come to a conclusion anywhere.

I am looking to purchase an advanced dock and graphics card for a friend for Christmas. He has a T61 4 gigs of ram 240 gig ssd middeltons bios windows 7 64 2.0 ghz


My questions:

What dock do I need? Will this work: http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-2 ... +card+dock

What graphics card should I get? He plays stuff like minecraft, older Valve Half-life engine games.

Seems like there are people that say they have no issue with 4 gigs of ram and a dock/graphics card and some people saying they have an issue.. Some people say that they have to hot dock it for 4 gigs to work. Whats the real deal with this?


I guess what I am asking for is a known good configuration that will work well for him. Thanks

forgot to mention, it has the 140 NVS graphics in it.

Indeed- the 2503 Dock you linked on Amazon is the correct dock, provided the picture is accurate to what you receive.

An NVS140M will play MC okay and will definitely play any older Source-engine game with no problems. However, a graphics card with the 2503 Advanced Dock will drastically help out performance and will ease some of the strain on his Thinkpad.

I have a Radeon 6450 in my 2503 Dock, it works okay, and it's extremely cheap. An NVIDIA GeFroce GT 520 would also be a good inexpensive option. A GeForce GT 640 would work brilliantly better, but would cost you a bit more. Some people on here have Radeon 7750s in theirs.

Beware that the dock's PCI-E slot is one expansion slot only, and there's very limited room. Most models of the cards I mentioned above will fit, but double check before buying one.

I have that 2503 dock with XFX Radeon 5570 2GB, thanks to Mr. TuuS

That Radeon card was the best card I can find after 7750 card

But I have one issue when tried to boot with 4GB of ram and from XFX Radeon, my T61 won't start, just blank screen ..
after I removed one stick 2GB ram from my T61, it boots normally ..

You'll need a workaround to be able to use 4GB ram and videocard inside the 2503 dock


Good luck with the advance dock

I also gave the dock w/graphics card a try and used it for the times I did game. In web browsing, homework, or research (internship) mode I did not use the dock.

I gave these components a try:
The T500 I had was the switchable graphics type. You probably read my posts about 'hot plugging' it to get 4gb going. Not sure exactly what was going on with the 'hot plugging' but it did work >98% of the time. IIRC my benchmarks were not earth shattering however I felt there was a qualitative difference in the games I tried. Regarding the 'hot plugging' method- I would start and let my T500 get to desktop first then I would put it on the dock. The graphics would ~98% of the time switch to the HD 6570 and output to the monitor.

Note: There were instances after 'hot plugging' that the wifi would stop working. I would then eject the dock and try 'hot plugging' again until the wifi came back on.

I do not recall ever removing a 2gb stick of RAM from my T500 while using the dock. After a successful 'hot plugging' the games ran fine and the 4gb of RAM were visible in 'system' so I continued to use this method. It was a nice little experiment albeit the power supply fan could be quite generous in the sound department (noisy)! A couple of forum members and I contributed to a thread a few months back. I have since built my first mATX desktop w/graphics card. Not sure if you might have read our 2503 thread yet so here are the finer details for your reading amusement

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=113724

Have fun!

I wonder if those various issues have to do with TOLUD settings...

Is the problem with the RAM the same with all graphics cards in this dock? Or are there any cards that are known to work with, let's say 6GB RAM?

As my current home entertainment Shuttle XPC becomes more and more outdated, I have plans of using my 2503 for this, where I can just dock any of my laptops that fits. So the clue is actually to have a card with a HDMI output to run HDMI through the amplifier and to the monitor. So no extreme graphics capabilities are needed, but it needs to support sound. But if it requires workarounds to get it to work, it will loose some of it's appeal.

I use a Expresscard => PCI-E adapter.

With my W500 it Works, if i insert the Card BEFORE boot (4 GB RAM)
With my frankenpad i have to boot, and then plug it in (6 GB RAM). ANd then both the internal nVidia Works and the external.

Ok, which is not too bad, as it only requires a working battery in the laptop, so it can be booted up before it goes in the dock.

From emeraldgirl's photos, I see that the Radeon HD 6570 seems to fit pretty well. So I will probably try one of those.

Norway Pad wrote:Ok, which is not too bad, as it only requires a working battery in the laptop, so it can be booted up before it goes in the dock.

From emeraldgirl's photos, I see that the Radeon HD 6570 seems to fit pretty well. So I will probably try one of those.

The best card you can get fitted into the integrated PCI-E slot would be low-profile R7-240 with an DDR3 memory:

http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentatio ... id=1&leg=0

I haven't had a chance to test it in my configuration (T400 + Adv.dock) but it seems that it should fit in it perfectly. If you decide to give it a shoot please check TDP ratings first - you cannot cross 50 Watt TDP limit without additional power supply.

I only found this one, which lists TDP as 30W. http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu/ ... 240/review But in the specs I see that this card requires a 400W PSU to run, plus that the pictures in the installation instruction indicates the presence of additional power supply cables from the PSU. I don't know how big of a PSU the dock has, but I would assume this one is pushing it. Or maybe the PSU requirements aren't comparable to when this is used in a desktop/cabinet setup?

Can't find anything on the other HD6570 card right now, but we know that works.

If you want to stick to 6570 I may recommend you Sapphire 6570 2GB DDR3 which requires 47W max. and runs pretty smothly. I used it for over a year and hadn't any problems in that time. Just be sure that you wont end up with DDR5 version of that card !!! It needs about 55 Watts which makes it a BIG-NO-GO for you.
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentatio ... 1176&lid=1

Sapphire 6570 is pretty similiar to that R7-240 I have recommended before which should work aswell. It might be real hard to find any references to that configuration - our thinkpads aren't getting any younger and most users gave up and switched to newer solutions.

Ok, found some of them. None of the Sapphire 6570 2GB ones on eBay ship to Norway, but I found a MSI 6750 1GB, just like the one Emeraldgirl posted a picture of. This was cheaper too, and we also know that card fits for sure, so I might opt for that one.

Thanks for your input, Pokrzept, hope this has helped some of the other who has read this as well.

@Norway Pad. The 6570 will fit just fine in the PCI slot of the 2503. It does run a bit noisy so just warning you. Have you given any thought into a fanless graphics card since you will only be doing media vs gaming?

I really haven't thought about that. I see some cards based on the Radeon HD6450 have no fans, so the option is there. Gaming will never be a subject, but I want to be able to display any kind of movie on any kind of resolution monitor that is theoretically available for us today. Within reason, that is. I don't see myself moving into the 4K area yet.

Graphics is a subject I have never put much thoughts into, so I have little clue on how to match performance to my actual needs. So back when I worked with desktops which needed graphics cards, I used to go on the overkill side. Which of course had the drawbacks of unnecessary expense, power consumption, heat and noise.

I am almost certain that something like an HD 6450 might be good enough for your HTPC requirements. At the very least you should have an HDMI that passes along audio+video as the T61 only has VGA (so retro now lol jk ). HDMI that can pass along audio/video is something that will streamline and also make your setup less cabley. My reasons for the slightly higher graphics HD 6570 was because I enjoy a slightly modern game or two. My ATI3650 worked surprisingly well but I felt compelled to see what the 2503+ gfx card could achieve. For an HTPC you do not need the HD 6570 as the fan might ruin any quiet scenes in videos you are watching. My recommendation is a fanless card w/HDMI that has decent customer reviews.

I do already run HDMI from an old Shuttle XPC, through a Pioneer VSX-LX70 receiver, out to a 1920x1080 monitor. I did once upon a time buy an AGP card with a HDMI port for the Shuttle, (Expensive and noisy. That overkill factor, you know ) and used it quite a lot for watching movies. The Pentium 4 based Shuttle has however become kind of outdated these days, so it's been used mainly for playing music the last years. But now I want the possibility back to watch movies on a big screen once and a while. So that's the motivation for the use of the 2503, and eventually also the purchase of a bigger monitor for use with this setup.

Thanks for the input so far, it's been most helpful.

I've got one last thing to add: most noisy thing in this setup ain't gonna be T61 nor graphic card but all-mighty Advanced Dock . Fan integrated info build-in power supply can be quite noisy but it is nothing compared to a little ANNOYING fan which you can find right next to PCI-E slot. This little fellow is a serious pain in the ... you know where. There are 2 simple solutions for this:

1st. You can solder variable resistor to lower fan speed;
2nd. You can completely remove fan (best solution would be a pair of cutters and insulation tape, I do not recommend disassembling docking station unless you've spare one)