Thinkpads Forum

Hey everyone,

i have added two t61 14.1 wide models to my humble collection. Both devices have minor issues but i can assemble one perfect device to my liking out of both. NVS140m t61 has a strange issue where it auto powers up when connected to ac adapter, cosmetically in better shape. It has no other issues and works fine, turns off fine. When turned off, i can power it up with power key. When disconnected from AC and reconnect, powers up itself. Tried usual solutions like removing cmos battery, wifi ans other peripherals, one by one, cleaning the board. it always power up.

X3100 board has no issues whatsoever but some cracks in the housing. I thought of going with the X3100 board to make a perfect one out of both and not hassle with nvs140m board...

What are you thoughts ?

Presuming you got enough space to store the nVidia board indefinitely there may be no irreversible choices to make
I heard some people say nVidia can yield 1080 video playback while X3100 cannot.. Haven't tried myself.
BTW is this for Windows or Linux? If Windows then which one?

it is going to be running with windows 7.

Pls. feel free to check some conversations on this topic.

Natakranta wrote: ↑

Sun May 24, 2020 10:12 am

And how's the 256MB graphics performing? Really so much better than NVS140M or FX570M in poor mans 128MB version?
One test please. Can it play smoothly 1080p in 60fps on YouTube? I know 30fps is no problem even for NVS140M, but how it handles 60fps videos?

If all the talk about 256Mb vs 128Mb is confusing you - all the answers are on the great page. I for myself had been confused until this weekend.. It turned out this video RAM are extra chips soldered onto the motherboard. Your nVidia mobo obviously has 128Mb video RAM. So the evidence above tells us you should be able to play 1080p video at 30fps but possibly not at 60fps with nVidia board. I think you may actually be unable to do either with X3100. Win 7 is probably the OS that will give you the best chance to use the abilities of NVS140m to the fullest. You may need to have the right drivers/codecs etc but there are people on this forum who have this setup and can advise you.

Now for the main question: do you care? Do you need it? Seems X3100 is less trouble overall unless you need that extra bit of GPU juice This no one other than yourself can decide.

Similarly I cannot advise on the issue of T61 powering on when power adapter is attached. No idea if that is a sign of some capacitor being bad etc.. On the other hand you could probably view that as a feature Quite often we plug our Thinkpads precisely with the intention to switch them on. Not always of course.. I'm sure you're aware of 08/08 issue with those nVidias but then if it works now it will likely give you some more service time even if the notebook is pre-08/08 (isn't it?) and you can look for a new mobo once it does fail. Think 14.1 widescreen are the variety that are more easy to find on ebay/Aliexpress/etc

Droider wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 23, 2020 2:16 am

Hey everyone,

i have added two t61 14.1 wide models to my humble collection. Both devices have minor issues but i can assemble one perfect device to my liking out of both. NVS140m t61 has a strange issue where it auto powers up when connected to ac adapter, cosmetically in better shape. It has no other issues and works fine, turns off fine. When turned off, i can power it up with power key. When disconnected from AC and reconnect, powers up itself. Tried usual solutions like removing cmos battery, wifi ans other peripherals, one by one, cleaning the board. it always power up.

Had that issue with a T520 board and if this doesn't happen on battery and your CMOS battery is good, you might be looking at a faulty battery charging chip unfortunately. See if it charges up the battery and whether it has any AC unplug detection issues.

atagunov wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 23, 2020 7:37 am

I heard some people say nVidia can yield 1080 video playback while X3100 cannot.. Haven't tried myself

All 14.1" T61/p boards come with 128MB of VRAM for the discrete graphics option, consistent with what I saw from other brands like Dell.
128MB of VRAM should be find in Windows 7, but you might start to run into VRAM problems with Windows 10 in higher resolutions where there aren't much VRAM left when the OS boots up.
1080p local video plays flawlessly with the NVS140M due to the native h264 decoder and it doesn't use your CPU to decode at all. YouTube you gotta be careful about the VRAM usage.
You can get 1080p working with the X3100 iGPU too but that will use your CPU instead and I have had output quality issues with it.

kfzhu1229 wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 23, 2020 10:10 am

128MB of VRAM should be fine in Windows 7

Any Linux experience? Still choosing mobo:

- 15.4" T61p (256Mb)

vs

- 14" 4:3 T61 nVidia (128Mb)

for a Frankenpad. More VRAM vs Ultrabay
Don't want DVD to stick out 2cm

My T61 with NVS 140M failed 7 years ago and I ended up replacing it with an X3100 board 3 years ago to bring it back to life. It has no problem playing 1080p videos on YouTube as long as they're not 60fps. I had Windows 7 on it and switched over to Linux Mint earlier this year and have the same playback experience on both.

MEA707 wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 23, 2020 12:00 pm

My T61 with NVS 140M failed 7 years ago and I ended up replacing it with an X3100 board 3 years ago to bring it back to life. It has no problem playing 1080p videos on YouTube as long as they're not 60fps. I had Windows 7 on it and switched over to Linux Mint earlier this year and have the same playback experience on both.

Not even a G98 card like NVS160M can do 1080p60 by hardware decoding. You gotta go all the way to cards like NVS4200M to have that.
Also, forgot to mention but the X3100's compatibility in Windows 10 is much more horrible. X3100 is known to cause graphical glitches in certain applications to begin with, and you are still using Windows vista drivers in Windows 10 as opposed of Windows 8 drivers for the G86 NVidia cards. Granted most of the glitches in Windows 10 are caused by Windows store apps like the built in films & TV app, but that and the inferior output quality can make the experience of Windows 10 on these things much more clumsy.
X3100 is fine if you don't care as much of futureproofing on your T61 and enjoy a longer battery life instead, while the 256MB Quadro FX boards in addition to being more expensive and having fitting problems, they produce much, much more heat than the 140M chips with a whooping 45W TDP instead of a 20W one and can drain your battery much quicker. The NVS 140m is like the middle ground but unfortunately there isn't a variant of T61 board with 256MB NVS 140M (or any 15-20W chips for that matter. The 256MB FX 360M in the Precision M4300 is like the sweet spot for me). If you plan to use Windows 10 with 128MB of VRAM you will be limited in multitasking, in that if your VRAM runs out any sort of animation start to lag as it keeps dumping data onto your slow 667Mhz RAM instead.

Thanks for all the ideas, i don't know why you guys are bashing X3100 so badly cause with a T8300 / T9300 dual ida active and 4gb ram and ssd, X3100 plays 1080p youtube videos in Windows 10 smoothly. What else could i expect from a 13 years old onboard vga, i like the x3100 to be honest. Never had an issue with 1080p 3gb in size movies playing locally with X3100.

The source resolution of the YT video is only half of the equation, the other half is what resolution you are actually displaying the video at. I can play a 1080p video just fine on a machine with a 1280x800 LCD, on my other machine with 2560x1440 it stutters.

kfzhu1229 wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 23, 2020 3:04 pm

MEA707 wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 23, 2020 12:00 pm

My T61 with NVS 140M failed 7 years ago and I ended up replacing it with an X3100 board 3 years ago to bring it back to life. It has no problem playing 1080p videos on YouTube as long as they're not 60fps. I had Windows 7 on it and switched over to Linux Mint earlier this year and have the same playback experience on both.

Not even a G98 card like NVS160M can do 1080p60 by hardware decoding. You gotta go all the way to cards like NVS4200M to have that.
Also, forgot to mention but the X3100's compatibility in Windows 10 is much more horrible. X3100 is known to cause graphical glitches in certain applications to begin with, and you are still using Windows vista drivers in Windows 10 as opposed of Windows 8 drivers for the G86 NVidia cards. Granted most of the glitches in Windows 10 are caused by Windows store apps like the built in films & TV app, but that and the inferior output quality can make the experience of Windows 10 on these things much more clumsy.
X3100 is fine if you don't care as much of futureproofing on your T61 and enjoy a longer battery life instead, while the 256MB Quadro FX boards in addition to being more expensive and having fitting problems, they produce much, much more heat than the 140M chips with a whooping 45W TDP instead of a 20W one and can drain your battery much quicker. The NVS 140m is like the middle ground but unfortunately there isn't a variant of T61 board with 256MB NVS 140M (or any 15-20W chips for that matter. The 256MB FX 360M in the Precision M4300 is like the sweet spot for me). If you plan to use Windows 10 with 128MB of VRAM you will be limited in multitasking, in that if your VRAM runs out any sort of animation start to lag as it keeps dumping data onto your slow 667Mhz RAM instead.

I have a T440p for intensive needs. T61 is just a backup for basic tasks such as internet, emails, etc.

Finished the assembly of my perfect T61 14.1 widescreen with intel mobo, T8300 cpu with middleton bios, cpu running at 2.6ghz supercool, 4gb of ddr2 sticks and 840pro ssd, windows 7 professional flies with it. Playing Half-Life 2 at max settings with 1280x800 resolution and youtube smoothly at 1080p. I am satisfied

Wait do you actually need Middleton BIOS just to run a T8300 on a T61? I'm a little surprised if it does because my D830 came with a T8300.
Forgot to ask but did you check the datecode for the graphics chip on the NVS140M board?

I didn't need middleton for T8300 as my intel board supports penyrn out of the box. Middleton was for sata2 and cpu dual ida mod for 200mhz more I have a D630 in my possession sharing the very same specs with my T61 x3100, nice and sturdy machine and it has the 12.7mm dvd slot to support my BC-5500A bluray drive. I would have chosen to use it over T61 if it didn't look like a toy so it stays in the closet.

I was going to take note of nvs140m board gpu production date but forgot it and i have already assembled the machine for spareparts if needbe. If it was going to fail, it would have failed long time ago. Took some pictures of both side by side as i applied some cosmetic makeup to the lid using MATTE black viynl wrap. Results turned out pretty good and uniform imo compared to the factory sticky non-uniform black gue. What is best, i managed to score a 9cell panasonic battery with %70 capacity for it.

Update about the NVIDIA board.

I ended up fixing the auto power up issue. The very same error was happening with my X61 T8300. I replaced the bios battery and inserted a full battery. Saved time in bios. This fixed the auto power issue with X61 and T61 both.