Thinkpads Forum

Kind of irks me that Thinkpads always seem to stop short of the top possible graphics chip available. I know the X1800XT just launched from ATI, but its in Fujitsu laptops, as well as Hypersonic and VoodooPC..

Seems very logical. Given that you can't upgrade laptop graphics on Thinkpads I'm loathe to buy one with the 5200 (x1600) when I know what I want is the x1800XT...

Thoughts? Rumors?

this might happen on the Z61m since that is more of a multimedia machine. the T60, however, is designed for business use, and the graphic card options reflect that design principle.

Thinkpads are buisness notebooks. They are not gaming notebooks, if you want a gaming notebook, buy a hypersonic or Voodoo... They are large, hot, and expensive... not the market that TP's are marketed towards.

I dont think the Z series will ever have a graphics chip that high powered. it simply takes too much cooling real estate and draws too much power.

honestly, for gaming, I use desktops. Its just a waste in laptops TBH - lack of upgradability and size coupled with price make them very unattractive. I paid a whopping $900 for my gaming desktop (Athlon X2 3800 @ 2.6ghz, 2gb PC4000, 74GB 10k + 2x250GB 7.2k, HDA 7.1, NEC DVD+-RW, 7800GT CO). Those specs cant be matched in a laptop and the machines that even come CLOSE are over 4k.

Probably never. Not on the T-series, not on the Z-series or on any other Thinkpad series. Not a big loss IMO.

lithium726 wrote:for gaming, I use desktops. Its just a waste in laptops TBH - lack of upgradability and size coupled with price make them very unattractive. I paid a whopping $900 for my gaming desktop (Athlon X2 3800 @ 2.6ghz, 2gb PC4000, 74GB 10k + 2x250GB 7.2k, HDA 7.1, NEC DVD+-RW, 7800GT CO). Those specs cant be matched in a laptop and the machines that even come CLOSE are over 4k.

What brand is your desktop? Was it configured that way or did you customize it yourself?

Thanks
Archer

Who said anything about gaming? And what is this nonsense about the Thinkpad being business?

The Thinkpad is one of the view laptops to ship with professional certified gfx drivers for 3D and CAD! The 5200 (x1600) is just a lesser version of the much more powerful x1800XT, so this argument you are all fronting is absurd.

Now if you want to cite battery life as a reason, that makes some sense. But I think that people should have the option. I want the most power in a small package and the x1600 definitely is a step down from the x1800XT.

archer6 wrote:

lithium726 wrote:for gaming, I use desktops. Its just a waste in laptops TBH - lack of upgradability and size coupled with price make them very unattractive. I paid a whopping $900 for my gaming desktop (Athlon X2 3800 @ 2.6ghz, 2gb PC4000, 74GB 10k + 2x250GB 7.2k, HDA 7.1, NEC DVD+-RW, 7800GT CO). Those specs cant be matched in a laptop and the machines that even come CLOSE are over 4k.

What brand is your desktop? Was it configured that way or did you customize it yourself?

Thanks
Archer

I built it myself.

I am a hardware enthusiast more than anything else... ive got more hardware lying around here than i would care to think about

dxben wrote:Who said anything about gaming? And what is this nonsense about the Thinkpad being business?

the X1800XT is a gaming chip. it is not a workstation chip.

the thinkpad IS a buisness machine. it is marketed as such and its feature set reflects it. Thinkpads, especially the T series, were never really marketed towards the general public and typical ownership of a thinkpads proves this. Sure, a notebook enthusiast is likely to have one. a typical consumer is NOT.

The Thinkpad is one of the view laptops to ship with professional certified gfx drivers for 3D and CAD! The 5200 (x1600) is just a lesser version of the much more powerful x1800XT, so this argument you are all fronting is absurd.

Yeah, a professional, industry level GPU for development. Not a consumer-centered high-powered GPU. The X1800XT is marketed as one thing: a gaming GPU. The T60p was never, ever meant to be a gaming notebook and it is not marketed as such. people on this forum simply buy it for that reason becuase it is the best they can get in the thinkpad package.

Now if you want to cite battery life as a reason, that makes some sense. But I think that people should have the option. I want the most power in a small package and the x1600 definitely is a step down from the x1800XT.

do you really think the x1800 would fit in the same chasis that an x1600 can fit in? that is laughable. the x1800 has much more power, yes, and as such requires a much more robust cooling solution, which is why DTR notebooks with this GPU included often are 1.6" thick and have 17" widescreen displays. [/u]

lithium726 wrote:do you really think the x1800 would fit in the same chasis that an x1600 can fit in? that is laughable. the x1800 has much more power, yes, and as such requires a much more robust cooling solution, which is why DTR notebooks with this GPU included often are 1.6" thick and have 17" widescreen displays.

oh boy, what are you talking about? the x1800XT is not a gaming chip, its just a chip for heaven's sake. it can be used for whatever we want it to be used for.

thank you though for pointing out the ONLY reason it is not a potential feature in the thinkpad, and that is its requirement for cooling and battery, which presents an engineering problem. i had not thought of that so props to you for mentioning it, as obvious as it may have been to you.

honestly, you are off the mark. the x1600 is also a viable gaming chip and can and is marketed as such, but the 5200 Fire GL that is found in the thinkpad is the same chip, with certified drivers. the same certified drivers can be implemented for the x1800XT, why is this fact escaping you?

in fact, BOXX is supposedly going to release a laptop with the X1800XT, and Boxx is a pro CAD/3D hardware vendor, no gaming from them. Fujitsu-Siemens also will have one, and they don't sell "gaming" laptops either. Hopefully you'll see what I mean by all this.

Sorry to get on you about this. I program these chips for a living, and its frustrating to see the ammount of inacurate info out there.

I do appreciate you pointing me to the most likely reason, as I mentioned, it is an engineering challenge, not because its a "gaming chip", whatever that means. The same pipelines are needed for both workstation 3D and gaming, that is why NVidia and ATI develop only one line of chips, with two seperate sets of drivers.

yes, I do know this, but there are *physical* differences between a FGL and X1600 chip, certified drivers will NOT install on a desktop chip and give the features of a FGL or Quadro. That fact is *not* escaping me. We are privlidged in the fact that we KNOW that, most anyone shopping for a laptop WONT. hell, you can do CAD on a GMA950, itll be slow as hell, but it can be done.

If anything, This is marketing, which is kind of what i have been hinting at this entire time. the X1800 is MARKETED as a GAMING GPU. YES, it can be used for CAD, but for the snooty buisness dude who doenst know any better teh FGL will kick the X1800's [censored].

In addition to this, the x1800 is demanded by PRIMARILY gamers. The FireGL based on it is going to be demanded by those who wish to do CAD work, and those who do CAD work and cannot afford a Quadro/FGL will just buy a mainstream card. gamers who want the power and do not care about build quality, keyboard quality, or anything like that, they wont have the machine for very long anyhow, right? They have to upgrade when the new stuff comes out. for these purposes, a Dell is perfectly adequate.

the T60p is 3k+. it is marketed as a high end design machine and is sold as such with te fastest processor avaliable and a certified FireGL GPU.

the Thinkpads will never have a high end GPU like that beucase of engineering and marketing. simple fact is that if IBM/Lenovo offered a T60p based on the x1800 based FGL solution no one would buy it. it would be far too expenisve, given the prices of the unit with an x1600 based FGL.

hell, i would LOVE to have a T60 with teh power of an x1800/1900 under the hood. HOWEVER, i am not willing to give up my 14" form factor, heat load, or battery life.

The X1800XT is a pretty [censored] good card; yet it does have pretty high requirements for cooling and power consumption. Would I like to have one? Sure; but like Lithium, I wouldn't be willing to give up my form factor for it. If I really wanted it, I would get something like the advanced dock and then see if I could put it in there (may not fit anyway) or build a true gaming rig. Maybe for a LAN party, a gaming laptop. Now it isn't *per say* a gaming chip, it is just that it was primarily designed as a high end ATI video card and most gamers picked it up; so ATI *has* to cater to them as well.

IBM hasn't seen much of a market from the serious gamers; I think the only Thinkpad to have something other than an ATI, in recent times, was the G4X Series which had nVidia FX cards if I am not mistaken.

Yup, The only thinkpads to have NV chips that i know of are the G4x's, and those had GF-FX5200's... quite possibly the most horrible GPU NV ever made.

Pretty sure ATI's silicon *typically* draws less power than NV's, but they seem to be trading blows with the current high end video cards... both of em have insane power requirements.

I think you both make great points about power consumption and the engineering challanges. No doubt those are the reasons.

My only contention to the original responses was the ideat that the 1800XT was intended solely to be a gaming chip and not useful to a Thinkpad type of user. Again, obviously this is just not true, since the 1800 could take advantage of the same certified drivers and provide even more performance for CAD/3D.

BOXX is planning to do this so obviously there is a market. I figured if BOXX has a market for it, and Thinkpads do cater to CAD/3D, why won't Lenevo release a seperate line of heavier Thinkpads that are more like desktop replacements?

Why not a x1800? Heat, Heat, Heat. I already have burn marks on my thighs just thinking about it!

Just consider the amazing increase in performance. Most people who are doing CAD/3D aren't doing it on an airplane, they need a mobile workstation and I think Lenevo is missing an opportunity here, as IBM was for a long time. Maybe they've already run the numbers and figured its not worth it, that's possible, leaving it to Niche players like BOXX.

My only contention to the original responses was the ideat that the 1800XT was intended solely to be a gaming chip and not useful to a Thinkpad type of user. Again, obviously this is just not true, since the 1800 could take advantage of the same certified drivers and provide even more performance for CAD/3D.

AH, but this was not my point. saying it was a gaming GPU was simply putting the chip in its place in regards to the market for it, not its capability. Please note that an X1800 *cannot* take the FGL drivers, ATI locks out features on its mainstream cards... you cannot simply install certified drivers and call it a day.

lithium726 wrote:Yup, The only thinkpads to have NV chips that i know of are the G4x's, and those had GF-FX5200's... quite possibly the most horrible GPU NV ever made.

Pretty sure ATI's silicon *typically* draws less power than NV's, but they seem to be trading blows with the current high end video cards... both of em have insane power requirements.

Not only that, but good grief, noise levels. The ATI, unmodded, is supposedly louder than the nVidia. Yet I tried both and, without a huge heatsink, cooling, and quite possibly a water cooling system, they are loud.

christopher_wolf wrote:

lithium726 wrote:Yup, The only thinkpads to have NV chips that i know of are the G4x's, and those had GF-FX5200's... quite possibly the most horrible GPU NV ever made.

Pretty sure ATI's silicon *typically* draws less power than NV's, but they seem to be trading blows with the current high end video cards... both of em have insane power requirements.

Not only that, but good grief, noise levels. The ATI, unmodded, is supposedly louder than the nVidia. Yet I tried both and, without a huge heatsink, cooling, and quite possibly a water cooling system, they are loud.

Again, that doesn't deter me. I am looking for optimal 3D performance. If there was no value to the 1800XT it would not have been made, and BOXX would not be using it, nor Fuji.

You can cite the downsides of this chip in a laptop, but it is a mobile chip and you all seem to be ignoring the huge difference in performance that it would provide over the 1600. The difference is significant.

Well, the reason it will not be put in a T, Z or X is beucase of size. Why they do not manufacture a true uber high powered DTR with a WUXGA screen, x1800xt and such parts is a question only Lenovo can answer.

who knows, perhaps theyll bring back the A series and put one of those chips in there

Not only that, but good grief, noise levels. The ATI, unmodded, is supposedly louder than the nVidia. Yet I tried both and, without a huge heatsink, cooling, and quite possibly a water cooling system, they are loud.

well yeah, with power comes heat... when youve got a 24pipelined core running at 600mhz with 1.8ghz GDDR3, things are gonna heat up... its big, hot, and doenst have the means to cool itself down due to form factor issues... CPU's have much better airflow and much more clearance for heatsinks (i myself have a Si-120... HUGE!)

that said, ive got a 7800GT CO (470core/1200mem) with a zalman vf700-cu on it, and it stays pretty cool and runs pretty quiet, im happy with it.

lithium726 wrote:Well, the reason it will not be put in a T, Z or X is beucase of size. Why they do not manufacture a true uber high powered DTR with a WUXGA screen, x1800xt and such parts is a question only Lenovo can answer.

who knows, perhaps theyll bring back the A series and put one of those chips in there

Now you're talkin'!

The A Series was, and quite possibly still is, one of the best desktop replacement machines I have ever seen in quite awhile.

[quote="lithium726"]Well, the reason it will not be put in a T, Z or X is beucase of size. Why they do not manufacture a true uber high powered DTR with a WUXGA screen, x1800xt and such parts is a question only Lenovo can answer.

who knows, perhaps theyll bring back the A series and put one of those chips in there
[quote]

I think it is likely that Lenovo will follow that path, it's just that you won't see the "Thinkpad" name on it. It will appear in their consumer line of laptops.

astro wrote:

lithium726 wrote:Well, the reason it will not be put in a T, Z or X is beucase of size. Why they do not manufacture a true uber high powered DTR with a WUXGA screen, x1800xt and such parts is a question only Lenovo can answer.

who knows, perhaps theyll bring back the A series and put one of those chips in there

I think it is likely that Lenovo will follow that path, it's just that you won't see the "Thinkpad" name on it. It will appear in their consumer line of laptops.

Then they will either make a new line for "media" consumer laptops or the 3000 Series is going to be a very diverse line.

i somewhat doubt we'll see a lenovo laptop with the specs of an XPS... they dont have the consumer image to market it and lenovo's machines are typically seen as budget laptops (always have been) and now its just "the laptop you get when you cant afford a thinkpad but want something from lenovo for some odd reason"



and yeah, the A series was pretty cool. Id love to have an A31p, but its far out of my "toy" price range

Hopefully, they will do a good job of using part of the Thinkpad Image and Externality to bolster the 3000 Series. It already seems as if they have a good idea where they want to go with it.

Namely, though...They should really watch out for a higher end 3000 Series attempting to compete with a low-end Thinkpad. That could be dangerous, but only if Lenovo did a great job taking the 3000 Series up to par with something like a Thinkpad.

Also, the Dell XPS isn't that great; I imagine that, now that they have acquired Alienware, they will either launch a whole new line of gaming systems and integerate with the XPS series, or drop the XPS and make a new line, or just go with Alienware altogether.

What makes you say that?

the XPS is a pretty respectable gaming machine... all dell reliability issues aside. Just judging hardware right now, if it just had a coreduo inside it could outpreform my desktop, and im pretty sure a coreduo model will be launching shortly if the 9400 is any indication.

I wouldnt buy one, but then again, i wouldnt buy a sager gaming laptop either.

Let's just say I expected more out of the XPS systems that I have tried out; true it is a good gaming laptop, but the ones I tried out I foresaw as lasting until the warranty ran out.

I don't know how much a coreduo would help, though, as most FPS games are only now just starting to use the CPU more in addition to the GPU. Half Life 2 is probably the best at this this right now. Also, you have to tell the game to take advantage fo the cores and not let Windows simply suck up both cores for its own use.

As far as reliablilty, i completly agree. from a spec standpoint, its a pretty nice machine.

core duo would make it better in general and more on par with my desktop, only reason i said that... i LOVE SMP, still have my dual 1.4ghz p3-s machine at home, a very nice machine for its age.

How about ugliness factor? I cannot understand who thinks Alienware or XPS laptops look good. Even in my geekiest young gaming days, I would prefer a Thinkpad over this.

Ugliness Factor?

The same thing you see, say, in these?

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/04/18 ... xps_m1710/

Good Lord, *Glowing Case*....They really are trying to throw away as much battery life as possible.