Thinkpad maintenance and upgrade

[bulgarian388]

Hi all,

I have a T60p, 2007-94u, one of the earliest released, and I am getting ready to send it back for a screen replacement because it started spawning dead pixels about a month ago. While it's at Lenovo for the replacement I was thinking if it would be possible to get them to also replace the CPU with a Core 2 Duo, and maybe upgrade the RAM. Does anyone know if Lenovo will be willing to do so? Also, it has a FireGL V5200 card in it, but I know that there is also a V5250 card, if there isn't something better than that already. Would it be possible for them to replace that as well? Of course, I will pay for the upgrades, but I'm curious if they will even do them.

If anyone has experience in this area, I would appreciate it if you could share.

Thanks in advance!

[Temetka]

To upgrade the graphics they are going to have to swap the whole motherboard. In the process they might be willing to perform a CPU and RAM upgrade for you. However I think the cost might near the same as a new machine.

You might try ordering the parts, doing the swap yourself and selling the old parts to reclaim some of your cost.

[Superego]

Even if you could swap the graphics cards I don't think it would be worth the money (at least if you're considering only the v5200 and v5250). The 5200 is based on the Mobility Radeon X1600-

http://ati.amd.com/products/mobilityrad ... specs.html

and the 5250 is based on the Radeon X1700-

http://ati.amd.com/products/mobilityrad ... specs.html

As you can see there is practically no difference between the two.

As far as the processor, you could upgrade (I'm assuming you'd probably want a T2700 or a T7600) but that's a pricey jump for a small increase from 2.16 GHz. Unless you absolutely can't live without the CPU I would save the cash and buy extra RAM and install it yourself (It's really easy). The HMM will guide you through it, and I think there may be some video instructions floating around Lenovo's website.

[bulgarian388]

Hi guys, thanks for posting. Well, if it's going to take a new motherboard, its not worth it. Like Temetka said, I might as well buy a new laptop.

As for the CPU, it's not that I can't live without it, I just figured it would be a decent upgrade to add a bit more life to the laptop, and since its gonna go in for a screen replacement, I figure it might be possible to kill two birds with one stone. Plus I wouldn't have to do any work for it either, that whole laziness factor....

While we are on the CPU topic, is there going to be any future CPU's released by Intel that will be compatible with the T60p's?

[dsalyers]

While we are on the CPU topic, is there going to be any future CPU's released by Intel that will be compatible with the T60p's?

My understanding of the next release of the centrino chipset will be Santa Rosa before the end of the first half of the year. There is no major update for the processor for the next six months. As far as I know it is just a speed bump.

In: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... i=2808&p=7
anandtech does a good run though of the differences between a Core Duo and a Core 2 Duo.

Bottom Line: about a 10% performance increase with no cost in terms of battery life. (both processors tested had the same clock speed).

Also, a feature that may (or may not) matter to you is that the core 2 Duo mobile has the 64bit instruction set, while the core duo does not. This allows for more memory (although a limitation in the current core motherboard chipset limits it to 3.5GB), and the use of 64bit operating systems.

Overall, I have a thinkpad with a T2300 (2.0Ghz) and a thinkpad with a T7200 (2.0Ghz). I don't see a huge difference between the two. Except, when I boot 64bit linux I use numerous applications that benefit from the 64bit word size of the machine.