Review of T61: Great machine with 90 minutes battery life

[brentpresley]

Man, where are you folks working where you have no access to an outlet?

Airports.

Have you EVER found an OPEN outlet in a crowded airport?

Airports are the main reason I bought a T60 over some more stylishly-designed competitors (HP and Sony come to mind).

[sugo]

Even in offices and conference rooms, number of outlets can be limited and location of outlets can be far away from the desks. Not having to lug around the ac adapter/cable is another incentive.

Economy seat on a plane is another place where outlet is usually not available.

[acheta]

4 cell = 37.44 wh
6 cell = 56.16 wh
7 cell = 65.52 wh

no, the 7 cell is 74.88 Wh (14.4V * 5.2 mAh) (almost exactly the same as my 9cell t40 battery)

source: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-67683

[wackydan]

And it is already documented that Vista with the fancy graphics turned up eats your battery as well....

So it will be hard to directly compare benchmarks on 60 series machines running xp with 61's running Vista.

[wswartzendruber]

Why does Santa Rosa eat so much power? Is it the 800 MHz FSB or what? Is it ALL because of the GPU?

[gator]

Why does Santa Rosa eat so much power? Is it the 800 MHz FSB or what? Is it ALL because of the GPU?

There are a LOT of transistors on the new core 2 duos (4 MB of cache!). GPU also contributes.

[Dead1nside]

It can surely turn off chunks of the cache though.

[darrenf]

And it is already documented that Vista with the fancy graphics turned up eats your battery as well....

This has been mis-reported. Vista eats up battery with or without the fancy graphics turned up. Turning off the eye candy makes virtually no difference in power consumption (unfortunately).

-darren

[ducky2802]

my impression is that battery life should improve with each generation, that components should get more efficient. Anyone remember the years of sticking the P-4 in laptops? I hope santa rosa is not a repeat of that scenario.

[syhead]

just one comment: I love my T42

[itzcoolz]

darren, are you sure about that?

for me, switching from the aero theme to the classic theme noticeably increases battery life for me. it's nothing awe-inspiring, but it's definitely noticeable.

[namezero]

Haven't tried any new Thinkpad lately, but used T42/T43 on and off.

Can't tell about the battery deal between T60 / T61. However my wild guess is it has something to do with Vista, unless Lenovo engineers screwed up T61 somehow.

Look at those two almost identical test configuration:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/in ... i=2985&p=5
Only big difference is one with Santa Rosa T7700 + Nvidia 8600M, and another one with Napa T7600 + ATI x1600. Both are running Vista.

And look at the power consumption results:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/in ... i=2985&p=8

Santa Rosa consumes less electricity during idle, while consumes as much electricity as Napa during load.


So back to T60/T61:
To have a fair comparison, both needs to run the same OS (either XP SP2 or Vista). Most if not all T60 comes with XP SP2, while T61 comes with Vista.

[darrenf]

darren, are you sure about that?

for me, switching from the aero theme to the classic theme noticeably increases battery life for me. it's nothing awe-inspiring, but it's definitely noticeable.

I was basing it on my observations alone and you may have disabled some feature that I left enabled by mistake. Making the comparison more difficult is the fact that Mobile Meter doesn't work under Vista so I had to refresh the battery information tab in power manager to track Wattage/Current draw.

I was also running my tests in December using the Vista RTM release and the drivers available at the time. Power management may have improved.

I have since read an article in a print magazine that said (to paraphrase) that there was no appreciable power drain caused by activating Aero. This confirmed my findings.

-darren

[darrenf]

namezero,

Two thoughts on those test results. The "under load" test showed battery consumption at 60Watts (!!). That's a pretty unrealistic test since it must have included exercising the GPU which will skew the test results. Since the test systems were differently configured, I wouldn't trust this as an accurate indication of anything.

The encouraging thing is that the new platform apparently supports a lowered FSB speed. That is something that was sorely lacking on the original Core and Core 2. I've long lamented that the minimum 1GHz CPU speed on the Core (2) was wasting a lot of battery power.

-darren

[astro]

Why does Santa Rosa eat so much power? Is it the 800 MHz FSB or what? Is it ALL because of the GPU?

There are a LOT of transistors on the new core 2 duos (4 MB of cache!). GPU also contributes.

The battery life of <2 hrs on the small battery MAKES SENSE to me. It is mostly driven by the graphics card.

In the T60 series, with 6-cell you had (from memory) battery life of about:
T60 GMA950 = 4.5 hrs
T60 X1400 = 3.0hrs
T60p V5250 = <2.0hrs (admittedly, 15" IPS affected this too)

The nVidia chip in the T61s is now giving you the performance of the V5250, so the midrange now has the performance the T60p had 12mths ago.

So I think the main contributing factors to battery life, in order, are:
1. nVidia graphics (by a mile)
2. Santa Rosa
3. Faster clock speeds
4. Windows Vista

The last 3 have probably a similar affect.

If you want battery life, buy GM965 and don't use Vista.

[Dead1nside]

Have you got any figures to support those claims astro? I'm not disputing that there's probably a difference there, but so vast?

[astro]

Have you got any figures to support those claims astro? I'm not disputing that there's probably a difference there, but so vast?

The differences in battery life between the variants is well-documented on this forum.

To dig something up, darrenf was one of the first to point out the poor battery performance of the T60p; he fingered the GPU as the main culprit:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=22449

I will correct something, though:
There is a PCMag review posting for the T61 w/nVidia says that it achieves ~1900 3dmarks(06). I believe the T60p out of the box was getting ~1500 (another darrenf post, I believe). So:

The new midrange T61 vastly outperforms last year's T60p, while achieving 'similar' battery life.

[acasto]

As long as the battery can last longer than the eighty year old lady sitting at the table next to the outlet at the coffee shop, I'll be okay

[Dead1nside]

Thanks for providing some reference to your comments astro, I guess I'm still quite astounded at the claims of poor battery performance. Especially the large difference between integrated Intel and X1400, at least an hour of battery life.

[beeblebrox]

Thanks for providing some reference to your comments astro, I guess I'm still quite astounded at the claims of poor battery performance. Especially the large difference between integrated Intel and X1400, at least an hour of battery life.

That's why some competitors, such as Sony, have introduced a dual chip GPU system.
If you need battery life, you select "stamina" which activates the integrated Intel GPU, otherwise choose "performance" and activate the NVidia chip. With regard to a price increase of merely $5 for the integrated Intel GPU vs. the non-integrated chipset I am really puzzled why no other manufacturer than Sony has chosen this innovative approach.

In my opinion Intel, again (!), is losing the customer's interests. Of course, many folks demand "power" system, just because the brochures and adverts tell them that that is needed. On the other hand they hardly use any power. Most systems are just idling away during web surfing and typing the email.

If Intel would realy "innovate" they would develop such a dual GPU core system and one that can set the CPU down to 300MHz at idling, while turning off all unnecessary components (peripherals, memory banks, etc.)
Right now I have the impression that Intel and AMD are in the GHz Power race again. All they do again is: bigger, faster, better!

Look at the Overall System Power Consumption. We are back at 30-50 Watts. Right?
That's back to the Pentium 4 Hotcore era. But now we have dual core, quad-core. Super duper turbo cache and all other wheelchair-like aids to have a Vista system running smoothly in a way that we were used to run older systems in previous days.

In 7 years actually nothing has changed. Still working on Lotus Notes and Office and still 3-4h battery time. That's innovation?

It's like I have 2000 horsepowers now under the hood instead of the 100. But most of the time we need the car to go to the mall.

[summa]

my impression is that battery life should improve with each generation, that components should get more efficient. Anyone remember the years of sticking the P-4 in laptops? I hope santa rosa is not a repeat of that scenario.

PC Mag tested a T60p with the ATI V5250 graphics chip back in February (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2098002,00.asp) and got 2:51 in their battery rundown test (running Vista) using a 85Wh battery. In terms of runtime per Wh of battery, that's virtually identical to the results they got with the T61 using the nVidia chip. If the T61 had a 85Wh battery, I think it's fair to say they would have gotten about six more minutes of runtime on the Santa Rosa-based T61 (which definitely outperforms the T60p). Based on that, there's nothing bad to be said about Santa Rosa here.

But of course you can't get a 85Wh battery with the T61.

We should certainly see improved battery life when giving up the performance of the nVidia graphics for the Intel integrated graphics. The Fujitsu and Dell machines using this are 15% and 30% better at minutes of runtime per Wh of battery (and yes, the better battery performance of the Dell (~ 12%) over the Fujitsu in virtually identical machine configs is strikingly curious).

[Dead1nside]

That's why some competitors, such as Sony, have introduced a dual chip GPU system.
If you need battery life, you select "stamina" which activates the integrated Intel GPU, otherwise choose "performance" and activate the NVidia chip. With regard to a price increase of merely $5 for the integrated Intel GPU vs. the non-integrated chipset I am really puzzled why no other manufacturer than Sony has chosen this innovative approach.

AMD is using this approach, in their next generation.

[Cheung]

Please bear with a newbie question. I'm about to take the plunge with a T61, and while doing some research on the Intel integrated X3100, I came across the following site.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Grap ... 176.0.html

From what I can tell, they seem to claim that the X3100 GPU is way better than the ATI V5200 FireGL according to the 3DMark03 performance. From what I've gathered from this forum the integrated GPUs should be no match to the discrete graphics cards. So what gives? What am I missing here?

I really would like to find out whether the X3100 is half decent before ordering 'cos I've read that the integrated graphics provide significant improvement in battery life. If the performance matches that of the former T60p (which I doubt), then it'd be a no brainer.

Thank you all!

Best Regards,
AC

[Dead1nside]

Well Cheung, I'd say without reading that link that it's bollocks.

The ATI FireGl V5250 is the equivalent of the Radeon Mobility X1700, it is a 12-pipeline card.

The Intel X3100 which granted is a new generation of Intel's integrated graphics, I highly doubt could beat a previous generation, mid level, workstation graphics card, with many years more driver experience.

Yet, the X3100 is obviously superior in battery life and a nice option for this generation. I highly doubt it comparable at all in terms of graphical capability, best tested by games, at all to the V5250.

[Fidicinal]

That's why some competitors, such as Sony, have introduced a dual chip GPU system.
If you need battery life, you select "stamina" which activates the integrated Intel GPU, otherwise choose "performance" and activate the NVidia chip. With regard to a price increase of merely $5 for the integrated Intel GPU vs. the non-integrated chipset I am really puzzled why no other manufacturer than Sony has chosen this innovative approach.

I had a SZ 360 for a while and putting the laptop on stamina mode would get me maybe a half-hour more of battery life. It was hardly worth rebooting into stamina mode for that.

[wackydan]

http://news.com.com/Vista+draining+lapt ... l?tag=item

[astro]

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Grap ... 176.0.html

From what I can tell, they seem to claim that the X3100 GPU is way better than the ATI V5200 FireGL according to the 3DMark03 performance.

It's a misprint.

[EDIT: Well, not a misprint, it is just misleading. The numbers in the table are all 3dMark06 scores.]

If you click FireGL V5200 link in the table, you will see that the 900 score is for 3dMark06. Also notice that the GMA950 score for 3dMark06 is a piddling 160.

If you want a relative indicator of performance, have a look at the list of links to the right of the article, which lists GPUs in relative "Performance Class"es. You will notice that the V5200 is in Class 2 while the X3100 is in Class 5.

EDIT2: Actually, looking again, the V5200 score is definitely a misprint, it should be around 1500. The Radeon X1400 already gets 900 (as in the table), I know this because I have one in front of me.

[Cheung]

Thanks, astro and Dea1nside, for the clarification and explanation.

I knew it sounded too good to be true...

Not that the extra weight of the 6-cell in the T61 will bother me that much (w/ discrete graphics), but the form factor does bother me -- with the batt sticking out the back...

If the T60 has the speaker facing up (rather than towards the desk), then I'd have just bought a 14" T60 instead...

[jd1010]

On notebook review one of the admin's has gotten a t61 and has been using it and answering questions. He has the x3100 integrated gpu and he says with normal computer use he got about 3hr 40 minutes with a 6 cell. That means with a 7 cell you should get like 4-4.5 hours, and the 6 and 7 cell are the exact same size. That is not terrible in my opinion. but then again I don't care much for the graphics processor which is why the intel x3100 is good enough for me.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=123126

[eigh]

Why does Santa Rosa eat so much power? Is it the 800 MHz FSB or what? Is it ALL because of the GPU?

There are a LOT of transistors on the new core 2 duos (4 MB of cache!). GPU also contributes.

that doesnt mean anything. the core 2 duo's are amazing and power efficient.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1 ... 804,00.asp

while that link may not contain every core 2 duo if you see in that pic the core 2 duo's are all lower than the other ones tested.


lots of transistors != lots of power used.