Thinkpads Forum

Alright, my first post. I've been a Thinkpad user and reseller for 10 years and I simply love 'em.

I just got a crazy deal on a T60, or so I thought. What first looked strange to me was the fact that the video card was different, and apparently WAY BETTER, than the one that comes up when I put the model and type # in on lenovo.com. I have the ATI FireGL V5200 instead of the ATI Radeon X1300.

I'm running both XP and Vista, and they both show a staggering 512MB of video memory, and looking at it a little more closely, it says that 256MB are "shared".

The ThinkVantage button pressed, I click on System Information and gthen Advanced and it even said somewhere "Thinkpad T60p". Wow, I thought. The seller said that the system board had recently been replaced, and the computer has to be fairly new as there is the sticker for Windows XP that says "Vista capable" at the bottom. Also, the warranty is good until the latter part of 2009.

Is there any other way to find out what's what?

A quick unrelated question: All previous Thinkpads (and I have had tons) always had PC Doctor on them. Where can I find it on the T60's?

Thanks for any replies.

Looks like it is a T60p ... what is the model number?

Well, congratulations, it seems you have a T60p, even if you provide us with the type number it wouldn't matter since the mobo was changed.

It's a 2623-D3U. Here are the specs:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... ry=2623D3U

When I go to lenovo.com, all the T60p's have a Core 2 Duo, instead of a Core Duo, but I believe that to be recent.

There's no big difference between a Core Duo and a Core 2 Duo I don't think. What difference would I see in your collective opinion?

Had a similar experience. Ordered a 15" T60 w/flexview screen through a Higher Ed contract and was able to choose the FireGL V5260. All the paperwork said T60, but when I received the Thinkpad, it clear says "Lenovo T60P" beneath the LCD screen. Which makes me wonder -- if there a difference between a T60 and T60p aside from the superior discrete graphics? Either way, I'm happy....

According to lenovo:

Product: ThinkPad T60 2623-D3U
Operating system: All

Original description: T2500(2GHz), 1GB RAM, 100GB 5400rpm HD, 15in 1400x1050 LCD, 128MB ATI Radeon X1400, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11abg wireless, WWAN, Bluetooth/Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, Fingerprint reader, 9c Li-Ion batt, WinXP Pro

But as ATI FireGL only comes with T60p and you said the system board has recently been replaced so all I can say is you have a T60p board in T60 barebone (housing only) and 2623-D3U is not (I suppose you manually read it from the bottom) the Type/model of your machine.

Do a System Update, you'll get PC Doctor installed, which will tell you your machine's accurate Type/model number or go to lenovo's website and get your system auto-detected to see what exactly is the deal with your system.

ryengineer wrote:According to lenovo:

Product: ThinkPad T60 2623-D3U
Operating system: All

Original description: T2500(2GHz), 1GB RAM, 100GB 5400rpm HD, 15in 1400x1050 LCD, 128MB ATI Radeon X1400, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11abg wireless, WWAN, Bluetooth/Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, Fingerprint reader, 9c Li-Ion batt, WinXP Pro

But as ATI FireGL only comes with T60p and you said the system board has recently been replaced so all I can say is you have a T60p board in T60 bearbone and 2623-D3U is not (if you manually read it from the bottom) the Type/model of your machine.

Do a System Update, you'll get PC Doctor installed, which will tell you your machine's accurate Type/model number or go to lenovo's website and get your system auto-detected to see what exactly is the deal with your system.

Alright, now I'm totally confused LOL...I did the auto-detect and it came up with the exact specs of a 2623-D3U. That is SO weird. Going to the Help section of ThinkVantage also shows 2623-D3U.

I just checked both my XP and Vista partitions for the gfx card again, and they are both consistent (they weren't on my T43p that I just sold to get this baby) and they show 512MB's. Don't they come with 256MB's? Can they be upgraded? Can the graphics card be upgraded??? I thought it was all built into the system board.

One more thing. It has SoundMAX HD Audio. The sound of a movie, for example, feels like surround sound. When a cellphone rang in a movie, I looked at my Treo to see if someone was calling me. lol...

I'm so psyched now. This baby is so BLAZINGLY FAST, boots up in 10 seconds, launches apps in 2s and I can watch movies, do multiple massive downloads and still have other apps and services running without ANY slowdown. And that was BEFORE I put in another GB of RAM for a total of 2GB's. Wooooooooohoooooo...

How do I do the System Update? I haven't gotten used to the new ThinkVantage vs. Access Thinkpad yet.

Thanks everyone. I wish I had found this board sooner. I'm going on 10 years using and selling nothing but Thinkpads.

CrunchDude wrote:and they show 512MB's. Don't they come with 256MB's? Can they be upgraded? Can the graphics card be upgraded??? I thought it was all built into the system board.

GPU cannot be upgraded as of this date on notebooks, however certain work is being done by companies like Asus to implement such technology.

Your ATI FireGL card has 256MB but your system is sharing it's memory with the graphics card adding it 256MB+256MB=512MB to make things more sweeter for you to look at your lcd display.

How do I do the System Update? I haven't gotten used to the new ThinkVantage vs. Access Thinkpad yet.

Press the blue "Thinkvantage" button on your keyboard and then click on "Update my system". You should also peep into all things in the Thinkpad Productivity Center to have a more insight look at some new stuff since "IBM Access" days.

I don't know if there's a HMM on this series that's easy to pull up with a diagram, but are you certain the GPU and CPU literally lie on the same board?

I know some past series' TP's had videocard daughterboards, which, not meant to be upgradable, could be provided you had a GPU daughterboard from a higher-end model in the same series. Of course that meant near full disassembly of the TP to install it.

Seeing as this guy had a board replacement, yet he's getting the original model reported back to him, I wonder...

This is a safe tool that I use often to document pc's.
It is small, safe fast and free....

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Bing0 wrote:This is a safe tool that I use often to document pc's.
It is small, safe fast and free....

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

That's a great tool -- Thanks!

ryengineer wrote:

CrunchDude wrote:

Well well well, I upgraded my T60p per your suggestion, and it ALSO generated 2623-D3U as my system type. Now, I just downloaded that tool and lo' and behold, it, too, displays (see below) the type and model # as 2623-D3U, and RIGHT NEXT TO IT, it says Thinkpad T60p. WTF!??? I mean I'm not complaining, but lenovo's website and the ThinkVantage System Info (under Advanced and under XP) as well as this Belarc Advisor (under Vista) BOTH display Thinkpad T60p. Is it a typo on lenovo's website? LOL...

Your thoughts are anticipated and appreciated.

img]http://hometown.aol.com/Natas22000/Specs.JPG[/img]

P.S. How do I get the ThinkVantage software for my Vista OS? I updated under my XP partition? Thanks again!

Note from Moderator: Snipped excessive and nested quoting and image with no warning in subject line.

Go here and install the Thinkvantage system update.

As far as your on going quest about the model is concerned, perhaps it's a typo (as you said) or somehow your system was custom built maybe, or some Lenovo engineer was in a REAL good mood and installed the FireGL chip instead of standard ATI for your model.

Can anyone confirm or deny my earlier theory?

ryengineer wrote:Go here and install the Thinkvantage system update.

As far as your on going quest about the model is concerned, perhaps it's a typo (as you said) or somehow your system was custom built maybe, or some Lenovo engineer was in a REAL good mood and installed the FireGL chip instead of standard ATI for your model.

Well, this is too weird. I think it's a T60p board in a shell of a T60. BOTH operating systems say the same and all the tests you guys had for me all say the same thing. I just don't understand why the auto-detect comes back a different type. That makes NO sense.

Thanks for all your help. This is a great board!

To Tolek: I didn't understand your post to know. If you can say it in lames terms a little more (for me anyway lol)...

Well, like I said above, some past Thinkpad series' have had the GPU (Videocard) and CPU (Processor) on separate boards within the laptop.

Some series have them on the same board, but some don't, and the ones that don't can have their videocards changed without a total swap of the motherboard. Technically, that makes the videocard upgradeable provided there's a higher-end card available for the particular series. The GPU part would have a proprietary interface, and likely require disassembly of the entire machine.

That may have happened to you, but either way, I'd like confirmation that the T60 series has this configuration.

Never heard of this before Tholek, can you mention a particular model so we can look it up. If so, then this could be like as what ryengineer mentioned which are being tried on some Asus machines. Also on this thread:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=42724

bontistic wrote:Never heard of this before Tholek, can you mention a particular model so we can look it up. If so, then this could be like as what ryengineer mentioned which are being tried on some Asus machines. Also on this thread:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=42724

Too bad I didn't respond there either.

EDIT: Although he was referencing a standard which was proposed by a GPU maker. nVIDIA and ATI both have such a standard, but neither are popular. I'm describing a totally proprietary configuration designed solely for a particular series configuration.

The only series I can think of off the top of my head that you could easily find diagrams of, is the 760 series, although that took it to extremes with 2/3's of the internal space being Ultrabay. I've seen more recent internals of a VAIO with a GPU daughterboard, but I forget which. I suspect it's still a common practice in series' with many variable options, since full mobo integration of CPU/GPU means more mobo variants and could impact the bottom line.

We really need a internal picture, or HMM on this to answer it. Anyone have a link?

Tholek wrote:We really need a internal picture, or HMM on this to answer it. Anyone have a link?

Oh, I don't know - did you try Item #8 in the (very old) FAQ?

You mean this?

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mo ... 844_01.pdf

Waiting a couple of minutes for the answer....here we go:

img]http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/7815/t60bu2.gif[/img]

No dice.

It's a full system board integration of CPU and GPU in this case. Well, there goes that theory.

ryengineer wrote:Go here and install the Thinkvantage system update.

As far as your on going quest about the model is concerned, perhaps it's a typo (as you said) or somehow your system was custom built maybe, or some Lenovo engineer was in a REAL good mood and installed the FireGL chip instead of standard ATI for your model.

Awesome. Thanks for the link for the software. Guess what, ANOTHER strange but great thing is that instead of the Verizon Wireless WWAN, it looks like it has a Cingular Sierra card in it!! I found this through the Belarc Advisor:

img]http://hometown.aol.com/Natas22000/HSDPA.JPG[/img]

It displays a Sierra HSDPA card. Wooohooo...Verizon would show an EVDO card. That would be awesome as I have had Cingular/AT&T for about 8 years. I work with them, too, on a freelance basis and have the latest Sierra AirCard (875) and also the OptionMax GT 3.6Mbps.

As you can tell from the shot, I have PDANet installed, so I occasionally tether using my Treo 750.

This would make the machine PERFECT for me. But where would I put the SIM card? Hmmm...

To Tolek: Sorry, I didn't mean to convey I was a newbie to computers lol...You can talk specs to me. My first one was a C-64 with a tapedeck lol...I just didn't know about the HMM.

CrunchDude wrote:
Awesome. Thanks for the link for the software.

You're very welcome.

But where would I put the SIM card? Hmmm...

As far as I know you don't, it's integrated wireless (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) and capable of doing:

The Aircard GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA card acts as a wireless modem for your laptop or tablet PC to wirelessly connect to the Internet:

Browse web sites and access all your Web-based applications.
Send and receive e-mail wirelessly and securely.
Download, view and edit attachments Send and receive text messages.
Connect to your corporate network(s).
Access information throughout Canada, the United States and internationally on EDGE/GPRS/HSDPA wireless data networks.

On models with the Cingluar card there should be a SIMM slot under the Main battery. Remove the battery an look near the gold contact pins for the battery.

All the units have a spot for the SIMM card reader but only some models have the hardware installed.

It sound like this unit is messed up so it might not have the hardware.

CrunchDude wrote:This baby is so BLAZINGLY FAST, boots up in 10 seconds, ...

So you're not running Vista then, I guess.

taob wrote:

CrunchDude wrote:

I'm running Vista and boot in < 10s. Don't knock it till you try it.

brentpresley wrote:I'm running Vista and boot in < 10s. Don't knock it till you try it.

Unless you're running it on an SSD, I doubt this is possible. Or you have a very different definition of "boot" than I do. I'm talking about a cold restart, no hibernation, no safe mode, from the time the boot selector would have shown up (after POST) to the time the login screen accepts keystrokes. I'm thinking boot time is more like 45 seconds. This is Vista Ultimate on a T60p with 2GB of RAM and a 100GB 7200 rpm drive.

Thinkpad T60p (2623-DDU), Vista Ultimate

Power-on to Vista boot loader: 12 seconds
Vista boot loader to Vista login screen: 28 seconds
Vista login screen to power-off via "Shutdown" command: 8 seconds

F12 boot device screen to OS X 10.4.8 Finder: 22 seconds

brentpresley wrote:

taob wrote:

Exactly. I was a beta tester for Microsoft last Oct/Nov/Dec/Jan and ever since RC2 came out, I have never been able to crash it again. And I've tried.

Oh, and how much do you think I paid for this puppy! Including EVERYTHING!???

I have one more idea. Due to this unresolved weirdness, could it be that I have UXGA graphics??? The maximum says SXGA+ for the ATI Mobility V5200 on both OS's. Hmm...

While I don't think so, so many other things are strange about my T60p. At least every application I run says Thinkpad T60p. lol...