Thinkpads Forum

Can you T60p users post specs and what games are playable and in which resolution. I might be trading my T43p for a T60p to have a more powerful gfx card, but if it's only marginally better I'd rather wait for the T60p to be launched here.

TIA

A V5200 is roughly equivalent to the x1600, a midrange gaming card. Expect it to play WoW at max setting and FPS games at low to medium.

HL2 @1600x1200, no AF/AA (doesn't need it with this kind of DPI) and everything at max details possible. No hickups, plays fine

Flatout 2 at 1600x1200 all max details, also no hickups and plays fine.

I have not done any FPS measurements because i know that Fraps FPS wrapping slows things down.

Isn't the FireGL V5200 one of the best GFX cards you can get? And what's with the V5250? I can't find it on ATI's website? Thanks...

CrunchDude wrote:Isn't the FireGL V5200 one of the best GFX cards you can get? And what's with the V5250? I can't find it on ATI's website? Thanks...

FireGL is ATi's line of workstation cards, primarily designed for CAD/CAM use, not gaming (same with NVIDIA QuadroFX).
Don't buy T60p if you plan to do much gaming. the card inside is NOT the choice if you're a gamer.

Ivan Ivankovic wrote:

CrunchDude wrote:Isn't the FireGL V5200 one of the best GFX cards you can get? And what's with the V5250? I can't find it on ATI's website? Thanks...

FireGL is ATi's line of workstation cards, primarily designed for CAD/CAM use, not gaming (same with NVIDIA QuadroFX).
Don't buy T60p if you plan to do much gaming. the card inside is NOT the choice if you're a gamer.

But it is the choice for Thinkpad-Gamers, because it's the best you get.

I'm not sure its the best choice for gamers -

I've read over at nbstar.net (a chinese forum) - that the x1400 can be unlocked into an equivalent x1650- which would make the X1400 the best choice for gamers...hang on will take a while to dig up the link

*half an hour later *

Hopefully this link will work (it should translate it automatically from chinese to english through google language tools)

http://translate.google.com/translate?u ... uage_tools


Ok that doesn't seem to be working


here's the original link,
http://www.nbstar.net/thread-68024-1-4.html

try this one

http://www.nbstar.net/thread-68024-1-4.html

You can run those links through www.google.com/language_tools - pick chinese ---> english. The OP has a few downloads (its a pull down from another chinese forum, that you have to registered to get to, so he downloaded the page and pics and zipped them up.)

-zappb

P.S I wonder if anyone on the forum speaks/reads mandarin? Would be useful to get a rough summary for what its all about.

Ivan Ivankovic wrote:

CrunchDude wrote:Isn't the FireGL V5200 one of the best GFX cards you can get? And what's with the V5250? I can't find it on ATI's website? Thanks...

FireGL is ATi's line of workstation cards, primarily designed for CAD/CAM use, not gaming (same with NVIDIA QuadroFX).
Don't buy T60p if you plan to do much gaming. the card inside is NOT the choice if you're a gamer.

I see...Well, like someone else, if you have a Thinkpad, I think the FireGL with 256MB of video RAM is the best I can get. Are you saying that the ATI X1400, or one of the "ATI X" series is better for gaming? If so, why? Thanks...

zappb wrote: P.S I wonder if anyone on the forum speaks/reads mandarin? Would be useful to get a rough summary for what its all about.

I dont speak Mandarin, but I think I have a fairly good idea of what they are up to there. They claim the x1400 is really just a locked down x1600. The one file that I cannot get to is the patched inf file. This file is the one that tricks the ATI installer into thinking it has an x1600 card rather than an x1400. Apparently, this does work, and they have benchmarks that show an incredible speed boost when this is done. If anyone could get at that inf, it might be fun to mess around with. Of course, it might not work at all with the newer versions of the Catalyst installer.

I just looked at the similar INF in the newer versions. If I had a copy of their edited version, I might be able to see what they changed, and I could possibly edit the new inf to match...

Any unlocking would probably require modding the hardware, and even if you did, it'd still be a 128MB X1600 (no such thing as a X1650). The equivalent of the V5250 is an X1700.

still I didn't see anything about modding hardware - it looked to be all software hacks...

not sure where i got x1650 from...still those benchmarks increases looks seriously good - thanks for the explanation jjesus

Overclock it by tricking the drivers to believe it's a different card with different clock settings is smart, but then again, one can O/C any card. Even then the X1400 will still have 4 pixel pipelines and 2 vertex shaders, compared to the V5200 and V5250 12 and 5.

But in fact, the V5250 and V5200 in thinkpads are uncerclocked, or at least some kind of "special edition". Probably to compensate for their huge fan design mistake.

is it possible to change out the graphics card on a thinkpad with dedicated graphics?

shahbazi wrote:is it possible to change out the graphics card on a thinkpad with dedicated graphics?

No-not a chance.

Troels wrote:Overclock it by tricking the drivers to believe it's a different card with different clock settings is smart, but then again, one can O/C any card. Even then the X1400 will still have 4 pixel pipelines and 2 vertex shaders, compared to the V5200 and V5250 12 and 5.

But in fact, the V5250 and V5200 in thinkpads are uncerclocked, or at least some kind of "special edition". Probably to compensate for their huge fan design mistake.

Though because of manufacturing procedures, it is always possible that it really has more pixel pipelines, and is just being marketed as a less powerful card, just like higher speed processors are often the same as lower speed ones, just clocked higher. What I would hope this is is a genuine soft mod, which would mean that these chips were actually 1600s, but were locked down to 1400 status. If all this driver fix did was overclock it, that wouldnt change anything I couldnt change already. However, if this was actually a 56 chipset that thought it was a 54, then maybe by tricking the driver into thinking it was a 54, you could run it like one.

I plan to buy a T60p 14" SXGA+ and want to use it for gaming from time to time. Is there any *ghost* issue with fast games due to TFT panel ? I remember my A31p got an IPS flexview screen : very nice color but unable to play Quake III : to much ghost effect.

I just bought Half-Life 2: Episode One this morning, and it runs beautifully in 16:9 (if you're getting it for games, you should really spring for the 15.4 widescreen, I think). According to the CS:Source video stress test, I'm getting about 100 FPS.

Thank you thatcrazycommie. 15,4 laptop are too big for traveling. 14" 4/3 are better compromise for my use. For heavy gaming, I got Core 2 Duo E6600, GeForce 8800 GTX with Dell 2407WFP.

Pascal_TTH wrote:I plan to buy a T60p 14" SXGA+ and want to use it for gaming from time to time. Is there any *ghost* issue with fast games due to TFT panel ? I remember my A31p got an IPS flexview screen : very nice color but unable to play Quake III : to much ghost effect.

The response time on the IPS screens greatly improved after T42. Most users don't have an issue with ghosting on IPS anymore. It's usually the graphics card limitation or overheating that's the problem.

Thank you SkiBunny. True, heat seems to be the most important issue with powerfull T60.

I'am very happy with my T60p ! I can play Morrowind in 1400x1050 with AA 4x. With my old T41p, it was only 1024x768 AA 4x. It's really far nicer in native resolution.