T61p review on notebookreview.com

[gator]

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3889

Answers my question about the HSF unit design on the T61 compared to T60. Results look AWESOME. If only the had a flexview option on the T61s

[Troels]

I think one of the BAT readings from the T60 is wrong. On my T60p, they are 30 and 32 degrees C, while his look like 31 and 50. That sounds unsafe.

Nice review.

About the flexview, Dimitri P. made a thread some days ago raising the question if T61p motherboards could be used with the T60/T60p 15" models.
I can't see why not, the ports on the right side like VGA and USB is extended from the smaller motherboard anyways.
I had my doubts about the battery earlier, but the reviewer says the keyboard and battery are compatible.

But what are the odds of the reviewer wanting to try such a obscure and crazy mod?!

[Puppy]

No PCMCIA slot option ?

[dickeywang]

It hit 5% on the battery gauge after running for 3 hours and 33 minutes

This doesn't look good. I know it's a powerful machine, but 3-1/2 hours still seems to low for the 9-cell.

[Pocket Aces]

No PCMCIA slot option ?

You get one PCMCIA slot and one ExpressCard/SmartCard slot.

[Puppy]

This doesn't look good. I know it's a powerful machine, but 3-1/2 hours still seems to low for the 9-cell.

I suspect the NVIDIA thing. Any (technical) reason why Lenovo has switched to them from ATI ?

[Pascal_TTH]

ATI was far to late on the market with their DirectX 10 GPU. Not only Lenovo switch from ATI to NVIDIA but also Apple and HP for the mobile workstations. Also, performances and performance per watt is far better on GeForce 8 series then Radeon HD.

For battery life, new GPU (DirectX 10) offer of course far better performances but they also draw much more power from the battery. During a Toshiba laptop presentation, a technical guy tells me that battery life with Quadro NVS 140m is 1 hour shorter then with GMA X3100. Here we can see T61p battery life is about 1 hour less then T60p. That the price to pay to have twice 3D power...

[pianowizard]

I suspect the NVIDIA thing.

And Vista.

[Troels]

ATI was far to late on the market with their DirectX 10 GPU. Not only Lenovo switch from ATI to NVIDIA but also Apple and HP for the mobile workstations. Also, performances and performance per watt is far better on GeForce 8 series then Radeon HD.

For battery life, new GPU (DirectX 10) offer of course far better performances but they also draw much more power from the battery. During a Toshiba laptop presentation, a technical guy tells me that battery life with Quadro NVS 140m is 1 hour shorter then with GMA X3100. Here we can see T61p battery life is about 1 hour less then T60p. That the price to pay to have twice 3D power...

Agreed, it does not look good at all for AMD. Nothing seems to go their way at the moment:

- Crappy linux drivers.
- Intel pretty much outsells them in processors.
- Laptop manufacturers seldom uses ATi/AMD GPUs now because they were delayed for Santa Rosa.
- BIOS issues on HD2400 and 2600.
- Performance of their GFX is not too good considering the price.

Now i don't know anything about the power usage of the HD cards, but nVidias offering have always been crap when it came to efficiency - anyone recall the 5700?

The price for the double 3D power is even higher. One needs to measure the battery life during gaming, and it will be more than one hour of difference. That is: that's how it used to be.

[Pascal_TTH]

Yes, that's a really bad situations for AMD now. Since GeForce FX and Pentium 4, things have change a lot. Intel and NVIDIA focus now on performance per watt. Even if GeForce 8800 GTX is power hungry, performances are there. Radeon X2900 XT eats more power, generates more heat but brings less performances. So, if not to important for desktop, it's critical for laptops !

If the desktop GPU have some *defaults*, mobile counterpart have the same beacause they share the same internal achitecture.

[tomh009]

Yes, that's a really bad situations for AMD now. Since GeForce FX and Pentium 4, things have change a lot. Intel and NVIDIA focus now on performance per watt. Even if GeForce 8800 GTX is power hungry, performances are there. Radeon X2900 XT eats more power, generates more heat but brings less performances. So, if not to important for desktop, it's critical for laptops!

We don't really have a lot of data on recent ATI mobile chipsets -- are they bad for power consumption? And are they as bad as the new Nvidia chipsets? The ATI delays may have caused Lenovo et al to switch to Nvidia, but certainly the T61 discrete graphics (Nvidia) power consumption is much higher than that for T60 (which had ATI). I'm not seeing the Nvidia focus on performance per watt, really.

Intel, though, has definitely got on the efficiency bandwagon. A little bit late (compared to AMD, which was offering high-efficiency CPUs years ago when Intel was doing Pentium 4), but they have immense engineering resources so they have been able to outperform AMD on that front recently.

[Pascal_TTH]

Yes, that's a really bad situations for AMD now. Since GeForce FX and Pentium 4, things have change a lot. Intel and NVIDIA focus now on performance per watt. Even if GeForce 8800 GTX is power hungry, performances are there. Radeon X2900 XT eats more power, generates more heat but brings less performances. So, if not to important for desktop, it's critical for laptops!

We don't really have a lot of data on recent ATI mobile chipsets -- are they bad for power consumption? And are they as bad as the new Nvidia chipsets? The ATI delays may have caused Lenovo et al to switch to Nvidia, but certainly the T61 discrete graphics (Nvidia) power consumption is much higher than that for T60 (which had ATI). I'm not seeing the Nvidia focus on performance per watt, really.

Intel, though, has definitely got on the efficiency bandwagon. A little bit late (compared to AMD, which was offering high-efficiency CPUs years ago when Intel was doing Pentium 4), but they have immense engineering resources so they have been able to outperform AMD on that front recently.

Witch Radeon vs witch Quadro ?
For high end, Quadro FX 570m is more the two time faster then the FireGL V5200/V5250. FireGL V5200/V5250 is a bit more powerfull then Quadro NVS 140m. So for same level of performances, you have to compare a T61 with Quadro NVS 140 and T60(p) with FireGL V5200/5250. GMA X3100 neraly offers the same level of performance then the Radeon X1300.

In desktop GPU, Radeon HD 2900 XT (200 watts) sucks more power then GeForce 8800 GTX (170 watts) and only offers the performance level of the GeForce 8800 GTS (140 watts). What more, with it's full copper heatsink and a very loud fan, Radeon HD 2900 XT run at about 90°C to 95°C while GeForce 8800 GTX with alu/copper HSF runs very quiet at about 80°C to 85°C. In entry level and mid range, power consumption is closer but all GeForce 8 (8600 and 8400) out perform the Radeon counterpart (2600 and 2400). Also, R600 architecture have impostant issues : not enough ROP, too few texturing units and really poor drivers witch still have important shadow rendering issues. So really don't expect great mobility Radeon at any point.