Thinkpads Forum

I am thinking of buying a T60 or T61. I have a couple questions. They come with 2MB or 4MB L2 Cache, does it make a noticeable difference on XP? How about if I upgrade to Vista?

Is it possible to put an aftermarket WWAN (verizon) in any T60?

How is the performance of 128MB discreet graphics in Vista? (I am not into gaming, but I watch movies and like to have tons of windows open. )

Thanks guys! I am new member, but I am a true Thinkpad junkie. This is a great site! You will be seeing a lot more of me!

2MB vs 4MB will only make a difference if you are into intensive gaming.
128MB is more than plenty for Vista.
anything above will make XP fly.

I was going to ask that question at some point...Hmm...I think I'm gonna hold out for erik's response on this one lol...I'm not into gaming either, but I doubt it's just a gaming issue.....

It's not just gaming, but any benefit would be limited to a small set of applications that heavily process a lot of data and have a useful cache set size of 2MB to 4MB. Anything smaller would not see a benefit, and anything larger needs even more cache.

I can imagine that some video processing tools might see some improvement, but I don't know of any real-world applications for sure.

Sounds like the 2MG of L2 would be fine for most uses of XP.

I jsut missed out on a great deal on a T60 on eBay!

Most everyday tasks like Internet and Office will show little performance difference. Only in CPU intensive tasks like audio encoding or 3D rendering will the extra L2 cache on the Core 2 Duo make a larger difference.

I have had Vista Business on my R60 with the integrated Intel graphics cards. Video and Aero ran fine. If you don't plan on gaming, the integrated GPU offers better battery life and less heat if that's a concern.