How can I turn my T61 into a gaming computer? (I'm new!)

[J3ff]

First of all, allow me to introduce myself, I'm Jeff, I work with about 200 lenovo laptops ranging from r50's to t60p's to t61's. I'm one of three IT guys for a school. what does this mean? I have access to lots of neat things and more to the point, I really REALLY use my own laptop (t60) and put it through some real tasks.

The ONLY thing I didn't get when I ordered my t60 was a video card.

It turns out that now I have a 22 inch wide screen at my during the week home, and a 20 inch wide screen at my weekend home (really don't ask, no I don't own either one) .... I'd LOVE if I could play games at both, whenever I wanted......so I'm wondering how much $$$ it would take to do what I want.

Current setup:

T61
Type: 6463
Cpu: Core 2 Duo T7300
Memory: 1.96 gb at 777 mhz
HD: Hitachi 120 gig, I assume 5400 rpm ( i can change that if needed)

This is according to my System Properties, I've never heard of 777 mhz but w/e.

The lame thing is my video card. I've never even heard of it.
Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family

I've heard there's some kind of docking station that I can add a video card to in order to boost performance?

That would be sweet if true. I basically want to take my work laptop home, plug it in to a docking station and make it good enough to play half life two......

Is this even possible?

[J3ff]

Oh my gosh I'm such a NOOB, I posted this in the wrong section....many apologies....reporting my own post!

Note from Moderator: Not a problem - moved it for you! Welcome to the forum!

edit: [censored] you guys are fast! !!!

[alacrityathome]

Jeff,

Go to this site: http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/intelgm965/

And, the site will describe the video capability and the gaming possible.

Outside of that, I am not sure you can do anything externally. Even the discrete video cards that are an option with the Lenovo PCs are soldered to the motherboard. I have not heard of anything that will work externally to the PC. At these frequencies of the gpu and cpu, you gotta be physically close together.

[J3ff]

Hmm, I guess if that's the case I need to figure out a reason why we need a new laptop around here (JK).

Tried to download some drivers from that page, it ended up saying "not suitable for the current environment"


I guess I'm looking for this ADVANCED dock

ex. http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=53537

google here I come..

[blackomegax]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5602

pretty much the end-all solution

[J3ff]

The XG Station was scheduled to be released at the beginning of Q2 2007. It is currently unknown if it is still intended for release or has been cancelled.

[madcow]

The video card will determine if you can play games or not. Your configuration, it is not going to play games very well. You can probably play really old games (5-10 years old). You need at least Quadro NVS 140m. The Quadro FX 570m is the best choice for gaming.

[Crunch]

I'd like to know if the ATI FireGL V5200 with 256MB dedicated VRAM, and up to 512MB on XP, and 1GB on Vista by way of Hypermemory is any good for gaming? It's pretty high-end, no?

Also, how is Vista with gaming? Or should I use XP for that. Thanks all!

[Estrogen Kid]

I'd like to know if the ATI FireGL V5200 with 256MB dedicated VRAM, and up to 512MB on XP, and 1GB on Vista by way of Hypermemory is any good for gaming? It's pretty high-end, no?

Also, how is Vista with gaming? Or should I use XP for that. Thanks all!

Your dedicated VRAM matters much more than shared video memory. A decent way to check how well a graphics card can handle games is by benchmarking it with 3dmark06. Like madcow said, Quadro FX 570m 256mb is the best choice available on ThinkPads for gaming right now. Quick comparison with 3dmark06 (got these from notebookcheck.net):

ATI FireGL V5200: 900
Nvidia Quadro FX 570M 256MB: 3800 (5500 with overclocking and modded drivers)
Intel GMA 950: 140

Clearly the integrated graphics will not be able to handle any modern games.

You could buy an advanced dock and put in a PCI-express video card, but keep in mind that the dock can only support PCI cards with a small form factor, so forget trying to put a GeForce 8800GT on it.

[Marin85]

I run 3DMark06 a few days ago and I got:

res. 1900x1200: 1076 benchmarks
res. default (1280x1024): 1600 benchmarks

I have Vista Business 32bit and Mobility FireGL 5200. AFAIK the Mobility FireGL 5200 could hit 2k benchmarks using Omega drivers and some slight overclocking (ATI TrayTools). Unfortunately Omega drivers don´t support Vista yet.

Cheers

Marin

P.S. I saw the gaming/overclocking thread here for nVidia. Maybe, we should open one for ATI? I´m willing to post in the T6x section

[Crunch]

ATI FireGL V5200: 900

Thanks for the tip. According to this...

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobili ... 164.0.html

...the V5200 is based on the X1600, which has a benchmark score double the V5200: 1800

Is it possible to get drivers for this card, specifically for gaming? Could I then always switch between drivers (X1600 driver?), depending on using the card for what they term "professional" use vs. "gaming" use?

Also, being that Vista is a monster OS in size and CPU/RAM/VRAM demand compared to XP, would it be better to use XP for gaming?

Thanks again! Interesting stuff!

[Troels]

The 900 score is dead wrong - it may be true for some notebooks, since underclocking is quite normal for some reason. For the T60p, even with stock drivers, you'd have to run multiple instances of 3dmark06 simultaneously to get that score. It's around 1700 stock.
For DX8 comparisons: 3dmark2k1: ~17k.

Sure, you can modify the X1600 drivers to work with the v5200, no problem, but will require a modtool like:
http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool/

I do not remember what i did on Win XP, but i use the 7.4 catalyst from ati with the v5200, which is somewhat old by now actually.

The Omega drivers also work, but many months ago, when i installed the drivers, the performance with these drivers wasn't quite as expected. Might be much better now though, and installation is more straight-forward.

You cannot switch between multiple driver instances.

J3ff,
I am not sure about the T61, but with the T60 and integrated graphics, there is no possible way to get DVI output. So even if you get a simple dock, your screens may not work with the T61 if you use DVI.

The Advanced dock could be a possiblity, especially if you have the time to experiment with different cards and accept that it may not just work the first time.

[Marin85]

It´s theoretically possible to replace the FireGL driver with a Mobility Radeon one under XP and I would definitely give it a try if I had XP. Unfortunately, AMD doesn´t provide any driver support for Mobility Radeon products under Vista Maybe, Omega Drivers would release something for Vista soon. I don´t know but I hope. Many people out there don´t like Vista...

Happy New Year

Marin

EDIT: I just saw the reply of Troels.

[Marin85]

@Troels: How did you get 1700? Can you post your configuration? I´m asking just out of curiosity

Thanks in advance

Marin

[Troels]

It's been some time since i've run 3dmark06. I uninstalled it again because i needed the extra space...
But the machine is completely stock, nothing is overclocked (wouldn't dare that at those GPU temperature levels)
My T60p is a 2623-DDU but upgraded to 3 GB memory.

I always disable the ATI Hotkey Poller (utility which records the current hotkeys to access catalyst control center) since it polls every few seconds. This is done with:
Start -> Run -> services.msc -> Ati hotkey poller, and disable it.

What else... well, disable as many tasks as possible. Make sure there enough swap space is available.
Performance differs a bit between each benches. But pretty much around 1700 in average.

I'm not sure how many of these advices are usable with Vista. There may still be performance issues in the drivers with Vista, which just needs to be solved.

[EricRC]

I think the band width of the graphic memory also matters. The spec. of the ATI mobility x1300 and X1400 which IBM uses on previous T60s is pretty the same. But the diffirent is the x1400 got 128MB 128Bit graphic memory, while x1300 got only 64MB 64Bit, so there's a gap between their performances.
But you can enhance the performance of the x1300 by extending the system memory.Because not only the capacity but also the band width of the graphic memory can be extended by sharing the system memory.
Here's the reason, The band width of the graphic memory controller of the x1300 was 128 bit, but graphic memory was 64 Bit, so the other half of the band width is shared with the system memory.(I saw this on some other forums before and describe it in my own words, so don't know whether it is exactly accurate)
Also you can get a maximun of 256MB graphic memory by sharing of the system memory
So, if you get a 512MBx2 combo or a 1GBx2 combo to enable the dual channel function, the performance will be strongly enhanced. This is what I did to my 2623-D4U with an x1300 graphic chip and it is quite good effect.