FrankenPad and Adobe products

[geohsia]

Hi all,
I am a photographer and think I'm about ready to embark on a FrankenPad. I have a few questions:

a) Considering T61p mobo with FX 570m but I already have a T61 laptop with NVS 140m. I know that the 570m won't make a difference for photo editing but I wasn't sure if it would help for video editing either. I see that it's not on the supported GPU list for Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.

I hope to get the T9500 and upgrade to 8 GB of RAM and use my SSD so the system should be zippy.

b) Do you think the 570m will make a difference? Will the NVS 140m be strong enough to drive the 1600x1200 display? I have a problem getting HD video to playback well as is.

What do you guys think? Thanks.

[RealBlackStuff]

I would stay away from T61 models with nVidia GPUs. Their (GPU) failure rate is getting alarming!
The T61 models with Intel 965 integrated graphics (a.k.a. Crestline, X3100) are a much sounder bet.

Is there any alternative to this power-gobbling Windows-crashing Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 ?

[geohsia]

I would stay away from T61 models with nVidia GPUs. Their (GPU) failure rate is getting alarming!
The T61 models with Intel 965 integrated graphics (a.k.a. Crestline, X3100) are a much sounder bet.

Is there any alternative to this power-gobbling Windows-crashing Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 ?

UGH. That's not good news. I was thinking if I did do the upgrade I'd do the dime mod. I'm curious if the GPU failure is because of constant overheating of the GPU which I hear is common w/o the dime mod. The problem is that the HD video from my camera is h.264 1080p and my T61 with NVS 140m struggles as is and I think the Intel integrated graphics would crumble and be brought to its knees even more quickly.

Hmm... what to do...

---Edit----

Ok, I just did a quick search and found that the GPU problem is extremely prevalent and the dime mod is for the T60's not T61p's Ugh.

[RealBlackStuff]

Those T61/Intel GPU models can use up to 256MB RAM.
And the T61 can have up to 8GB RAM.
With a decent CPU, would that not be powerful enough?
Read this: http://www.hardwarezone.com.my/articles ... =2256&pg=4 at the end of this page.

[TTY]

What's your notebook's Type and Model number? It can be found on the bottom of the notebook, the format is seven characters/digits: xxxx-xxx. Don't post your serial number here.

If you plan to get a T9500, make sure your motherboard supports Penryn processors, otherwise you'll get a thermal sensing error upon boot. You can look up the part number of your motherboard here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... yle=lenovo

The NVS 140M supports 1600*1200 resolution.

nVIDIA's graphic chips exist in different steppings, you might have a later stepping that is less prone to failure or where the problem doesn't exist any longer. You should be able to check which stepping you have with PC Doctor, it ought to be pre-installed on your T61.

I haven't seen any claims that motherboards with Intel graphics GMA X3100 would be able to hardware-decode H.264 1080p. The Intel GMA X3100 is specified to be able to playback H.264 1080i and H.264 720p. Maybe it's possible to use a software decoder with such a motherboard.

[geohsia]

@RealBlackStuff - It seems like OSes are moving toward GPU accelerated video. According to the link the video from my DSLR would be high bit-rate so I don't think it will keep up.

@TTY - I have a T61, 7662-CTO. I have the 42W3784 system board and I think only 42W7873 and 42W7874 support Penryn. I think I need something faster than the NVS 140m. I'd stick with just T60p but it only supports 3 GB of RAM. I think with Windows 7 and one or two apps that memory will disappear quickly.