Thinkpads Forum

The Air has it I believe, and it's the only thing lacking. i'd happily give up some battery life in exchange for an improved gpu. guessing i'm in the minority?

The X220 is designed to be a portable corporate productivity notebook. I think for most of its users, a discrete graphics card is low on the priority list.

Get an X31

jk, I agree with ZaZ though, not a high priority for most.

Just wondering, why do you want discrete graphics...?

Cheers.

bluefrisbee wrote:The Air has it I believe, and it's the only thing lacking.

The Air is in my not so humble opinion rather a lifestyle gadget for consumers, so discreete graphics are mainly a sales incentive. While being a nice design product, it is lacking many other features which rather disqualifies it as a proper business notebook. But this has already been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere, and therefore there is no need to further elaborate on this topic.

bluefrisbee wrote:i'd happily give up some battery life in exchange for an improved gpu. guessing i'm in the minority?

A discreete GPU doesn't really make sense for a machine which is in first place designed for maximum portability and business reliability. Also, there are sufficient Thinkpad alternatives to cover any work requirements for GPU intensive tasks.

Personally, while not using any X series Thinkpad, i do avoid discreete graphics like the plague, because i do prefer a silent and, although it almost never leaves the desk, potentially long running machine over any IMHO (for my own computing requirements) superfluous GPU performance. Other than that, the integrated graphics in slightly older Thinkpad generations are already a far cry from the ones in recent models. If i am not completely mistaken, recent integrated graphics already easily outperform older Thinkpad's like the T6x's discreete graphics.

bluefrisbee wrote:The Air has it I believe, and it's the only thing lacking. i'd happily give up some battery life in exchange for an improved gpu. guessing i'm in the minority?

The Air only has it in the C2D model, due to the small CPU die. In the newest Air, there is only integrated Intel graphics (HD3000).

Honestly, your best bet in seeing superior GPU power in X series is in AMD Llano solutions, such as in the X120e refresh.

bluefrisbee wrote:The Air has it I believe, and it's the only thing lacking. i'd happily give up some battery life in exchange for an improved gpu. guessing i'm in the minority?

I went through the same debate. My initial choice to switch from long time Mac usage was a Sony Vaio. However, I am really glad that I chose a ThinkPad. It does everything exceptionally well, no bloatware, no overheating and less noise. Also, I ultimately didn't find discreet graphics necessary because I realized that a gaming laptop has a really short shelf life in terms of being able to play the latest games. Regardless, I do play the occasional older game like Civilization 4 with no issues.