Thinkpads Forum

OK, buying a new Thinkpad for my son for college. He has a nice T42 (soon to be on marketplace) with a flexview screen, ATI9600 graphics and a 2.0GHz CPU, but it's not cutting it at engineering school. The only difference between the T500 and the W500 (other than CTO configuration differences) appears to be the graphics chip - ATI Fire V5700 with 512MbRAM vs the ATI 3650 with 256Mb VRAM. How do these two chipsets compare (2D, 3D, gaming, autocad, etc)?

AFAIK, the gaming performance of both cards using Lenovo image and Lenovo drivers (so, no driver tweaks and no clean installation) seem to be pretty much the same. Considering the larger amount of VRAM, the FireGL card may even perform better in games with the "proper" gaming drivers.

The FireGL card is recommended for CAD and OpenGL applications. I don´t know about Autocad, but on Maya and 3dsMax the FireGL card can make a lot of difference. Also, I believe the FireGL card is recommended for AMD/ATI Stream SDK (the ATI alternative to nVidia CUDA). Apart from this, the FireGL card is supposed to be more stable (due to mission-critic business applications).

Maybe a few forum members with T500 and W500 machines would be willing to benchmark their machines with SPECviewperf and post here their results.

Besides the GPU, the other major difference between the T500 and W500 is that the latter can be had with a WUXGA (1920x1200) screen while the T500 maxes out at WSXGA+ (1680x1050), which is the minimum for the W500.

Thanks guys. I was wondering if the V5700 and the 3650 were basically the same chip, like many of the ATI families are. The extra 256Mb RAM sounds like it would be useful if they are. The W500 is about $50 cheaper also!

Decisions, decisions!

I believe hardware-wise they are basically the same chip. The FireGL only comes with all the OpenGL stuff unlocked. Some time ago it was possible to unlock all the OpenGL features of a non-professional ATI card just by modifying the drivers. To my best knowledge this is not possible anymore, because ATI/AMD has "hardwared" it somehow (disclaimer: this is what I heard). Correct me if I´m wrong but the T500 is also available with a low resolution (for 15.4'') screen with LED backlit...

I find it somewhat surprising that cet. par. W500 is cheaper than T500 BTW, the extra VRAM can come very handy with CAD and OpenGL applications, but it also makes the laptop slightly hotter.

I'm pleased to report that my W500 with a config of 2.8 / 4GB / 7200 rpm runs very fast, cool & quiet. More so than my T60p, even though it runs at or below normal temp ranges. So in my particular case the open GL card does not add much heat. Even when running Maya and even more resource intensive apps. When doing regular work such as spreadsheets, reports, & such, with many apps open it runs completely silent and there is no warmth to be felt anywhere. Simply amazing.
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Cheers
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If you're intent on buying W500 just for the WUXGA screen, don't. It leaves a lot to be desired, and I'm being nice here.

Apart from that, and a couple of driver issues, it's a great machine. I like it a lot better than T61p (another one with a weak WUXGA LCD) that we've owned.

W500 is cool and quiet until pushed hard. And it can be pushed hard with no fear. There's not much-if anything-that I don't see this machine being capable of.

Hope this helps.

ajkula66 wrote:If you're intent on buying W500 just for the WUXGA screen, don't. It leaves a lot to be desired, and I'm being nice here.

I agree completely, especially after being spoiled with the IPS WUXGA screens I have on my Txxp models. I addition I have a good friend with a W500 equipped with the WUXGA displays and it's quite poor. Then to make things even more interesting, I decided to order my W500 with WSXGA+. Placed side by side next to his machine the display on mine looks so much better. A very discouraging result for those of us that prefer and _need_ the higher resolution for work.
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It would certainly be welcome to see Lenovo address this issue going forward, by offering us a higher quality display.
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Cheers...
Posted via BlackBerry

The IPS panel on your T60p is has UXGA resolution (non-wide)

Marin85 wrote:The IPS panel on your T60p is has UXGA resolution (non-wide)

Sheesh.... my typos are everywhere.....

Ah.. yes the wonderful UXGA conventional format. This W500 is my first wide screen and it's an odd feeling. Funny how one gets so used to a certain format that by going wider it's such an annoyance....

archer6 wrote:Ah.. yes the wonderful UXGA conventional format. This W500 is my first wide screen and it's an odd feeling. Funny how one gets so used to a certain format that by going wider it's such an annoyance....

I couldn´t agree more! If I had 4:3 T60p IPS, I would have been probably waiting until Lenovo would release a 4:3 ThinkPad again (or at least IPS even if it should be wide)

Marin85 wrote:I believe hardware-wise they are basically the same chip. The FireGL only comes with all the OpenGL stuff unlocked. Some time ago it was possible to unlock all the OpenGL features of a non-professional ATI card just by modifying the drivers. To my best knowledge this is not possible anymore, because ATI/AMD has "hardwared" it somehow (disclaimer: this is what I heard). Correct me if I´m wrong but the T500 is also available with a low resolution (for 15.4'') screen with LED backlit...

I find it somewhat surprising that cet. par. W500 is cheaper than T500 BTW, the extra VRAM can come very handy with CAD and OpenGL applications, but it also makes the laptop slightly hotter.

do you have any information on unlocking the FireGL capibilities on a regular ATI Radeon? or more accurately an ATI Mobility Radeon with 16mb VRAM and 144mhz gpu?

@TheRedFox: Are you serious about this thing? I admit I meant "older" cards, but not that old... Probably, it doesn´t even have any "OpenGL features" as at this time there wasn´t any OpenGL Joke aside, if you provide the exact model, I could search, but to be honest I highly doubt there would be any modded drivers for it that would be meant to increase its OpenGL performance.

Marin85 wrote:@TheRedFox: Are you serious about this thing? I admit I meant "older" cards, but not that old... Probably, it doesn´t even have any "OpenGL features" as at this time there wasn´t any OpenGL Joke aside, if you provide the exact model, I could search, but to be honest I highly doubt there would be any modded drivers for it that would be meant to increase its OpenGL performance.

probably not *sigh* lol
I couldn't find any exact model info, but I think you're right that it probably wouldn't make a difference. besides, what would I use it for? I'm pretty sure all the OpenGL apps that my card can handle (like Cube-engine) probably already run well enough.

@RedFox: You could try Ray Adams ATI Tray Tools. It offers an amazing variety of settings and tweaks for most ATI graphics cards, this includes OpenGL tweaks as well.

Cheers,

Marin