Thinkpads Forum

Hello everyone
I was looking on ebay and it seems you can get some great deals on refurb thinkpads.
I just sold my macbook and am looking to get one. I found a T510 with an i7-620M and the Quadro FX880M chip for a great price.
I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience in buying refurb thinkpads from ebay and perhaps they could tell me a bit about how it is.
Thanks

T510's don't come with FX880M's as graphics cards; the W510 does. The T510 gets a NVS3100M instead.
Aside from the internals, the T510 and W510 are the same chassis.

My friends have T510's; they comment that although it's a bit on the bulky side, it's a tough laptop and stays cool under operation. The CPU and GPU are enough for some casual gaming and general usage.

Colonel O'Neill wrote:T510's don't come with FX880M's as graphics cards; the W510 does. The T510 gets a NVS3100M instead.
Aside from the internals, the T510 and W510 are the same chassis.

My friends have T510's; they comment that although it's a bit on the bulky side, it's a tough laptop and stays cool under operation. The CPU and GPU are enough for some casual gaming and general usage.

That is what I thought about the graphics chips, but the ebay listing says it includes the FX880M
Here's the link http://cgi.ebay.ca/Lenovo-Thinkpad-T510 ... 1383wt_942
Is it just me or does it not make sense?
I'm buying the laptop to do CAD work for university, so I kinda want the FX880 chip. Does you know how the NVS3100M chip performs for CAD? I haven't heard too much good things about it, just that it's kind of a mediocre chip.

I wouldn't trust that ad very much; it lists the i7-620M by it's turbo frequency of 3.33GHz rather than it's base frequency, which is kinda cheap.

The NVS3100M card is a bit weak for anything beyond casual gaming, but I'm not sure how well it'd do for CAD; it's drivers are the professional variant, meaning they'll do better with CAD work than they will rendering zombies. (Unless your work happens to involve both O_O)

You can get a dual-core W510 or even a quad-core W510 if you think your CAD work needs it. However, the FX880M does not have Optimus, so power consumption will be a bit higher unless you manually underclock it when you're not using it.

No, it's not you. The T510 does not offer the FX880. If you're really interested ask for the machine type. You can plug that into Lenovo's website and get the specs. Either they're lying or stupid and it doesn't come with the FX880, or it's a mislabeled W510, which makes it a better deal. Not much of a GPU guru, but I would think the 880m would offer much better performance. My question would be do you want to do CAD on a WXGA screen?

FredGarvin wrote:No, it's not you. The T510 does not offer the FX880. If you're really interested ask for the machine type. You can plug that into Lenovo's website and get the specs. Either they're lying or stupid and it doesn't come with the FX880, or it's a mislabeled W510, which makes it a better deal. Not much of a GPU guru, but I would think the 880m would offer much better performance. My question would be do you want to do CAD on a WXGA screen?

I'm not too concerned about the screen, as I'm sure it'd be fine for work when I need to be mobile, the rest of the time it'd be plugged into a 1080p HP monitor which is of decent quality, nothing fancy though.
I just sent the seller a message about it asking about the GPU to see if they know anything, I'm not too hopeful though.

I've only got 1300 dollars so I think the W510 may be a bit out of the price range, but I'm not too sure.
Does anyone know how much the i7-620 outperforms the i5-520?
There are a few W510's that are affordable to me but they all have the i5 chip rather than i7.

Also the ad says "Lenovo Item # 4313CTR (Custom Built unit) xxxN47K" Am I able to tell anything from what using the site?

To be honest, you can get a completely new T510 with i5-560M (same clock sa i7-620M, just 3MB cache instead of 4MB) with FHD screen and NVS3100M, BT, and the 6300WLAN for about $1150 after HST.

You kinda missed the huge 40% coupon from RFD and the somewhat smaller 35% coupon from Lenovo.

You can try to wait for Lenovo to try and clear it's stock of Tx10's when they introduce the Sandy Bridge laptops at CES next month.

Colonel O'Neill wrote:To be honest, you can get a completely new T510 with i5-560M (same clock sa i7-620M, just 3MB cache instead of 4MB) with FHD screen and NVS3100M, BT, and the 6300WLAN for about $1150 after HST.

You kinda missed the huge 40% coupon from RFD and the somewhat smaller 35% coupon from Lenovo.

You can try to wait for Lenovo to try and clear it's stock of Tx10's when they introduce the Sandy Bridge laptops at CES next month.

Where did you get that configuration? I can't seem to get it on the American site or Canadian. I live in Canada btw
Sucks that I missed coupons

Watch RedFlagDeals; they give out Lenovo Canada coupons. Sign up for the Lenovo newsletter too.

I got that configuration with the 40% boxing day coupon, but I believe I left the HDD at base because I was planning on putting in my own Scorpio Black drive.

A new laptop isn't in the forecast for me at the moment.

Colonel O'Neill wrote:Watch RedFlagDeals; they give out Lenovo Canada coupons. Sign up for the Lenovo newsletter too.

I got that configuration with the 40% boxing day coupon, but I believe I left the HDD at base because I was planning on putting in my own Scorpio Black drive.

A new laptop isn't in the forecast for me at the moment.

I just checked it out and it seems I can get a W510 with the 1600x900 screen, 4GBs of RAM and something else upgraded that I can't think of for 1240 taxes in.
I'm so excited.
Thanks a ton for telling me about the coupon!

EDIT
Just bought this!

Wow. Niiiice.
I'd say to upgrade your HDD to a 500GB Scorpio Black, but I think $1240.57 should be enough to satiate your year-end spending spree.

Colonel O'Neill wrote:Wow. Niiiice.
I'd say to upgrade your HDD to a 500GB Scorpio Black, but I think $1240.57 should be enough to satiate your year-end spending spree.

I vow to not spend any more money for the rest of the year haha
Perhaps I'll upgrade the hd to a better model sometime

One thing that I noticed now though, I have win7 32 bit as my OS but 4GBs of ram. I've got Win7 64 bit on disk that I can install but I watched a video saying they made tweaks for windows 7 so it'd boot faster. Will those tweaks no longer apply if I install my own version of windows 7?

Yes, the tweaks only apply to their preloaded OS. Windows 7 32-bit is fine; I still run it with four gigs of RAM.

On a T510 (and I presume, W510), the limit is capped at 3GB usable. That said, you can load up one of those RAMdisk apps to use that unmanaged memory as a swap file partition (if done improperly can cause BSoD), or get a nifty program called eBoostr that allows you to load 896MB worth of most often accessed files into RAM (these are usually small files, where RAM excels at and platter drives are weakest) to complement the hard drive. I use eBoostr on my T400 (which is capped at 2.46GB, grr.) also with an SD card to make things run really snappy.

That said, most unmanaged-memory-as-page-file programs are paid, as is eBoostr.

I'm curious, does the T410 (2522-RE3) support max 3.6 GB RAM for Windows 7 Pro in 32-bit, or is it 3.25 GB RAM that eBoostr claim?

Hmm, that does sound neat but I think I'd rather have all 4GBs of RAM.
I emailed the Lenovo order help link asking if it's possible I get the 64bit rather than 32bit, so hopefully that gets to the right person and they can get 64 bit on it.
Are the Lenovo tweaks noticeable or not really?

I know 7x86 will use up to 3GB in the discrete only models. eBoostr can claim 896MB between 3GB and 4GB.

You could always use the ReadyFor4GB patch, which is known to break XP Mode. Doesn't work with the ATI/Intel switchable graphics though, so try at your own leisure.

Colonel O'Neill wrote:I know 7x86 will use up to 3GB in the discrete only models. eBoostr can claim 896MB between 3GB and 4GB.

You could always use the ReadyFor4GB patch, which is known to break XP Mode. Doesn't work with the ATI/Intel switchable graphics though, so try at your own leisure.

I'll probably just end up installing my own version of Windows, without the "Lenovo optimized Windows 7" or whatever it's called
Hopefully they get my email though and are able to install the Lenovo version of x64
Either way, I can't wait to get it!

Is the Scorpio Black an option you can get from Lenovo, or have to buy it and install it yourself?

Colonel O'Neill wrote:Wow. Niiiice.
I'd say to upgrade your HDD to a 500GB Scorpio Black, but I think $1240.57 should be enough to satiate your year-end spending spree.

you can download and install windows 7 x64, just find the iso from MS or a friend. Your oem key and cert are valid for either 32 or 64 os.

You can probably also get an ultrabay adapter, ditch the DVD (if you dont use it much like me) and install your oem HD on there, and a SSD boot drive.