Thinkpads Forum

UPDATE: issue resolved. The W510 absolutely crawls on 90W power. Needs the 135W adapter.

I made a video to compare my Thinkpads. Both of these were purchased used. I've had the T410s for a couple of years. The W510 was recently purchased.

basic specs:
Thinkpad W510: Core i7 1.6Ghz, 8GB RAM, 1GB nVIDIA Quadro FX 880M, 240GB SSD, 90W power supply
Thinkpad T410s: Core i5 2.53Ghz, 4GB RAM, onboard Intel graphics, 120GB SSD, 65W power supply

To try and minimize the number of variables, I boot both laptops into a Xubuntu Live session, open Firefox and go to speedtest.net and run the speed test. For this comparison, both laptops are booting off the same USB flash drive and use the same ethernet cable.

W510 - horribly slow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYfhHjkT9zw

T410s - much more responsive:
https://youtu.be/tw0ptZbLe7s

I have run Memtest86+ on both to 100% completion, and memory on both passes. The W510 even has a faster SSD (SATA III) vs the SATA II SSD in the T410s.

Any ideas what the problem might be, or how I can go about diagnosing this?

when I got my W510 as a refurbished machine the memory was installed wrong. Getting it installed right speeded it up. https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P ... a-p/249257 Good luck. ~BOB

Restore BIOS settings to default and reboot.

Have you also tried different linux live distros like Linux Mint Debian?

Figured it out - it's the power supply. With the 90W power supply, the laptop is doing a lot of throttling. I redid the test using only battery power and it is much more responsive. Strange Lenovo would design the laptop to run slower (so slow as to be nearly worthless) when plugged in than on battery alone.

AFAIK the W510 ships with a 135w AC adapter. Using the 90w adapter will force the BIOS to throttle the CPU clock to limit power consumption within the adapter's limits.

The W510 with Quad-core CPU and 4 RAM-slots needs the 135W adapter.
The W510 with Core2-Duo Dual-core and 2 RAM-slots came with a 90W adapter.

RealBlackStuff wrote:The W510 with Quad-core CPU and 4 RAM-slots needs the 135W adapter.
The W510 with Core2-Duo Dual-core and 2 RAM-slots came with a 90W adapter.

Thanks for the info. I've got the quad-core and 4 RAM slots.

axur-delmeria wrote:AFAIK the W510 ships with a 135w AC adapter. Using the 90w adapter will force the BIOS to throttle the CPU clock to limit power consumption within the adapter's limits.

It's basically unusable. I think the reports of people who use their W510 with 90W adapters have the Core2-Duo Dual-core machines. The quad-core is borderline not usable on a 90W power supply unless one has lots of patience.

I never had serious speed issues with a W510 on a 90W adapter. Just doing a ctrl+alt+del reboot is supposed to end the throttling. I often did that when I had a W510 but I sometimes forgot and didn't notice any big slowdowns. I got it for the quad core CPU and later replaced it with a W520.

RealBlackStuff wrote:The W510 with Quad-core CPU and 4 RAM-slots needs the 135W adapter.
The W510 with Core2-Duo Dual-core and 2 RAM-slots came with a 90W adapter.

Since when w510 uses Core2Duo CPUs?

Guess I meant Dual-core, Oops!