Thinkpads Forum

Hi, I've searched around here, no luck, and once again Lenovo's documentation is a complete failure which doesn't help. How their engineers tolerate working with such an awful marketing team tainting their brilliant efforts is beyond me.

Does anyone know if the W series thinkpads have switchable graphics in similar vein to the new T series models?

Okay, the page here indicates NO switchable graphics option on W series:

http://www.pc.ibm.com/uk/thinkpad/ (see table at bottom).

The TAbook says that all W500 models have switchable graphics. I would take that as the more reliable source. W700 models probably do not. (based on the battery life claims)

Noted, thanks Andrew.

Well - I now have mine and also Lenovo has done a BLOG post.

W500 has switchable graphics - but "hot" switching only works under Vista. Under XP - you must choose in the BIOS.

awolfe63 wrote:Well - I now have mine and also Lenovo has done a BLOG post.

W500 has switchable graphics - but "hot" switching only works under Vista. Under XP - you must choose in the BIOS.

Whoa, you have one already? Would you mind running some gaming benchmarks?

What do you suggest? I'm not much of a gamer so I don't have many games.

I guess a 3DMark06 will have to do then. Also, post your specs.

My specs are here

Almost the same as the T500 reviewed by Notebook Review here which scored 4371

Two runs - I get 3904 and 3884.

Could be that the FireGL drivers are more conservative and thus slower. Could be an XP/Vista difference.

awolfe63 wrote:My specs are here

Almost the same as the T500 reviewed by Notebook Review here which scored 4371

Two runs - I get 3904 and 3884.

Could be that the FireGL drivers are more conservative and thus slower. Could be an XP/Vista difference.

According to Notebookcheck: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison ... 130.0.html
The FireGL v5700 should be on par with the Radeon HD 3650 in terms of 3DMark scores since the FireGL is based on the Radeon HD, it should be faster than the Radeon on things like CAD.
I too would like to know if it's possible to use Radeon driver on the FireGL chip, like what people on laptopvideo2go.com do with the Nvidia Quadro chips.

It turns out that my machine has an overheating problem - so my results should be treated as unreliable.

awolfe63 wrote:It turns out that my machine has an overheating problem - so my results should be treated as unreliable.

Do you recall what range of frame rates you were seeing during 3DMark06's first game test and was it running with smooth motion?

No - it was slow - 12-15, I think. It is in the shop now.

awolfe63 wrote:No - it was slow - 12-15, I think. It is in the shop now.

That should be about right .... my T61 with the T7500 2.2 with 2Gb Ram and the Nvidia 140M (default settings) benchmarked at only 1669 and the first test frame rates were only around 4-8.

My older desktop unit with a single core P4-3.0, 2Gb of Ram and an older ATI X800XT benchmarked at 1912 with frame rates from 10-15. The old single core P4 was really slowing things down even with a 10,000 RPM WD Raptor HD and the test results listed that the max to be expected from the older single core P4s at only about 2250 on the benchmark scale. The dual cores had common reported ranges well over 10,000 depending on the video card used. The quad cores were reporting well over 30,000!

It seems (to me at least) that the type of processor and it's speed is just as important as the type of video card.

Thanks for the info

I ran 3DMark06 again with my overheating problem fixed - same results.

awolfe63 wrote:I ran 3DMark06 again with my overheating problem fixed - same results.

I sure hope Lenovo finds a way to step up to the HD3850 GPU next model year