Just restored a binned W500 - need driver advice

[wujstefan]

I have picked up a "damaged" W500 today.
Its owner stated its GPU died, and wanted to dump it - picked it up for a quarterpack of beer.

After putting some light with the flashlight directly on the screen it turned out that the bulb has died. I had a complete, perfect shaped WSXGA+ display from T500, so gave a shot. The system is in perfect shape, it seems barely used really. It works very nice w/ T500 lid sporting V5700...

And now comes the question - V5700 is essentially a HD3650, but with double VRAM. Did anyone try 3650 drivers on such system? Any recomendation / advice would be great.

[Cigarguy]

I gave away my W500 V5700 with the ATI driver from Lenovo a few months ago. But I remember it working perfectly with this driver. And you're right, in normal everyday use, hardly noticed a difference between compared to the 3650. I love these T/W500 machines in 15.4" format. Better, hardware wise, than a T61 and 4-5 I've owned over the years always had a great screen for not being Flexview. I still prefer the 4:3 Flexviews of yester years.

[TPFanatic]

The 3650 and V5700 driver are included in the same Lenovo Switchable Graphics driver package. Forcing it to think it is one or the other, that I don't know how to do. I think the V5700 may be marginally better in some games, NFS Hot Pursuit seemed to run a little smoother on W500 than my T500 and overall it sucked on both so it's a negligible difference.

Where would the extra VRAM make a difference?

[Cigarguy]

I'm guessing back in the day, some professional drawing or CAD programs.

Can't see AMD/ATI making separate drivers for a V5700 and HD3650 considering they are the same thing except for more vRAM.

[wujstefan]

V5700 drivers should actually have lower clocks for stability. Clocks seem just the same, however.

I have both T500 and W500, will perform some tests and let you all know. W500 should work way better with CAD software.

[Hans Gruber]

I have a couple of W500's with 3.06ghz processor and a couple of T500 models with 2.8ghz processor. There is no real difference in 2017 between the models. Even with an SSD and 8GB of ram they are dated but still highly functional daily drivers.

Out of curiosity OP, what is the CPU in your recently acquired W500?

[TPFanatic]

I would appreciate guidance on undervolting T9400 processors. Most the T500s in my house are running those and they're hot as hell even after repasting and frequent dust expulsion. The T/W500 models seem to fill up on dust easily, and the behaviors of their particular users of course does not help, so I would like to try undervolting to ideally lower temps by at least 5-10 degrees so I needn't run the fans as much.

[wujstefan]

Out of curiosity OP, what is the CPU in your recently acquired W500?

T9600 - already "upgraded" with P9700. With D-IDA it is pretty much the same while way cooler.

I would appreciate guidance on undervolting T9400 processors. Most the T500s in my house are running those and they're hot as hell even after repasting and frequent dust expulsion. The T/W500 models seem to fill up on dust easily, and the behaviors of their particular users of course does not help, so I would like to try undervolting to ideally lower temps by at least 5-10 degrees so I needn't run the fans as much.

You shouldn't have much trouble with that. Tried Throttlestop? I'm undervolting a P9600 in my frankenpad and it works really nice (43C at idle, 68C under load for such an old unit is more than OK I guess). PM me if any help needed, but this should cause no problem really. T-series CPUs undervolt nicely in most cases, Intel must have put a big voltage margin on these CPUs.

The unit that I've got winded up to 70C at idle, and close to 90C at load. After dusting / repasting it's the like of 45C at idle and 75C under load (T9600). When swapped to P it does not reach 70C w/ fan at max. When the fan is artifically off (spinning starting at 70C), it holds on lower 60s bumping higher time to time (like every 10-15 mins of work). That's at least when working on ATI GPU. I can't switch graphics on W7 for whatever reason so can't check it on X4500M, but presumably should be way lower.

I wonder why T400 is way, WAY cooler system while having same technology inside with less space.

[EngineersCake]

Not sure if this will help, but I recently found this resource:
https://download.lenovo.com/eol/index.html

Got all the drivers for my T61p there.

[4uk4a]

Microsoft says that the driver is one:
http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com ... px?q=V5700
http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com ... =hd%203650