Would you buy a T43 today?

[Dekks]

The CPU goes up to 2.26Ghz (Pentium M 780)
I did not notice too much difference between a 1.86ghz 750 and 780 since they all have the same TDP.
720p is 100% fine for local file playback and can also handle youtube 720p but not 60fps.
I would say 720p utilization is around 30% to 60% depending on the video quality and codec (MPEG2 requires much less CPU power due to the GPU acceleration and lower quality but H264 would certainly take 60% CPU power for a Pentium M 780 but the image quality looks amazing)
The top 2.26ghz also handles some 1080p video playback while the common 750 simply cannot.
MPC is recommended because it outputs maximum efficiency even though the UI does not look too good.

It's a 15in IPS model that runs Openbox on Arch, I've never run any Windows on it.

Since my last post i was puzzled by the CPU/temps/fan speed & general performance post upgrade.

First some background I got it originally from ebay for 15GBP sans HD/memory & it was described as spares only. Since adding HD/caddy & memory I've used it for work doing standard ops and while the performance was OK & it never hit me as a great performer the IPS screen made up for that even if the fan was knackered. It never could keep up with my 2Ghz X32 doing the same arch upgrades which I put down to CPU difference & it being generally in poorer condition unmatched RAM etc etc.

However by yesterday evening it was clear the initial snappiness noted was an illusion and yes it played 720p video a tad better, the performance using my existing docs/web browsing showed little increase and the temps settled down to being +/- 1/2C as before depending on load.

After using powertop/inxi system utility i noticed the CPU wasn't doing anything at other than 800Mhz [RBS & ajkula66 can start laughing now - they probably know why instantly - took me a bit longer pouring thru the BIOS power management pages] Initially i thought the ebay CPU was locked in low speed mode as it as a reject. I've never looked at the T43 BIOS before and it had speedstep power AC settings set to Auto & balanced modes which i changed to Max Perf - lo and behold the CPU realised it's a 2.13Ghz and now most web pages load instantly. It gets hotter rapidly when utilized fully but the fan speeds up far quicker and peaks over 1000rpm higher than before and it cools quite rapidly down to its idle temp of 51C. Totally different system now

[600X]

For some reason, my T43 is performing worse than my X41 when it comes to videos. On Xubuntu, my X41 can play 480p content without any problems. On my T43 however, 480p videos are very choppy to the point that audio gets desynced. Not sure what to make of this. It's running Xubuntu as well and has the 1.86GHz CPU coupled with the X300. Perhaps the Ubuntu Radeon driver is the problem?

[ajkula66]

@600X:

Are you connecting wirelessly or via LAN?

[600X]

I'm connecting wirelessly. I do know that the old Radeons and Ubuntu aren't the best match, but as long as I maximize the clock speed on my T60 for example (X1400), I can play 720p YouTube just fine. (also under Xubuntu)

[ajkula66]

I'm connecting wirelessly.

Try loading the same video(s) via LAN connection and let us know whether you've noticed a difference.

[brchan]

Many "cutting edge" distros like Ubuntu, Xubuntu, arch, etc. have dropped accelerated driver support for older, dedicated gpus. This was certainly the case for the S3 video driver in my T23 a couple years ago.

Try booting BunsenLabs linux, since It worked very well on my T43 the last time I used it a couple months ago. If you haven't already, try testing chrome and firefox as well.

[600X]

@George

I'll try your advice when I get the chance. It is surprisingly hard to find a wired connection here on campus.

@brchan

I am very much open for different distros. However, the desktop environment is very important to me. I can't stand LXDE and Openbox, which is why I went with Xubuntu and XFCE. I don't have high demands, but easy tweaking of the trackpoint speed, support for the fingerprintreader and a couple of other things are very important to me.

[Dekks]

Many "cutting edge" distros like Ubuntu, Xubuntu, arch, etc. have dropped accelerated driver support for older, dedicated gpus. This was certainly the case for the S3 video driver in my T23 a couple years ago.

Try booting BunsenLabs linux, since It worked very well on my T43 the last time I used it a couple months ago. If you haven't already, try testing chrome and firefox as well.

Not true for arch, xf86-video-savage is still in main repos. However you need a boat load of old dependencies for XAA and then will need to hack Xorg to get it to work. The problem is the removal of XAA from mainline Xorg support many years ago.

[600X]

So would you recommend me switching to Arch? I'd be in on that because I could keep XFCE then. Do you have a link to a step by step guide? I'm not really that good at Linux, but I can usually do most things on my own as long as there is a detailed guide available.

[ajkula66]

So would you recommend me switching to Arch? I'd be in on that because I could keep XFCE then. Do you have a link to a step by step guide? I'm not really that good at Linux, but I can usually do most things on my own as long as there is a detailed guide available.

I'd be interested in this myself...

On a somewhat different note, I've done a quick test (booting from the live DVD) last night on my T43pSF: Mint Betsy (Debian-based), Zorin and CentOS 6. I was able to play 480p videos with no major stuttering and would presume that the situation would improve if the actual OS was installed on the SSD. Having said that, the machine ran *really* hot under Mint.

[kfzhu1229]

For some reason, my T43 is performing worse than my X41 when it comes to videos. On Xubuntu, my X41 can play 480p content without any problems. On my T43 however, 480p videos are very choppy to the point that audio gets desynced. Not sure what to make of this. It's running Xubuntu as well and has the 1.86GHz CPU coupled with the X300. Perhaps the Ubuntu Radeon driver is the problem?

Which T43 are you talking about? Integrated GPU or ATI Radeon? X41 definitely has the integrated version and I noticed the integrated GPU performs better in video playback but lacks a lot in terms of gaming. I have the Radeon X300 and Pentium M 780 on mine. And there is definitely something wrong with your OS because a T43 under Microsoft Edge it plays YouTube 720p just fine as long as it is not 60fps and without any other apps eating the CPU including flash ads. Netflix IS a problem though for some reason. Just for reference, my T43 also plays 1080p fine under Windows 7 and I'm talking about h264 in all cases. There is another possibility is that your CPU is the lower speed ones (Pentium M below 750) which actually does hurt the video performance by quite a bit. I tried Pentium M 725 and Radeon 9000 vs 745 and 7500 and it turned out YouTube performance is better on the Pentium M 745 and Radeon 7500. I know they are not in the same generation but it does tell you a lesson.

[600X]

The specs are in the post you quoted. At the moment, everything is pointing towards the OS, which doesn't surprise me. I never had issues with YouTube videos on my T60 either, until I switched to Ubuntu that is. I downloaded Manjaro XFCE and I'll give it a try later on. Linux is really crappy at creating bootable USB drives from ISO files though, so I'll have to find a Windows or Mac computer first before I can proceed. I'll keep you all updated.

[kfzhu1229]

I would say you should try different drivers before switching OS. At least Windows 7 for X300, a XP driver is so much different than Vista driver and you can tell by the Aero capability all at once at the very least. Well it is weird in your case, even my ThinkPad A30 does not have any problems playing local 480p files and DVD, and it can even do 720p with just a Radeon 7000 16mb under Windows 7. Also use MPC-HC with EVR decoder instead of the stock player for local files and discs. Forget about subtitles support if you want absolute maximum performance.

[Dekks]

So would you recommend me switching to Arch? I'd be in on that because I could keep XFCE then. Do you have a link to a step by step guide? I'm not really that good at Linux, but I can usually do most things on my own as long as there is a detailed guide available.

If you want Arch then there are boat loads of docs on the arch wiki plus versions with hand holding installers such as Architect.

[danikayser84]

Update on my T43: I moved it from "Active" to "Semi-Retired" and put Windows XP back on it and am using it as my new away/on-the-road laptop (replacing my T30, moved most of the files from my T30 to the T43)... T43 is still a good machine even over 10 years later, but nowadays for my 4:3 fix, I'll use my 14.1 T61

[600X]

So I tried a live image of Manjaro XFCE and was shocked to discover that 480p YouTube runs 100% smooth OOTB. I'm currently installing it and hope that this resolves my performance issues. I've grown to hate Ubuntu more and more over the past months and years, but this really seals the deal for me. I'm never touching Ubuntu again.

EDIT: False alarm, choppiness is still present after installation.

[kfzhu1229]

YouTube videos mainly eat CPU power instead of GPU power for these machines if it is in h264. First make sure there isn't anything else consuming the CPU power in the background. If you really don't want to switch to Ubuntu or Lubuntu or Windows, try upgrading the processing power by doing the overclocking hack to Pentium M 745 into this machine or put a Pentium M 780. Also try a bunch of browsers and see which one performs best. Browser benchmarks do not matter much in these machines as Google Chrome is definitely not going to run well as T43 tops at 2GB DDR2. The worst case scenario would be that you can try to download the videos and watch it with MPC.

[kfzhu1229]

Update on my T43: I moved it from "Active" to "Semi-Retired" and put Windows XP back on it and am using it as my new away/on-the-road laptop (replacing my T30, moved most of the files from my T30 to the T43)... T43 is still a good machine even over 10 years later, but nowadays for my 4:3 fix, I'll use my 14.1 T61

Since your machine has the Radeon graphics, I would say you can try dual-booting with Windows 7 and see which one fits you better. I would personally go with Windows 7 which can utilize this machine as one of the first Windows Aero approved ThinkPad if not Windows 8.1/10 because of NX and PAE support is present. I am personally not much of a fan of Windows XP and I only put it on my 600 and 390X which Windows XP is their latest supported OS for Windows. So I suggest you to try Windows NT 4.0, W2k, W2k3, W7, W8.1 and W10 as well if you have a second spare HDD.
For Windows 7, as long as you disable certain services, it is not any slower than XP on this machine.

[600X]

YouTube videos mainly eat CPU power instead of GPU power for these machines if it is in h264. First make sure there isn't anything else consuming the CPU power in the background. If you really don't want to switch to Ubuntu or Lubuntu or Windows, try upgrading the processing power by doing the overclocking hack to Pentium M 745 into this machine or put a Pentium M 780. Also try a bunch of browsers and see which one performs best. Browser benchmarks do not matter much in these machines as Google Chrome is definitely not going to run well as T43 tops at 2GB DDR2. The worst case scenario would be that you can try to download the videos and watch it with MPC.

Ubuntu would run even worse than Xubuntu. The CPU power is more than enough, even my X41 can easily do 480p on the same OS as my T43. The problem is the GPU and the driver situation under Linux. I did try to get hardware decoding support as brchan recommended, but despite following the Arch wiki, I wasn't able to get the multilib repo working, so I've given up for the moment.

[brchan]

You could try overclocking the X300 gpu. I got a pretty big jump even in web page responsivenes. The core on these OC very well, and IIRC, mine was stable at 400Mhz/275Mhz core/memory from 300/230 stock, basically turning it into a slightly faster X600 (but with 64 bit memory interface).

It did run a little hotter, but was still manageable. I used Rovclock in the Arch repos.

As for web browsers, I noticed that Chromium is quicker on machines with dual cores or above than Firefox. For single core, Firefox is generally much more responsive. However, chromium will still play media content smoother. Also, youtube clients such as youtube-viewer-gtk play video much better, and I was able to play 1080p on my T43 with no problems.

[kfzhu1229]

My X300 temperature is already a big hassle without overclocking. Especially for the 14.1", overclocking the GPU can make the palmrest unusably hot. But I can try overclocking in notebook hardware control and see if there's any performance increase as I'm using Windows 10 under UXGA and X300 doesn't handle it all that well with aero animations

[ajkula66]

You could try overclocking the X300 gpu. I got a pretty big jump even in web page responsivenes. The core on these OC very well, and IIRC, mine was stable at 400Mhz/275Mhz core/memory from 300/230 stock, basically turning it into a slightly faster X600 (but with 64 bit memory interface).

It did run a little hotter, but was still manageable. I used Rovclock in the Arch repos.

You're brave. I'd be *very* hesitant to OC a decade-old-laptop-GPU that sits on lead-free soldering...

[Dekks]

did try to get hardware decoding support as brchan recommended, but despite following the Arch wiki, I wasn't able to get the multilib repo working, so I've given up for the moment.

Multilib?That's for 64bit machines only trying to run 32bit apps? Dothan is 32bit which should use i686

[600X]

Multilib?That's for 64bit machines only trying to run 32bit apps? Dothan is 32bit which should use i686

But how do I install mesa-libgl, lib32-mesa-libgl, mesa-vdpau and lib32-mesa-vdpau then?

[Dekks]

But how do I install mesa-libgl, lib32-mesa-libgl, mesa-vdpau and lib32-mesa-vdpau then?

just look for the i686 versions in standard i686 repo

i.e. https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extr ... esa-vdpau/

[600X]

I did that, but when I try to install it says "could not find database".

[Dekks]

I did that, but when I try to install it says "could not find database".

which version have you installed? do uname -a

have you first run pacman -Syyu

core,extra and community should update their databases.

[600X]

OK so I was able to install mesa-vdpau, but that was the only package available out of the 4. However, the playback issues still persist.

[Dekks]

https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extr ... esa-libgl/

of the 4 packages listed they are 2 sets of dupes, i true 32bit from i686 the other the multilib 64bit versions which you disregard in true 32bit land

[600X]

Trying to install mesa-libgl just gives me a bunch of errors:

target not found: lib32-wayland
target not found: gcc-multilib
target not found: lib32-nettle

etc. etc.