T60 Family Graphic Cards

[meditate2001]

just for info:

I just received the IBM iSource -- EMEA Announcement Letters and they claim for the t60 family the following cards:

- Graphics chipsets are ATI mobility Radeon X1300 (64 MB), ATI mobility Radeon X1400 (128 MB), and ATI Mobility FireGL V5200 (256 MB) graphics chipset

So no x1500 and unfortunatly not the x1600 or the x1800. i thought lenovo would break with the ibm-principle always to include older ati-cards , instead of new ones...very sad....

the x1400 is the successor of the x600 and is just middle-class.

[hdahl]

With such a flimsy video card it will be usable approximately until Windows Presentation Foundation will be in operation, i.e. at latest until Windows Vista gets launched or at least installed on such a notebook.


Best regards,

Henrik Dahl

[christopher_wolf]

Ehhh, I don't think that these video cards are anything flimsy; I certainly got alot done with my 64MB x300, and my needs are by no means trivial. Molecular Modeling, FEA, Many sessions of custom coded OpenGL while other graphics programs are running, etc.

I have seen many laptops with more and more memory on boards, more pipelines; essentially going behind the concept of "Bigger is Better" Well, yes...But if 64MB or 128MB is sufficient for most needs today. The more powerful cards you get, the more energy you will have to provide. PowerPlay can only go so far underclocking the GPU; that point will eventually get higher and higher. The real question at that point will be "Will the battery technology have increased as much?" Most likely, but you will probably end up using a small portion of the entire power of the video card while using up more power for the same thing.

That said, I think the current lineup of Video Cards is quite sufficient for just about anything I can imagine Thinkpads being used for; except of course a portable desktop of a media center PC, which was never the manin goal, perhaps a secondary goal, for the Thinkpads. As far as I understand, there are three choices for the Video Card, the highest one being the 256MB ATI. That should be enough.

[meditate2001]

christopher,

every comparison makes only sense with a context. if the x300 is enough for you, good. but there are others who needs/wants more than that. and i said it is sad because again they picked only midclass cards, compared what cards are available.
also ati said the powerconsumtion is not higher at all compared to the xX00 cards.
i think the thinkpads are getting bought for the purpose of the costumer not of ibm/lnv. of course they are business machines, but [censored] it is the 21.century, business IS multimedia also. and other cards are there, why not putting them in ? the price couldnt be it...they have so many models with so many different things, only not with the cards....

[atha]

Other than gaming, I wonder what would be the multimedia which requires state-of-the-art adapters with maximum clock rates. To me, those new cards (yes, they were announced at CES this month), seem to have quite good multimedia features - for instance the video support - hardware accelerated mpeg1/2/4, including divx and WMV9.

Of the mentioned higher grade adapters - I've seen that Mobility X1600 is announced for some upcoming laptops (apple macbook pro as one of them), but was the X1500 nothing more than mistyped X1400 after all in initial T60 press releases. Mobility X1800 has been mentioned at news sites, but is there anything official available about it.

[hdahl]

The new version of the Windows display subsystem, Windows Presentation Foundation will do all presentations in Direct3D only, and not the old stuff. This will make an excellent need for a fast graphics processor in any non-outdated business notebook.


Best regards,

Henrik Dahl

[inTrance]

The new version of the Windows display subsystem, Windows Presentation Foundation will do all presentations in Direct3D only, and not the old stuff. This will make an excellent need for a fast graphics processor in any non-outdated business notebook.

On my T43 with a ATI x300 Windows Vista (Build 5270) runs very
nicely. Vista is an operating system and not Doom

You'll need a graphic card with 128MB memory to display resolutions
higher than 1024 in the Vista Aero mode. But that and DirectX 9
support are the only limiters. There is no need for a high-end-card...

And it's a business machine... For multimedia and gaming you can
choose a z-series-book or a acer, samsung, sony,...

[Navck]

My X300 does good enough for me, I play Half Life 2 on medium settings on my T43.
I hope they give us the option of X1600s for the less than OpenGL users.

[christopher_wolf]

I have some very intensive requirements for my x300; furthermore a "context" changes from machine to macthine, even within the Thinkpad line. I have seen some workstations slow down under the same job set I run without any delay on my T43; multiple molecular rendering, 15+ OpenGL windows, and a simulation analyzer that I coded which goes through 1GB+ of data. All of these can run side by side with Winamp playing, Firefox browsing, and Thunderbird downloading mail.

I also can't see how you can call a 256MB or 128MB on a laptop "midclass."
If that is the case...What are the high-end cards? 512MB? That is going overboard for what the Thinkpad will be doing. If a job requires that much from the Video Card, it is best to run it on a Workstation no matter what the specs on the laptop are. There is no problem with the current lineup of Video Cards for a Thinkpad.

If it was a graphics workstation I would bump the card up to at least 128MB and get a rather large allocation of system memory.

[donking!]

i don't really understand when the graphics card is used and what it's used for. i get that it's very important for gaming. i don't do that. but how much does it matter for other graphics applications?

i am thinking about getting a thinkpad to use for photoshop, indesign, maybe illustrator. these are all programs i'm learning now. i will be doing mostly page layout for creating advertisements.

i also might do some video editing with avid express pro. but the page layout stuff is my main thing.

how much does the graphics card matter for getting good performance with these applications? how much will the difference processor speeds on the duo cores matter? memory?

thanks for any thoughts.

[christopher_wolf]

In the case of Photoshop; the video card matters little. The really important thing is the system memory. I would recommend boosting it to 1GB or higher.

[donking!]

Thanks for the reply, Christopher.

What about in the case of page layout programs like InDesign, Quark? And drawing programs like Illustrator? Is it also the case that the video card doesn't matter much?

Oh, and also with non-linear editors like Avid?

Thanks for any more thoughts.

P.S. Say hi to UC Berkeley for me. Used to be a graduate student there for a long time.

[powerant]

Maybe GPU of T60 is ATI x1300, x
1500 and Firego V5200

we can get it from the T60(P) manuals

[aamsel]

Those are all 2D programs which do not require 3D video card capabilities.
Just about any video solution will perform adequately with them.

Andrew

Thanks for the reply, Christopher.

What about in the case of page layout programs like InDesign, Quark? And drawing programs like Illustrator? Is it also the case that the video card doesn't matter much?

Oh, and also with non-linear editors like Avid?

Thanks for any more thoughts.

P.S. Say hi to UC Berkeley for me. Used to be a graduate student there for a long time.

[meditate2001]

I also can't see how you can call a 256MB or 128MB on a laptop "midclass."
If that is the case...What are the high-end cards? 512MB? That is going overboard for what the Thinkpad will be doing.

my old ati 9000 which is nearly 4-5 years old has also 128mb but is very slow in 3d graphics; so, the memory has not something to do how fast a card can process graphics. its just the memory.
and i call the cards midclass, because in the x1X00 cards because of their 3d-power compared to the top card, they ARE midclass.
and again, you probably not need it but probably some others are.