Why doesn't Lenovo use nVidia cards in Thinkpads?

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#1 Post by **gator** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 2:23 pm

I was wondering why Lenovo does not use nVidia chips in the Thinkpad series of laptops (they use it in N100s series, for example).

Is it because of trouble with heat management, or is it just that ATI X1400/X1600/FileGL series are better than the Nvidia 7X00 Go series GPUs? My friend does quite a lot of benchamrking work at his place of employment and he says that the nVidia Go 7600 is ahead of X1400 (both are 128 MB cards).

Anyone has any info on this?

own6volvos · #2 Post by **own6volvos** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 12:54 am

Power consumption

Kamika007z · #3 Post by **Kamika007z** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 1:48 am

I believe that nVidia cards are better in terms of performance, and also driver quality, however own6volvos is right... it's all about the power consumption.

There was an IBM notebook back in the day... I believe it was the G series G40 (I think) which sported an nVidia GPU.

nelson · #4 Post by **nelson** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 3:46 am

Or maybe Lenovo has an exclusive deal negotiated with ATI. Or maybe they just like the ATI parts better.

own6volvos · #5 Post by **own6volvos** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 4:27 am

nelson wrote:Or maybe Lenovo has an exclusive deal negotiated with ATI. Or maybe they just like the ATI parts better.

Its not really anything exclusive. If nvidia had something a bit more power friendly, all of the laptop makers with battery concerns would be using them. Currently you wont find any business grade laptop with an nVidia card anywhere you look.

Highend HP: ATI x1600 and v5200
Highend IBM: ATI x1400 and v5200
Highend Apple: ATI 1600x

#6 Post by **K. Eng** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 7:26 am

own6volvos wrote:Its not really anything exclusive. If nvidia had something a bit more power friendly, all of the laptop makers with battery concerns would be using them. Currently you wont find any business grade laptop with an nVidia card anywhere you look.

That's almost true, but the Dell Latitude D620 sereies offers an optional nVidia Quadro NVS110 (I believe that's roughly equivalent to a GeForce 7300 series).

ATI has had dominance in the notebook graphics market for years. I'd like to see some tests comparing the power consumption of ATI and nVidia mobile GPUs.

christopher_wolf · #7 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 1:47 pm

ATI; because of better performance for a given level of power consumption as ATI has always had a focus on the mobile market to some extent. There are Thinkpads with nVidias in them, such as the G4X Series; in addition, there have been reports of rather high temps in those machines when running heavy graphics loads.

#8 Post by **gator** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 1:59 am

Thanks for the information, people.

Why doesn't Lenovo use nVidia cards in Thinkpads?

Why doesn't Lenovo use nVidia cards in Thinkpads?

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