lenovo w500 & advanced dock questions

[watanabe]

Just picked this up for $1,111.73 with shipping & tax from the lenovo outlet:

Intel® Core™2 Duo T9400 (2.53 GHz, 6MB LS, 1066 MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows Vista Business 32
80GB SSD Serial ATA 2.5" Drive
3GB (2+1)PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1067MHz SODIMM Memory (will switch this with the 4GB crucial set I just put in my wife's 13" MBP, doubt she'll be able to notice)
AMD M86GL Switchable Graphics 512MB
DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer Ultrabay Slim
15.4” WUXGA+ (1920 X 1200) TFT

also picked up the advanced dock for $321 shipped using a 25% off coupon.

My questions are:

1. what 80GB ssd is that? an intel x25-m?
2. anyone know what the best graphics card i can put in the dock is? "One half-size PCI Express card slot - Supports half-size PCI Express cards, including graphics adapters that enable multi-monitoring" They only list the x1300 but I think there might be something better than that.
3. With that dock, can it drive a 2560x1600 display? I've googled, read many threads, and can't seem to find a definitive answer. I have a 3007wfp-hc I'm interested in hooking up to this.
4. Windows 7 RC compatibility? Anyone got it installed and running smoothly? Same, as above, a few older posts with the beta/etc, wondering how RC is turning out.

This is for Rhino 4.0 (OpenGL 3d/rendering) exclusively, I'm an architecture master's student and don't game at all.

edit: also curious how this will perform compared to my current desktop that just died in the move over from Tokyo. Decided I wanted a laptop for future moves/internships/etc, my old system was:
amd phenom tri-core@2.1ghz
6gb 1066mhz ram
ati 4850
2 640GB 7200rpm barracudas

Seems like it may be a bit of a side grade or down grade, but I think the SSD may boost disk performance, and the ATI OpenGL drivers should boost performance since my last graphics card didn't support that.

Thanks

[ZaZ]

Interesting question on the SSD. Does anyone but Intel make a 80GB drive. That'd be way cool on if you got it. They go for $300 I think. It'd be like like you got the notebook for $800.

None of the cards are that great for the dock I think since it runs at 1x speed. You got to watch the heatsink too. If it's too wide it won't fit.

I believe it will do 2560x1600.

I've not done any Windows 7, so no help there. Congrats on the machine.

[awolfe63]

I have used this dock with the Dell 3007 and my W500. No problem.

After investigating, I can't find any graphics card that fits that is better than the internal graphics.

I think you got an Intel 80GB as well. IF so - great deal.

Doing my first Win7 install right now - but not on the W500. I would not expect any problems though.

Only about 1/2 the graphics speed or maybe even a bit compared to your desktop - so you will need to see of you are happy with it for Rhino. I expect you will be.

[watanabe]

Arrived this morning, it is in fact an intel 80gb SSD! Have it hooked up to my 3007wfp-hc through the advanced dock and everything is running great. Very pleased with my purchase.

Now I'm wondering if anyones got the firegl v5700 working in windows 7, I've read people have got it to work using the normal radeon drivers, however I need the firegl ones for my 3d modeling work, anyone got the word on that? I don't care if I have to disable switchable graphics if that helps. Would be on 64bit if that makes a difference.

[PanEuropean]

I'm wondering if anyones got the firegl v5700 working in windows 7...

Yes, I have been running Windows 7 RC on my W500 (4062-27U, same graphics card as you) for several months, and it works just great.

The answer is almost too simple to be believable: You use the V5700 graphics driver that Windows 7 installs when you do the initial setup. Don't go fishing around on the Intel website or the Lenovo website for any other driver, or you will just cause yourself headaches.

I should mention that prior to installing Windows 7 RC, I turned off the 'switchable graphics' in the BIOS, so that the machine only recognizes and only uses the 'advanced' graphics - in other words, the discrete graphics. I can get about 3 hours of battery life with everything running at 'maximum performance', and that is more than sufficient for me.

I run AutoCAD and SolidWorks, no problems with either of these applications.