Lenovo ThinkPad P73, really worth it?

Just to get it out of the way, I love ThinkPads but there is always something to criticise, such as their audio, performance or just the pricing on the higher end models.

I want to reach out to ThinkPad P73 owners and their opinion on whether this machine is really worth the premium price or if its overrated.

I recently bought the ThinkPad P73 with the i7-9750 and Quadro RTX 3000
However I am still trying to decide whether to keep it or to return it as I have not even opened the box yet I still have a few days to decide, the reason I read a few reviews stating lacklustre cooling and overall just a few issues with the CPU and GPU during intensive use getting power starved limiting the CPU to 30W TDP when the GPU is at 100% utilisation.

Here are the most in-depth reviews I could find:
https://www.ultrabookreview.com/33057-lenovo-thinkpad-p73-review/
https://next.lab501.ro/notebook/review-lenovo-thinkpad-p73-core-i9-9880h-quadro-rtx-4000

The RTX 3000 in the P73 seems to be non-Max-Q and is the Max-P version.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-RTX-3000-Laptop-Graphics-Card.423876.0.html
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Quadro+RTX+3000&id=4119
https://www.notebookcheck.net/GeFor...-RTX-3000-Laptop_7323_7364_9854.247598.0.html

From early benchmarks it seems a GTX 1070 smashes the Quadro RTX 3000 quite a lot in gaming and its only professional tasks the Quadro seems to somehow creep ahead and in OpenGL they seem pretty close, for such an expensive card that supposedly is between 2060 and 2070 it performs amazingly poorly and Notebookcheck tested the RTX 3000 in the P73 so it could very much be the ThinkPad P73 at fault here holding the 3000 back substantially as it does get quite toasty easily reaching 80 to 90 degrees under load.

Again, I like to know what the P73 owners think.

 

There seems to be a real lack of reviews on this laptop. I was considering getting one for work, but am now a bit worried. Am now leaning towards getting a Precision 7730 or 7740 instead.

Michael

 

I can share you my experience with P50 and P51. I know it is not exactly same structure with P7X series, but might still help you or anyone in making decision. My P50 is with Xeon 1535 64GB ram while the P51 with i7 16GB ram. Both with quadro m2000m. Performance wise for 3D simulation (Creo, Ansys, NX) and photo editing (lightroom, photoshop,illustrator) are way smoother and faster on my P50.
Another big difference between these two is my P51 run hotter than my P50 under heavy load (about 10 to 20 degree Celsius). Might be the very reason that my P51's motherboard got burnt and stop functioning all together. Gaming wise, these laptops have to work very hard to run games such as Starcraft 2 at high setting. Heck, even Transistor can overheat these laptops. My MSI GE62 with 970 works way better than these two on gaming. So in my opinion, get Xeon Quadro combo if you really need it, or might as well stay away from this P series altogether.

 

The RTX 3000 (non Max-Q) is worse in every way compared to a typical mobile GTX 1070 (non Max-Q). It only makes sense it'll get destroyed in every benchmark that does not heavily use RTX features. What's surprising is how bad thermal performance is seeing as to how TDP is limited to 90W for the 3000. Seems like a repaste is a must.

 

1070 is better for sure imao, but it seems to be a mix of bag with the RTX 3000, its like an AMD GPU, its worse in some but comparable in others and in a few its better.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/GeFor...-RTX-3000-Laptop_9581_7364_9854.247598.0.html

I assume the RTX 3000 would be neck to neck with an AVG 120W GTX 1070 if it had game optimisation drivers but 150W 1070? No way, the Quadro would be left in the dust as shown in some of these benchmarks.

 

Yeah, it does sound like the gap would close significantly. However, looking at those reviews, the GPU seems to be reaching 80C as it is. Assuming you could flash a 100+W VBIOS on it, plus repaste it with either Kryonaut or liquid metal, I think it would still underperform when compared to a 1070 in a beefy gaming laptop.

 

I frankly do not understand how Lenovo could screw up the cooling system on the P53 much less the P73 when they are very large machines, larger than some gaming thin and light these days and it bothers me when they have better temperatures on 2060 and the same CPU but ThinkPad with its thicker chassis does not.
Something very wrong with the cooling design in laptops recently and Lenovo is joining those ranks perfectly.
The P53 and P73 share same cooling solution found on P52 and P72, the issue here is CPU only has one pipe which is also shared with the GPU (facepalm) and the GPU has 2 pipes and the third one which is the CPU pipe, so already here we can see the issue, GPU gets hot so will the CPU, but if CPU gets really hot then GPU will too, because after all shared pipes sound all good in theory, never works out in practise unless there is a whole lot of them.

 

Yes, I completely agree. For as overengineered as their chassis are in terms of features, with things like keyboard cage that's spill-proof, REALLY resistant carbon material, and usually really great batteries, they use ONE heatpipe for the CPU and ONE heatpipe for the GPU. In 2019. What is Lenovo thinking?! This is completely unacceptable.

If you look at the user manual for the P73, on page 95 you can see that they're using two heatpipes for the GPU and one for the CPU. I think the Razer Blades have 4 heatpipes and they're way lighter than the P-series. What gives?

 

ThinkPads have in general never had great GPU performance but at least their older machines could cool i7 extreme edition.
Its really nothing but laziness and sadly that is a trend for a lot of companies, even Clevo and their cheap soldered gaming laptops which also have nasty cooling but awful build quality.

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What did you decide in the end? I've just ordered a P73 with i7 and RTX3000.

From this review https://www.ultrabookreview.com/33057-lenovo-thinkpad-p73-review/

it seems that the i7/RTX3000 configuration should be ok in terms of heat. Sounds like it's more the i9/RTX4000 and upwards that would suffer.

Thanks

 

I ended up getting the P73 with the i7 and the RTX 3000 all things considered how bad the cooling is in general but I regret it because while its lighter than my gaming Alienware by a HUUUUUGE factor, its still massive in pure footprint so I am trying to return it, I bought this on pay later scheme however as I set the status on return I froze the payment effectively I have paid nothing for it, Lenovo refuses to reply to me, the Norwegian company that I paid through also has spent two freaking months just telling me I should wait for an email about return details, mind you I contacted them 8 times now.
By end of this month which would be the third month, I effectively have gotten a free ThinkPad P73 because Lenovo refuses to accept the return even though it is my right as a customer and I did not even open the laptop wrap.
And I paid nothing as it was on a delayed payment, I was unsure when I bought it, the P53 would been more my style as its 15 inch which is still good but the internals are identical to P73 including cooling performance.

So unless 17 inch is something you really want in a laptop then I suppose the P73 is good enough, the build quality is exceptional imao its hard to find any laptop that can challenge this beast in build quality.
But from a performance standpoint its disappointing from the reviews I have read, as I said I have not used mine because I want to return it, if I do end up keeping it for free (doubtful) might just do a short review and post it on this forum.

I have sort of given up on high performance laptops in general as the greater the performance, the better the cooling the heavier and larger they become to a point were they are impractical in every use case were there is not a decent table and a reliable power source.
The ThinkPad P53 and P73 however are relatively thin and lightweight comparable to quality and they got amazing battery life as well apparently.

 

Thanks for that. You might end up with a free laptop - stuff like that does happen sometimes!

17.3 inch is fine for me. I need a big screen. I'll be using it as a desktop moved between home and office really.

What I've read about poor performance seems to relate to the higher spec versions - i9 and upwards being throttled back due to heat, and the RTX 4000 and 5000 being the lower powered versions.

I'm hoping that the i7 and RTX 3000 full power version will be ok. What do you think?

Thanks

 

i7 is the highest I would go, or the Xeon if ECC memory was a huge factor.

The RTX 4000 can work too but if GPU performance is not ALL that important the 3000 is fine.
The reason why is because when both the CPU and the GPU is under load they get power throttled, so they both suffer performance penalty, this throttling even happens with the lowest spec machine.
Its odd to me it happens considering the power brick is more than large enough to handle the task.
We are not even talking temp issues here, if you just push the CPU or the GPU then temperature can become an issue specially on the CPU.

I would recommend to repaste the hardware with better thermal paste if that is within your ability.
And/or at least undervolt the CPU to get it to run better, plenty of tutorials on the matter.
You can get huge performance boost with this method alone.

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I'm pretty confident the i7 and RTX3000 is more than enough for my needs but I'm concerned about what you say about them not performing properly - i don't want to pay for a spec and performance I'm not going to get.

I'm not going go get into modifying hardware myself on a brand new PC I'm buying with a warranty.

Have I made a mistake ordering this computer then?

Thanks for the advice

 

Yes you wont get the top performance of those components, and you wont in any workstation machine unless we are talking Clevo here, sadly its a trend for everyone, Dell, HP, Acer, Asus and so on.
Its just the ugly truth, if all you care about is having a 17 inch with capable hardware just to move around I rather recommend some of those gaming laptops like Lenovo Legion series.
Or something from MSI or Dell.

They wont have the build quality nor the screen quality but they are cheaper probably lighter in weight too since they wont use magnesium body chassis.
Its up to you where priorities are.

EDIT
Eluktronics MECH-17 has a mechanical keyboard and configurable hardware its also 17 inch, it wont be as strong as the Thinkpad but its a good laptop in general.


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Thanks.

A Dell Precision M7740 with the same specs is about £1000 more than the P73.

You said "...it's a trend for everyone, Dell.... etc" but then said you'd recommend something from Dell? Or did you mean a gaming laptop from Dell rather than a workstation? I prefer the idea of a Quadro card for my CAD work rather than a GeForce gaming card...

When you say "wont get the top performance" do you think it's a significant issue with the i7/RTX3000, or not a major issue in real world usage?

Thanks again

 

I meant their gaming lineup and the Alienware ones from Dell, as all the RTX 3000, 4000 and 5000 have crippling issues in modern workstation laptops for some reasons, only Clevo does not.
i7 and RTX 3000 is probably the only setup I would go for as it as the LEAST amount if issues, its right at the border it still could perform way better had they had better cooling, and better power use freedom.
If CAD work is important then I say stick with the P73, if you do not really care much for the RTX features then look at Clevo resellers such as Eurocom or whichever for Quadro P5000 I know they sell them some Clevo resellers even offers 4k screens sort of pointless for general use but it can be useful if you do really detailed work.
Clevo machines have proper cooling but they are heavy, not as well built as ThinkPads, have average keyboards and atrocious battery life.

 

Thanks a lot.

What are the RTX crippling issues in other laptops? Throttling due to overheating, the same as in the P73?

Thanks again

 

Also, is the 7740 RTX 3000 the max-Q or the max-P version?

Thinking of actually going for the Precision 7730 and Quadro P3200 instead now...

Thanks

 

P3200 would be vastly better cooled in both the Precision and the ThinkPad but it will perform like a 1060 whereas the 3000 more in line with a 1070/2060 also the 3000 should be Max-P in both.

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So would you say a badly cooled RTX 3000 is still better than a well cooled P3200?

Thanks!

 

Yes, of course it has more of everything, more processing units, more shaders, more VRAM I think its not terribly crippled even if I make it sound like it.
Its also really good at professional work, look it up on notebookreview they tested the P73 with RTX3000
https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-RTX-3000-Laptop-Graphics-Card.423876.0.html

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Ah right, ok.

It was actually a notebookcheck review that got me worried (as well as this thread):
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenov...ed-down-by-poor-heat-management.445929.0.html

That review said that the GPU slowed down a lot after a few minutes of heavy load playing Witcher 3:

"Unfortunately, the performance is not stable in the " Witcher 3" loop. At the start of the test, the P73 60 FPS. At the end, the FPS counter showed the number 45. Sustained GPU load seems to overwhelm the cooling system"

and they showed a graph of the frame rate dropping from an initial 60 to around 45...

Hhhmmm, maybe I shouldn't have cancelled my order...

Thanks again!

 

It all depends on your use cases, I think the laptop is overpriced for what you get and the cooling system is definitely crippled but here we see the power limitation in this laptop which causes that framedrop more than anything.

Heat problems exist in virtually every modern laptops these days, no way around it but undervolting unless its about AMD then you can unlock TDP to 45W from 15W and get 50% more performance LOL

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Try a software called TPFanControl. An old software by Lenovo. I set it at smart mode 1 and notice the fan on the right (GPU fan) kicks in at lower temperature. The result is better performance over long period of usage, lower temp around 10 degree celcius. Seems like not only the cooling structure is bad, but also native cooling software is not good.

 

Couldn't agree more on that... Isn't it just a little depressing to see there are other components out there performs more better than the hardware components that u're paying for... on P73?
I guess this is why till today, Lenovo is not considering on making all AMD/ATI gaming laptops or workstations, because the end price is probably going to kill P73 sales, affecting the ThinkPAD brand ranking in the laptop world.

 

Well... According to this veteran technical drawing guy...

...it ain't worth for the smaller one.
So, the bigger bro isn't anywhere betta!​

 

Thinkpads have probably the best keyboards in the business. Also, they are very beautiful machines. My wife's Thinkpad T410 is almost completely indestructible. I stopped buying Lenovos after the chassis on my W520 was chipping plastic on the sides.

Nowadays, I think that both HP ZBook and Dell Precision are much better choices and are much more "battlefield proven". Personally, my Dell Precision 7730 has been holding up very well, and the Pro Support is quite good. However, I think the best thing about the Dell series is the user base, who actively participate on the forums here. Dell technical managers actively participate also (once in a while) and answer questions, and they generally do listen. Dell Precisions 7750's are about to launch, and their thermal solutions are generally pretty solid by all accounts.