Lenovo W510 Owner's Thread

Powered usb on the w510, anybody?

 

Yes, it has a powered usb 2.0 port. I believe its the yellow coloured one on the back of the unit

 

Can anyone comment on the graphics card performance? I was curious for some benchmarks (3dmark06 or Vantage) comparing stock speeds vs overclocked ones.

 

Well it gives an idea of its raw power but it doesnt mean its that far apart because i my 770m scores 6.5 but the 880m will have about 30-40% increase over it. i think reason why radeons score equal in the wei scores when performance is less is because dx is better optimised than nvidia in dx10+ for the mid range. nvidia card works better in games in dx9 like the 9600m. put it in dx10 and it just cries. But on the higher end crds its handles it it.
But they are the mid range cards.
The 4670 is powerful so in that case im not saying the880m is better. Just give it newer drivers and it will be same score.

 

Just got shipping update for W510 FHD multitouch. Its shipping 2/16
ordered 1/10

 

I have tried but it failed to submit to futuremark's website don't know why page loads forever..

 

Where did you get the update?

My online status still shows 3/3, it was 2/16 last week. I also called Lenovo and they gave me the same 3/3 estimate.

 

Whenever I do that (switch to a VT), it totally messes up my screen. It goes wavy and out of focus, and the only way to correct it is a reboot...

 

I don't have the slice battery, but the W510 + stock 9 cell is about 6.4lbs

 

The nVidia 195.x beta drivers take care of that, but they're otherwise not particularly stable yet. I get crashes after a while when using 195.32 (I think that's what it is) but I can switch to virtual consoles and all that other good stuff. Likely the final 195.x driver will need to come otu to support these cards.

 

My 3DMark06 result: 6395 3DMarks

 

Cool, thanks. Could you also report on the range of frequencies/clocks the GPU core/mem use in different power levels?
TIA

 

I'm having a disconcerting problem with my keyboard, which is repeatable with many keys.

If you press the key down just enough for tactile feedback that it's down, the key press might not register. Thus, I must press the keys down slightly harder than I think should be necessary. I think the keyboard is great, except for this issue. (I'm a touch typist, btw.)

Anybody else? (BTW, Kevin's post here: http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2010/02/07/lenovo-thinkpad-w510-first-impressions.aspx may indicate that he's having a similar problem.)

 

Thanks for the results. I'm a bit disappointed in the score it's decent but not great. Can you or anyone else try some benchmarks after some overclocking.

 

There is a new cineBench out. Does some decent CPU/VPU workloads which are more workstation oriented.

http://downloads.guru3d.com/CineBENCH-11.5-download-2475.html

 

Funny, that was my biggest complaint about my T61, but my W510 doesn't seem to have the problem.

 

Yes, I've noticed the same thing. The tactile point seems to occur before the keypress registers. It also seems to transpose characters occasionally -- as if the scan rate is too low. This is the same issue that affected the Das Keyboard -- they were trying to fake N-key rollover in the keyboard firmware, and it caused problems for anyone actually capable of typing at reasonable speed. Hit 100wpm or so -- even for very short sequences, such as a word or two -- and it'd start transposing characters, etc. "The" becomes "Teh", etc.

I wonder whether a keyboard swap might resolve this? Is the keyboard controller built into the motherboard, or is it part of the keyboard assembly? I seem to have an Alps keyboard in my W510; wouldn't mind trying a Chicony.

(Thankfully, I usually use my laptop with a small external keyboard sitting on top of the laptop keyboard... so this won't impact me much. But would still prefer to find a solution.)

 

Do you know whether your W510 has an Alps, Chicony, or NMB keyboard? Check the first point in this thread for a guide on how to tell which keyboard is installed.

 

Thanks for the link - that's interesting information. My W510 keyboard is an ALPS. (I know you weren't asking me.)

It was difficult to find out, but the keyboard on my R60 is a Chicony (I had to lift a few keys to see the springs), and I actually prefer that one to the ALPS at the moment. Perhaps it's just a matter of getting used to.

 

So I placed an on-line order for the W510 on 2/07/10 and the order status has not changed from: "Status: In process" with a Est. Ship Date 2/24/10.

Does the status change any time before it gets shipped?

 

Yes, I also prefer the Chicony on my X61 tablet to the Alps in my W510 and to the NMB in my (former) W500.

 

What about on battery? What's it getting?

 

Can you get specific makes of the keyboard from Lenovo and swap in your preferred make?

 

any one test stylus on FHD multi touch? like Pogo Sketch for iphon?

 

Just ordered myself one of these with regular non-touch FHD screen.

Estimated shipping date for me is 03/03/10. Sounds about normal considering the holiday in china.

 

lol you are slow thinker arnt you? hehe

 

How did you order your W510 w/non-touch FHD screen? i m trying to do the same and the sales representative told me i cannot.

 

Same here!

 

he probably used 3rd party or someone canceled order so he used window of opportunity and grabbed it. correct me if im wrong.

 

It's an Alps.

 

My order had an estimated ship date of 2/12/10 but today it got changed to 3/08/10.

They already shipped the slice battery.

 

Mine got pushed back also (Feb 10 ship date to March). I'll call them monday and cancel and will just buy a Sager 8690 instead..

 

I need to have a pointing stick.

Plus, they already shipped me the slice battery. I wonder if they thought through getting the slices to customers before updating the shipping dates?

I was with ThinkPads for over a decade but I got happier with the Dells for the past two years. I suppose I could have waited for Dell to come out with a Core i7 in 15 inches, but it didn't look like that was happening any time soon.

 

Similar thing with me, they shipped me the Thinkpad Topload Case over a week and a half ago (maybe that's what they meant by the Feb 10 shipping date - lol) but no laptop.

HP also has the ENVY 15 which I spec'd out with the

i7-720QM
500GB HD
4GB RAM (2 x 2GB, it also has 4 dimm slots)
15.6" Full HD Anti Glare (1920x1080)
ATI HD 5830

and etc for 1749$.. Build quality should be great, it has a magnesium allow shell and should have now flex.

No trackpoint though.

 

Funny I had the opposite experience. They shipped my w510 9 days earlier than promised, on 2/1, but waited until 2/11 to ship the accessories including the SSD. From Lenovo's viewpoint that might make perfect sense since they can charge my credit card at the earliest opportunity. But customers must be scratching their heads. Maybe it's all part of being early adopters - I hope they aren't like this with more routine computer orders.

 

I'm actually thinking the opposite...returning my Envy 15 and getting the Thinkpad. I'm just hoping someone on here can confirm how much the i7 720qm throttles on battery power for the W510. The Envy goes down to a 7X multiplier, and there are no plans to allow differently. Something to do with the new battery technology, which is actually worse in performance than the old type. Poor design actually. The Envy was designed, as you mention, to be light and portable. With an hour and a half battery life, even with power saving features on, you have to add the slice, which then adds 2 lbs and defeats a lot of the benefits.

 

This post might help: http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=558462#p558462

 

My question may veer off topic a little but i have been wondering...

In the past, the T-series laptops have always dominated any lenovo forums, and this forum(lenovo section) too. However, this time around the W-series is getting more attention..

Is there a reason for this other than the quadcore i7 options on the W-series?

 

So only last 2 hours on 9cell battery?

 

I don't think his post said anything about battery life. He's reporting the number of minutes it takes to run certain benchmarking programs.

 

being a university employee, I get my thinkpads from academic ordering system. The FHD option never disappeared there.

 

Oh Sorry my bad

Do you know how long will it last with 9 cell battery?

Thanks

 

### LINUX ###

One question for the people running linux on the W510: with the latest beta release of the NVIDIA drivers, is the graphic card recognized and is it stable enough to work with it (besides suspend issues)? For the moment I'd be happy enough to have 3D working, even if not fully taking advantage of the card, and be able to turn on my laptop at work in the morning and turn it off in the evening without any crashes in between. As long as it can do that, I'll be happy to buy it and wait till the newer linux distros and NVIDIA drivers slowly fixes all the small details.

Thanks everybody for the very helpful posts!

 

If you don't care about suspend/resume and never need to switch to virtual consoles then the driver bundled in Karmic works fine. I haven't had any crashes with it whatsoever.

There's definitely gotchas - if you log out and back in again or swap to a virtual console you get a fuzzy display that is completely unusable until you reboot.

The latest 195.x beta fixes the fuzzy issue, but I wouldn't say stability is all that good right now, I've had some GPU lockups after fairly short periods of use.

It seems the G210 has all the same issues with things that work/don't work as the FX 880M by the way. Likewise fixes that work for the G210 seem to work here as well. Just to give you some more search terms when looking for information!

 

Thanks. From the looks of that thread, it appears that the 720 should only be a little bit lower than that. Definitely not 58% of full performance, like the HP is doing.

 

How much does an extra 135-W AC adapter cost? I don't see it listed on the website.

 

Like you said I think it's because the W510 can be configured with a quadcore i7, plus the W510 has a more powerful gpu. This time around the W510,T510 are actually more different compared to last gen's the W500,T500.

 

Even though the W510 hasn't been out that long, is there a general impression yet on performance, battery life, build quality, etc.? Worthwhile purchase?

 

It's not a subtle difference between quad Core i7 and just about everything else that could be jammed into anything portable. Plus, those of us using CUDA appreciate the fast nVidia adapter too.

The most recent version of Matlab is even more parallel processing friendly, there is a great parallel and CUDA aware compiler from Portland group. Put those in the picture and it's almost insane to use anything else for computing that isn't high mobility dependent.

Yes, it would be better to get a 14.1 or 13.3 inch form factor to fit on trains and airplanes, but 15.6 widescreen is bearable.

 

Lenovo will usually sell replacement keyboards, but won't allow you to select whether you wish to receive an Alps, Chicony, or NMB. But the keyboards usually show up on eBay within a few months of release... and with a bit of extra effort you can get what you want then.