Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

If you're paranoid about benchmark scores, I would get rid of those 1333MHz RAM sticks. the 2920XM can support 1866MHz RAM just fine, and from what people said so far, the performance increase is noticeable. So start hunting down those Kingston Hyperx PnP RAM sticks.

 

I have the chip. Combined with throttlestop it's a force to be reckoned with. Full quad-core speed with Turbo-boost is 3.2GHz. This is achieved with running CPU benchmark utilizing 8 threads simultaneously. While this may not seem like a probable operating scenario, I've actually run Playstation 2 emulator that takes full advantage of quad-core CPU and hyper-threading.

 

I'm happy with it like it is. I just used the benchmarks to verify whether or not changes I made were helping or hurting performance. Not really worth it at this point to trash the 4 sticks I have and buy 4 more unless it made a lot of difference in performance.

 

Yes. This review confirms your findings
Kingston HyperX Memory Performance and Benchmarks

 

thanks for the link. that was pretty much what i'd been hearing. sometimes the bleeding edge sucks. I found that out with my first ssd. It was noticeably faster, until it bsod'd.

 

BIOS 1.34 is out (21 Nov 2011):

CD:
BIOS Update Bootable CD for Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit), Vista (32-bit, 64-bit), XP - ThinkPad W520

Download:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-77033

Readme:
http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/8buj12us.txt

<1.34>
UEFI: 1.34 / ECP: 1.19
- (Fix) Fixed an issue that might return a time-out error in SATA compatibility
mode.
- (Fix) Fixed an issue where the UEFI BIOS might not be updated correctly when
running the BIOS update after resuming normal operation from standby/
sleep state.
- (Fix) Removed the following description from the version 1.32 in the Summary
of Changes section because that was not actually supported.
- (New) Added support for Airplane in-seat power mode of ThinkVantage
Power Manager.

 

Does anyone know if the TigerDirect model of W520's warranty can be upgraded through Lenovo to onsite and thanks.

Gary

 

Installed without any problems (using the download method).

But it did not fix my 40 second warm-boot delay problem

 

yes, any 'think' system sold through tigerdirect can have its warranty extended or upgraded.   you can either call lenovo sales directly or do it yourself online: Lenovo - Warranty upgrades and support

 

If you have Rapidboot installed, get rid of it. My system boots 20 sec slower with Rapidboot (I know, I know, ironic but that's how it is for my X220 and W520)

 

erik,
Thanks much for that. Now, if I should get this laptop, I am just wondering if I should customize with Lenovo or TigerDirect option. The only custom things I would want would be the warranty which can be done later and possibly the color sensor - not sure if I would miss not having the sensor or not. Anway, thanks again.

Gary

 

gary - unless you're working specifically with color-critical projects, you probably don't need the colorimeter.   given that you're unsure of this i'd say you don't need it.   you'd probably be just as well off using the factory sRGB profile and tweaking colors with DCCW built into win 7 ( link).   if you do need a colorimeter then i'd suggest the new i1display pro as it'll be portable across systems.

 

Yes, SSDs don't need RapidBoot. I removed it quite a while ago.

My slowdown occurs during the "Thinkvantage Active Protection System Sensor Diagnostics". I removed the Thinkvantage APS software as well, but the diagnostics is in BIOS and can't be turned off

 

Holy Cow, how did you get that high? The NBR review had only 9970, how did you get more than double their score?

 

the intel 510 ssd did most of that. I have 16gb of memory with 8 of that as ramdisk and I have all of my temp files and browser cache's on the ramdisk. other than that just the standard ssd tweaks and a few adjustments here and there.

 

badhabit: how much did your W520 and the SSD cost you altogether?

 

Any guide for using ramdisk as cache?

 

which program to use for creating ramdisk?

 

I finally had the time to play with my new W520 last night and I wanted to inspect all the expansion sockets...How do I deal with a problem like this?


If I can't remove this screw, I won't be able to access any slot under the keyboard. So that means no upgrade possibilities for mSATA, WiFi, and faster DDR3.

Help!!!

 

tweezer or thin needle head pliers?

 

there are several guides you can google that will take you through it step by step but it's pretty simple. I use the dataram ram disk. Don't remember exactly what I paid for my setup. I think the ssd was 579.00.

http://google-chrome-browser.com/ho...e-cache-ram-disk-and-speed-surfing-20-or-more

 

[/QUOTE]

Do you mean to say SATA3 SSD works in the other slots? When I mean works, I mean SATA3 SSD performance #? Because I keep seeing posts saying SATA3 isn't enabled on Lenovo w520.

Because I what the W520 but I want the SATA3 performance for the price I'm going to pay. I want to put the Samsung 830 or Intel 510 in it.

 

SATA3 works fine, and is faster, with the main HDD slot and Ultrabay. You can even get them in RAID0.

Another story is that, in practice, the benefit of SATA3 SSD over SATA2 in a laptop is only seen in synthetic benchmarks and file copying.

 

fwiw I've tried one sata 2 and 2 sata 3 drives in my w520. You can tell the difference. I could tell the difference in the two sata 3 drives speed wise in everyday use. sadly the fastest drive was not reliable enough for business use. I ended up with the intel 510.

 

I don't see how pliers can work in this situation.
Tweezers could work when the screw wasn't stripped.
I guess it's too late now.

 

IMO it's subjective. I have SATA2 and SATA3 drives in different bays, one is Intel 320, and the other is SATA3 Crucial something. Benchmark show the difference, in practice can't notice any at all.

Another issue is that most drives are not SATA2 interface speed limited (which is ~250MB/sec) in practice. Even Intel 510 is way below that in everything except sequential reads/writes in big blocks.

But what is the practical application (not benchmark), aside from hibernation/resuming, that writes/reads so much data to/from the drive, without any processing at all, and does it so often and so much that boosting speed from ~250MB/sec to 500 (SATA3) - 900 (SATA3 RAID0) really save a noticeable amount of time? Loading gigapixel bitmap images in photoshop, perhaps, would be faster by a couple of seconds, but how often does it happen? Saving can be immediate either way because of write caching.

IMO if the machine has less than 32GB RAM and already decent SSD, extra money would be better spent on RAM, than on faster SSD, if practical performance boosting is desired (running multiple databases, VMs, heavy photoshop with big images etc). Can setup more memory-hungry file system caching options too, so all that RAM goes to good use.

 

I have 16GB RAM and my system usually only uses about 50% of the RAM.
That's why I decided to spend my money on 2 SATA III SSDs in RAID0

 

If the system isn't idle, and is actively using the filesystem, the 'unused' portion of memory will be working as cache, with access speeds orders of magnitude faster than SSD.

All that, automatically, and releasing memory to applications should they have better use for it (which makes most setups with RAM disks purely benchmark score maximizing exercise).

http://i40.tinypic.com/2wogn0k.png

 

How did you manage to bugger up a screw like that? Are you using an electric screwdriver?

 

Good point. It should!
It seems however that either the OS or the software is not really taking advantage of the cached memory.
Check this out:
64-Bit: Benchmarks With 4 GB To 16 GB : Memory Upgrade: Is It Time To Add More RAM?
This pretty much agrees with my own experience. I have not noticed much difference going from 8GB to 16GB for example.

 

Dataram ramdisk:

RAMDisk - Software - Server Memory Products & Services - Dataram


Some threads/posts on using it:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...ch-fear-writes-ssd-ramdisk-2.html#post7790395

 

Nope. Manual tools only. I went through every single screw driver in my toolbox and it still wouldn't budge. This is the end result.

What should I do?

 

It probably would not cost much money to have a machine shop drill out the defective screw and tap a slightly larger hole for a new one. Make sure they have suction going while drilling; you don't want little bits of metal falling inside, and mask off around the work area, too, if that is possible.

 

Remove a Stripped Screw with a Rubber Band

 

Of course, a game that hardly accesses more than a few tens of megabytes on the disk during playtime isn't going to run any faster, or show higher FPS. Nor it would be any faster by using 2x SATA3 SSD + Raid0 vs a decent SATA2 SSD.

However, with more RAM and write caching enabled, writing to disk (any disk) is measured in gigabytes per second as far as user experience and performance is concerned, unless the application explicitly requests 'WriteThrough' (which is relatively rare). Reading the previously read/written data back is at least 4-5GB/sec. Disk transfer speed only becomes noticeable when loading the data initially, or dealing with the amount of data exceeding the amount of RAM (like copying HDDs). And even that in case of SATA2 vs SATA3 SSD, iis only really noticeable when loading more than 100MB of data (0.5s vs 0.2-0.3s starts to become visible, although hardly matters).

The more 'unused' RAM there is, the larger portion of the disk is cached. HDD benchmarks, that switch OS cache off, or games, of course, don't show it. 'fsutil behavior set memoryusage 2' in Vista/Windows7/W2008 may speed up certain usage patterns too.

 

Yeah no. Games are extremely GPU/CPU dependent. You just have to have enough RAM. Beyond that, it's moot.

Databases, simulations, mathematical programs (maybe flight sims), etc. will see considerable benefit as they are usually RAM or CPU choked.

It'd be nice to be able to force BF3 to precache everything into RAM and keep it there. It keeps reloading the level every round.

 

Cool! Thanks!

 

I was looking for more benchmark results of the effect of RAM upgrades to productivity apps, but could only find it for the Mac OS:

OtherWorldComputing.com

 

when I went from 8gb to 16gb it made no difference in my benchmark scores. That really surprised me at the time but after a bunch of research it makes sense. I didn't expect to be able to tell the difference in the vertex 3 and the 510 as far as daily use but I could. On my machine there was around 1000 points difference in the pcmark vantage score on the vertex 3 and the 510 with the vertex being the fastest. If it had been stable I would still be running it. That said the 510 has performed flawlessly with the exception of the warm boot issue and I get around that by shutting down and restarting instead of rebooting.

 

EEK!!!
try an easyout screw remover.
Sears: Online department store featuring appliances, tools, fitness equipment and more

 

Ok, I will just come out and state that while I want a laptop that fits in with the office I also game at night with reasonably demanding games and really want a great screen.

2 big questions:
If I buy the 6 cell battery, install an existing M4 SSD (SATA III) and remove the optical drive (worthless crap in my opinion) is it really possible to get this under 5.5 pds? Weight is a big concern.

The second question is simply will the Q2000 card meet the desire to play SCII at full 1080p in high detail?

Details:
Intel Core i7-2760QM Processor (2.40GHz, 6MB L3, 1333MHz FSB)
Operating system:Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64
15.6" FHD (1920 x 1080) LED Backlit Anti-Glare Display, Mobile Broadband
NVIDIA Quadro 2000M Graphics with 2GB DDR3 Memory
8GB RAM (1600)

And if I am nuts for looking at a workstation tell me what other options there are for a great screen on a machine that fits into my conservative office environment and can handle after hours superman duties!

 

I'm sure if it can handle BF3, it'll handle SC2

 

Thanks and nice review posting... any idea on meeting my weight objective and where the best place to find a HDD enclosure to replace the optical drive?

 

A stock W520 is 5.95lbs with the 9-cell, so replacing it with a 6-cell and taking out the ODD should see something close to 5.5lbs. I bet there are external ODD bays somewhere on the net. When I took out my stock 500GB drive, I bought a HDD dock to use it (and other drives) externally; since the ODD is SATA as well, I don't see why it wouldn't work.

 

If you are referring to an HDD enclosure for the UltraBay slot, then I would recommend this one from NewModeUS. It's extremely light and fits well. Plus it's cheap.

2nd HDD or SSD Caddy - Lenovo ThinkPad W520, W510, T510, T520 [TP-W510-T510] - $46.75 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

 

If my Quadro 1000M can do it (tested on external monitor), I'd be surprised if a Quadro 2000M can't.

 

I think you will find the answer to your second question here...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/623595-battlefield-3-thinkpad.html

Otherwise, Colonel O'Neill can probably chime in on specifics.

 

Sorry, I mistook Starcraft for Battlefield.

Since this site's forum search link appears to be borked, try a Google search with the following keywords (everything between the quote marks):

" site:forum.notebookreview.com starcraft w520 "

Hope this helps.

 

I'm currently looking at a W520 with a 160GB SSD. I also plan to pick up an ultrabay adaptor and HDD to replace the DVD drive.

With the default OS load that comes preinstalled on the laptop, how much free space will be available with the 160GB SSD?

Thanks

 

When formatted, a 160GB drive will have 149GB of free space, including OS installation. At least that's what Computer tells me.