Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

I will be damned. Yep, Optimus was disabled in the BIOs. Sigh, I should have known when the machine came with wireless disabled. Thank you both.

 

Hey,


sorry for the misleading link.

As for now, I had to do a complete reinstall of my Windows. Just out of interest - are you installing all your drivers manually by downloading them from the Lenovo page? Or are you using the Thinkvantage System Update (after Wlan & Nvidia driver installation)? Do you install all of the drivers & software? I really don't get why no manufacturer just gives you one big, regularly updated file to get all of it covered. It always feels like I'm installing a lot of nonsense (for features I don't have or because of missing descriptions...)

As for now, I used the System Update route, and after the first run was completed, there still were some "Intel wifi, Thinkpad Video Features, ..." left (again to mention, you do not get any information). But, when I'm checking these, all of them still appear the next time I'm scanning. The only difference is, I lost 5gb of space on my drive. So to sum it up, I do not think the System Update by Lenovo is the right way...

 

In case someone else runs across this, the below methods work for me 100% of the time. I'm currently running with video drivers downloaded from Intel and Nvidia installed via the method below.



Cloning on a W520 with Optimus turned off:
Enter Bios
Switch the graphics option to Discreet
Cloning will work normally in windows.



Cloning on a W520 with Optimus turned on:

Install Drivers:
Get the latest driver package from Lenovo
Win7 x64
Win7 x86

Optional. If you want to use the absolute latest drivers from nvidia and intel, get them now. To use them, run the lenovo installer but do not let it actually install the drivers. Next locate the folder that the lenovo installer created, you'll notice it has folders named intel and nvidia. You need to replace the files in those folders with the ones you downloaded directly from intel and nvidia. Once that is done, run the setup.bat file and let it complete.

If you simply want to use the lenovo drivers, run the installer and let it complete.

If you do not install the drivers using the lenovo installer, you will have problems attempting to clone. I had issues with the nvidia control panel freezing up.



To activate display cloning:
Connect external display
Fn-f7 or Win-P to bring up the projector options.
Choose Disconnect projector. (Yes, this is counter intuitive and took me a while to figure out.)
Right click your desktop and choose NVIDIA Control Panel or otherwise open the NVIDIA Control panel
In the left payne choose the Display tree and then Set up multiple displays.
In the right payne under number 1, check both your laptop display and the external display.
In the right payne under number 2, right click the laptop display and then choose Clone With and the number of the display you wish to clone with.
Click apply
Click yes to the change confirmation
Display is now cloned.

 

Guess the Sandisk Extreme SSD aren't a good watch with the W520 (sandforce..)?

 

THIS is why I love forums!

 

Just my two cents worth - stick with Intel and Samsung SSDs. Again, just my personal preference and experience.

 

Seeing that Sandforce drives today use the mostly-reliable SF-2281, the only major difference between SF drives now are the companies selling them. Obviously, I wouldn't buy from OCZ, but I've had great experiences with SanDisk tech support (for their flash and mp3 products).

 

Anyone gotten the Dolby sound drivers working with Windows 8?

And is there more recent drivers than support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=HT072084

 

I found that my W520 turned on it's nVidia card for basicly everything. Including the Lenovo Power Manager (why!!??) and IE (=browser).

I would recommend digging into the settings and forcing IE to the onboard video. It really doesn't need the Quadro afaik.

 

Crucial is the favorite, if i ask for that Sandisk it's cause there're good discount at the moment.

 

hi all,

A recent owner of the w520 here, and the awesome people here and their guidance and experiences helped me considerably in finalizing my purchase. All things are running more or less ok, with the exception of a few issues. I've spent hours reading up on different forums and threads and the situation keeps changing with bios updates or driver changes, so I thought that I should search for the latest solutions.

The specs are: 2820qm, 8gb ram, quadro 2000m, 500gb hdd. Win 7 64bit, bios 1.34

1. I'm interested in knowing that provided with 'ideal' conditions, i.e. An airconditioned room plus a decent cooling pad (Need recommendations for that as well), what settings can leverage max cpu and gpu performance running on ac power, not battery. Currently I'm using lenovo power manager, batterycare and tpfancontrol and keep trying out different combinations. But it has become confusing.

2. If there is a power outage while playing a game, what is the best procedure to stop the trottling and incredible amounts of stutter that hits the game? I don't need to play for an hour, but getting to a savepoint would be helpful.

3. Ebay has a bunch of $10 hdd caddys that claim to work with w520's. Is it ok to use them for my WD scorpio black? I was hoping for a cheap solution to that and the laptop cooler issue.

Much thanks in advance!

 

1) I game a lot on my laptop, and my standard gaming profile is as follows: Discrete GPU enabled in BIOS, Optimus disabled in BIOS, Maximum Performance and Turbo Boost+ enabled in Power Manager; TPFC.73ti on Smart Mode Quiet (or Manual Mode 64, when needed)

2) Good luck on this one. Maybe a secondary UPS?

3) I can't speak with authority regarding the cheap eBay options, but I chose the NewmodeUS caddy for my laptop:

Add a 2nd HDD to Lenovo Thinkpad W510, W520, W530, T420, T430, T510, T520, T530, W700, W710 - YouTube
2nd HDD or SSD Caddy Lenovo ThinkPad W510, W520,W530, W700,W710 [TP-W510-T510] - $46.75 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

The fit and finish were perfect. VERY well made. No gaps after installation. I'm very happy with the purchase.

I don't use a laptop cooler, so I can't really help you there.

Hope this is helpful.

 

Just a few points:

Throttling: ThrottleStop, works perfectly, one click.

Caddy: don't buy the cheapest, the best buy in my opinion is the "nimitz" one from eBay

Optimus: just change the default profile to integrated, all problems solved.

 

If one is prepared to pay $40+ for something as simple as Ultrabay tray, may as well give some money to Lenovo. They do have a proper 12.7mm tray now ( 0A65623 ), and shipping is free.

Mine $10 one ( http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120711487081 ) fits and works well.

 

Well, Lenovo didn't have a proper 12.7mm tray when I made my purchase back in November, but I'm happy to see that they finally got their act together.

 

I think i got the same one, first i thought it has no LED by in fact there's a little blue light, still doesn't blink when HDD works...

I haven't updated my Nvidia drivers in a while and see new ones were released, do you use "VERDE" one or just hmm.. i don't know, they have no name.. I mean standard one!?

 

The nimitz one blinks

For nVidia, it doesn't matter how you get there, there is only one driver: 305.93:
NVIDIA DRIVERS 305.93WHQL

Don't forget, always do clean-install! Save your Optimus settings with NVIDIA Inspector:
NVIDIA Inspector 1.9.6.6 download from Guru3D.com

 

The NewModeUS caddy that I bought (same one that Razorbak86 linked) has a working blue LED HDD light. Maybe your caddy is defective?

 

I think he is talking about a $10 one.

 

306.23 WHQL is out today.

 

Quadro is following a different development branch.

 

On mine the blue light blinks when the drive is being accessed. I'd rather it had no light at all

 

You guys are funny. There is a flashing green icon right above the blue ThinkVantage key. Why do you need a blinking LED on the UltraBay caddy? Not that you're flying a Boeing or something...

Anyway, I got one for about $10 and it has no LED. My life hasn't degraded one iota.

 

The Verde driver is released on the same day.

 

No there's not only one, if you go to the beta section there are more, just check it!

 

Very helpful suggestions guys, thanks!

Thanks a lot for the suggestions. So what I'm taking from all this is that I should first put lenovo power manager slider to

Maximum performance,
enable lenovo turbo boost+,
and tpfancontrol to level 7 manually

AND then use Throttlestop with this? I havent gone through the throttlestop guide at this point, but I plan on referring to the one here:

Throttlestop Guide

And should I also get the drivers from the link that zsero posted, version 305.93, or the ones that carage refers to?

I was also thinking, that most games these days are barely dual core optimized ports that thrive on raw clock speed rather than core count. Is there a way I can manage use a software that lets me create different profiles, for say, video editing where everything is unleashed, and 'crappy ported game' profile which allows me to turn off two cores and get as much turboboost on the remaining two with (hopefully) less power draw and heat penalty.

I'm terribly sorry if the above sounds ridiculous to you guys, but I've been out of the loop for a long time and know very little about how these new systems work.

p.s. please forgive my english and grammar, it is not my first language.

 

Like a lot of you I bought a Newmodeus caddy for my w520. I have a Samsung 830-240gb in the internal SATA slot and I put an OCZ Vertex II in the caddy. After removing the DVD writer that came with the laptop I put the new caddy in and rebooted. The laptop hung on the bootscreen, so I shut it down, rebooted and went into the bios and looked around, nothing unusual-the Samsung 830 with Win7 was the first item in the boot order. Rebooted and was able to get to Windows where I formatted the new caddy/drive and moved a lot of my data, music, etc to the caddy/drive. Later I installed some windows updates and like usual with those I rebooted. The laptop again hung, so I shut down, went back into the bios and removed the caddy/drive-OCZ SSD from being considered as a boot drive. Rebooted and the laptop booted into windows. Later I updated the video driver and once again rebooted. Upon this reboot the laptop once again hung at the Lenovo boot screen. I went back into the bios, changed nothing, rebooted and the laptop booted into windows. I'm running the Lenovo bios 8BET57WW (1.37 ) 04/06/2012

Has anyone experienced this problem and found a solution? I don't want to have to boot to the bios everytime I want to reboot. If you have had the problem and found a solution, please share your resolution of the problems.

Thanks,
David

 

For disabling cores check out How to turn off a CPU core or limit cores on dual-core/multi-core computers | Solidly Stated . I seriously doubt you'll see ANY practical benefit from disabling the cores, as compared to a 80W+ converted to heat by GPU and 2 cores, the rest cores being idle will hardly add much.

And besides, most games will bottleneck on GPU anyway, Quadro 2000 wasn't a very powerful card even at release.

 

I recommend keeping TPFC in Smart Mode most of the time. The program is very responsive when gaming and works really well. Only use Manual Mode when absolutely necessary (i.e., when Smart Mode simply isn't cutting it).

 

I completely agree.

In fact, one of the best ways of keeping the heat load manageable when gaming is to lower the display resolution to 1280 x 720 resolution (720p). Running at 1920 x 1080 (FHD) on an Ivy Bridge Core i7 CPU with the Quadro 2000M GPU simply generates a lot of heat, which the single-pipe, heat sink/fan combo has difficulty shedding.

If the unit had separate heat sinks and fans for the GPU and CPU, this wouldn't be necessary, but alas, it does not.

 

Interesting points raised and I agree with you guys completely. However, the Quadro 2000m is actually sufficient for my gaming needs. The laptop is working perfectly for work, and heat is not my main issue.

My problem is that I often have to deal with power outages, and during gaming, the game which is running perfectly fine, starts stuttering and becomes completely unplayable. I know that drawing that much power out of the puny battery will kill it soon but I just wish I could make it to a save point or something without being forced to shutdown the game instantly.

I am not saying I want to play play for an hour but I would like to manage 10 mins stutter free to save the game on my terms. Hence I was theorizing that the cpu must throttle due to lenovo implemented 'long battery life' feature and that by running only two cores sans turboboost, I could get rid of the issue. Any info/guidance on this theory would be highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

Why not get a robust UPS? If you live in a place with power outtages, you are likely to be getting very dirty, spiky power delivered to you when it IS up. UPS will buffer the power, less strain on your power brick.

 

Install ThrottleStop and force full performance even on battery. It's much simpler than switching cores on/off, and works just fine.

 

Im getting some strange issues after updating using the Lenovo tool, i just installed all the update but after the mouse started clicking like crazy at random times and for random lengths of time. the spacing can be between 20 secs to 10 min, after booting in safe mode the time expanded but it was still there and is still there. im not sure what update is causing it and im not sure how to remove it with out doing a system wide reset. any ideas, anyone have a similar problem??

Thanks

 

Hello,

I have a w520. I recently installed a msata SSD to I re installed windows from scratch. Everything seems to working fine. I installed the lenovo drivers/utilities manually from the website.
Device manager seems fine... no missing drivers.
I just bought an RS232 ExpressCard. I plug it in and nothing happens... I tried two different cards... one from ebay and another from bestbuy... same results... is my windows installation bad? Am I missing any drivers? I don't even know if the original windows installation would have worked... maybe the slot is not working at all?
thanks for any input.

Phil

 

Your Windows re-installation should be okay. It is not supposed to know about all devices out there and include the appropriate drivers for them. So, you should manually install the driver for the new RS232 ExpressCard.

Open Device Manager and you should see that card listed, most likely with a yellow indicator ("unrecognized" or "unresolved").

If the card does not come with any CD, you should go to the manufacturer's support website and download the driver for it. (Usually, it is better to ignore the CD, even if one is included in the package, and check for the latest driver version posted online.)

Also, check in BIOS to see if ExpressCard port is enabled.

 

I never thought about checking the bios.... I will check...
thanks!

 

What are the cons with this laptop and how is the sound on it?
I need something like this for business but also for pleasure.
Not really going to game with it. More audio and graphic editing.

I'm more opting for this laptop due to Win 7 pro on it.
Others (MSI, ASUS, & Toshiba) only use Home Premium editions.

My business partner uses a T-420 which is why I'm looking at Lenovo.

Thanks

 

The W520 is a powerful workstation class notebook, and it can host a powerful CPU, so video and graphic editing shouldn't present any problems. However, I wouldn't recommend it for audio unless you plan to connect good external speakers or use headphones. The built in speakers are really weak. The W530 (newer model) has better speakers, but the new keyboard just isn't the same as the legendary design used on the W520 and previous models.

Regarding Win7 Pro, you can always purchase an Anytime Upgrade from Microsoft to upgrade Win7 Home Premium to Professional for $85-$90, and it takes less than 10 minutes to implement. (Just type in an authorization key, and you're done.)

Newegg.com - Microsoft Windows Anytime Upgrade: Windows 7 Home Premium to Professional

The W520 performs proficiently at gaming, but the CPU options are much more powerful than the GPU options. As long as gaming isn't your primary focus, it performs better than a lot of competing business-class notebooks.

 

The W520 is a great notebook. Its sound is good enough, really -- not great, but not tinny either. If you are an audiophile, I'm sure you have the right equipment to pamper your ears. For general use, the W520's audio capability is not a disappointment.

You may want to consider the T520 with i5 "Sandy Bridge" processor and integrated HD 3000 graphics -- the system would run cool and quiet. Except for discrete GPU (graphics card) choices, the T520 and W520 are practically identical.

Windows 7 edition should not be a major decision factor. As Razorbak86 stated above, you can purchase an Anytime Upgrade code.

You should pay attention to the screen. Never buy a T/W520 with a HD 1366x768 screen. Consider either HD+ 1600x900 or FHD 1920x1080 screen.

 

The internal sound system is not good, but there is some help available.
One option is free, W520 Sound Enhancement Thread - Page 8 - Lenovo Community
The other option is to pay for sound enhancement software.
Both Creative Labs and SRS have software sound enhancers available for a price, approximately $30.
Of course pure software solutions is not going to fix hardware limitations caused by tiny speakers.
However, it would make your experience much more enjoyable.

As for graphics, you can take advantage of your empty ExpressCard slot and join the eGPU club. As long as you can get enough power supplied, you can pretty much run any single chip desktop videocard you want. I mated my W520 with a GTX 670 despite the bandwidth limitations which is probably starving the GPU, the gaming performance still beats $3000+ gaming notebooks sporting single GTX 680M class GPUs.

 

Appreciate your help guys.
Didn't know that the successor was a W530 which I meant to be speaking.

Reckon I posted in the wrong thread.
Aside from that, I read that either the 520 or 530 had a wiring problem.
Being too close to something causing it to heat up & short out? Believe it was to do with the speakers.
Read it sometime ago.

 

I haven't heard of any wiring problems, and my W520 has certainly never shorted out or heat up considerably (ignoring F@H...).

 

I set my W520 to do nothing when I close the lid, because sometimes I want to move it around without interrupting ongoing downloads. I want the same to apply when I open the lid. On my T61 I had the same setting and it didn't do anything when opening or closing the lid. However, my W520 with W7 only ignores closing the lid.

Can it be set somewhere that it also ignore opening the lid? In the sense that it doesn't trigger a power state change?

 

There are two places. In Windows Control Panel and in Lenovo Power Manager. They can step on each other.

 

hello folks,

need your opinion on this one. I am trying to move away from the apple platform, and find lenovo as a good alternative. The thinkpad line seems to be robust enough compared to some other brands.

I have an option of buying an year old W520 for like 900 bucks with fhd screen OR get a w530 for like 1800 bucks after taxes. The configuration of the new w530 will be comparable in terms of components/options to w520, except that it will have the newer generation CPU/GPU on it.

The machine will be primarily used for software development and virtualization over either linux or windows. I am not into gaming, but I do like reasonably loud audio. I've read on this forum that the audio for w530 is considerably better then w520. Are there any software level solutions to enhance the audio for w520?

I am on a budget, but I also don't want to spend money on something which is clunky to begin with. What's your opinion on which one maybe a good enough option?

Let me know what your thoughts are.

Thanks everyone.

 

^^^ No matter how hard you try, audio on a W520/530 won't be as good as on, say, a Y580. At the same time, I wouldn't say T/W520 sounds are tinny, clunky, cheap, terrible, unusable, or whatever. I listen to losslessly encoded music on my T520 all the time.

Although you didn't tell the configuration details, but you did say "I am on a budget," I would say a W520 with FHD screen for $900 is a great deal. With RAM and SSD upgrades, it will be an awesome system.

 

I'd definitely go for the W520 if it's half the price of the newer model with roughly the same specs.

As for audio, follow this link and it'll get you audio on par with the W530. After reviewing the W530 and then installing Dolby for my W520, I couldn't hear any differences.

 

I downloaded NVIDIA Inspector.

How do I save the Optimus settings?

 

Computer failed to go to sleep twice in 2days. Hard drive and screen went off but that's it...

I turned off my wireless mouse before sending sleep command, as usual, so it shouldn't be related...