Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

Intel says Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) for i7-2720 i7-2820 i7-2920 is 16GB RAM:
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But they were wrong before: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/Max-memory-for-W510/td-p/250913/page/2

What do they mean by "dependent on memory type"?

 

Thanks for the reminder. I was fully aware but the speed gain would potentially far outweight the potential slight inconvenience I guess. So far after researching from many sources, I think the issue is negligible.

But thanks for highlighting again, I guess over time, intel should offer trim support for raid users.

 

MMMmmm, Don't know. Maybe the limit can be computed from: "Max Memory Bandwidth - 25.6 GB/s"
Too lazy to do the research!

Lenovo in their datasheet for W520 say 32GB, so maybe they know sth we don't know.

 

I don't know anyone that wants to pay the price to get 4 sticks of 8GB memory.

It has taken my 4 sticks of 4GB nicely

 

i think most of the people on the forum buy these laptops for personal use, if you buy one for professional use, for example use in oil and gas industry, or design/scientific the productivity gains can be enough to justify the price, not to mention when some specialist software can be 3 times the cost of the actual laptop

 

Well I can only speak for my company, but we certainly wouldn't drain that kind of money into a quad core laptop. A 6-8 core, dual processor workstation... yes.

EDIT: I work in the auto industry and while we do have W520s for engineers, they also ALL have desktops with far better power to cost ratios.

 

Dell mobile workstations (M6x00) with the same processors are advertised as

Up to 16GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600Mhz - 4 DIMMS
Up to 32GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333Mhz - 4 DIMMS

and, unlike Lenovo, it's possible to configure 32GB on the website ($7000+ for the extra 16GB).

 

Uh, that might be one of the reasons.

 

Seven...thousand...dollars...

Yeah...umm...that's a crazy amount of money to spend on RAM. Of course, 8GB RAM sticks are expensive and hard to come by, but I suppose with $7000, you could instead create a parallel computing network with much, much more RAM and CPU power for that money

 

Dear Lenovo Owner's,

Im a guy from Switzerland and I am looking forward to buying the new W520. But before I do so, I have some general questions I would like to have answered.

Thank you very much in advance and Greetings from Switzerland.

Mike

 

What about a non-RAID set-up, would that compare to what you've got or would it be slower?? (Since I read that RAID doubles the speed of the storage performance. "read", as in a rumor. Could be fact, though.)

 

How do you spell "rip off"?? That price is unconscionable. They ought to hang their heads in shame. Seriously.

 

Hi all,

Just want to verify with fellow W520 owners with RAID 0 enabled that since my W520 configuration is RAID 0, which means I will receive 2 hds in my W520 right? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

So if I want to upgrade W520 with 2 SSDs, I will have to:

1. Do all the patches right up to Windows 7 SP1 or latest

2. Restart, run the Rescue and Recovery 4.31 to make recovery W7 discs

3. Enable BIOS to boot from AHCI, shut down the machine

4. Swap both hds to SSDs

5. Use the recovery discs to restore W7

6. Enjoy the glory of RAID 0 SSD wonderful speed


If however, later if I change my mind about using RAID 0, I then will have to:

1. Do all the patches right up to Windows 7 SP1 or latest

2. Run the Rescue and Recovery 4.31 to make recovery W7 discs

2. Change BIOS to boot from AHCI, shut down the machine

4. Swap 1 hd to SSD (primary) and one hd remains as storage drive in the caddy or the other way round (May I ask which one is recommended since I'll be using Intel SSD 510 series)

5. Run the restore disc to restore W520 to its former glory

6. Enjoy the wonderful speed of single SSD


Appreciate fellow experienced users' input if you find any of my steps for both options are incomplete please.

Cheers,
Marky

 

Sounds about right to me. I am running a 120 GB C300 as OS/Program drive and a 256 GB C300 as a data and files drive now.

Actually the 120 GB got the nod as the OS drive as it is a bit faster than the 256 GB. Go figure.

Also I had better performance with the OS in the Ultrabay Caddy than in drive 0 position. Again go figure.

Perry

 

Important note: In the RST help file, Intel recommends a "stripe" size of 128k for RAID0 Hard Drives, but 16k stripe size for SSDs. The default setting is 128k. I suggest you change it when you set up your SSD RAID0(You can check my earlier posts on this subject.)

 

Anyone else finds the redesigned Lenovo's support page completely useless when it comes to finding the latest driver updates? All the errors / missing information is not helping either...

 

It is unfortunate that Lenovo does not offer a SSD RAID0 pre-configured. (I have the SonyVaioZ11 which comes factory installed with RAID0 and you don't have to set up anything - you don't even need to know what RAID is.)

Here are a few links that helped me in setting up the RAID0 with the W520:
Intel® Rapid Storage Technology — What is a RAID migration?
Intel® Rapid Storage Technology — What is a RAID ready system?
Intel® Rapid Storage Technology — How to set up a RAID ready system
Also: "... set your BIOS to RAID mode. RAID mode provides the greatest overall flexibility and upgradeability because it allows your system to be RAID ready and enable AHCI." Intel® Rapid Storage Technology — How to configure the BIOS for RAID or AHCI on an Intel® motherboard ....
What is AHCI?

 

Thanks for sharing Perry.

 

Very insightful as always Huberth. Many thanks for potentially saving me time and effort.

 

Order date: Friday 05/27
Shanghai ship date: Tuesday 05/31
Now the customs waiting game begins

 

i have the 1000m with an i7-2720qm and the stock 7200rpm hard drive. I just got the laptop so I haven't tested many games, but I can give you some starcraft 2 figures:

Starcraft II:
Resolution: 1920x1080 Textures: Ultra Graphics Details: High FPS range: 30 to 35 fps
Resolution: 1920x1080 Textures: Ultra Graphics Details: Ultra FPS range: 20 to 25 fps
Resolution: 1600x900 Textures: Ultra Graphics Details: High FPS range: I don't have any data for this, but it does run smooth at ultra settings when set to 1600x900

A Note for Minecraft Players: Optimus won't switch over to the nvidia card unless you specify javaw.exe to run with dedicated graphics in the nvidia control panel.

I had trouble with minecraft, because I made minecraft.exe run with the dedicated graphics instead of javaw.exe. Hopefully this will be useful to others out there that had the same problem as me.

 

My fan is pulsating every 5 seconds. Oh my god. I hoped at least this would not happen on my notebook! Any solution yet?

 

As suggested by JameZ on Lenovo Forums, engineers were made aware of the problem and are working on the solution. We'll see if they tackle the problem in the next BIOS update.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/578393-w520-fan-pulsing-2.html#post7552228

 

2000m with i7-2720, WoW runs at 30-40fps at ultra settings, 1920x1080. 8x AA

Rift runs at 1600x900 smooth at ultra with the middle AA.

 

After getting my W520 about three weeks ago, I'm wondering if the processor (i7-2720) is slower than it should be. Looking at the windows experience index and a couple of other benchmarks it seems like it didn't match with other scores I'd seen. Is there any way to know for sure?

 

Make sure battery is in and AC is plugged in. Turn on max performance. Then run WEI.

Also bios 1.24 and 1.25 disable turbo boost which would make your CPU rating take a hit I believe.

 

Same here with the turbo boost issue:

Bios 1.24 and 1.25 = NO

Bios 1.22 = YES

I also installed the REAL Bios v1.25, and still no Turbo boost.

I also have CPU 2720QM.
Is this the only CPU affected ?? Or it affects all CPU in the W520 ??

Is Lenovo trying to limit or cap our CPU performance ??

 

I made sure the AC was plugged in and the battery is in, and the settings are on max performance. From what I can tell I'm running bios 1.21, so that shouldn't be a problem either. The windows experience index has the processor at a 4.6. Are there any other explanations for what could be happening?

 

It does not seem to affect the i7-2820

 

WEI for Q2720 on Win 7 is 7.5.
Run HWiNFO32 and see if it is actually boosting to 3.3GHz. If not make sure you have BIOS 1.22 (I would re-flash just to be sure.)

 

Looking at HWiNFO32, it has the CPU turbo clocked at 3.3GHz. It also is has the four cores currently clocked at 797 MHz (to be honest I'm not entirely sure what this means), with brief fluctuation. Also looking at the RAM it has each module clocked at 667 MHz, is this what it should be for 1333MHz RAM?

 

You mean the Processor subscore is 7.5.

The Base Score (WEI) is likely 6.9 which is the lowest subscore. The lowest subscore if using a good SSD is the Graphics and Gaming Graphics.

 

does the "fluctuations" get to 3.3GHz at any point? Do they go any higher than ~800MHz? If not the Turbo boost is not working.
667 * 2 ~1333MHz

Make sure BIOS is 1.22. Also you can try shutting down. unplugging AC and taking out the battery, wait, and put the battery and AC back and trun on.
Worked for me once after switching to extended battery mode and getting stuck with no turbo boost.

 

Yes I meant the CPU subscore. He mentioned the CPU score for him was 4.6.
2000M would get 6.9 so with a good SSD that's the minimum score and WEI.

 

So, I did a clean install onto a new Intel 510 250 SSD, and was wondering how I could have 'forced' a 4k block size; assuming a) I should have b) it matters and c) I don't already have it.

I ran WMIC Partition, and here are my results.

Bottom line, should I just find something else to worry about?



wmic:root\cli>partition
BlockSize Bootable BootPartition Caption NumberOfBlocks Size StartingOffset
512 TRUE TRUE Disk #0, Partition #0 204800 104857600 1048576
512 FALSE FALSE Disk #0, Partition #1 488187904 249952206848 105906176
[/p]

 

I don't believe it, but turning the computer off and removing the battery fixed the problem. When I looked at the benchmarks again they were constantly around 3GHz and the WEI sub score was 7.5. It seems like that did it, thanks!

 

You're welcome. Do you know what you did to get stuck with no turbo boost?
I almost used up my battery charge and was playing with power modes so i'm not sure which one is the one that did it. We should figure out what it was and report it to Lenovo for a fix. Maybe its related to the standby and AC problem that others mentioned.

 

I'm pretty sure I messed around with the power modes as well between having my computer plugged in and carrying it around. Not too sure which one did it, but I'm pretty sure it was a power option.

EDIT: I just tried putting my computer on the "balanced" power plan and started HWiNFO32, it seems that my clock speeds are again around 800MHZ; however, putting the plan back at "maximum performance" put them back around 3GHz.

 

You might try and download Intel Turbo Boost Technology Monitor 2.0.

Some folks have stated that simply running HWiNFO32 throttles back their CPUs (mostly X220 folks).

The Intel monitor is simply and effective.

 

Hmmm, there is something about the "balanced" power plan. I just noticed that when I use "balanced" I have the sleep/resume issue with the 1866Mhz RAM, but not in "maximum performance:

 

I'm running the "real" 1.25 BIOS with the 1866MHz RAM and i7-2720QM. I can't get my CPU to clock above 2.2 GHz no matter what I do. I ran Prime95 maxing out all the cores and at the same time switched through all the available power plans. I hit a ceiling at 2.2 GHz, maybe saw 2.3 flicker once in HWiNFO32.

I also still have the resume-from-sleep problem.

 

Try setting "Maximum Performance" in BIOS

 

Setting the powermanager to max performance or any other profile with turbo or max turbo enabled helped in my case, even with the BIOS setting at balanced.

 

eWeek review contains some interesting information about the W520. Example:

"The second-generation vPro technology included in the chip set I tested in the W520 is in large part responsible for the surprisingly positive performance characteristics I saw. The new chip set is much better able to evaluate heat and performance.

The ability to track when a chip is "cool" or "hot" - and how long it will take for the chip to get "hot" again - is a big part of the cooler overall operation of the W520 compared with the W510 that was released just one year ago."

Full review here: Lenovo W520 mobile workstation doubles power, lightens load [eWEEK]

 

For everyone making changes to "power plans", please be specific ...

Are you changing it in the BIOS or in the Power Manager software ??

Or both ??

What combination of changes seems to work ?? If it did work...

For the Turbo issue or the 1866MHz Ram sleep/resume issue ??

We want to try to narrow down a possible solution/cause.


Thanks.

 

I have "Maximum Performance" in BIOS and have not changed it.

I just noticed that when I use "Balanced" in PowerManager I have the sleep/resume issue with the 1866Mhz RAM, but not in "maximum performance" (in PowerManager)

 

Got the same problem. Roll back bios to 1.06 fixed the problem. check more detail at W520 TurboBOOST not working after updates. - Lenovo Community

 

Has anyone connected a 3D monitor (120Hz) to the W520, and have the laptop send the signal in 3D (120Hz), disregarding/disconnecting the laptop monitor?

 

1.22 is the last one that works, you don't have to go to 1.06. I think more people should report the problem on the lenovo forum so this and other turbo boost problems getsfixed sooner.

I didn't modify the BIOS turbo boost settings, only in Win.

In the case where I got stuck in 800Mhz and (a couple of posts back) reboots and changing settings in BIOS didn't fix the problem and I had to shut down unplug AC and take out the battery to fix it. A combination of changing power modes (in Win) and pluging and unpluging would cause this. (probably only happens to Q2720s)

P.S. I have 16GB of kingstone Ram @ 1600Mhz (CAS 9) and never had any problems. Kingstone 1866MHz (CAS 11) given the difference in latencies, the performance gain is negligible, and it might have increased heat, and the stability issues people are experiencing, therefore not worth the extra cost IMHO.

Waiting to see how those force series 3 SSDs will work ...

 

I just tried shutting down, disconnected power and battery, waited a minute, and rebooted. Entered BIOS, switched all performance settings for both AC power and battery to Maximum Performance (AC power settings were already at Max, and even though I use a dock and am plugged in most of the time, I changed the battery settings to Max as well).

Booted up, and ran some Prime95. Clocks up from 2.2Ghz to 2.3Ghz, but no higher.