Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

20% off for today, the 10th.

WSERIES20 - 20% off a W520 on the standard lenovo site!

 

If you have a desktop, you can just put it in the desktop if it is SATA. If it is IDE, you need an adapter to split it into power and IDE, which costs like $5 or something.

 

How good is the faciel recognition, can I get it to be used for passwords on the machine so that instead of having firefox remember them I can have them encrypted in that app instead?

 

Thank you very much for the 20% off coupon liveify, that sealed the deal for me and I placed my order today.

Intel Core i7-2720QM Processor (2.20GHz, 6MB L3)
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64
15.6" FHD (1920 x 1080) LED Backlit Anti-Glare Display, Mobile Broadband Ready
NVIDIA Quadro 2000M Graphics with 2GB DDR3 Memory
4 GB DDR3 - 1333MHz (1 DIMM)
UltraNav with TrackPoint & touchpad plus Fingerprint reader
500 GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
DVD recordable multiburner
9 cell Li-Ion Battery - 55++
Bluetooth 3.0
Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 (3x3 AGN)10
Integrated Mobile Broadband - Upgradable
4270 : 1 Year Depot Warranty - TopSeller
2Yr Basic Warranty Extention

Comes out to $1676.20 before tax and with the coupon. I think I got a pretty good deal. Unfortunately the estimated ship date isn't until 7/22...

 

My experience with Power Manager, especially with respect to "Battery" settings, is that PM severely throttles down CPU max rates. My guess is that Lenovo got so many complaints about "short battery time" over the past several years that they decided to end those complaints, and the only way to do that is to cut power consumption.

The CPU being the main user of power -- GPU is right up there, too, of course -- it needs to be throttled in order to save power and extend battery life. Of course, one can always uninstall/not use Power Manager, but I'm not sure that would totally liberate the CPU, since there is probably some throttling built into the BIOS or OS.

 

Quick question:

For all you folks with the FHD screens, if you have ever had the older Thinkpad FlexView IPS, or have had/used some of the newer IPS screens from Dell or HP Elitebooks, how does the W5200 FHD compare?? Now that you've been using your machines for a while.

 

The throttling on battery occurs even in Ubuntu 11.04. I've tried to manually set the clock speed higher than 1.2 GHz in Ubuntu, but it doesn't work.

 

Has anyone tried this yet?

 

i had an a31p withe the good screen and this is the best thinkpad screen i've seen since then. it's much brighter and clearer than say a t61p screen. it's worth the difference in price over the other screens, at least to me.

 

It seems to work also with BIOS 1.22 and Lenovo PowerManager.

All I did is DISABLE SPEEDSTEP in BIOS.

It is a compromise for now, until Lenovo fixes the BIOS.

 

The 1.26 bios is great, had uninstalled the TPfancontrol already

 

I really don't get why you would want to do that? There are known work arounds for the 800mhz problem aren't there? Things like, powering off, pulling the battery, then starting, not switching power sources, etc.... Why give up AC performance? Seems like a poor solution in my opinoin.

Also, why not update to the 1.26 bios? It's definitely better than the previous versions. I know it still doesn't fix the reboot issues with the intel 510, but they have fixed some issues in it.

I just get the feeling you are digging yourself a bigger hole than necessary here with that "compromise" of a solution.

 

The following power off system reset procedure seems to work on my i7 2820QM w/o any changes to the BIOS (1.26). As with older ThinkPad systems to reset the CMOS:

• Disconnect AC
• Remove the battery
• AND then depress the power on button 10 times (5 sec intervals between).
• Reinsert the battery and connect to the AC. TurboBoost will be restored.

I did this (battery was out for 5 min), replaced the battery and plugged the system back into the AC. TurboBoost is working again! Max frequency is showing 3.4GHz on the Intel TurboBoost Monitor, and CPU-Z is showing 3.1+ at times. The CPU frequency was stuck at 797.x MHz on AC prior to this.

 

I have a Dell Precision M4400 with their RGB IPS screen. I can set it side-by-side with my new W520. The Dell screen is nice in one respect because it is 16:10, but Dell no longer sells anything other than 16:9 now. Once I color calibrated my W520 I consider the FHD screen to be one of the best ever offered on a Thinkpad. The Dell RGB does beat the W520 in color slightly, but not enough to make me stay with Dell over the W520. As a long Thinkpad owner (T41, T60) I regret buying the Dell M4400. The screen was the one and only nice aspect of that machine. I have junked the M4400 at work and got a W520 to use instead. I liked it so much I bought a second W520 for home use. Both have FHD screens.

 

Has anyone else had problems with the fans in 1.26 not running fast enough?

With 1.25 I get no turbo boost at all with the 2720QM. BIOS 1.26 does give me turbo however the fans no longer provide adequate cooling and it is constantly thermal throttling when gaming or doing anything intensive for a prolonged period of time.

It is most noticeable when trying to play games as performance will tank (~1fps or nearly frozen) for about 10 seconds before going back to normal for about 30 seconds and it just repeats this over and over again while the fan speed stays the same. The fan never reaches max speed.

tpfancontrol reduces the constant throttling, however it still happens on occasion.

 

I think the discussion around fan control, heat, etc. belongs in a separate thread. There are about 10 active ones already at support.lenovo.com in the W area.

 

The M4400's RGBLED screen isn't IPS, it's TN.

*tilts screen back* yep, defintely TN

 

That's when you're running on battery, right?

Do you have the Thinkpad "Power Saver" on Ubuntu? If not, it's got to be a BIOS thing that Lenovo set.

 

Yes, running on battery. As far as I know of, I don't. Though, I do have a CPU clock monitoring and setting utility that allows me to toggle between different performance modes and clock speeds. Tried every one, won't go beyond 1.2 GHz no matter what (goes below that fine, though).

 

Was that a FlexView IPS you had on your a31p? The T61p had many different screens, but I'm not even sure they had a FlexView IPS. (My T22 had a non-IPS screen, and it was just an average screen, nothing like the FlexView on my T60p.)

I am looking specifically for comparison between the older FlexView IPS screens and the current FHD 1080p panels on the W520.

 

Which BIOS are you using?

Is there any adjustment available on it for when you are on Battery?

 

I'm using the 1.26 BIOS. When I am on battery and in Ubuntu, I can only adjust it to go lower than 1.2 GHz, if I try to click on a clock speed higher than 1.2 GHz, it will just stick at 1.2 GHz. In Windows, no matter what I try, I am stuck at 1.2 GHz max.

 

Okay so i have a quote saved from a rep in which i got him to do the B&N discount + 10% off with my coupon for allowing their newsletter. I got it configured with the 2000m, FHD, 500gb hd, and the intel 6300 all for $1,556 before taxes. Has anyone been able to haggle it down for anything less, it was around 23% off i believe.

 

I hope the rep I got will give me the BN plus 10% when I go to order. That would be amazing!

 

Where can I download BIOS 1.26?

 

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/8buj06us.txt
http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/8buj06us.exe

 

I am travelling in Europe and use the W520 on battery 80% of the time.

I followed your advice and tried BIOS 1.26 with Speedstep enabled. With that setting, the core speed (measured by CPU-Z) is continuously 800MHz on battery (yes - I did pull the battery and press the off button 10 times). It's like running a Porsche on 2 cylinders!

I am going back to the SPEEDSTEP DISABLED setting in BIOS. At least I get 2.3 Mhz on battery with that setting (while still being hopeful that Lenovo will eventually fix it in a future BIOS release)

Note: This "compromise" is for people who use the W520 on battery a lot and need optimum performance while on battery.
It comes down to this choice:
a) 800 MHz on Battery / 800-2300-3200MHz plugged-In.
b) 800-2300 MHz on Battery / plugged-in.
While travelling, the last option is the most productive.

 

Ok finally made the plunge and got a w520 but here's the catch I got a sweet deal!! I got a i7 2920xm, 4 gigs of ram( I'll upgrade myself cheaper), nvidia 2000m, 320 gig hard drive, fhd screen, advanced 3x3 wireless, color sensor, all the other basics and a three yr warranty for ONLY 2266 that includes taxes...rep says august 6 is ship date but yfrom what I hear that will probably be much sooner..hope I didn't make a bad choice going from a MacBook pro to this..I need windows and ubuntu and this seems to be the closest to it..I have a owc 240 gig ssd 6g that I am going to put in as well. Hope the ssd will work also based on the issues I have been hearing with all the ssd for the w520..fingers crossed

 

Did you set the performance level on battery to Maximum, and the settings in that power profile to Maximum Turbo? I get 2.3 GHZ max on battery with the i7 2820QM.

 

When you boot F1 and get into the _BIOS setup_, do you see any choices for how to set the CPU while the machine is in battery mode? If so, have you tinkered with the settings to see if you can free up more cycles??

You probably have, but I have to ask.

 

Yes, battery is set to Maximum Performance

In power manager->power plan->system settings
I have the choices: highest - adaptive - low - lowest

I have it set at "highest"

I couldn't find maximum turbo (since I had speedstep disabled).

I've re-enabled it now and I am trying it again with "Maximum Turbo".

Do you have BIOS 1.26?

 

What else does "resetting the CMOS" do to the machine? Does it roll-back any settings? If so, which ones?

I'm asking bec my T60p has been flaking out on me the past two weeks -- it's only five years old and been running an average of 10 hours a day/365 -- and I'm wondering it this might help my sudden freeze and total loss of keyboard, mouse, and all other mechanical switches (even the power button becomes unresponsive, have to shut things down by pulling the plug _and_ removing the battery )

 

Resetting the CMOS via the technique that I described was/is the approved method of clearing out erroneous info. The main settings should not be affected.

 

I am running BIOS 1.26 as distributed. The maximum turbo setting is inside the Power Manager system profile under Settings -> System Performance. First dropdown box. The default is "TURBO". Change this to "MAXIMUM TURBO"

 

i think it was the uxga 1600 x 1200. i know when i bought it it was a very expensive option but at the time i wasn't using a port replicator as much and i needed that screen. it was a lot better than the best screen you could get on the t61p because i still think the screen on that sucks.

 

Do you remember how much it cost? I always wondered how much <s>Lenovo</s>IBM charged for these upgrades back in the day.

 

Do you remember if it was a FlexView on your a31p? FlexView on my T60p was about a $400 upgrade, but it has been worth every penny. Made all other screens look poor comparison, then. Still makes most of the current screens on the market look washed out, terrible viewing angles. Only thing better than my FlexView on most of today's WLED TN screens is their brightness, and my panel is bright enough for what I do.

 

Thank you. That was very helpful. It seems to work with the "Maximum Turbo" setting. I am getting speeds of 800-2300Mhz now while running on battery. (No TurboBoost though)

 

You're welcome. You will NOT get TurboBoost on battery until the engineering team changes the parameters for power consumption when on battery. You will get TurboBoost on AC to the maximum level (3.4)GHz) with 1.26 and the clearing of the CMOS. The power draw of TurboBoost on AC can exceed 40 watts w/o the NVIDIA GPU engaged. No idea what it would look like with the discrete GPU running, but it would probably approach 90 Watts. LiOn batteries do not like heavy drawdowns and that may be the major reason why there is no battery mode TurboBoost on this system. I remember that the main reason for the 170W power brick was for the reason of TurboBoost + discrete GPU running. There just wasn't enough power agenda left to distribute on the 135W power brick.

 

My 2620M is stuck at 1.2 GHz even after setting the CPU speed to Maximum Turbo.

 

I'm receiving my w520 today in a couple hours and was wondering if you guys could make a small list of the problems people are experiencing and point me towards their respective fixes?

1. Fan Speed Problem?
2. TurboBoost with Battery Problem?
3. Warm Reboot with Intel 510 Problem?

any others?

 

Sorry for the double post...

If I want to use TurboBoost while using the battery, what bios should I use? Is there some sort of work-around if not a full solution? Like plugging out and removing the battery or something?

 

I believe you need the initial release BIOS, 1.06, if you want to use TurboBoost on battery. I'm not 100% sure if it worked with 1.22, but at least it didn't throttle on battery.

 

What problems does BIOS 1.06 present?

What settings (bios, power management, or otherwise) do I need to set to have either option A or B?

 

I've never used the 1.06 BIOS, my machine shipped with 1.21.

For option A, you can probably just leave everything untouched. For option B, I believe you just disable SpeedStep in BIOS and set the CPU performance in Power Manager to "Maximum Turbo".

 

Just received my W520 minutes ago, its installed with BIOS 1.25 according to the ThinkVantage ToolBox. How can I check if Intel Turbo Boost is working?

 

Try HWInfo64. The CPU frequency indicator will tell you.

 

Can I protect the main password in my firefox browser using facial recognition?

 

Should I be worried about this system?? The W520? I am seeing mixed reviews...would you guys keep your system or if you had the chance to trade it in right now would you and for what??

 

Where have you seen mixed reviews for the W520? Every review I have seen lists nothing but positives aside from a few nit picky details.

Does anyone know the performance differnce between a Intel Core i7-2620M Processor (2.70GHz, 4MB L3) and a Intel Core i7-2720QM Processor (2.20GHz, 6MB L3)? I haven't been able to find benchmarks and I'm trying to decide between going for the quad core or going for a 1920x1080 screen. Also does anyone know how 1920x1080 looks on a 15.6" screen? I tried to go to staples to get a feel for it but they only had 1376x1333 or whatever that weird resolution is. I'm considering spending the extra money for the upgrade but would like some opinions on it.

Out of curiosity how does optimus work on the W520? Do you switch it in the BIOS or is there software you use?