Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

It stays around 797 but fluctuates when I am installing a program or doing some activity. How do I know if its working?

P.S.: Under the HWiNFO64 v3.82 it says Intel Turbo Boost Technology - Suported, Enabled

 

I guess from people talking about fan, ssd issues and wobbly battery I look at it as either bothersome and possibly something they wish they could trade in but maybe I'm looking at it wrong. I guess the fact that I am getting the 2920xm processor because my rep hooked me up and a 3yr warranty is what really sold me considering that alone is a 8 to 900 dollar upgrade.(I don't remember actual cost). Does anyone have a good pic of the FHD? I keep hearing good things about it but I still haven't really seen a good picture of this screen in action.

 

Hey Everyone,
So I've seen people upgrading their ram. Most are going with the 1333 mhz ram but I've seen a couple people with 1600 mhz and one guy has upgraded with the 1866 mhz ram (pc-10600, 12800 and 14900 respectively). I was wondering what performance benefits people have seen with going over the stock 1333mhz ram if any?
My w520 came in the mail yesterday and I'm stoked, but would like to deck out the ram (AutoCAD, 3D Stuido & Photoshop applications.)
Thanks!

 

I thought you ordered this already dude, surely you must know what your buying.. 2820qm -2920xm not much difference..

 

I would be surprised to see Lenovo ever enable Turbo Boost while on battery. They may decide to bite the bullet and do it, but if I were them I wouldn't. Why?

Plugged into power, I've seen my machine consume up to 130 watts for brief moments, and 110 watts steady (turbo boost engaged, gpu and cpu fully loaded). If you know ANYTHING about batteries and work it out:

130 watts, voltage is 12 volts (3 battery cells in series), so that's 10.8333 amps out of the battery pack. Since the pack is 3 parallel packs of 3 cells in series, you need to divide that current by 3, so 3.6111 amps out of each individual cell.

I don't know if you guys know anything about the cells used in these packs, but they are simply 18650 li-ion cells. Even the best made of those cells, the most that's generally advised to drain out of them at any time is 3 amps, and that's pushing it. Ideally you'd only drain around 2.5 amps out of one at any time.

Since Lenovo has to cover these battery packs under a 1 year warranty, I HIGHLY doubt they'll enable turbo boost on battery. It would trash the batteries.

 

@infinus: Even if we don't get TurboBoost on battery, why can't we get the regular CPU speed on battery and TurboBoost when plugged in? I don't want to be stuck at 800 Mhz everytime I'm on battery.

 

What do you mean "wobbly battery", it isn't secure in its mount? I'm also pretty sure that the BIOS update fixed the fan issues, I'm not sure about SSD's though.

 

I completely agree on this...... have you tried bios 1.26 and set max turbo boost on battery? It seems that by doing this most people are getting the normal cpu frequencies.

 

Well it was a free upgrade to get the 2920xm processor..and yes at kingfat I did order it already but I haven't gotten any info on ship dates so I still have the ability to cancel my order. Just a little anal when it comes to spending over 2k for a laptop. Don't want to have to worry about the fact that I made a mistake. You guys really like the FHD screen??

 

LOVE the FHD screen, although I highly recommend a color calibrator for it. I prefer the non-built in variety however any will do.

 

I used CPU-Z and Prime95 to test the TurboBoost Speed and it jumped from a constant ~800 to ~2193 MHz. This is with Maximum Turbo.

What am I supposed to be getting?

EDIT: Even though CPU-Z is showing 800 Mhz, HWinfo64 is showing 2192 constant

 

EDIT: WHoops

 

Your logic is impecable. Running on battery with the i7 2820QM processor + the discrete GPU has power demands of 90+ Watts or more. Setting the "MAXIMUM TURBO" in the System Performance section of Settings in the Power Manager profile will yield a 2.3 GHz clock speed as required.

 

just ordered my first laptop! thankfully i found this site before i joined the apple army. thanks to wseries20 coupon i was pretty confident in getting a fair price for my new setup. coupon was expired but basically got honored by end of order.

gpu: i7 2720qm
display: FHD 95% gamut led
gpu: nvidia 2000m
wifi: 6205 (2x2)
ram: 4gb ddr3 1333mhz 1 dimm
hdd: 320 gb @ 7200rpm
warranty: 3 years tp+onsite

little less than $1900 for comp + taxes + shipping + 3 year warranty.
expected to ship early august. will probably read the 300+ pages of this thread to pass the time.

 

Still no one willing to post a high def pic of their fhd in action?

 

Click the review in my sig. I have pictures of 1080p, 900p, and 720p.

 

You have anything with a lot more colors involved..screen pics? Anything new that you would say are annoyances or has it been a awesome machine for you?

 

Unfortunately that does not look to be the case with the i7-2720QM CPUs... I just tried everything mentioned and I'm stuck at 1.5GHz.

 

If you had to choose between the 2720QM and the FHD screen (given that your eyes can actually look at a 141 DPI screen comfortably for extended periods of time), I'd say that the FHD screen is the better upgrade. The 2620M has performed fine for my needs, I actually haven't really run into a scenario where I wished that I had a quad core instead.

Optimus works automatically out of the box. Though, you can toggle which mode you want to use in the BIOS. It works just like it says, automatic switchable graphics. If a program needs the performance, it will use the NVIDIA dGPU, otherwise, it'll use the Intel iGPU.

I believe Lenovo states somewhere that the battery is only covered for physical damage and not chemical deterioration.

 

Really? That surprises me. I've never read the fine print. It would be interesting to hear Lenovo's view on it. Even if the warranty wasn't an issue would it be a bigger pain to deal with users frustrated about having a feature disabled to protect the batteries or frustrated users upset their battery packs gave out early? Seems like a lose lose for them. It's a technology limitation.

 

I remember reading about it. I'll go try to find it again. Having the battery packs burn out early could be better financially for Lenovo, though.

 

My findings are at BIOS level 1.26. Are you running 1.22?

 

Oops, forgot to update my signature. Yep, running 1.26 and have Maximum Performance set for battery and on AC in the BIOS. Also have the Maximum Turbo in Power Manager. After reading about the press 10 seconds to clear the CMOS, I went ahead and tried that. Looks like I'm still stuck at 1.5GHz when I switch to battery. Am I supposed to disable Speedstep like one of the previous posts mentioned where Speedstep is in actuality Turbo Boost?

 

Do you at least get the full speed under AC?

 

I'm using BIOS 1.25 and I understand that Intel Turbo Boost isn't working for me on both AC and battery but I want to make sure that SpeedStep is working.

I took a video on battery using HWiNFO64, SuperPi, and the Intel Turbo Boost Monitor. I'm on Maximum Turbo in Lenovo's Power Management Settings and I assume SpeedStep is enabled in the BIOS since I haven't touched it.

So does the fluctuation between 800 to 2192 MHz indicate that SpeedStep is working?

YouTube - ‪speedstep‬‏

 

As it stands right now, everything is fine under AC... pull the plug even if it's in the middle of a heavy job and BAM, back down to 1.5GHz.

 

What about if you boot the machine unplugged? I thought there was still an issue when switching power sources that Lenovo is working on. I might be wrong there..... worth a try though.

 

Try to use a benchmark that stresses more than one core, running single thread dont stress a modern much

 

I tried using Prime95 but I don't know what settings to use?

 

Orthos - Overclocking Wiki maybe that will work not sure how up to date it is

 

Anyone seen a review with test of the screen outside? Some pictures of its performance, if it is workable

 

I can do that later on this afternoon, if you like. I'll add it to the review in my sig.

 

That would be cool

 

Thanks I'll think about if I want to spend the extra money on the screen or not. Is it a better quality screen than the 1600x900 screen or does it just support higher resolutions?

But I take it you can override optimus? I know I've just read some things that say that the dynamic mode isn't always accurate, so I'd like to know if I can override this manually through the BIOS or otherwise.

 

The FHD is much better quality, its 95% gamut the HD+ is only 60-65ish cant remember exactly

 

You WILL learn to love the FHD for sure. You WILL get used to the higher dpi also . The money is well spent.

 

As stated, the FHD screen also has 95% gamut instead of 60%, and is also rated 50 nits brighter at max brightness. Yes, you can override Optimus' decision by right clicking the application and selecting which GPU to use when launching. You can also change the default GPU used in the driver, and what settings the program should use. It is pretty flexible, and I've only experienced an inaccurate detection a couple of times, all of which were fixed in like 30 seconds.

 

I'll second that. The FHD quality is outstanding. I wouldn't change it.

 

Third that. I had to use it the first two days in order to get use to the 141 dpi, but once you do, you'll never want to go back to lower resolutions. The color quality and brightness don't hurt, either

 

Well, just got confirmation on my order being shipped...wasn't expecting that...ordered 7/11. Shipped today the 13th from the email..should have tracking info. Tomorrow...kinda crazy..maybe I'll get lucky and I'll be able to play with it on Saturday..**crossing fingers**

 

Anybody use a owc ssd in their w520...I have one from my MacBook that I just sold cause the mac just wasn't doing it for me anymore...it's a 240gig 6g ssd.

 

Thinking about ordering this computer. Do you think it is better to get the dual core or quad core processor? Also the screen. Is it worth it to get the 1920x1080 or is the 1600x900 good enough?

 

This should be in the WNSIB subfourm, not Lenovo/IBM.

Dual or quad core is mainly a question of what you will be using this computer for. Are you performing a lot of single-threaded tasks, or are you using software that takes advantage of multiple cores (like photo/video/audio editing, CAD, etc)? I would get the 1080p screen, since it's so amazing to look at; 900p is okay, but push for the best screen you can afford.

 

Thanks for the thoughts on the screen everyone, now I'm just going to wait a week or two to see if I can find a good coupon for the W520.

 

you can't go wrong with the fhd screen.and you can also use the magnify screen utility to make it bigger if you have trouble reading it.

 

How did you end up doing on this? This is the exact configuration I'm going to buy, then do an Intel 310 mSATA and add another 8GB RAM.

 

Should I bother with the Intel Centrino wireless card or is the stock fine? Does anyone here wish they bought something that they didn't, like bluetooth or a better wireless card, etc..?

 

Privatejarhead u get any pics of screen outside

 

Not today, it started to rain after I got back home from dinner :/ Maybe tomorrow if I can.

 

The stock is a generic Realtek or some other brand of wireless card, in 1x1 configuration which means that it will have problems holding a reliable signal in a RF-crowded environment (like a college apartment/dorm building with hundreds of students using wireless). Price-wise, the wireless card should be the least of your worries, since the most expensive WiFi card (and the best one of the bunch), the Intel 6300, is only ~$40; when you're buying a +$1400 laptop, $40 is a drop in the bucket and I'm sure you would be able to haggle over the wireless card if you talk to a rep, especially if you buy other, much more expensive upgrades.