Lenovo W540 Announced today

What the spec of your w540? Especially the cpu?

 

Model: 20BG001CMS
CPU: Intel Core i7 4900MQ

 

Could you please test the CPU for throttling (with the machine plugged in)?

Please use something like Prime95 v27.9 (or LinX v0.6.5, or Cinebench 15) for stressing the CPU, and something like RealTemp to see if it manages to hold turbo clocks (3600MHz in you case I believe) and what temperatures are to be expected.

Also, a somewhat silly question: is there a BIOS function or some other means to have F-keys instead of media functions active by default (so you don't have to press Fn + F1 for F1, etc.).

Thank you!

 

For F-keys there is a Fn-lock (Fn+ESC) which toggles mode between mediakeys and F-keys, have not seen any bios settings for this.

Seems to throttle down to 3200 Mhz when using all cores at 100%, max temp 86 degrees celcius.

 

Good to know, thanks! Do you like the keyboard?

Wow, throttling by 400Mhz even when plugged into wall? This is very disappointing.
Have you tried setting it to High Performance (or similar) in BIOS?
Does this also happen in Cinebench?

 

You are obviously not very familiar with turbo boost
4900QM fequency is 2.8GHZ. Max Turbo boost is 3.8GHZ with ONCE CORE in use. although 3.2 might be a little low.
Turbo boost frequency is based on temperature and power consumption.

I will have to test my w540 and see what results i get. I also have the 4900QM. I almost got the i7-4930MX which is unlocked. so now I'm kicking myself.

 

Unless the W540 is radically different from the earlier models, an unlocked CPU makes no difference because the BIOS does not allow overclocking.

I've got an i7-3920XM in my W530 and I can't overclock it, both at BIOS level and with the Intel XTU utility.

So you can stop kicking yourself lol.

 

You are correct for the case of "ONCE" core.

It's also 3.7GHz for 2 cores, and 3.6GHz for 4 cores. And he is getting 3.2GHz, which is 400Mhz lower and is frequency someone should be getting with a much cheaper 4700MQ.

Maybe you should read up first before insulting intelligence of others.

Dell M4800 doesn't throttle while plugged in. In fact, neither did W530, so perhaps it's a BIOS bug.

 

Who knows..but the W510 bios with the 920xm cpu's could be overclocked, I had one before and played with it.Right now.. I have the W520 with the 2920xm..which has a locked bios. So if someone gets the extreme version of the W540..it will be good to know if you can overclock the system..

 

This is pretty bad. I wonder what happens if you also tax the GPU at the same time.
I need this as mobile video editing computer.

 

For comparison to the previous model year, the i7-3720QM processor in my W530 holds steady at 3.3 Ghz (100 Mhz throttle from max 4-core turbo) when under constant full load and has a maximum temperature of 83 degrees Celsius. As others said, your processor appears to be throttling excessively (400 Mhz vs. 100 Mhz). Your maximum CPU temperature is only three degrees higher than mine, so I doubt there are any serious thermal issues causing your processor to throttle. It may be something in the BIOS.

edit: when running Unigine's Valley benchmark a few times as well as Prime 95, the temperature goes up to 95 degrees Celsius, and the multiplier starts to fluctuate from 3.3 Ghz to 3.2 Ghz (100-200 Mhz throttle).

 

Anybody willing to test the GPU with FurMark in addition to the prime95?

 

I believe thermal throttling by Intel specs starts at either 95C or 100C.

So this is either a bug, or Lenovo abusing BD-PROCHOT for whatever reason (in which case ThrottleStop would solve the problem, but come on, TS on a workstation laptop?).

Could it be that the GPU is getting too hot since both chips share the heatsink?

Are any of the other owners experiencing the same issue?

 

I tend to believe the same thing, since I had similar issues with my X1 carbon. Then after a bios update there was no more throttling. But I think that this is an important point in a workstation that has to be tested before release to the market.

 

Just wondering, after the Optimus mess on the QHD M4800, do your 3k W540s have Optimus enabled?

As said above, a throttling test with both GPU and CPU stress would be appreciated. The Most won't throttle with both Furmark (k2000m) and Prime 95 (4800MQ) and it would be nice if this could perform as well in a similar situation.

Thanks for your input.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

 

Well, I've just tested Prime95 + Furmark on my W540(20BG-001CGE, i7-4900MQ, K2100M). This is what happens:
(Top graph is clock speed, bottom one is temperature.)



800 MHz... _Extremely_ disappointing...

 

Thanks alot!
What is the scale on the y axis?
Also does it start from left or right? (the time is reversed)

 

Ok i think I figured it out. It seems that it spends 60% around 2800Mhz and 40% at 800Mhz.
I really hope this fixable or else it is very disappointing for a company that once had the best laptops on the market.
I guess if I want a desktop replacement I ll have to look at either Dell or HP now.

 

The throttling issue was a major problem with the W520 (which I own) initially. It took Lenovo many months and firmware revisions to fix it.

I agree that this is very disappointing, given that Lenovo is quite late in releasing the W540. Haswell will be supplanted before Lenovo fixes the problems with this model, if ever.

BTW: Lenovo has been relentlessly censoring criticism of the W540 on their forum. This won't make the problem go away, though.

 

I didn't know that the throttling issue was fixed in W520. Where can I download it?

 

The exact version depends on your model:

Lenovo Support - Home (US)

I recommend BIOS version 1.36. Higher versions cap memory speed at 1333mhz - ug.

 

That's ridiculous.

I hope they are at least not ignorant of this issue.

 

I don't know why they call it the most mobile workstation since the M3800 has similar specs and suffers from throttling as well. If you call a computer workstation, you better make sure it behaves as such.

 

I'm not touching screen with a tip of my nose, and while I have hard time seeing individual pixels I still can see the lack of resolution in fonts (especially small ones) not being sharp enough.

Actually, pixel density in W500 is a bit higher at 1920x1200 on 15.4" screen than on 15.6" 1920x1080 panel, as screen on W500 is actually physically smaller horizontally, though it is still slightly (<0.5") bigger vertically.

Those issues show up only if you use XP-style UI scaling, otherwise the only issue is a bit blurry picture, which should become less blurry as pixel density increases.

Here you would be correct, except comparing camera sensors with screens is a bit like comparing oranges to apples.

And here you're correct too, though external desktop monitors usually also are set at noticeably larger distance from the eyes than laptops' screens.

Aside from comparing oranges to apples, while you may not see a difference at resolutions beyond 150ppi, please keep in mind that not everyone has the same vision as you do. I certainly can see the difference between 141ppi in W520 and 212ppi in W540.

 

Are the available screens, touchscreens. The order site doesn't say so, and that makes me think they are not yet ready.

 

When did this become available for purchase on the US site? On a related note, what's the best deal out there currently?

 

Yesterday. So far I got a 15% discount, but I ordered through sales person instead of website because website didn't offer AC WLAN and 8GiB SODIMM. As to the touch screens - luckily, I don't give a damn about them being touch, I hate seeing smudges on my screens. But if they arrive with touch (estimated arrival date 01-23) I'll post it here.

 

So were you able to get AC WLAN that way?

 

The Swedish Lenovo importer just got the whopping amount of 7 more W540. So it seems like the production is extremely slow.

If looking at the components in the laptops it seems like HP and Dell are getting a good supply of all the main parts that are the same as the lenovo models (CPU, GPU, WiFi and so on). Also looking at the parts that could be specific for Lenovo it seems like all preconfigs are in low production which rules out problems with the parts that differ between the models (3K screen for example). Left is then the common parts between all models and that are specific to Lenovo. For example the motherboard, battery and power supply.

If looking what accessories that are in stock in Sweden it seems like batteries and 135w power supply is on it's way or already here. The 170w power supply on the other hand seems to be unavailable which may point to low output or bad quality in the making of the big power supplies.

It would really help if Lenovo could explain why the W540 is severely delayed and why they are many months behind the competition regarding haswell workstations. Information is the key to keeping the customers less upset, but maybe the Chinese way of information lock down finally got the hands of the old IBM brand.

 

Yes, AC WLAN, single 8GiB SODIMM instead of two 4GiB sticks, and a discount.

 

It's fine if the W540 got delayed. There are more than enough choices on the market right now.

Also what happened to the FirePro GPUs?

 

Fine for who? The execs at HP and Dell? The ones who like Lenovo are not that fine, and are getting less and less likely to buy a new Lenovo Workstation.

As far as I know Lenovo don't use FirePro's. At least not in the W520 and W530. Probably want to go all in on Optimus.

Luckily it seems like Broadwell will be released in late 2014 or early 2015, it would be really embarrassing for Lenovo if it was released just a couple of months after Lenovo managed to get their works stations into production.

 

To my knowledge, Broadwell will not include any CPUs for the mobile workstation (=> 47 W / 57 W) and the Standard Business notebook (=> 37 W Dual-Core) segment, which means the W550 (if they call it like that) won´t be out before 2015 and Skylake anyway. Only Ultrabooks will be updated with Broadwell (T450(s), T550, X250, X1 Carbon).

 

And I'm fine with that, considering open source Nvidia and Optimus support in Linux is getting noticeably better and better and w/o any binary blobs required, whereas AMD/ATI drivers work at all only after downloading firmware blobs.

 

Looking at this article it looks to me like they have Broadwell-MB to cover the mobile workstation range, but of course until Intel actually releases it we can only speculate. Unless there is someone from Intel here who's not tied down by non-disclosure?

 

This article is one year old now. Take a look on this one (translated from German): Further details on Intel's "Broadwell" CPUs

According to this article, which is more or less up-to-date, since its from December, there will be only these Broadwell CPUs for Notebooks:
- Broadwell HQ (Quadcore, with GT3e, 37 W (GT2) or 47 W TPD)
- Broadwell U (Dualcore LV, with GT2 or GT3, 15 W TPD or 28 W TPD)
- Broadwell Y (Dualcore ULV, GT2, 4.5 W TPD)

Which means whats missing are the classical-socketed Dual-Core M (37 W, GT2) and Quad-Core MQ (47 W, GT2) Broadwell CPUs. It seems these are going to be updated with Skylake in 2015. This also is something my ThinkPad roadmap here suggests, as T440p/T540p and W540 are "planned to extend through 2015 transition" and not updated in 2014, unlike the other ThinkPads like the X240 or the T440, which will be updated in 2014 with Broadwell.

 

The Dual Band 7260AC WLAN card is now available in the online configuration tool. I had to cancel my original order and recreate, but the process wasn't too painful.

 

Not sure if mentioned but at least my w540 (20BG-001CMS) was equipped with a single 8gb stick instead of 2x4gb (as was specified on the vendors site).

After a couple of weeks with the new laptop (light use as i still use my w510 for work) i must say the trackpoint/trackpad is horrible. I can get used to the off centered keyboard but will be using a external mouse.
Of course they removed the usb port on the back (that the w510 has) so i expect to break nano receivers as they protrude from the side.

It's fast and portable and pretty well built but some of these design changes...

 

Yeah, I'm waiting in horror to try new trackpoint myself. As to the nano receivers - Since W520 I've had those plugged in the left set of USB ports and had absolutely no issues.

 

So with the W540, can you go up to 32gb? Website and Crucial says only 16gb.

 

It would be rather silly if machine suddenly was limited to only 4GiB modules when it's predecessor could take 8GiB - I have 32GiB installed and detected in both W520 and 530. According to order details my W540 is being shipped with 8GiB module in one of the four SODIMM slots, according to Hardware Maintenance Manual W540 can take up to 32GiB. Order page on website doesn't provide all the options available, and it wouldn't be the first time I hear companies making inaccurate claims like you're saying Crucial does.

 

Intel has now announced the spring refresh of its haswell processors including the 4910mq and the 4810mq processors. So Lenovo just managed to miss the first span of the processors life cycle... This while HP and Dell has had their offerings on the market since october. Nice work with the production planning :thumbsup:

 

I must admit that I'm very tempted with the Dell M3800. Seems to have all the specs that I want. I've been a ThinkPad guy for the better part of two decades, but their current offerings don't seem to cut it. I do like the W540, but would prefer if it were a little thinner. Also don't particularly like the numpad as it makes the trackpad way off centered. I'm just a little worried about the build quality, something I've never had to worry about with ThinkPads.

 

Disappointing.

 

Unboxing vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vD10irticg

Reading the comments it seems he had trouble to even boot the computer at first and then after a few days the graphic card broke...

 

Don't early batches tend to have the most problems?

 

I am very happy with my W520 but after 2.5 years it is time to rebuy. However my impression so far is that the W540 is an epic fail....something along the lines of Windows 8 over Win 7 Pro.

I would love to hear I am wrong and it is a good replacement machine. Anyone have any hands on experience they like so far?

 

I am curious if the throttling issues are fixed...

 

You won't gain much in performance over a W520 anyway.

 

For a ~2k machine? Is laptop making new area for Lenovo? Haven't they learned anything from past? I think this should not be an excuse...