Lenovo Y50 Owners and Information Thread

Thanks for your detailed results Diversion!

I was wondering if the model coming with a i5 4200h suffers from throttling too? If not (or not as much as the i7), how much would be the difference?
I'm not a hard-core gamer however I would be quite frustrated if I couldn't play recent games smoothly...

Regarding the the 2GB vs 4GB 860M dilemma, will upcoming games be more and more demanding in vram (like Watch Dogs seems to be)?

Thanks for your help guys !

 

I feel pretty much identical to all of these points.. For the money, it's a raw power machine that games extremely well and runs cool doing it..

Honestly, I think I might grab a Asus UX303 with 840m 2gb for light gaming and ultrabook weight/size.. I think this will suite me far better and get far better battery life too.

 

Mine is the 4gb model but like most people say, only Skyrim with lots of mods would actually exceed 2gb.. but I say if you can keep the price low and get a 4gb model, might as well just to be safe.

 

Has anyone done partitioning? And I mean on the default OEM Win 8.1 install.

I've heard making any changes to C, like shrinking it to make another partition can break OKR

Also how do I check which wifi card I have? Device Manager and PC Wizard are only telling me Qualcom Atheros AR956x, not whether it's an Intel 7250 or a 3160

 

The thing is here in France you cannot keep the price low to get the GTX 860M 4GB...

It's either you go for the entry level version or the high end one...

-i5, 4gb ram, 500gb hdd, 860M 2GB for 800 €
-i7, 16gb ram, 512gb ssd, 860M 4GB for 1450 €

 

i tried offline gaming but the stuttering is still there. my computer is using the 860m (i changed it under nvidial control panel, manage 3d settings). i have an hdd and did not make any physical modifications to the laptop (i have the y50 touch base model, non4k). i tried to run cs go on battery but the fps drops but i almost always have the laptop plugged in. i think it's something about the graphics card. when i play starcraft 2, sometimes the screen will freeze with the audio going and when i minimize and maximize the game again, it will be a black screen with the game still going and i can only hear the audio. do you suppose it's a faulty graphics card?

 

I don't think you have a faulty GPU because if so mine's(and a bunch of other people) should be faulty too lol. I don't know what the problem might be, hoping it's just a driver issue - GPU or other device - or a game optimization which would come with patches..

 

how can i modify the screen rez up to 4k if i have 1080p, just asking if someone knows how to do it

 

lol , thats like asking to add 20 liters of fuel to a 10 liter tank its not possible

edit- unless u want to swap out ur current screen with a uhd screen. thats the only way

 

Just looked at the Lenovo Canada website, and they no longer offer the non-touch FHD model. It's either touch FHD or non-touch UHD. And prices are higher than they were when I bought my non-touch FHD it seems.

 

You can't, this is an LCD screen, not a CRT. LCD screens can display up to their native resolution. You can't display more than 1920x1080 pixels because the panel doesn't have more pixels. Simple as that.

You can do the opposite though - display 1080p on a 3840x2160 display. It will scale it down using software.

 

Did Microsoft pull the y50 UHD Touch model? I don't see it on their store anymore.

 

I'm only 23 not 90. Not worried about carrying 7.5 pounds. This would be my work laptop any way. I have a xps 12 for travel

 

So where do I find install files for the Dolby Digital Plus equalizer? The speakers are meh at best without it, and I would hate to lose it in case I ever have to completely reformat the machine or there is a hdd failiure.

The Dolby site has no downloads, seems they only hand the software out to OEMs and it's not on the LENOVO partition on my hdd which only has drivers on it.

 

Haha I have to agree with micek. The recent progression of slim and light notebooks has given the impression that anything over 6 pounds immobile. I thinks that's silly but different strokes for different folks. I

I'm curious about the cpu throttling issues people are talking about. I haven't experienced it but thats probably because I don't do any CPU intensive work, I just play games. Does this throttling translate to any practical performance setbacks in programs like MATLAB? I would also like to confirm the impressive GPU performance and cool temps. I'm hoping to flash the BIOS to over clock beyond 135 because that is easily possible. Has anyone done that yet?

 

Yikes, the one with the 768 screen and the 720M GPU? Is there a different model you were referring to?

 

Hey guys. Finally got my Y50 UHD yesterday (ordered from Klick, ty for the nearly 1 day delivery ) and I love it. Ive just run into one problem, I attempted to play Assassin's Creed 4, but for some reason any resolution I put it in makes the actually game extremely small with a ton of black around it. I havent had this issue with any other game, if anyone knows about a fix that would be great. Also, league of legends has massive text for some odd reason, the damage text, gold text, and announcer text is extremely oversized. If anyone has a fix for either of these issues I would be extremely grateful.

 

Here's my example. My unit has the i7-4700MQ. 2.4Ghz base and 3.4Ghz turbo. I have both CPU-Z and HWMonitor open. I launch a simple game, FTL, in windowed mode so I can monitor in real time. My conditions before launch were idle for 2 minutes and CPU temps @ 50C. After 2 minutes and 10 seconds of playing, my CPU hits 70C and turboboost kicks off, locking the CPU at 2.4GHz. It never comes back either, at least not until the CPU goes below 60C or so, which won't happen while playing a game. In fact, I have it paused in the background while typing this and it's still locked to 2.4Ghz. So basically I'm looking at a pretty powerful CPU but I can't use it for more than a couple minutes. Imho, I'd rather have an i7-4500U or 4510U than this CPU in it's current state. Although dual core, those would hit 3Ghz for longer periods of time and you would at least get better battery life.

And now that I am done typing, I look at my monitor and my CPU speed is now capped at 1.7Ghz. FTL is still paused in the background. After another minute it goes back to 2.4Ghz

 

You might have to manually switch the resolution to 1080p for Assassin's Creed. As for LoL, what res are you playing at?

 

No, its this one: Test-Update Acer Aspire V5-573G-54218G1Taii Notebook - Notebookcheck.com Tests

No English translation out yet, but you can look at the specs and numbers.

 

The Dolby things are installed with the audio driver, you don't have to install it separately. If you've installed your audio driver already check Windows control panel.

 

1080p IPS with GTX 850M ddr3.

 

@ xentar712

For some reason I can't quote you. This is the model I was refering to: acer aspire v5-573g-54208g50aii

15 inch
IPS Display
i5-4210
8GB RAM
GTX 850M
1000GB + 8GB SSDHD
Windows 8.1
Price 800 Euros

It scored 82% on Notebookcheck.com, unfortunately the review is in German, you have to wait for the translation on Notebookcheck.net. But you can look at the numbers and specs.

General consensus is:

quiet, cool, great screen, fast enough for most games (about 30-50% slower than Y50 though), great sound system, average keyboard and touchpad, great battery life, slimmer and lighter than the Y50
The Acer Laptop seems like a better Multimedia system than the Y50, but if you wanna play the newest games on FULL HD and max settings, it might be too slow for you. Like the Y50, I dont think think you can find a better system in that specific price range.

 

I tried with every res for assassin's creed, only like the smallest res available makes it actually full screen. As for LoL I tried 4k, the cursor is ridiculously small so I tried at 3k, thats what Im seeing the giant text in, so I guess I need to try a lower res.

Edit: Assassin's Creed only takes up the entire screen when I put the resolution to 4k, so I don't think its scaling everything down correctly, its just shrinking the screen size.

 

Just a personal y50 opinion here comparing the UHD model with the FHD equipped with the Chi-Mei screen. I actually prefer the FHD y50. The UHD yellows are distracting to me and even though I had calibrated it to tolerable levels it was still somewhat annoying. The brightness constantly changed automatically and the colors only seemed decent at certain brightness levels. I also did notice the 48hz difference when playing fast paced games like quake live or shoot mania as well as an increased response time lag over the FHD model. Another annoyance was scaling for some programs and compatibility issues with games requiring me to set the desktop resolution to 1080p so they would behave.

The 4k display is nice to look at, but when you own it and use it every day, trade-offs become apparent.

 

What I meant was turn the Windows desktop resolution to 1080p. Some games will run in letterbox otherwise. Crysis 3 was another that I could note of. You will experience very weird things if you try to game in 4k. Skyrim had this floating text in the middle of the screen. I haven't tried any games in 4k since I first tried it.

 

Debating picking one of these up. I can get it for 10% off at bestbuy and 10% back in rewards... So a little over $900 for FHD touch model... I currently have a GS60 Ghost Pro 3K but to buy that and then sell the ghost and pocket close to a grand and then when the newer cards release get a different laptop again.. I have a problem...

 

I'm on the other side of this one. Not to say my opinion is any more valid, but I prefer the UHD screens (I haven't tried a y50 FHD, but my old laptop had 1080 FHD TN panel). I personally can't tell the difference between 48 and 60 fps whatsoever. Although, I think if you try to turn off vsyn, you may notice that the response time lag on the UHD improves. At least, this was the case for me. I found that my cursor movements in Dota 2 seemed a little behind and slower than my actually movements - turning off vsync in the settings solved this immediately.
For me, it's just a matter of the high resolution and the better colors with IPS. I just can't stop looking at it. Seeing images on the screen feels like looking through a window.
Also, I think someone else mentioned changes in brightness occurring at certain times - My particular machine doesn't have this problem. The brightness never spontaneously changes and it moves smoothly from high to low brightness levels without color changes.

Although, the yellow issue I agree may be a problem for some individuals. It doesn't really bother me - I've never even been so bothered as to attempt calibration which some people have had good results with. But it may bother other people - so be weary of this and scaling issues with programs that don't yet support hiDPI

 

There's two different Dolby systems at play on the Lenovo. Dolby Digital Plus which you can find here...

Right Click on your speaker / Playback Devices / On the Playback tab hit Properties / Dolby Tab / Make sure the little icon is glowing blue

You also have Dolby Digital Plus Home Theater which you can find on the Control Panel. If you reboot your system you have to turn it back on. Doesn't turn on automatically.

 

I'm not sure if I am stupid or not, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to use the Dolby Equalizer.

If I go onto the Custom 1 or 2 profiles and try to click on the visual equalizer bars, the circle markers go up but then fall down to the default position again.
I can't seem to find a way to get the settings to stay up. Any ideas?

 

Buy Lenovo Y50-70 4K Touchscreen Laptop, Intel Core i7 - Microsoft Store

still shows up for me. looks like they renamed it to signature edition so maybe that messed you up?

 

Yeah I see it now, the same thing happened when I opened up Borderlands 2. I'm not sure how the performance would be affected if the CPU could use turboboost but even for CPU intensive games like BF4 I still get 40- 50 FPS at high/ultra settings. So my question is still, how does this throttling issue affect performance outside of benchmarks? This shortcoming must have some sort of drawback. I see in Diversion's post that the CPU will hit 100C with throttlestop and furmark, but furmark is kind of an unrealistic stresstest. Couldn't we use throttlestop and simply make the threshold for throttling 85C? I have no experience with throttlestop, so correct me if I'm wrong.

 

not true, within the the same architecture you will have the same tdp at the same clock speed, such that at 3ghz there's no difference in power consumption between any dual core haswell cpu. so even if you do get an i7-4500u and keep the turbo boost, you will only get the performance benefit but not any efficiency benefit.

in fact, at higher clock speed undervolted CPU has even less efficiency than a quad core. at max clock speed with full turbo at 28w tdp, the performance you get is somewhere around a quad core cpu at 10w tdp at lower clock.

you have to understand that clock speed doesn't increase proportionally with power consumption, the higher clock the more voltage it takes to push all the way up.

the only real benefit from undervolted cpu is that they operate normally at a lower clock speed and have better controllers to figure out when to push up the clock speed


as for the y50, you can use throttlestop and set the multipliers to keep within something like 3.2ghz to make sure it gets the performance boost while not overheating

 

Yeah, just set the multiplier to 32 and played BF4 for half an hour and didnt get temps above 84C. That may be a bit on the high end so tone down the multiplier to 30 or 29 if you want.

 

For those of you that ordered the 4k touch version from the Microsoft store, how long until your order was processed and shipped? I ordered mine yesterday, and it is still in process. I am worried that it wont arrive in time for school.

Also. can you get higher than 48 hz on an external monitor? I don't see a reason why you can't.

 

okay, guys with the FHD version with 2gb 860m, what fps do u get if u run csgo on all low settings but on 1080p in scrim matches ? ( 5v5 only) and dm with over 20 people in the server ? im ahardcore csgo player and i need atleast 200 fps in 5v5 if not at 1080p , even 1600x900 would do. im surprised how people state 120 fps , this laptop is easily capable of 200+ with csgo :\ (please avoid the conversation where some people truy to explain how poitnless it is to have fps more than 60 cus of the 60hz screen. i got no time for that , i need 200+ and does this laptop give that ? )

 

so the few seconds of screen freezing while maintaining 60fps is confirmed caused by throttling of cpu I hope users who have ssd can confirm that their y50 is not having problem in games? personally I really dont care if the cpu is clocked only at 2.4ghz or 3.2ghz as long as its not the cause of screen freeze in my games btw I updated my nvidia driver to 340.52 and screen freeze in dota 2 is still there. I played csgo last night for good 30 mins and I didnt encounter the issue.

 

I have found setting max processor state to 99% in your advanced power options disables turbo boost and will all but eliminate throttling while playing cpu intensive games. Try it and see if your periodic freezing goes away.

 

I believe it could, but you're looking at the wrong laptop if you claim to be a hardcore player. Get one of those laptops with a 3D screen. A 120hz panel will benefit you much more than a 60hz one. Yes, 200fps on a 60hz panel does reduce input lag. But even if you had only 120fps at 120hz, you'd be better off. There's twice as much information displayed for your brain to process. You can be much more accurate with your movements in such a situation. This is assuming 3D laptops still exist. It's a shame that refresh rates higher than 60 are so uncommon and thought to be made only for 3D.

 

whew,, why does lenovo make products like this.... however the spec is amazing though..
sorry im out of topic, does the y70 has harger fans than y50?

 

Hey,

After reading reviews for the Y50 and browsing through the threads here I decided to pick one up for grad school. I received the laptop today and first thing I did was delete all the partitions and install Windows 7 since I'm not a fan of Win8 and can't stand the new start screen that was clearly designed for phones/tablets. I made sure to back up the Win 8 serial and recovery partition though incase I ever decide to install it (though from what I understand, its in Bios). Now that I'm running Win 7, I had a few questions (a lot of it I already found the answers in this thread) that I didn't happen to see answered and was wondering if you could help.

First of all, without actually using Windows 8, I was wondering if there were any Lenovo programs/drivers that weren't available on the Lenovo drivers page that I should download? I know I should have checked it before uninstalling but I was very frustrated with the clunky win 8 interface and wanted to get it rid of it asap.

Secondly, I read that a Lenovo Settings program was included that allowed for temperature measurement and had some features like dust removal. Is there a Win7 version of it because I only found it for win8 online? If not, is there a program that could let me control the fans? I tried Speedfan but it does not let me control or even see the fans. I'm a little afraid that if I try to do some intensive engineering computations or gaming on the machine that it could overheat.

Third, this is my first time owning a laptop that has Nvidia optimus. Is there a specific program that I would need to use to switch between the two graphics card or will it be handled automatically?

Next, I installed Win7 via bios set to legacy and the OS setting set to Other O.S. Is there any benefit for using UEFI and the Win 8 Bios setting? I found a few mixed things for legacy vs UEFI but nothing for the OS setting.

Finally, I've read that the screen on the laptop is terrible and was thinking of replacing it before I recieved it. However after seeing it myself, it doesn't look too bad. I haven't had a chance to see how games look on it but I watched a little bit of netflix and it seemed fine. The viewing angles also seemed fine. Is it possible that Lenovo upgraded their screens and is there a program for me to check/test the screen?

Sorry if these seem like noobie questions, I've searched through this forum and online and didn't seem to find answers to these.

Thanks!

 

The monitor isn't the limiting factor........from a few pages back.

 

here's a Nice PROFESSIONAL Review of the Y50 UHD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjRJde3Im1I

 

We should ask nvidia/intel a driver fix so that the 4k model will be great. All the y50 owners togheter lets us email them and post in their forum

 

Hi everyone,

I have a few questions regarding the Y50 4k UHD Touch model from Microsoft:

1. The Canadian listing isn't as complete as the US one. Would I be right to assume they are the exact same?
2. I've read that the touchpads from Microsoft can be either Elan or Synaptics. For those who bought theirs from Microsoft, can you post which one you got and if you bought it from the Canadian or US site?
3. How often do they have their student discounts? I missed out on the last one and their only sale right now is "save $150 if I buy Office 365", which nets out to about only $80 in savings.

Thanks!

 

3. I went on to ( Microsoft Store - EDU Portal) and it gave me a total of $150 discount. It is still available, but I am unsure if Canadian schools apply. My total without tax was around $1350 with no Office 365.

 

His comments on the keyboard are bizarre; no "short Shift key"? There is. No mention of its squishiness? The smashed-together key layout?

If the Y50's keyboard is one of the best he's used on a gaming laptop, I'm curious as to what his previous benchmark was.

 

i got mine within 2 days of ordering it even with the free ground shipping. it looks like they ship out from LA county (i'm in san diego).

also, i have the synaptics touchpad and i am not a fan of it. i bought it from the microsoft store, was not aware that there was a different store for canada.

 

Linus probably just doesn't use the right shift key that often. not everyone uses the right shift key while typing, that including myself. the smashed together key layout almost happens on every 15.6" notebook if you are to include a numpad

 

sorry, i posted incorrectly... when i tried offline gaming with bots, i didn't stutter so maybe it's a wifi card issue?