Lenovo Y500 SLi review

From what I have gathered, the ultrabays will be for the whole orders/laptops first- then it might become available later on individually. (If there is a big demand)

 

hey guys- looking for opinion on when to buy my y500. I saw lenovo is offering a pretty good discount (missed it when it was $600 off- thought it might go lower )

Just wondering what you think prices will do over the next few weeks.

I would hate to miss the current pricing that they have had over the past two weeks...

 

Can anybody point out how can I get a Lenovo Y500 with 2 years international Warranty ?

I am from India. I dont think Lenovo will release Y500 in India.

I really Love this one....
Someone please help me to sort this out.

Only Lenovo Z500 will be available here by January 2013

 

Good news 4 those in india
I had a call from lenovo customer care(after i enquired abt y500 & y580) telling me that itll be launched in india by jan 1st week or mid jan
I m gonna get 1

 

I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this question. I'm new here.

I'm desperately looking for an ideapad y500 with SLI that can be delivered in belgium or germany. www.lenovoshop.com/de keeps delaying it and I need it as soon as possible, do any of you know some alternatives?

 

Hi shrey962,

I also tried Lenovo India Customer Care, they have no idea

Somebody please point me to Y500 with international warranty

 

Lenovo customer care executives almost everytime dont have any idea.
I contacted lenovo sales
Itll be launched by 15 jan & available by feb 2013

 

Thanx shrey962,

If Y500 comes , i am getting one for sure.

 

Its on Serbian (where i i live) and you can order one here, it says "coming soon".
edit : Hes is saying performance wise in best case is around GTX650Ti desktop and it will price is around 1200$.

Y580 i7,GTX660m here in serbia is around 1000$ so you can do the math...

 

From what site apart from lenovo's site can you order it in serbia?

 

Just got my 500 today... I am about to order the 2nd card in a few; looking forward to the improvement it will make!

 

Found a review for the SLI Y500.
Let google translate do the work for you. - It's a pretty in depth review with a lot of pictures and stuff. Even with the bad google translation it's worth a read.

'click me!'

 

where do you buy the second gt 650m to put in the disc drive. ive looked online and they dont sell it any where

 

On the lenovo site. Go to accessories and then graphics cards or something like that.

 

Here's a link
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...ail?GroupID=460&Code=0C22235#.UN3tD3fhcfY

 

My 2nd card should be here in a week or so... I will post up single and SLI 3dmark scores once it arrives.
Any other requested benchmarks like heaven or anything of the sort, feel free to ask during this time of waiting...

EDIT: Just got an email that my order is delayed; they won't be shipping the card until the 8th at the earliest. I was expecting it to be delivered on Monday

 

I finally managed to find the SLI model in a German store. I immediately ordered it, and I should have it (hopefully) around Saturday.
Need to fix a ride to the colleague who lives in Germany to pick up my order.

I'm pretty new in the 'high end' notebook happening, but I'd be willing to share some information and pictures by the time.
Also, will probably buy a msata to replace the caching SSD. Never done it before though. I believe there was a short guide something around here on the forums.
If anybody would be so kind to link it? I can't seem to find it.

*edit*
I just found this. Maybe useful to a bunch of gamers here. (Was in combination with the i5 model.)

 

My 2nd card is here... I can only get one card to overclock with the batch file I have.... the 2nd card won't take the settings. I will post up results once I figure it out...

Edit: well I got 2 separate batch files to work for the 2 cards, just trying to make it all work in 1 file now.
I'll post some results up tomorrow!

 

Did it come with the 170w power supply? 220 bucks for the card and power supply would sound like a fair deal but if I have to purchase both separately then I'll just wait for the prices to come down before buying.

 

Negative, but the one suppied with the laptop is functioning just fine... the OC'd 3d mark scores are above what I have seen posted anywhere else thus far.
The system is capable of p4000+ in '11.

I read that it was suggested for optimal use and best output from the dual card setup... However I have not used a 170, nor own one. I'll put some scores up when I get home

 

Here is everything real quick for everyone to browse through...
Images are as follows:

3dmark 11 OC temps
3d11 single
3d11 OC sli
3d11 default sli
idle OC temps
idle stock temps

View attachment 90213 View attachment 90214 View attachment 90215 View attachment 90216 View attachment 90217 View attachment 90218

 

OC temps during Skyrim at max
oc speeds
stock speeds
vantage single
vantage OC sli
vantage default sli

View attachment 90219 View attachment 90220 View attachment 90221 View attachment 90222 View attachment 90223 View attachment 90224


If anyone wants me to post anything else please let me know...

 

Wow-puts it above the fermi 675M but not kepler version. For the price though, price/cost/performance ratio still good.

 

Got mine yesterday evening.
First thing I did was a touchpad check. I was pretty damn happy when I spotted 'Synaptic'. Have had no issues with the touchpad in the few hours I've been using it right now.

I'm not really used to laptop speakers, never used the one in my Asus since I have a 5.1 connected to my desktop. But these JBL speakers are pretty darn good for a laptop! They are incredible loud, and still pretty crisp. You can even feel a slight punch when the volume is up to a certain lvl.

When plugged into to charge you can feel some sort of static emitting from the surface of the laptop. I've read this before and the strenght of it differs in each socket. It makes your palm rest feel like you're rubbing a strong magnet.

I get a strange Nvidia display error from time to time. Not sure if it occurs randomly or because I was doing something. But when it does Chrome turns black and I need to restart chrome to get everything back.

As for games. Good! I installed Guild wars 2, Skyrim and Need for speed most wanted. They all run perfectly fine on high settings with 1920x1080. +/- 30 fps doesn't really drop much lower. Still hard to play Most Wanted like that though. You really need a high fps if you want the smooth feeling. Temperatures are fine so far. I've ran all the games for about 30 minutes and the GPU stayed around 50 to 60 *C / 120*F - CPU temps are a bit higher, 60+ for each core.
I don't know if this laptop falls under the 'gaming' category, or if it's just a powerful multimedia laptop. Either way it doesn't look as bulky and ugly like gaming laptops do in my opinion. The design is beautiful, the metal is solid and the brushed pattern looks cool. The power brick is huge though, I once thought my old Asus had a large power brick, but this is almost double the size.
And not to forget a really solid and good keyboard. Pressing the keys feels nice, they got a nice stroke. Not too short but not bothersome long either. Typing normally doesn't result in any flex either.
Last, the screen looks good. Brightness is good, what you do notice at night is the reflection from the backlit keyboard.

 

Thanks for the review, makes me want to get the SLi now! Must resist!!!

 

Sometimes yes but mostly in gaming is slower than GTX675.

 

Most likely true, but i doubt you're going to find laptops with a GTX 675 in the same price point as Y500, and with under 3 kg's of weight.

 

Does anybody know if the Windows Performance check can work with SLi?

I get the following numbers:

However the gaming and desktop graphics are both 6,9. I've seen somebody with a single 650m Y500 do the same check. And he got a 7.0 in both categories.
Seems pretty strange to me. Is there any way to fix this?

 

What the.. I re-ran the score. And now my disk transfer got bumped to 6,8 instead of the 5.9
What is going on here?!

 

One should not trust the windows performance index. No seriously that thing makes no sense, at all.

 

Indeed who cares about wei lol, just do some benchmarks...

 

If anybody is interested in a short vid with the Y500 boot up time.
I just recorded it. Will add a comparison somewhere at the end of this week when I've installed a Crucial SSD.
Don't mind my bad accent, I'm not English.

 

That's a cool accent and thanks for the video. So you replaced the hard drive with the SSD or is this a mSATA SSD? I have the 16GB mSATA but has been thinking about replacing it with a 256GB mSATA card.

 

This is the caching msata ssd. The 16gb one which comes with every i7 model.
I will replace the caching one with a proper fully fledged crucial msata ssd.

 

So installing the Crucial m4 took 2 seconds from the old boot time.
I didn't expect the boot to get much faster since the caching SSD seemed to do a really good job.
However applications games and such clearly load faster, which makes this a worthwhile upgrade.

Et le video

 

Hey, I'm ignorante in computer things, I just want to know if it is possible change the default 16gbssd with another one bigger. Can you explain me what means this "fully fledged crucial msata ssd". I'm looking to buy this notebook on this shop in Germany LENOVO IDEAPAD Y500 MBG3DGE Gamer Laptop >> notebooksbilliger.de.
Regards.

 

Yes, that's what I did.
The 16gb SSD is a caching sdd, which basically means it's just there to speed up and backup the HDD. It is in no way usable for storage.
You can swap it for a crucial/msata SSD to get extra storage and some extra speed. The caching SSD does well enough, but you can't use it to for games etc.

I bought the laptop at the same shop, good choice.

 

You are speaking English very well, the Deutsche accent is cool! . Very nice bootup time.

 

Ha ha! Thanks. Dutch, not Deutsche though . Deutsche is German, Dutch is from the Netherlands ^_^.

 

What about noise? Does it disturb if you play games?

 

I'm thinking of purchasing one of these while the sale goes on.

 

It's pretty damn quiet. You can hear the HDD when you start using it in a quiet area, but if your volume is above 10% you won't hear a thing.

 

I am going to get the dual gpu y500 really soon and I have a couple questions for you guys. The first is a clarification: Are both gpus able to be overclocked with no problem? Second: has anyone been brave enough to downgrade back to windows 7 and tested the sli performance?

 

I doubt you need to overclock with the amount of power SLi 650m gives you. But it should be possible, the 650m is easily overclockable and the laptop is good with heat.
As for w7 no, I really enjoy using w8. Unlike some. No issues with most games really.

 

Thanks for the quick response... so you are using the sli in windows 7 no problem?

 

Nono buddy, I am using W8 . Hence the 'I really enjoy using w8' part.

 

oh snap... i guess i just missed that.

 

man I have the sli version (sli is turned on) and my drivers are latest 310.90 I dont get those fps readings,which drivers are you on?
I get around 39-40 fps when I record with fraps,and when I dont do any recording and only use the benchmark option it still gives me no more than 40fps.I dont get it.And what drives me mental is that another one with y580 has done the same chapter on black ops 2 and got around 55-59 fps.SLI should be more powerful than that.So I am beginning to think that my laptop is suffering from sth:/

Is that my drivers(maybe the latest is not the best?) or are you guys using another software to calculate the fps?
can you shed some light here?

PS:the chapter that I have tried recording was at the beginning of the 2nd chapter where we first start on the chopper afterwards get hit by an RPG and land on the ship to save Woods.

 

Would this be a better option to get than say the Sager NP9130?

 

They are on par if you customize the Sager with the best GPU/CPU. But it will be more expensive and uglier.