Lenovo y560p - Sandy Bridge - Review + Benchies

if the intel drivers are not even recognized, the problem lies elsewhere.

have you really gone to the intel page and let it install that plugin that sees which hardware you have? have you really downloaded the mobile version of the driver?

have you installed the intel drivers first and them tried to install the AMD drivers, forcing this by the use of the BIOS?

Have you read how people using the arrandale switch made the switch happen and how they install the new drivers?

 

EDIT: I uninstalled ATI drivers completely, then tried installing INtel.. that didn't work.
If I had read, then I wouldn't be having problems.
Please.. indulge me.
Anyways, downloading drivers/automatically detecting doesn't work. I simply have no intel adapter... despite having a 2630qm.

 

Well I called up Lenovo, the support tech checked over the motherboard diagrams. Anyway I think he basically got to the end of his knowledge and wasn't helpful beyond. First he said it had switchable graphics, then he said it didn't and said to exchange the y560 if I want it, which I obviously don't want.

Anyway he had me check BIOS, run the switchable graphics software (search switchable under program find), or right click on desktop. The fact that I needed to check BIOS leads me to believe that we will probably have to wait for a BIOS update. Don't know if that is accurate.

 

This is such bull by Lenovo. I lost so much respect for them.

 

Well my Y460P just shipped. If switchable graphics is not enabled or the promise that it will be enabled is not made in the next couple of weeks, I will return it and wait for Y470. I just hope Lenovo doesn't ruin the keyboard with the redesign.

 

I'm so glad I found these forums... I would have bought this laptop, and bee PISSED. I think I'll just wait until May. The only thing I don't like on the yX70 is the single button mouse, and since no one else seems to want to put an msata connector in their laptop - I will just stick with Lenovo

If the CPU's GPU isn't detected by the system, a simple driver update won't do. You'll need a full BIOS update, if the functionality is there to call up that is.

 

hmm..well if I'm the only one with the CPU's GPU not being recognized.. it might just be a hardware problem?
I feel like it might be lenovo's bad bios though.

 

Well I got my my y460p today.

I was going to leave it boxed because there was no backlit keyboard or thinklight which customer service said it had because I do a ton of typing in the dark. Normal letters no problem, but the F keys and number keys are always a pain in my butt.

I decided to live without that again and open the box and give it a try. My next issue is the flimsyness of the entire thing, especially the screen. Just holding it and walking around my screen wobbles in and out. When I pick the laptop up the screen depresses down pretty hard.

I really wanted a better build quality than this. And lastly the discrete graphics which according to their sight we were supposed to have. I am the same as the prior poster.. I do not even have another display adapter listed in my device manager.

Now for the good.. At under 5lbs this joker feels light to me. Especially to my 14.5 asus.

I love the look of the outside and the screen. The keyboard is solid and I absolutely love the touchpad, especially the buttons. The feel so soft and wonderful. I came from a asus N81v, which I loved, but the buttons were loud and poppy when pressed.

I am not a big fan of the lower resolution these days and if I kept the machine I had plans to attempt to replace it with a 1600x900.

With all of these issues I think I will probably just send the machine back. I still don't know about the backlit keyboard, but the y470 is built from metal, has a better gpu, and discrete graphics.

By the way if you look at pictures of the y470 and y480 you can see that the 14 inch one has two buttons bellow the mousepad while the larger screen has one. I prefer the two button approach. The 2 buttons on this machine now can not be beaten.

 

Nope, see my stuff above - same for me. I wouldn't be surprised if it is all y560p's.

Lenovo had better have a quick BIOS update. False advertising like that is terrible.

 

Oh okay I see.. we should just call them and ing annoy the out of them so that they give us some driver updates that work.

 

The graphics on my system all together is about 3.6 gb.. only 1gb dedicated. so the intel adapter is obviously there.. just lenovo's bad support that won't recognize it.

 

actually that is the dedicated stealing some ram.

have you searched how to install the drivers? power user?

 

of what drivers do you speak of? intel's don't work.

 

speaking of y470, anyone know what the GeForce 555M 1GB is going to be around as far as performance. Its not going to be mxm and be gddr3 right?

 

the GT 550m is going to compete with the AMD 6600 series.

The GT 540m has the same performance as the 5650/6550.

The thing is that we dont know if the GT 550m is going to be a rebrand. We do know the performance of the GT 540m because it is a rebrand and its already out.

@drymarro

the AMD drivers

 

Well I guess my mind has been made up for me. This morning I tried to power on the new Y460p and it would not power on. It would shut down immediately.

Since I was on the fence anyway I went ahead and RMA'd it today.

I am going to wait and take a look at the y470's and maybe new edge as well.

 

I appreciate you trying to help me... but let's face it.. this is all Lenovo's fault. I have done all the things you said and nothing has changed.

 

I just wish Lenovo and HP would just say "Switchable graphics will be supported with the next BIOS update" and be done with it. I really want the Y460P NOT the Y470, but if it will not support switchable graphics that will be a deal breaker.

 

So, my y560p obviously has no way of switching the graphics, but....

I have it hooked up to a 1920x1080 23" LCD monitor via VGA. I am getting a very faint flickering/banding if you look closely at images, mostly if I'm moving the mouse around.

I've tried updating to catalyst 11.1 (10.12 driver), and haven't been able to find anything that works.

I do not have a DVI to hdmi adapter, so I can't test if it is just vga.

Any ideas? Anyone else see this? It happens in both windows and Ubuntu.

 

Have you tried the 5700 series driver? The newer drivers aren't quite stable.

 

I don't even think there is a 6xxx series driver, i believe al lthe drivers now are for 5xxx.. It shows it as a 5700

 

It's odd that it happens in ubuntu and windows.. when it is probably not an identical driver in each

 

wrong. The 6xxx drivers aren't on the website. However you can get them through the manufacturer.(in this case the lenovo y560p driver page.

 

you have a 5730 aka 6570

so just grab the 5000 series and see if it works

 

do you know anything about the release date of the y470? I think I've read somewhere something about may 11...


Also,... how come newegg has y560p with 4 and 6gb of ram? was this an earlier version of the series since on the lenovo page there only models with 8gb.
Am I right that the 8gb max depends on the motherboard used?
so, consequently, could it be that, further down the road, lenovo might offer a model of the y460p/560p that allows for 16gb of ram? (just a thought based on the previous increase from 4/6gb to 8gb)

thanks

 

Tobs,
Most likely just a different configuration of hardware. The hard drive is also smaller. The 4 gig system comes with 2 and 2 config, but i'm sure it would at least handle 4 and 4.

 

.... lol yeah I've had the 5700 driver since I got the laptop. Why do you somehow think I'm stupid?

 

My flicker problem is gone, I think it was my vga cable. I tried an hdmi to dvi cable and it seems to be fine, and a VGA cable at school to a 19"lcd also worked fine. False alarm.

Back to discussion of the false advertisement by Lenovo for the switchable graphics!

 

lol they're faggots. on the phone they go on telling me repeatedly that I don't have an Intel graphics adapter as well... like they're lying straight to our faces.
oh and the chat support is horrible. they told me to download the wrong wireless driver... wireless didn't work.. then they told me that it's my fault I reformatted lol.
turns out the REAL driver was the other one listed in that section.
I know a lot more about computers than their horrible support.

 

"It's odd that it happens in ubuntu and windows.. when it is probably not an identical driver in each."

I'll say. They are two diffferent operating systems and a driver is priviledged code.

Renee

 

He could have just used the non proprietary drivers that come in ubuntu for AMD gpus.

a fair advice, you never ask that, you probably wont like the answer.

the 11.1 catalyst is out, out the drivers are 8. something something, meaning that they are from 12/10

 

So Lenovo is still putting junk screens in their laptops? No high dpi screens to be found anywhere?

 

Higher dpi doesn't mean a better screen. At least not to me.

 

The 11.1 drivers are for desktops.. not mobile lol. I even tried installing on my laptop pretty much slowed down to the speed of a turtle.

 

I have downloaded and installed the catalyst 11.1. you just dont know where to find it
AMD.com | Support & Downloads

just on the right upper corner.

 

lol. yah i have installed it but it doesn't run well.. did you even read what I said?

btw, how is the performance for you? For me, it was slow.

 

So does switching out the hard drive with the Crucial SSD void your warranty?

 

it is perfect. actually gained fps in some games, like sc2. one of the best drivers after the 10.3

did you install it correctly?


I understood that you tried to install the desktop drivers in your notebook (a mistake that I already did once, and incredibly it worked, go figure)

 

I installed the new drivers in my HP dv6t Quad Ed. and got some nice gains. About 400 more 3D marks in 06. Although I have notice a slight screen flicker when I log into windows that wasn't there with the old drivers.

 

We havent really seen anything with the 6600 series yet, so the performance is up in the air. I would bet it would be like 10-15% better then the 5650/6550 though If I was to guess also some one else said thats what they thought the performance gain would be.

 

Has anyone tried OC the 6570 GPU on this lappy yet?

 

Does anybody know if the GPU memory is GDR3 or GDR5?

 

yes but they have a poor shadder count and so forth. it will give us something to play with, but it wont be the improvement that we saw when the 4600 series arrived. lets not forget that the 6600 uses the same chip as the 6700 series

 

its gddr3

10 chars

 

Higher dpi on its own is no guarantee of a good screen, on the other hand low dpi is junk reserved for people with bad eyesight. I don't understand the logic behind getting 14-15" screens that have the same resolution as my 13", which I consider pathetic to begin with.

 

so go find a middle range gpu that can play anything at the res that you want.

Remember that the TDP must not pass 35w on the gpu itself. When you go higher you are entering big boys territory.

Aside that the res in a tiny screen leads to so tiny letters, that eventually you have to scale the dpi in windows settings, and in the end most programs dont work too well with that.

1600*900 in a 15'' screen is a good res.

 

I'd certainly put 1280x800 on 12.1" in the "low resolution" spectrum, but would hardly label AFFS upgrade screens on X20x series as junk. Besides the fact they are CCFL and not LED, the image quality is much better than on average screen. ESPECIALLY matte screens. I find the Toshiba PVA screen on X200T also pretty good for anything. (And this is by far the best screen I've seen in terms of reducing glare when it comes to a glossy screen.)

I use 1440x900 on a 19" external monitor. The default font size is just right for me from the position where I am sitting and looking at the screen. The monitor is matte and fine on it's own, for the office work I am using it for. The default color calibration is actually really accurate from what I can tell without a professional calibrator.

On the other hand I use 1920x1200 on a 17" screen and have to increase the font size to about ~115% to normally see text on the screen. That messes up display on so many programs and web sites. The facts I find more important are color reproduction and saturation, contrast, brightness and definitely good black levels. For the last, PVA, IPS and AFFS screens are definitely superb in comparison with TN screens (even the RGB LED has quite a bit worse blacks).

 

Hey,

Two questions from a newbie.

1- Doesn't the fact that you can't use the GPU whenever you want annul the Sandy Bridge advantage? Is there any other advantage of the Sandy Bridge architecture?

2- The Fn and CTRL key are strangely placed on this laptop. I saw that in the past there was a setting in the BIOS to swap both keys. Does it exist on the Y560p model?

I am looking for a desktop replacement laptop on which i will do lots of Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere and the random game. I will probably plug in an extra 23 inch screen. I was debating between the XPS 15 (i5 560M) and this Y560p (i7-2360) model. They are about the same price, with a little advantage for the lennovo.

What do you think? Is this one a good choice for 1000$ tax in? How is lennovo?

 

1. No not really. Because the performance and battery life of the CPU are much better than the previous generation. That alone makes it worth the price, the graphics are just another benefit on top of that.

2. Yes they are strangely placed as a lot of the other Lenovo laptops tend to be.

I think it's a good choice, but I bought one. The Y560p is far far superior to the XPS15 with it's current CPU. Compare the benchmarks between mine and a xps 15 review. That's predominantly the advantage of the Sandy Bridge.

 

People like higher res because it's simple to understand. There I said it.