Questions for W520 owners willing to help

Got three questions for the proud owners of W520 machines, but first a bit of background. I need a notebook that can take 16GB of RAM today and won't cost a kidney(which is the price for two 8GB modules nowadays).
I do not play any games on this machine nor do I work with any multimedia, 3D, CAD/CAM/CAE apps. For what I care 3D could be stripped off the notebook's gfx chip. I need the notebook for office, browsing and most importantly, development stuff (which varies from Linux kernel development to Java to big DBs like Oracle and DB2).

16GB are a must for I need from time to time to run multiple VM machines in parallel, each of them consuming at least 2GB of RAM.
I do not need FHD, HD+ is fine and my eyes will be grateful.

The most important things to me in a new notebook right now are: quiet (nearly silent), runs cool, support for mSATA and 2x 2.5" HDDs (low power SSDs) and a decent battery time.

Now, the W520 fulfills some of the points, but doesn't some other, it has a monster GFX with way too much RAM, hence the three questions:

• can one completely disable the discrete GFX and its memory (for instance in BIOS)?
• how many Watts does it burn at idle or with only light browsing/office tools when the discrete GFX is disabled?
• what's the lower Wattage one can get the W520 to?

I hope somebody can help me out. Thank you!

 

I would be happy to help but don't have a clue how to get the info you need except the BIOS Q.

How do I measure power consumption for you?

I do know that I have sat here with it on my lap for about 12 hours yesterday and again working on it this morning and it is as cool as a cucumber on my lap.

Very different than my very old HP 17 inch or my T61 that both toast me pretty good. Also the battery life is very very good. I haven't timed it yet but the meter said 6.5 hours after I fully charged it yesterday and I have no reason to doubt that was what it did (or more).

Again I was only working on the machine...mostly burning Recovery Disks, adding RAM, adding SSD and UltraBay Caddy. I am still working with only on SSD and no HDD as I have not yet added programs and data. So I imagine it will use a bit more power when the second HDD goes in.

Perry

 

Perry, thanks for your reply
How about that BIOS question? Does it have an integrated only mode?

You can see the power consumption via Power Manager under the Battery tab.
It's very easy really, no need for an external power measuring device.

For measuring please set the display brightness at 50%, and stop any multimedia player.

For measuring at idle: please make sure you have no apps running in background (no antivirus, defragmenter or whatever else; so basically you want your HDD LED off), start Power Manager and switch to the Battery tab, wait about 30 seconds and see where the consumption stays at.

For measuring under light load like browsing or office you can place the Power Manager windows somewhere where you can see it all the time and start browsing or working on some office documents. This way you can get an idea where the consumption hovers, between what and what values and what you feel the average would be.

Would be great if you could do it for both integrated only and discrete only, but I really only badly need it for integrated only.

It's really very subjective, no hard facts but it's more than enough to get an idea. Thank you very much.

 

I not sure if you run 4 ram slot is available for the W520 with dual-core CPU, Lenovo doesn't provide an upgrade for 4 ram on the dual-core version, but they do provide that upgrade option for the W520 with the quad-core CPU.

 

Yes. The three BIOS modes are Integrated, Discrete and Optimus. As for your other questions, you might send them to Anand Shimpi at Home - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News so they can look into it. I'm assuming they have a review in the works.

Maybe the reviewers at this parent site would be a good idea, too.

 

I plan to get a quad core based model with a 2720qm inside. I don't really need a quad core, but it doesn't hurt either or that's my hope ("quiet is gold").

I will not let Lenovo directly upgrade my model, I have really nothing to gain by that. I can get a whole lot more by upgrading the hardware myself, I've done it for years with my notebooks, and I build my desktops and servers from scratch. But this game is not for everybody, and I don't have to go with each product I put inside through lots of tests like Lenovo does. So if you buy from Lenovo you know it always works. Or that's how it's supposed to be. But I don't need this either, cause if it doesn't work, I'll swap it out. I always have components available around me

 

No sane person who is technologically able will allow Lenobo directly upgrade the ram and hdd for them. I'm just trying to point out that the W520 with the dual core might not have a 4 slot for ram, which you absolutely need.

 

mostly you haven't done any of this but how about playing simple youtube + running media player & browsering.

Does that bring even little fan noise..like it runs on Fan 1 if you have TPFanControl software. I will be very surprise it can run very cool with quard core and 170w brick.

 

Right. It would be very very useful, but they already do something similar when they report the battery times. Those are actually more relevant than the power consumption at a given moment. A graph with the power consumption over the whole battery test would be nice to have, something like those fancy FPS graphs from HardOCP, only with W instead of FPS on the y axis. But... that's also hard to do. You can't do it with the AC plugged in, so there is no way to use a professional AC power meter, and there is no way I know of to measure the battery power consumption. The solution might be using a device between the battery and the notebook itself, but there is no such device I know of, and you won't be able to attach the battery directly to the notebook so you'll need adapters, and that for each battery connector type. Talking about high prices here.

All this because the software power meter is not really reliable, or is it really?
I mean when it comes to reviews, it's important to be able to compare the power consumption of various models from different brands and it has to be constant and reliable at all times. Can you do that only we software? I somewhat doubt. So the alternative is running some standardized battery benchmarks and report how long the battery lasts. Even this is tricky because of the variance in running background processes and what not.

So yeah, having such nice power consumption charts would be awesome, but it's no easy feat. Still, considering what this site's business is, I am sure this would be an investment that will pay back. Or maybe not, how many users would really care about such graphs and would really understand them?

Yeah, it's complicated. I mean look at Lenovo: they have problems writing down the tech specs (it sometimes varies depending where you read it from) or informing the users about what their gear offers or offers not. As said, complicated

 

Well, some people value convenience, time and hassle factor over a few $$$ and would rather purchase the entire package from Lenovo.

Installing memory & SSD is not all there is to it; much more time involved in researching what's the -current- 'In Thing' to buy, where to buy, how cheaply, etc, etc, etc.

Often easier to just grab it all up front, nice and easy.


And, you're correct on memory; 4 stick slots on the quad core laptops; 2 stick slot on the others, so plan accordingly. Convenient how Lenovo is saving a few $.01 on number of slots, but forcing memory oriented buyers to pony up real $$$ for quad boxes just to have the memory capacity. Save & gouge in one easy step

 

And that's not the worst of it. I am being "forced" to buy an "abomination" with a monster charger and an enormous discrete graphics chip when all I really need could be satisfied by a 90W charger and an integrated solution. And it could probably fit in a 14" chassis as well. But there is no such machine.

Well, money has to go round.

 

Then buy a t420 and 8gb ram sticks if it bothers you that much. Seriously, if it is that bad, you would pay the huge price for the RAM than lug around this machine for the next 3-5 years.

 

I love my kidneys.

 

It doesn't sound like the W520 is the model for then.

 

To me it's about the only option. Since 2004 I only use Thinkpads and it won't gonna change. Too bad the W520 is the only machine I could consider nowadays.

 

IIRC, dual-core CPU's just don't support 4 sticks of RAM.

 

I think I saw that some place as well, but I can't remember where and Intel's ark is more than useless: I7-2620M vs I7-2720QM
To see them list I7-2720QM with a max memory support of 8GB is sickening.

 

Yea, it's funny that the specs for both in the comparison are likely WRONG. The max for the i7-2720qm is likely 32GB of RAM. The max for the dual core is likely 16GB.

When the 8GB SoDIMMs come down from their lofty heights, we'll see.

 

I can see how one might not want to research SSD options... but RAM? Here's the extent of the necessary research:

"Is it PC3-8500? Ok, it'll work."

 

Who are you talking to or what are you referring to?

 

Am I correct in thinking that even though the w520 has a quadro card it is going to be unstable in some CAD apps because of the Nvidia Optimus technology?

 

No. Not until tested and proven.

 

I doubt it too that it will be causing problems.
From the application's point of view nothing is different. The application doesn't know whether there is an Optimus inside or not.

Your worries are not really justified, especially since the W520 is certified for this kind of apps (although is is only marketing, there has to be some substantiation as well). All this, if the drivers play nice, and my hopes are that they do.

 

1) The last gen dual core CPUs could see 4x4GB RAM when installed on a quad-core motherboard, and they could see 2x8GB on their normal dual-core motherboard. It would seem safe to assume the new generation CPUs will behave similarly. ( source)

2) Talk to crazycanuk about Optimus causing problems with CAD. I don't have a direct source, but I know he has claimed there are numerous problems. They could be resolved by now, but the concern is warranted given (alleged) recent user experiences.

 

Still nobody who has 2-3 minutes to answer my questions related to power consumption? Come on guys, please help me out.

 

I set the video to "discrete only" in the BIOS. I wouldn't trust optimus if you actually need the performance. If you don't need it you can just set it to integrated only, but I haven't tried it yet.

Power usage with backlight at 50% is in the 20-25W range.

Code:

PowerTOP version 1.13      (C) 2007 Intel Corporation

Cn                Avg residency       P-states (frequencies)
C0 (cpu running)        ( 2.9%)       Turbo Mode     0.0%
C0                0.0ms ( 0.0%)         2.21 Ghz     0.0%
C1 halt           0.6ms ( 0.6%)         1500 Mhz     1.1%
C2                1.1ms ( 1.0%)         1100 Mhz     0.0%
C3                7.6ms (95.5%)          800 Mhz    98.9%

Wakeups-from-idle per second : 144.8    interval: 15.0s
Power usage (ACPI estimate): 21.5W (5.3 hours) (long term: 68.7W,/1.7h)

Top causes for wakeups:
  51.7% (733.1)   [Rescheduling interrupts] <kernel IPI>
  17.3% (245.2)   [kernel scheduler] Load balancing tick
  11.7% (166.3)   chrome

A USB device is active 100.0% of the time:
/sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1

 

Thanks Volker. Well, that's not bad at all for for the discrete only mode. What gfx do you have, 1000 or 2000?

 

I have the Quadro 1000.

 

What do you mean by discrete mode only? Is that when you use the quadro only and bypass the onboard graphics so essentially turning off Optimus?

I can see a lot of people turning this off. With a workstation i would imagine most people would value stability. Makes me think of all those times I have lost work lol.

 

Yes, exactly.