T61 Advanced Dock question

I love to play games. At the moment, my T61 is still fine with running all kinds of games. But Im thinking of upgrading its graphic cards, will the the advanced dock help? Can someone give me a list of graphic cards that will be able to fit into the advanced dock? Thank you all in advance..

 

I can't get you a list of cards, but I can tell you that most cards that are any good won't work because of their power requirements. The advanced dock just doesn't supply that kind of power.

 

Most cards with a large heat sink and fan won't work either because they are too fat.

 

also vista only allows the use of one driver for the 2 video cards...so that greatly narrows the oppertunities.

 

I own the T61 with Advanced Dock. I purchased this combination months ago because Lenovo claims the Advanced Dock will accept a standard height, half length PCI Express graphics card for multi-monitoring.

However, this information was not correct. The T61 will not work with any PCI Express graphics cards except for one. An ATI X1300 card made by Lenovo themselves.

I have tested three different cards now, and two different OS configs. I began with Windows Vista Ultimate, and an nVidia Quadro NVS 440. The laptop would not boot to Windows with the card installed. So I tried an ATI FireMV 2400. Same result. Laptop would not boot to Windows. Now I have a Matrox QD LP PCIx card and it won't boot to Windows Vista.

Next I downgraded to XP Pro. I am able to get the laptop to boot to Windows, but the system freezes almost immediately. I have done full HD recoveries a number of times with the same result every time.

Conclusion.... the Advanced Dock is not compatible with PCI Express graphics cards. Lenovo should not even be calling the slot a PCI Express slot. They should be calling it a proprietary graphics slot since the only card that works is their ATI X1300. Of course, if you have Vista you can't use this card. Vista requires that multiple graphics cards use the same driver.

My T61 has nVidia Quadro NVS 140M graphics card internally.... and even the Quadro NVS 400 would not work. While they are same manufacturer, and same series.... they don't use the same driver.



So forget using a PCI Express card with the T61. It is not possible. The only thing you can do is get a mini dock with a DVI & VGA output and use 2 external monitors off the internal graphics on the laptop.



You can reference this thread for more details on my troubleshooting work:

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=T_Series_Thinkpads&thread.id=41

 

Tnx for the info. Lenovo does needs to update the info on the docks since most of it is outdated.

 

Yes, they do. I was duped by their incorrect reference material and advertising on the advanced dock, and I purchased a laptop and dock along with four external monitors and a PCI Express graphics card. When I could not get the laptop to boot with the card, I tried another card... with the same result. Now I have tried a third graphics card, and also downgraded to Win XP.... and still cannot get it to work.

I have lost thousands of dollars and countless hours of time troubleshooting this issue, with no help from Lenovo. I paid them extra for tech support, and they would not help me.... not that I even think they could help.

It's pretty clear that the Advanced Dock simply does not perform the function it was designed to do, at least not with the latest T61 series laptops.

I would caution anyone considering a purchase from Lenovo to not get the Advanced Dock. It does not work. The best you can do is to get an Advanced Mini Dock and use 2 external monitors off the internal graphics card. (One DVI, one VGA)