T61P 6459CTO - T7500/570M upgrading to X9000ES/570M

Hey guys,

My first post! heh, first of all i want to thank the forum and everyone of u guys here, this forum has been priceless to me Heres my story, I bought a brand new refurb. T61P 15.4 WSXGA+ 6459CTO with FX570M 4GB 1GBTurbo 4965ABGN FP 160GB/7.2K from eBay last month for 1050USD. (This machine is going to be used for my hobbies..gaming..overclocking etc..i chose lenovo because of the build quality and pointer in the middle of the keyboard ;P)

A pretty good deal I thought.. when i received it.. it had the bugged motherboard 42W7877 (kept crashing during games) so I had to send it back to service center for motherboard replacement... now that its all fine with the 44C3931 motherboard..im going to start the fine tuning..

1) I have replaced the original thermal paste with arctic silver,
2) Ive undervolted T7500 to 1.1250v using RightMark.. I did 1.0875 it failed the 3DMark, but later failed after a couple of days on 1.1125v so i bumped it back up to 1.1250v
3) Ive overclocked the 570M to 490/800 using Rivatuner.. jz a lil bit helps

Here are my current temperature statistics ambient aprrox. 28c -

T7500/STDVolt 570M475/700 (IDLE)
CPU - 38
GPU - 53

T7500/STDVolt 570M475/700 (CPU Orthos test 15mins)
CPU - 87
GPU - 83

T7500/1.250v 570M490/800 (IDLE)
CPU - 38
GPU - 53

T7500/1.250v 570M490/800 (CPU Orthos test 15mins)
CPU - 74
GPU - 71

T7500/1.250v 570M490/800 (GPU 3DMark06 test 15mins)
CPU - 71
GPU - 86

T7500/1.250v 570M490/800 (CPU/GPU Stress at the same time 15 mins)
CPU - 88
GPU - 96max

The CPU/GPU test at the same time is a super stress test to see if the heat sink is able to dissapate the heat from the chips.. it was a torture.. but i think it simulates the "playing a game" test..the temps got as high as 96 for the GPU but thats only a little bit higher than when i play LOTRO which gets to about 92 on the std setting. but again its a different test so cant really be compared.

and now I am planning to upgrade the processor from the original T7500 65nm 35W to X9000ES 45nm 44W.. I understand there is the risk of the heat problems but im willing to try it out..I plan to undervolt the X9000 anyways, All im hoping for is that it will be stable at pretty similar temps as my T7500 in all that stress test i plan to do..

moreover, I ve read here that R61e has been successful in upgrading to X9000..so im not too worried.. but what im worried about the is the POST BOOT error about the thermal sensors the R61e encountered.

My X9000ES should arrive sometimes next week, its a C0 Stepping. I will post my findings when I get the new CPU in. So stay tuned to any T61P owners that want to upgrade their CPU.. Im going to the max the T61P will go.. ;P

Im sure im not the first one to want to try this but if theres anyone with prior experience with X9000ES in a T61P/Lenovo notebook want to give me some insights of what to expect I would really appreciate it.

TO BE CONTINUED...


PS. I couldnt get 3DMark06 to run the CPU test.. it keep giving me "D3Derr invalidcall" error.. im using the latest lenovo driver.. anyone know how to fix this?

 

So what happend?

I've heard it is compatible.

I'd like to know for sure though.

 

Very good deal.

 

I've got T61p with X9000 and it works very well. Unfortunately there is no OC and DC/DC converters are really but it work fine. Of course, Vcore is reduced to 1,05V(and TDP to 37W) for all multipliers. During 3d rendering CPU_temp doesn't go higher than 72C(ambient ~25-30C) with fan @ 3500rpm.

There is only one real issue if you upgrade from Merom to Penryn. Merom has a analog thermal sensor and Penryn has a digital one. Measured temperature is correct and fan control works good but when you turn the laptop on BIOS reports thermal sensing error and makes annoying beep like a desktop from 1990. You can disable it when you mute sound but after message you have a few seconds to press escape button to continue booting.

When ambient temp. is around 20C and I use my laptop for lowcpu usage things, cpu_temp stays below 55C without fan. When cpu usage is under ~40C fan works at 2500rpm and it's almost noiseless. It makes a very nice combination with SSD drive.

 

LOL i got mine for 511.00 USD... with a T7700, 160GB 7200 HDD, 1GB of turbo mem (selling for 20 bucks because it is useless and unstable in windows 7), 2GB RAM, WUXGA+ panel. I was thinking of doing exactly what you were wanting to do as well when i got mine. I do think that with the G84 based GPU it will fail even easier with an X9000 in it. It's not some great feat to do what you are doing.. i'm still breaking my T61p in, got it last Saturday, heat is on par with yours. I plan to apply some thermal compound as well, but upgrade to a T9500 instead of an X9000 now.

If you own GTA 4, you should play it on the T61p with stock drivers and report max temps during gameplay.

 

turbo memory unstable in win7? i have 4gb and never had a single problem with it.

 

that depends on which version of the turbo memory you have.

 

er...the one that works with t400s

 

Bios mod could be worth thinking about. Would probably stop the beeping too.

 

I guess you've bought T61p which was produced before 21th or 23th III 2008. A few series of motherboards with Quadro570m have serious problem with supplying enough of power for DDR2 controller, GPU and some other devices when both SO-DIMM slots are occupied. CPU has separated DC/DC converters and I haven't experienced any problem with stability after upgrade from T7300 2,0GHz. Even when I've added 2nd HDD, SoundBlaster Audigy 2zs PCMCIA and 2x4GB DDR2. I only noticed only lower stability with overclocked GPU. With one stick of RAM GPU was stable at 560/1200/1984MHz with two it crashes above 500/1000/1680.

I've experienced blue screens when I tried to enable TurboMem in Vista x64(basic version without any SP). Now I've got W7_x64 and everything works well but the TurboMemory is useless anyway. It makes a lot more sense to buy more RAM(and disable virtual memory) and faster HDD or SSD(avoid cheap ones and Patriot - real crap slower than ATA HDD in my old T43).

I've played GTA4 on my T61p but it was at the beginning of this year. I remember that the temperature didn't get higher than 82C with the fan running at 4500rpm.

I guess 44W is a max. TDP when X9000 runs at 3,2GHz or 3,4GHz. I don't remember what was max. multiplier for X9000...

Indeed but I don't have any experience with that sort of things. I just don't reboot my T61p too often, so it doesn't really bother me much. Thanks for suggestion.

 

the original turbo memory that came with the T61 is slightly different to the later version that is used in your T400s.

 

Good to know, I have no proof it was the actual turbo memory, but i have a clue it was that, since i had to remove the battery and put it back in before it would boot. If i have one with said issue, i'd like to know about it ASAP so i can get a newer mobo before my warranty is up (January 2011). 4GB of turbo memory? Holy heck. I remember when it suddenly powered off i was using Lenovo System Update 4.0, i was plugged in. I removed and put in the battery so it would power on again, it shut off randomly again at the Windows 7 splash screen. I then did the same thing, it booted up without any errors or notifications and never did the same thing since then. Does this correlate to the mobo "unstable power supply to hardware" problem, or is it something else?

Also, i am positive it is not temp crashes, since it has never been put through a full CPU-GPU burn in, i monitored idle temps with tpfancontrol when i got it, and inspected the heatsink. Idle temps with Balanced power plan are about 36-43 with fan on, no load. I even ran the CoD 2 demo to see how stock Lenovo website drivers faired and GPU temp only got to about 65 when i finished the demo, max settings.

 

You may want to not go too hard when it comes to OC'ing; or at least apply AS5 to the 570m as well- my T61p became a brick due to the faulty G84M-based GPU...

 

X9000 works with the T61p!? WOW. Anyone want to try a QX9300?

 

I'm good thanks...

 

The turbo memory has the same DC/DC converters as GPU, north-bridge and RAM. Do you have both SO-DIMM slots occupied? If so, just try how your laptop will work with only one.

I really wanted to buy QX9300 instead of X9000 but my T61p came with Merom and max. FSB is only 800MHz. QX9300 requires 1066MHz

 

I had more heat dissipation issues in mind. It hasn't randomly shut off since i booted it back up and disabled Turbo Memory in the Turbo Memory console, i have heard the earlier Turbo Mem flash memory used in T6xx's was a bit far from desired control in the OS, and that the console shouldn't even be used to disable it. I still have it in there and it hasn't crashed, might pull it out though.