ThinkPad T410s Optimus Lounge

Optimus Owners Lounge. It's happy hour. Let's talk.

 

Here's a Win7 WEI score for the machine I am using.

 

Not interested—my dollars will only be going towards notebooks with ATI or Intel video chipsets. At this time, ATI/AMD is the only display adapter manufacturer (well, Intel is doing a fair job as well) to truly support open source operating systems—NVIDIA’s Optimus is Windows 7-only.

 

I'm confused. Are you saying the GPU is incompatible with all variants of Linux?

You can run the machine in three modes. Intel, NVIDIA, or Optimus combined which is technically Intel most of the time.

I get that not having Optimus auto switching for Linux is a reason not to buy, but if that is the only reason, it's a pretty narrow view. I'm running my machine in discrete only right now.

Sorry, no. I do not have four displayport LCD panels.

 

That is correct—Linux, BSD, Vista and XP cannot use the NVIDIA GPU. Another case in point, my legendary ThinkPad T41 GPU is not supported by Windows 7, but is supported by Linux and BSD VERY well because the manufacturer has chosen to make technical documentation for the GPU available to the open source community.

Sorry, I don’t mean to rain on the Windows 7-only Optimus parade too much.

 

You can use a combo of displayports, dvi and VGA.

 

I don’t know about all of them, but my two T400s (not the T400s, but the T400s uses Intel) and T41 both have ATI cards.

 

Guess I'll have to crack out my SLED 11 SP1 disks and see.

I don't have any monitors capable of daisy chaining to get up to 4 displays via a single DisplayPort and VGA connector.

Unless of course you know of some cool octupus harness.

 

Let me know when you have a tracking number for the shipment of all of that hardware to me.

 

do you have the dock 3 plus? or any variants of the dock?

 

Yes, I have the dock at Lenovo - Find accessories for your laptop and desktop - Docks & Port Replicators 433820U

But only two video ports can be used at a time.

 

I'll try to get to it after I get back home. ETA is at least 2 weeks. Traveling will prevent it until then.

Warakawa, what's the background on your avatar pic? It's an interesting picture.

 

Lenovo forgot to update the background detail of the dock 3 plus, this information is relevant to the old non-optimus equipped thinkpad T410, T4x0s, T510, W510, etc.

Warakawa's picture is the picture of Dr. Sun Yat Sen, he is the founding father of modern Chinese Republic (he helped to top over the old Monarch). Bit like what George Washington did for United States of America, although Dr. Sun was not a soldier.

 

Are you saying the dock should support 4 active ports with an Optimus based T410s?

 

The Lenovo Files A Smarter ThinkPad – New Hybrid Graphics/Battery Saving Combo

Read Ross Compton's comments. According to him that is how you are going to run 4 displays.

 

ah ha! Cheaters!

Actually this is pretty cool. Thanks for pointing it out.

I have no intention of ever using the laptop built-in LCD panel with the dock just because of the way I have my office configured with the KVM switch and other stuff, but I think a LOT of people will want to use three LCD panels from the dock.

 

What kind of battery life are you guys getting with or without the ultrabay battery?

 

I realized after borrowing a LCD panel from my neighbor, that I still don't have all the cables I need. While digging around for displayport cable prices, I stumbled across an article where someone tested the T410s this weekend.

Apparently this dude tested the Lenovo support article configuration and instead of using the laptop LCD as one of the displays, used four different LCD displays.

This proves you can use at least three ports on the dock and one from the laptop.

See Driving Four Dell LCD panels with a single Lenovo ThinkPad T410s Optimus laptop and dock - Keith Combs' Blahg - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

after tinkering with my T510 NVS 3100m with Optimus for the weekend, I am not pleased.

1. The "auto switching" capabilities of the driver is really bad. Its stuck on the integrated card on many applications that need the discrete graphics. A good example is the new iTunes visualizers. Anyone with the optimus technology run the itunes visualizer and see if it uses the discrete chip. For me it didn't causing the visualizer to lag severely. Even when I set the settings to use the nvidia card for iTunes it doesn't use the discrete card and I know this cause its not showing up in the GPU activity monitor.

2. I updated to the newest driver and Heroes of Newerth just crashes. I know its a GPU problem because it runs when its on the integrated setting.

Is there anyway to get rid of this optimus BS and just use the 3100m. Its holding it back. I really don't care about my battery life.

 

halobox how did you get WEI to use the 3100m instead of Intel HD graphics...?

My score for graphics is 3.9 cause it used the integrated card and I found no way around it?

EDIT: I disabled Optimus by choosing the discrete option in the BIOS and life is good. I advise all of you guys to do away with Optimus as it bottlenecks your 3100m unless you really REALLY need that extra 30 minutes of battery life or something.

 

Well, I just installed SLED 11 SP1 on a T410s Optimus machine. I guess the definition of "use" is pretty loose.