ThinkPad X220 (i/T) Owners Thread

I'm on a factory install with 1.16 BIOS. One other thing that I find strange: A friend of mine has exactly the same machine (i5, 8GB, Intel 310) and we compared benchmarks when they arrived (after installing the newest drivers). His drive appears to be slightly faster, scoring 7.7 at WEI, while mine only achieves 7.5. We have the same drivers installed. Any suggestions?

 

Why do you care? Your WEI score has little practical value.

 

I know I know...I still feel like I am loosing something .

 

I don't think it's completely accurate. With two identical machines, one got 6.5 for the cpu and 5.9 gpu. The other one got 6.4 cpu and 5.8 gpu.

Then get it RMA'd -)

 

Hmm, at least in my case there was no difference between 1.11, 1.15 and 1.16. Kinda odd to me.

 

If you have other drives in the system, those affect the score as well.

 

Take a look at the review on SSD Review

To contrast with Edwarday's posts, check out the following benchmarks:

 

Using CPU-Z, my idle voltage (i5-2540m) is always 0.881-0.886 V, no matter plugged in or not Is it supposed to be this high for the 2540? :/

 

Those are very fast... assuming that's on a pristine, newly installed system with nothing running? Those lines are clean

Day 2 here with the Renice... between this ssd and the updates to the wireless and bios this is finally starting to shape up to the tablet I was hoping for when I ordered it.

 

That is weird that people with the i7 have lower voltages than those with i5's. The few people who reported back with i7's were all in the .75-.78 range. I'm a little higher with the 2520 and you are the highest I've seen with the 2540. Yet another person with the 2520 had one in the .7xx range.

Are you on a factory install? Using power manager? What has your battery life been like?

I'd like to figure out why there is a difference between all the voltages. Or is it just a variance in the processors? I don't know much about all this stuff, but I'd like to know.

 

Yup, I'm on a factory install and using power manager. Battery life playing 720p video, I calculated out to be around 7 hrs at brightness 7/wifi off - this was kinda disappointing to me with a 9-cell , and the reason why I was looking into my CPU voltage. Btw, I also have a 7200rpm 320gb, like many of you. Perhaps the 2540 is just designed to run at a higher voltage...

 

Thanks for the info. Does changing any settings in power manager reduce the voltage? Maybe putting it on low?

Seven hours with the 9 cell does seem a bit low. I'm getting around 6 hours on the 6 cell.

I'm just finding the variances between identical processors a bit odd. I can understand differences between models.

 

Okay, well after tinkering with a bunch of stuff in power manager and going back to the original settings, my voltage is now 0.861 V o_o, no idea what's going on now - maybe CPU-Z isn't reading these new SBs properly?

 

Lenovo Onsite Maintenance was a good buy already.

My 2 day old X220 had a DOA integrated camera. Called TS yesterday and the tech was here today and installed a new camera.

Good purchase.

 

I don't know about the voltage issue you have been discussing, but as to playing HD video continuously at a rather high screen brightness, thats pretty close to the "torture test" that most reviewers use as their "worst case scenarios" of battery life - except that streaming video or playing a DVD is used because it is even harder on energy use than playing bright HD Video from a HD. Still, I would think your 7 hrs of HD video at 7, no wifi, would equate to more like 9+ hrs of wi-fi web surfing at more modest, 40-50% brightness, even with some flash video mixed in, and that would be consistent with other reports and certainly would be credible efficiency. Have you tested battery life under any other conditions?

 

No, but I'm about to. Will keep you guys posted.

 

I have the i5 2410 or whatever (the base one). I'm currently on battery and HWiNFO32 shows my CPU at .7655 V. I have the 320gb 5400rpm HD.

 

Alright, so:

at brightness 4, regular web browsing, I get roughly 9 hrs 20 min battery life
at brightness 0, regular web browsing, I get roughly 10 hours of battery life

this is with a 7200rpm HDD as well.
I think my CPU voltage might really be affecting my battery life

 

@sivik

most of a laptops battery power is used up by its screen. If you are watching videos or playing video games then the gpu is also a huge power hog.

If you browse web and dont have screen on max brightness you should get good battery life.

EDIT: Lol btw those numbers are insane. When my dell notebook was new i was getting 2 hrs 30 minutes with 6 cell.

i dont know if 9 hrs is something to complain about my friend.

 

I don't know what to tell you, not sure how much a fraction of a volt affects battery life. I'm getting 8.5-9hrs out of the 6-cell just browsing on brightness 4-7. What does Hwinfo32 say about the cpu voltage when the cpu power is set to 'low' in Power Manager? If it's .8xxx when you're plugged in too, that means you're likely using the Max Battery profile and are running at 800mhz while plugged in (which you don't want). Make sure to use Max Battery life profile on battery though. They don't seem to all be equal even when setup the same. Same goes for when plugged in. Max Performance runs higher clock speed than others even when all are set for Max Turbo.

One thing to note is that you're only using a hdd which will consume more power when it's running. My hdd is on stand-by when on battery, only the ssd is in use. I'm sure there's gotta be 1-1.5W on the table just from that in your case.

Here's a general tip to save a lot of battery life. Don't scroll on web pages, it causes a decent amount of cpu load when at 800mhz. Instead click on the scroll bar on the side. Makes a huge difference.

 

You must be doing something right because that's what some people are getting on 9-cell.

HTML:

Make sure to use Max Battery life profile on battery though.

So, you physically change profile form max performance to max battery when you unplug, and vice-versa?

HTML:

One thing to note is that you're only using a hdd which will consume more power when it's running. My hdd is on stand-by when on battery, only the ssd is in use. I'm sure there's gotta be 1-1.5W on the table just from that in your case.

Do you have to enable a setting to make the hdd go into standby on battery or is it automatic in conjunction with the msata drive?

HTML:

Here's a general tip to save a lot of battery life. Don't scroll on web pages, it causes a decent amount of cpu load when at 800mhz. Instead click on the scroll bar on the side. Makes a huge difference.

Thanks for that. I guess using IE or Firefox, instead of Chrome will also help too.

 

right, got my i7 tablet back from the lenovo workshop, theyve put it a new mainboard, and updated the bios to 1.16. However my WEI reading for the cpu is still only 3.4 which is rubbish!!!! is there any legit reason for this or should I still be making a fuss.. the whole machine doesnt seem blindingly fast thats for sure, still slower than a much lower spec dell.

 

Did you try what's described in this post? It's in German, but you can use Google Translate.

 

It seems everyone who is below .8xx either has an SSD or slower HDD.

With sivikchen being an outlier with a bit higher voltage.

Damn 8 hours on the 6? That is nuts. I'm getting around 6 with brightness at 0! Do you think the SSD is having that big of an effect or something else? I did do a clean install and am not using power manager. However I've seen many with the factory install using power manager only getting 6 too. Tell us your secret, haha. By the way is that using a wall clock or going on what power manager is saying?

Changing the power scheme in the windows power management doesn't seem to change the voltage on mine.

Running 1.16 right? Are you using anything other than the factory install and power manager to eek out more battery? Just curious as any tips would definitely be appreciated. Gracias.

As an aside, mine runs at 800 MHz regardless of profile or whether or not plugged in to power. It isn't throttled there, it jumps but definitely idles there.

 

I have 2 GB of ram right now, do you suggest going to 4GB? why or why not?

 

I suggest that people that are trying to diagnose battery issues try a few things. FIRST, get the free edition of batterybar. When on battery, the utility will show your actual battery discharge rate, which is good for trying to figure out what's causing drain.

Second, I can tell you that Chrome is not very easy on the battery life.

Next, if you go into task manager, add the column named "CPU TIME", that way you can see which processes, historically have been using the most cpu over time. Mine is DWM.exe (desktop window manager)

Couple observations on my machine. With everything minimized, using medium brightness and wifi on, my battery discharges at about a 7.5-8.5watt rate. Once I open or maximize chrome and start doing things, it can surge all the way up to about 10-11watts. Pages with are heavy javascript users, just having those pages open and idle seem to be increasing my battery drain with chrome, by looking at what batterybar is telling me.

After over a week of regular usage with batterybar, its reporting that on average, my 6cell lasts about 6:14 on a full charge. That comes to, as I've mentioned before in other places, about 10watts of drain per hour.

For an entire system, 10watt/hours of drain is quite impressive. Also, I'll note that the backlight doesnt really start sucking power until you get around 9. Once you pass 9, the battery drain goes up and up and up.

 

Check out this browser power usage comparison.

 

Yeah, I know, I read the entire article. :-/

 

Dang, I might need to start using IE9 instead of Chrome

 

Anyone having problems with TPFancontrol? It had been working fine up until today when it started to misread my CPU temp. There is some other reading coming up as 104oC, even though my CPU is around 50oC, so it revs up to maximum fan speed which is annoying.

 

If you're using Windows 7 64-bit, I suggest adding another 2GB RAM stick (about $20). SuperFetch will take advantage of the 4GB physical memory to enhance performance.

 

If you have the cash, just max it out to 8gb and be done with it.

 

Sucks, because in my opinion, in nearly every other way, Chrome is currently by far the superior browser versus all other alternatives.

 

I very much agree. I think I've just resolved to take the battery hit. Even with chrome, I get a little over 6 hours solid.

I just CAN'T bring myself to use ie9, and firefox is just still too bloated. Chrome feels fast.

 

Hey floz, I think I might be totally blind. I searched all of task manager and couldn't find where to add the CPU TIME column. Even looked in Resource Monitor. I'd like to check that out. The specific location would help me greatly, thank you.


EDIT: Nevermind, figured it out. Thanks for the info.

 

I was using the battery for a while again today. Get almost exactly 8.5hrs (slightly more) just browsing at brightness 7.

The biggest thing you can do for battery life is use the factory image. I don't know what exactly they do, but I've noticed it with previous machines too. Factory image gives much better battery life for whatever reason.

I do change manually between Max Performance, and Max Battery Life (cpu at 800mhz) or Energy Saver (variable cpu). For whatever reason, even if I set the AC setting in Max Battery Life to Max Turbo I don't get the full 2520 turbo speed, only up to 3.0ghz. And if I set cpu and other settings to the lowest in anything other than Max Battery Life, battery life is lower than if I use that profile. So when I switch between battery and AC, I either do Fn+F3 and select the appropriate profile or right-click on the BatteryBar icon on the task bar and select the profile through that.

Look under Idle Timers in Power Manager. There's a setting to make the hard drive spin down after a certain amount of time. I make it spin down after 30sec when on battery, leave it running all the time on AC.

I'm using the latest version of Firefox 3. Briefly used Firefox 4, but it seemed to increase power consumption so I went back to 3. I use two add-on's to make it look just like 4 with the tabs on top and everything, but without the battery life penalty. Hide Caption Title Bar Plus and Tabs On Top.

As mentioned before, when browsing don't scroll. Click on the scroll bar to go up and down in a page. Open task manager and look at the difference when you're using 800mhz. It's a massive difference in cpu load.

BIOS 1.17 right now.

Johnson, why do you have your machine set to run at 800mhz even on AC power?

One thing I doing that may be unusual is that I have a lot of components disabled in the BIOS. The only things I have enabled are WLAN, Bluetooth, USB, Memory card reader and Fingerprint. Everything else like LAN, Camera, etc I rarely use so they're disabled. I started this practice in the T400 and recall it improving battery life a bit. Did it in the X220 as soon as I got it.

As far as cpu voltages, maybe the hard drives in use do affect it, ssd vs. 5400rpm hdd vs. 7200rpm hdd. If that doesn't change it for people with slightly higher voltages, I have bad news. Did a quick google search and it turns out identical cpu's of the exact same model will use slightly different voltages to run the same clock speeds due to manufacturing variance. We're talking about .5V between the lowest and highest in our small group that reported here and I just can't see that making a huge difference. The cpu is only one component, and in these machines the screen takes more power than anything else.

 

Fantastic Vin. Thanks for the info!

Don't forget to also click on the 'Show Processes from all users' button at the bottom of task manager, Processes.

 

Speaking about energy profiles, could someone explain to me why it is not possible to have Turbo and balanced CPU at the same time? What I mean if I use an energy profile like "energy saver" the CPU never goes into turbo, but if I use something like maximum performance the CPU is always in turbo. Why not something like balance + turbo when required?

 

Great post Vin, I appreciate the detail. I guess I'm going to bite the bullet and just install power manager so I can mess with the settings.

That is just how it is... I haven't actually set anything to keep it at 800, it just does on it's own. I thought that was what speed step did? It stays at 800 MHz and just ramps up when needed. Seems to stay that way whether on AC or Battery. Does yours not idle at 800?

I've changed through the power profiles and it doesn't seem to change it. It definitely just sticks at 800 until needed.

 

Seeing as gpu usage is likely the difference in battery life in browsers, I wonder if there is a way to cap its performance, or otherwise disable it in firefox/chrome?

 

anyone with a X220T, please also check in the TabletPC Review forum for support. We could use more posting over there...

Lenovo (IBM)

 

Well, <strike>on battery power</strike>, actually even on AC or battery, when set to max turbo/max performance thats how it works. If you are on AC Power and you set it to max turbo/max performance, it always runs at max speed, mine runs at close or over 3ghz (i7) at all times when running on AC power. I believe this is how it is for everyone. If you have any other setting on AC power, like turbo, instead of max turbo, then it behaves the same as you stated, idle at 800mhz and goes up as needed. See screenshot attached.

 

Hmm, on battery and AC set to Max Perf/Max Turbo mine still goes down to 797. It seems to fluctuate between that and 2990 (i5 2520). This is with Turbo Boost+ also on. But it is usually at 797 (occasionally hits 3190).

Are you saying with yours set to Max Perf/Max Turbo it stays at ~3180 (for i7) at all times? Or is it that it will just jump up to that instead of stepping up to say 1800 MHz or whatever is needed? So with max/max it goes all the way up instead of progressively stepping up?

Hope that makes sense, ha. Just trying to wrap my head around it.


Edit: I think I answered my own question in some experiementing. If you move the slider (basic) down to "long battery life" it pretty much locks the processor at 797. No matter what I did it didn't jump from that. As I move the slider left towards max, the amount it jumps up is raised. Makes sense to me now. So when you put it at max/max it will jump straight up to 2990 and sometimes 3190 (for 2520).


One thing odd I did notice when on battery set to Long Battery Life it usually idles around 8-9 watts with firefox open. On power it drops down to around 5-6. Wonder why?

 

I only use the advanced settings as you saw on the screenshot. When set to max turbo/max performance, it is always running around 3200mhz. It does not jump to anything, when you change the settings, it goes up to that speed at once and stay there at all times while on max/max setting. If i change the setting to anything else (other than max turbo), it will idle at 800mhz and move up as needed. I believe on balanced it goes up to stock speed when needed and on turbo it will go up to turbo speed when needed. On max turbo, it is at turbo speed at all times. Hope this is better explained this time.

 

With power I noticed how the performance isn't at max unless you go to Basic mode in power manager and check off "Lenovo TurboBoost".

The voltage variation is due to manufacturing variance, yes. It makes a lot of sense that the i7s would be at lower voltage in fact, because all the CPUs come out of the factory at the same volts, and are binned based on how fast they can run with some reliability criteria. i7s are the highest clocked because they can go higher on the same volts, and thus at low speed can use less volts.

 

Ok, I have some more interesting findings.

Seems as if Vin isnt totally crazy with his 8 hour battery findings. I've noticed now that, every so often, I AM able to get 8 hours on the 6 cell battery. Battery bar shows, on these occasions, that my idle usage comes in at around 7.5 watts and lower. It's very strange, and I can't seem to figure out why sometimes my system seems to last longer. Other time, I idle much closer to 8.5/9 watts, other times 7.5 or less, even down to 6.9.

I notice, sometimes DWM.exe runs constantly around 1-3%.

EDIT: took out the last sentence here.

 

Ok, as a test, I am disabling "igfxpers.exe" from starting up, using msconfig. This is the background intel utility responsible for switching the refreshrate to 50hz when on battery. This is already a reported issue to lenovo, and on the forum here.

I disabled igfxpers.exe, and set the refresh rate to 60hz and restarted. I'll be keeping a close eye on my battery discharge, and dwm.exe cpu usage, over the coming days.

 

Hi, just received my new X220T.

Coming from a 4 year old X61T, my first impression:

1) monitor size, I don't like. What is the reason that nowadays all the notebooks have 16:9 size??? 4:3 is WAY better in my opinion

2) touchpad sensitivity. Way too sensitive for me. I have problems in surfing the web and using the computer overall.. Instead of one click it selects, or instead of one click it does double click (I could swear I did single click).
Anyone experiencing the same? ANy workaround?

All the rest is good so far.

A

 

@klausita

1) I don't agree. Widescreen is perfect for my use of computers, i.e. using two windows at the same time. Going back to 4:3 would kill me.

2) Way don't you change the touchpad sensitivity in the UltraNav settings??

 

Makes total sense to me now. That is odd though, if I set max/max mine still ramps down... doesn't stay at 2990 constant. Maybe CPU-z is reading it wrong? It shows it bounce up to 2990 then drop back down to 797.

Anyone else getting this set to max/max? I would think it should stay at the max speed at all times.

I did have a flash of "8 hr 15 min" yesterday on my battery meter. That was right when I powered on. Then it mysteriously went back down to "6 hr" like usual after a minute. I'm going to mess around with some of the suggestions that Vin had to see if it improves.

Floz have you noticed at all that your watt usage when plugged in is less than on battery? On the lowest setting I was getting 8-9 on battery and 5-6 on power. Maybe when it is on battery it is using more power to actually use the battery? Ha, if that makes any logical sense.