ThinkPad X220 (i/T) Owners Thread

Try what serialk11r said above to have lenovo turbo boost disabled on the basic settings screen. I think mine is disabled, will need to confirm later since im not home now.

Also, try using hwinfo instead and see if it makes a difference on the cpu stats reported.

 

Yah, tried both enabled and disabled... no difference. Still jumps back and forth.

I'll probably get hwinfo later today and see. Unless someone else chimes in on their findings with CPU-z before.

 

I have to agree with 1). 4:3 is way more productive than 16:9 when it comes to word processing, etc. Widescreens are only good for movies and other sorts of entertainment and I think it is very sad for business laptops to go that way...

 

I don't think so, but I'm not sure and am posting this largely to bump it, as I don't think anyone's addressed it. Whereas you can overclock and downclock a discrete gpu independent of the cpu, can you do the same with the HD3000? I'm fairly certain you could not adjust the clock speed on the Intel inegrated "GMA" with Arrandale and before. What about SB?

 

I haven't found a way to adjust GPU clock speed, but I think it's automatic and not visible for some reason. Power manager tells my my GPU clock speed isn't changing even though I think it's supposed to by design...graphics performance definitely changes with different settings, so maybe it's just a bug.

 

CPU-Z doesn't seem to correctly monitor Sandy Bridge processors. Initially I was using it and saw the same thing you're observing. Hwinfo32 is the one to use.

 

The ULV X220 seems to be out. Some pre-configured machines are available in some markets with the i5-2537M, and that cpu/board is now listed in the X220 parts page as well. No X220s so it's not any thinner or lighter, so unless it's significantly cheaper I don't see the point. In my experience, ULV don't really give much benefit in power consumption for normal use, just far less processing power.

 

Yea in the past when processors didn't have automatic undervolting ULV actually made some kind of difference, but nowadays it's totally pointless IMO.

 

I think the 2537 has been there all along.

When you're pushing the machine that's when it's likely to be more noisy and hotter. It'll come in handy if you want cool and quiet. I'd love to have a 2537 board. Typical notebook usage doesn't really need that much CPU power anyway.

 

It wasn't there at least on the parts page a month ago when I looked.

My X220 is cool and quiet (because the processor hardly needs to be loaded to do even moderate tasks) unless I'm doing something like video encoding, esp since bios 1.16. And if I'm doing something like video encoding I want the power of the i5-2520. And if I'm after battery life I just turn down the processor and easily get 8.5hrs. These current full-power processors are jacks of all trades and masters of all, they are what you need them to be regardless of situation.

As far as I can tell, the ulv and full-power processors are the same up to the limit of the ulv ones. But beyond the ulv's capabilities, full-power ones (esp with turbo-boost) have so much more to give.

 

I believe it's in the HMM, which was released in April.

 

Yea this is what I think too. At low load or low power profiles I'm only at 0.8V or whatever, and I'm pretty sure ULV doesn't clock lower than that or undervolt more. Neither would I want it to, since sometimes I can feel a tiny bit of lag. The only use for ULV this generation is to put a power cap on machines that don't have the cooling capacity (and rip people off at the same time, how handy). It's also a way to utilize lower bin chips probably.

 

I have just got my i5 x220T ips last week, I do like this tablet a lot. I spend a week to make the best x220t pressure sensitive work with the built-in multitask but it seem that our of my capability.

My poor English also a big issue here but I hope and wait some guys here provide me some nice links to try and work.

Thank you.

 

Hey Vin, what is your idle watt usage when you are on battery and using the Maximize Battery Life profile?

I can only seem to get mine down to about 8 or so. If you are rocking 8.5 hours it has to be around 5 or 6 right? Someone on the thinkpad forum was saying that 1.16 was using more power (8-9) instead of around 6-7. I didn't have power manager installed then so I can't really confirm that.




Anyone else with the factory install or any install getting 8.5 hours on a 6 cell? I seem to really averaging around 6 hrs.

 

I'll get that today to try out.

Sounds like a stupid question but should I be getting Hwinfo32 or 64 for a 64 bit system? Most of my programs are 32 bit, didn't know if this one needed to be 64. Thanks for the advice.

 

Is anyone else having issues booting from external DVD drives?

I am running BIOS 1.17. If my external DVD drive is plugged in (regardless of whether a CD is in the drive) the boot process is messed up. If I attempt to boot from the drive by hitting F12, if it makes it to the intel boot manager at all, it just freezes there until I unplug the device.

Really pissing me off here. The guy at Lenovo just told me it sounded like a BIOS bug, and I would have to wait for a fix. He couldn't confirm whether the engineers were even made aware of the issue, though. Has Lenovo's customer service slipped? I NEVER got a brush off like that in years past.

Anyway, has anyone else experienced this type of issue?

 

I've booted fine from an external USB Lite-On DVD drive with BIOS version 1.04. I've since updated the BIOS to version 1.16 but have not tried booting from the external DVD drive since I've updated the BIOS. Sorry, but at my present location I do not have an external DVD drive to test.

You might try plugging the drive into one of the other USB ports. Check the BIOS setup that everything is Kosher.

 

If it is a BIOS issue, have you tried resetting the BIOS to factory defaults, and then redoing all of your settings? I had an issue with my mic and one of the techs suggested that. Didn't fix anything for me, but its worth a shot right?

 

Has the throttling issue been fixed for the i7 x220s yet? If not, I think I'm glad I returned mine for a refund rather than wait it out for a fix...?

Petrov.

 

Have you by any chance connected the DVD drive via USB to a docking station? I noticed that booting from DVD is not possible when the drive is connected to the docking station. When the drive is connected directly to the laptop it's no problem

 

I think not. According to some users, only the perma throttle situation has been fixed with bios 1.17, which I have not updated to yet. But people still getting throttle to 800mhz when stressing gpu and cpu, just that now it goes back to normal after, so not getting perma throttle anymore. thats whats being reported at the lenovo forum, you know which thread...lol.

As for me, at the moment I switched to a 90w adapter that i got from a friend, p/n 42T5276 and have not had any throttling since then. No touchpad or warbling sound problems either so Im very happy for that. But if I use the 65w adapter, the throttling is definitely there using that adapter.

 

built in multitask? what is that?

 

just thought i'd offer my 2 cents on the throttling issue if it helps. I'm on bios 1.17 and the standard 65W adapter.

When the AC adapter is connected through the ultrabase, I DO NOT experience any throttling whatsoever. When the adapter is connected directly to the the laptop, throttling will occur for very brief periods (<1sec) while the cpu/gpu is under load but it doesn't remain throttled, and as far as i can see shouldn't cause any functional limitations.

all in all, very happy with my purchase.

 

either way, i'm glad i ordered two and kept the i5 version. i didnt' even bother with the hassle of waiting if/for the i7 to have the fix. i'll take peace of mind over hassle for a minor speed increase that i'll probably never notice. i sold the i7 locally and made a profit as well.

 

is there any reason to use lenovo's recovery disks to install win7 on the x220t? why cant i just use a legit image of win 7 home on a bootable usb and then use the product key on the bottom to register it. i guess its just a matter if i want the thinkvantage toolbox, which can be downloaded from their driver site anyway, right?

 

The factory install was rumored to have some special power saving registry tweaks. The rumor was never confirmed.

 

You can definitely do this, and I did this initially when moving to the Renice 120gb msata drive. Installed a fresh Win7 x64 w/ the code on the tablet.

However I found it to be such a tedious thing going through all the drivers, and found that getting things to work as desired (various fingerprint functions, camera, touchpad, touchscreen w/ rotate) was going to be a long, laborious affair.

I ended up cloning the original 320GB system and main partitions (not the recovery) to the ssd using Seagate DiscWizard, and then aligning the partitions using GParted (both off of a Hiren's boot usb stick). I have the original install, and much faster obviously due to the Renice SSD.

The 320GB is now a data drive with the SSD as the system. Great setup for a tablet/laptop so small.

 

Couldn't you install the factory image from the hard disk to the SSD using Lenovo's Restore and Recovery utility? That's what I plan to do once they fix the mSATA SSD detection issues.

 

I'm sure you could probably do that as well. I also made the recovery media on day 1.

I had already installed numerous packages and moved files onto the install when I finally received the msata, so it was easier overall for me to clone and align.

 

No problems so far?

That is exactly what I'm planning on doing. I did a clean install on day one, now I've had it for a few months. I really didn't want to have to redo all my settings, drivers, applications, etc. Never actually done the change over before. Figured cloning my current partition would be much less of a headache.

Is there a certain sequence to getting it all working correctly?


One other question if you happen to know. Lets say I do a clean install on the mSata drive. Can I clone that and pop that clone on the main HDD if the SSD failed?

 

In regards to sequence - I installed my msata drive, and then booted into a hiren's boot cd (i installed on usb stick and made bootable).

If you already did a fresh install some time ago, do you still have the recovery partition on your drive? I did not want a recovery partition taking up the valuable space on my ssd.
With recovery media in hand that was from a point in time I was comfortable with, I used GParted (utility on hiren's disc) and deleted the recovery partition.
I also used GParted to extend the main install partition to use the rest of the disc. (left the initial system partition intact).

Then used Seagate DiscWizard utility from disc to clone hard drive to SSD.
When booting to the SSD, windows wanted to check the partitions, and then gave them it's approval and finally booted.
I used msinfo32 to confirm that the partitions were not aligned correctly (google on this)
I then followed instructions I found in a search on how to use GParted as a free method to align partitions correctly for SSD use. It involves moving partitions by a block or so... very easy actually. Look it up.

Then went back into windows and confirmed with msinfo32 that partitions aligned correctly.
Ran speed tests and confirmed everything looked good. Typing from it now!

Hope it goes smoothly.

 

what is hiren's disc?

and what does it mean to align the partitions? ive never cloned a drive before

 

Hiren's BootCD 14.0 - All in one Bootable CD » www.hiren.info

Align partitions - good of an explanation as any:
Guide RAID / Non-RAID Partition Alignment for max performance

 

Does anyone here know if the Dell UltraSharp U2211H will work fine with the x220? Will the Intel HD 3000 gpu be able to handle the monitor and not have any trouble at all?
Sorry I'm a bit of a computer newb...

 

It should be fine.

 

Hi All, I got my X220i today. I installed a mSATA INtel 40GB but it's not being detected. Anyone know if this is a known issue before I return the SSD to the shop? In the boot list in the BIOS it only shows the Hitachi HDD and the other ATA slots are all empty.

Am using 1.17 latest BIOS.

Any driver or something obvious I need to do to get mSATA to work?

Thanks

 

Are you sure it's properly seated? I've got no trouble with mine.

 

Ive re-seated it, and the screw hole lines up perfect.

Will have another go and see.

EDIT: Reseated again, still nothing showing up in BIOS. I would have thought unlikely to be faulty SSD from Intel but can't rule it out :/

 

What RAM speed does the X220t support? Can I build in 1600 Mhz RAM or even faster?

Or does it make no real sense? Thanks

 

This is a known issue, though I've never heard it reported with a i3. They're supposed to be releasing a BIOS update in July to fix it.

 

Thanks for that. So it's a lenovo bios bug only seen in i5 and i7 before?? Do you suggest I contact Lenovo support or just wait for new BIOS?

 

Excellent post, I really appreciate you detailing that out for us.

Now to actually get the mSata and get started.

 

Apparently it's a bug in any X220 that's WWAN capable. If yours ISN'T WWAN capable, it might actually be your drive.

Anyhow, I suggest you post in this thread on the official Lenovo forums:

Re: X220 with USB3.0, no mSata SSD possible ? - Page 8 - Lenovo Community

 

Did u try using hwinfo? Can you post your results. Did your cpu idle at 800mhz or full speed on max turbo/max performance setting? Just curious to see if there is really an issue when using cpu-z on sb processors.

 

Up to 1866Mhz. I'm using Kingston HyperX in mine.

 

Yes yes, it works. Sorry I didn't chime back in. CPU-z was definitely the issue. At max performance it stays at 31xx, never drops back down to 800.

Gracias.

 

Ok great. Good to hear that was the issue and everything was fine with your system.

 

But It only runs at 1333Mhz.

 

Not according to that Starcraft thread...

 

Yeah I just saw this. I had no idea.