Thinkpads with NVIDIA Optimus?

Any news on Thinkpads (particularly the Edge 13 & 14 and T410S) with NVIDIA Optimus? I've been doing searching but haven't had much luck...

Thanks,
Nikki

 

I want them to have ati switchable graphic card.

 

These were supposed to be available back in January. I have called in to Lenovo sales a few times and there is no official word on when they will be available, only that they will definitely be available at some unknown time in the future. Obviously they are having some problems, either with sourcing the parts or with compatibility.

I guess it is just a matter of being patient and checking the Lenovo website to see if anything has been updated.

 

I have a W500 with ATI switchable graphics and I can tell you: No, no you don't.

ATI Switchable has HORRIBLE driver support (only 1 driver update and that was for Windows 7) because it requires convoluted combinations of Intel and ATI drivers.

I know everyone is a little sour over the Nvidia card failure issue but I am a bit disappointed with the T60p and W500 ATI graphics offering while the T61p was pretty good. The ATI cards just don't have good driver support or good OpenGL support. The W500 was simply way too weak for a workstation laptop considering it was the SAME card as in the T500.

 

The concept itself is great but so far it's just not perfect and often very buggy.
I had hybrid-SLI in my M17X-R1 and it was a total fiasco.
You can read this review and get a few tips about this upcoming solution.

 

Nvidia Optimus has its own driver problems, too. Now you need intel AND nvidia to write drivers that work together. It took them long enough to write a decent driver for their own hardware. There are already Optimus driver releases that are incompatible with certain Intel driver releases, and the fun has barely started

 

There have been many reviews of the Asus UL50 with Optimus, but no retail product. This sounds consistent with Optimus not being finished yet.

 

The thing is, I don't care if the Windows drivers are ready or not. As long as I can switch between discrete and integrate in the bios or some other manual method, it is fine. I'm going to be running Linux, so I'm not going to have automatic switching anyways. If the hardware is ready, I wish they could just sell me one of the laptops while they are working out the software bugs.

 

Looks, there's no way to switch on a hardware level yet, other than restart and enter the BIOS.

 

I know, it saddens me that the T61p had/has a better GPU than the T500, W500, T400, and i think the T410, and all this because it was GDDR3 and actually a really good card and the T61p i think is one of the best ThinkPads ever made simply because it's the best balance between build quality, size, and horsepower, for me. It still keeps up with many modern GPU's in actual game performance, at least i know it does. GDDR3 GPU's were certainly higher end in 2007, which is when it was released.

 

That might be even more of a problem. The first generation of switchable graphics had essentially two distinct graphics cards and a multiplexer at the end, so manually switching in the bios was easy. The way I understand it, nvidias new brain child is more of a coprocessor than a full-blown graphics card and needs cooperation from the intel built-in graphics to copy directly into the intel framebuffer. Sounds very unlikely that a mere BIOS switch can achieve that.

I'm also running Linux only

 

I'll be interested to read about your experience with Linux when you get your T410s.

I may have to go with the T510 or Dell E6410 / E6510.

 

Why can't lenovo offer 5650 or at least 5470 on their thinkpad line.

 

So I'm taking that the T410S / Thinkpad Edges will have NVIDIA Optimus, and that it's just a matter of time?

If that's the case, I'll be waiting it out (yet again) for the switchable graphics.

 

Any updates? Can anyone confirm

 

The k46 lenovo laptop is offering Optimus, I would assume that the t410s will be using it too.

 

As of Catalysyt 10.3, ATI is supporting notebooks with switchable graphics. I'm running Catalyst 10.3 drivers on my T400 right now.

 

Awesome guys. I'm really hoping there will be automatic switchable graphics on this one.

What's the K46? Haven't heard anything about it

 

Yes, it's high time they made things right!
It will open a door to much more powerful systems with a huge battery life.

 

A Lenovo laptop similar to 410s but without trackpoint, roll cage, and only available in China.

 

That's interesting! Are you actually running your notebook in the switchable graphics mode or discrete only? I wonder whether switching graphics works beacuse looking at the release notes for ATI Catalyst Display Driver (10.3), it reads:

 

Thanks. The inclusion of Optimus on this machine is encouraging

 

Optimus or not, but technically, most i5/i7 ready chipsets support the integrated graphics (except for PM55, AFAIR ) so the switchable graphics would work on all systems with i5 and i7 CPUs (excluding true quad-cores) and discrete graphics, provided the BIOS is updated accordingly.
It's up to Lenovo now. The hardware is ready.

 

Bad news (from other forums):

"Lenvo's website has changed.

"If you selected "United States" from the top-level drop-down, then on the T-series page, under "Thinkpad T410s", it now says, "Super thin and light with new touch-screen capabilities available, plus the latest Intel® Core™ technology."

Contrast that with the description you get if you change your location to Canada:

"Thin and light like T400s and the same great features, plus faster processors and nVIDIA® switchable graphics. "

Not a very promising sign for people ordering in the U.S., but possibly good for eBay resellers located in Canada, ha ha."

 

I don't think that it is a bad sign. If Lenovo offer a t410s discrete graphic then I will be worry.