W700 vs W701

Currently, there's a 20% off promotion going for the W701 with the coupon USPTHINKAUG, which makes the price considerably more reasonable.

Up until this morning, when I saw the discount, I was planning to purchase a W700 off the outlet for around ~1400 USD, with one of the Core 2 Duo processors, the 1920 x 1200 400 nit screen, and the Quadro FX 3700. However, now that the W701 is considerably more affordable, how do the two compare?

If I were to purchase the W701, I'd get the baseline i7-720QM, and the Quadro FX 2800m. How does the i7 compare to the Core 2 Duo (2.8 ghz, 800 mhz fsb, etc)? I'm certain the 8 concurrent threads of the newer processor will yield more efficient performance in my photo and CAD work, but I also plan to play some games on the machine in my free time. Is the performance upgrade significant for either?

Secondly, does anyone know how the Quadro FX 3700m and the 2800m compare? I don't have the funds to upgrade to the 3800m at the moment, but the cards use the MXM 3.0 standard. Is it possible to upgrade the graphics card (and the processor, for that matter)? And where would one look to buy the 3800m card? Preferably from an official source, such as a parts supplier for Lenovo, but I don't know of anywhere to buy purely the card. In the absense of the 3800m, would the 2800m suffice for photo editing, (very) light CAD work, and some gaming? (Crysis, WoW, L4D2, Mass Effect 2, etc on med/high settings).

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

2800m
3700m

The 3700m is rated slightly higher by notebookcheck. But they seem pretty close to me. I'd lean heavily towards the W701 for the following reasons:

1) The newer quad core CPU seems more future proof (if that has any meaning on a laptop) in addition to being stronger
2) The new generation of Thinkpads supposedly got much better screens (but I have not followed the 701 to know for sure here)
3) The 701 GPU can always be upgraded to 3800m, and maybe there's a chance for the 5000m later this year (just guessing here)
4) I know the 701 has 4 dimms, did the 700 only have 2??? The 701 can upgrade to 8Gb much cheaper then, and should be able to hit 32GB with 8GB sticks coming on line (unless the chipset won't support that much...I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong)

 

I agree with a lot of that reasoning. I'm just unsure of where to purchase the 3800m MXM chip from a reputable vendor. And can anyone vouch for the accuracy of the notebookcheck data? I know there's been mistakes in the past. :x

 

Umm, what the point in purchasing W700? It has inferior screen, old chipset & CPU.
It will be obsolete shortly after you purchase it.

 

Obsolete? Hardly. The W700 has more vertical pixels than the W701, which are more useful. The better CPU only has value if you're pushing it.

 

How has it more vertical pixels? They both have 1920x1200.
The CCFL screen on W700 is very inferior compared to RGB LED on W701. Even by the time W700 was released, reviewers noticed how dim the screen on W700 is.

 

I stand corrected on the resolution, but how is the W701 screen better? The WUXGA on the W700 is about 30% brighter than the W701.

 

Did you see both displays yourself though?

Because for example display on W700 was advertised like 400 NIT (did sound outlandish first I've heard it), while when actually measured it was more like 200, and very non-uniform ( http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-Thinkpad-W700-W700ds-Notebook.15275.0.html). This was confirmed several times in this very forum.

In comparison with W700 I've seen once myself, W701 RGB LED is brighter on max brightness, and very uniform. Colors are like totally incomparable, extremely vivid on RGB LED. The only thing I didn't like about new screen that white point calibration was more tricky.

 

As much as I'd like to read every post, there's probably not enough hours in the day, but that's some interesting info.

 

Well, my reasoning for getting the W700 would be the substantially lower price while still maintaining decent specs. Does $800 justify the newer i7 quads? If I went with the W701, I also would have to get the 2800m without the digitizer. If I was to get the W700, I'd get the 3700m (still slightly ahead of the 2800m, and just behind the 3800m, but unfortunately mxm 2.1) + the built in digitizer, twice the amount of stock RAM, and a decent screen.

Thoughts? My main reserves on the 701 is the availability of the 3800m as a card for upgrade purposes. The only ones I can find are engineering samples on Ebay.

Also, if I get a quote using the current promotion, will the price be secured throughout the 21 day period, or will it expire with the promotion?

 

Bump for any other opinions and thoughts! Any info is greatly appreciated.

 

Research whether does games benefit from using a Quad processor.
And also think whether you would use the machine maximum power and also the time on which you expect to keep the machine before getting a replacement.
I personally would go for the W700, the extra +800 would pay for 2 Thinkpad R400's!!

It might be tempting to go for the latest Thinkpad but buy whatever fits your bill at the moment.

 

Yeah, and I don't exactly need "top of the line" computing power, just enough to suffice for my light CAD and photo work, school and professional applications, and some gaming in free time. The 17'' screen and color calibrator are a must, along with the digitizer and full size keyboard, so I think the best and most economic choice would be the W700. The hardware should definitely last for another 3-4 years before I'm in dire need of a new portable workstation.

 

It justifies the newer i7 quads and much better screen. If you work with photos, you nuts willingly accepting W700 screen over W701s, not as long you've seen them at least
At least for gaming Core 2 could not be considered adequate, and definitely not for 3-4 years. Especially considering there will be a Sandy Bridge CPUs released by the end of this year, making Core 2 officially two generations old.

 

I don't think any normal user (excluding industrial or institutional applications) needs more than 8 or maybe 16GB dude.
Quad deffinitely looks like the future, seeing as the average feature size is going lower and lower, i think to 22nm by next year, then shortly after 15 or 11nm. MXM 3.0 is also a bit more futureproof in bandwidth and future applications, since it supports higher clocks and data rates.

I have the W700 and i mean, i really can't complain for what i do, i do some heavy number crunching, and game sometimes, at least, for what i paid for it, this baby is a beaut (1300 brand new sealed in box off eBay shipping incl.), and i think maxed out, this thing will be up there with the big boys performance wise, i think i shall wait until the price of MXM cards goes down however, paying 500-600 for a card that's already at least 2 generations behind, and who's desktop counterpart is only 100-200$ at last check, just doesn't make much sense to me.

 

Allow me to pose this question:

If my buying options included the W510 and the W700, which would you suggest?

The W510's screen covers 95% color gamut compared to the W700's 70%, but I'm unsure on brightness. It also has the newer i7 quads, while the W700 is limited to the previous generation Core 2 quads. It also allows expansion to 16 gb's of RAM, while the W700 is limited to an 8 gb maximum.

However, for less money, I'll get a substantially larger display that uses my preferred widescreen format, 16x10. Additionally, I'd get the benefits of a full keyboard w/ num pad and the built in Wacom digitizer. The largest benefit is the Quadro FX 3700m, which is a huge step up from the very underwhelming 880m included in the W510. Additionally, the W700 stays fairly cool while the W510 has been noted for heating issues under heavy work load or more graphically intensive gaming. Also, I will probably never need more than 8 gbs of RAM for the purposes and duration that I'll be using it (2-3 years), and Core 2 Quads only have slightly lower performance by comparison to the cheapest i7 quad. The only place I can really see the i7 shining would be in highly threaded applications, but for that matter, I don't do much beyond multimedia editing in CS5 and light CAD, and nothing that would require 8 logical cores for acceptable performance.

Thoughts?

 

I would not take W510 over W700. W510 seem to be a lot failure prone judging from this and Lenovo's forum feedback.

 

Yeah, I've seen a large number of complaints due to heating issues where heavy workloads and moderate 3d gaming and applications would raise the CPU and GPU temps to 90C+, which can be awfully taxing on the memory and lead to component failure.