X201 Core i7-620M Heat and Battery life questions

Can someone with the X201 Core i7-620M processor please answer the following questions:

1) Does the X201 gets hot when doing intensive tasks or watching 1080p movies? Please describe how hot it is, like whether it is comfortable putting on the lap, etc.

2) What is the average battery life of the 6-cell battery, when using wifi, setting screen to medium brightness.

3) Is the fan noisy, does it come on often?

I am keen on the fastest processor on the X201 but not too sure how it affects the heat and battery life. Thanks for your answers!

 

Hi.

I have the x201 with the i7-620M.

I am very happy with it.
Does not run hot at all, in-fact it's not even running warm, and i have been
playing with it quite a bit trying to max out the processor ( running two videos at 1080p, anti-virus full scans, have both Internet Explorer and Firefox open with eight tabs each, in addition to having Office 2010 beta open.

It's a BEAST.... maybe, maybe it tops off at 40-50% fleetingly as much as I try I can't blow it open.

On 6 cell battery on Wi-Fi downloading files and 80 processers I can get 5.30 hours (screen at 50%)
Running internet and HD video about 4.50.

Still going thur the power tweats.

Can't believe the battery life is so good.

If you can, get the high voltage i7... you will amazed at its power.

Off to work can post more later.

 

What are the high voltage i7s? The i5-540M is good enough for pretty much all business tasks, you wouldn't notice a difference compared to the i7-620M or even the i7-720QM...

 

Oh no, you would notice the difference. In a second,


i7-620M have a higher base clock rate and Turbos much higher than the i5.
The i7 in te 201 is the closest you will get to a desktop i7.
If you really, really need that few more minutes of battery power than by all mean get an i5 instead..

In my case, I am allways never finding myself unplugged for more than 4 hours. Even if I can be unplugged, I find myself at an outlet anyway 90% of the time.

And I just love knowing I have that extra power If I need it.
( even if I'll never use it.)

I also feel that even at lower Max/Balanced Battery Power wattage setting, the i7-620M still out performs the full voltage
i5.

 

Benchmarks and architecture disagree with you. The i5 and i7 are basically identical, it's simply a marketing distinction (specs i5 i7).

 

Seconded. These benchmark testing results from NotebookCheck show there's only a very small difference between the i5-540M and i7-620M's performance, while the i7-620M has a significantly higher power consumption both at max load and at idle. The different i5 CPUs are all roughly equal in power consumption, definitely within testing error.

 

Hi.

I beg to disaggree, even according to your link, the differences are as follows:

i7-620M 4 MB SmartCache 2.66 GHz 3.333 GHz 35 W DDR3-800/1066 MHz

as opposed to

i5-540M 3 MB SmartCache 2.53 GHz 3.066 GHz 35 W DDR3-800/1066 MHz


And in regards to the above link, I STRONGLY disagree with their findings.
I don't know what thety were smoking or what bug their system had but those findings are WAY OFF BASE.

" the i7-620M CPU reveals itself as being especially energy devouring. The CPU treats itself to about 15W more, with up to 64.7W under load, than the i5 colleagues. The test system also needs around 10W more in idle mode with 30W than the configuration with a Core i5 chip."

64.7 watts??? are they for real?. not even a Dest top i7 quad core extreme uses that much.

I have yet to hit 35 watts the max wattage according to intel itself ( and trust me I have tried my hardest to just to see. most times under the heaviest stress I can throw it, I average 15-25 watts Two 1080p movies anti-virus and all radios on plus CS 4 and office 2010 beta not to mention file sharing.

And 10 watts more at idle??

Are they saying an i5 runs at negative wattage?

Because I run a normally 10 watts at idle.

Someone need to take a closer look at those findings.

 

Sure, the clock speeds do differ in the i7's favor, however, from the synthetic and gaming benchmark comparisons, you can see that the increased clock speeds have a negligible impact on performance, but that the i7-620M has markedly higher power consumption as compared to the i5-540M.

But, this is getting offtopic

EDIT: That's not to say that you shouldn't get the i7-620M - if you need every bit of extra CPU horsepower, by all means go for it. But, for 99% of users, I'd say the extra money that the i7-620M demands is a waste.

 

clock speed is about the same, even with turbo on.
there wont be noticeable difference between the i7 620m and 540m, even 520m,
but the 620m does use more power. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-Core-i3-i5-i7-Processors-Arrandale.25085.0.html

 

Which wouldn't be that drastic of a difference in real world performance.

 

Thanks Oldghost. Anyone knows how to select warranty options for the X201 on the US site?

 

Hi.

I beg to disaggree, even according to your link, the differences are as follows:

i7-620M 4 MB SmartCache 2.66 GHz 3.333 GHz 35 W DDR3-800/1066 MHz

as opposed to

i5-540M 3 MB SmartCache 2.53 GHz 3.066 GHz 35 W DDR3-800/1066 MHz


And in regards to the above link, I STRONGLY disagree with their findings.
I don't know what thety were smoking or what bug their system had but those findings are WAY OFF BASE.

" the i7-620M CPU reveals itself as being especially energy devouring. The CPU treats itself to about 15W more, with up to 64.7W under load, than the i5 colleagues. The test system also needs around 10W more in idle mode with 30W than the configuration with a Core i5 chip."

64.7 watts??? are they for real?. not even a Dest top i7 quad core extreme uses that much.

I have yet to hit 35 watts the max wattage according to intel itself ( and trust me I have tried my hardest to just to see. most times under the heaviest stress I can throw it, I average 15-25 watts Two 1080p movies anti-virus and all radios on plus CS 4 and office 2010 beta not to mention file sharing.

And 10 watts more at idle??

Are they saying an i5 runs at negative wattage?

Because I run normally 10 watts at idle.

Someone needs to take a closer look at those findings.

 

Hey Oldghost, there are several complains about the stereo speakers on X201. Can you try to see if there is sound coming out from BOTH your speakers on the rear?

 

Okay so you have an extra MB of cache and a moderate clock bump. My point stands that they are VERY similar processors and the difference in performance will be very small for the VAST majority of users (admittedly your needs may be different).

However, I do agree that the energy consumption numbers are highly suspect. I would expect a very slight bump (no more than 3W at load and 1W at idle) due to the extra cache (it can be power hungry). But otherwise it should be very similar (see comments above).

 

Thanks for agreeing that the wattage findings are suspect.
perhaps faulty equiptment, or even worse they actully tested a Desktop i7 instead.

Shame, in any event because the i7-620M testing that nearly everyone quotes is so flawed many people are being scared away from it thinking its such a power hog compared to the i5.





BTW both of my speakers are working. guess I got lucky.
I just wished they were better. Not certain why with all the bad press Lenovo still puts them on the bottom after all these years.

 

The core i7 on the x201 is just a i5 with high clockrate. In essence it is just a marketing that Intel is pushing. The dual core i7 and i5 have the same architecture design. The only different core i7 is the quad core one, which x201 does not offer.

 

Three differences between i5 and i7

1. Higher base clock rate. 2.4 GHz vs 2.66 GHz

2. Higher Turbo Boost clock rate. 2.933 GHz vs 3.333 GHz

3. 25% more SmartCache 3 MB SmartCache vs 4 MB SmartCache

 

@Oldghost: The NotebookCheck benchmarks were done on a test system by interchanging Core i3/i5/i7 processors. The power consumptions are total system power consumption, not only the CPU. The same test system was used in all the tests, with the following specifications:

So it's expected that the power consumption would be a fair bit higher than your X201. And no, they're not desktop Core i_ chips.

I'm not saying the Core i7-620M is not faster than the i5-540M. It undoubtedly is. However, on Lenovo's website, the upgrade from the i5-540M to the i7-620M is $150. Although the premium may have been worth it for your uses, such a huge price difference is, for 99% of users, a complete waste of money. The Core i7 is only marginally faster (as seen in the real-world benchmarks - you can hardly call those invalid), and consumes more power (although you can debate exactly how much more).

Both the i5-540M and the i7-620M will handle daily tasks superbly, and even in heavy processing, the difference is very small. The higher clock rates and the 1MB extra cache will make no perceptible difference in daily use. I'd say the extra $150 will be much better spent on an SSD.

 

While you were correct in stating the physical differences, in reality, none of these factors make any difference whatsoever in majority of programs since they will never stress the CPU at 100% load constantly. In programs that do take advantage of the extra features, there would be slight differences, but for example in encoding, you'd only save a few seconds overall in rendering a file that takes several minutes to hours, which is negligible. As stated before, do not get fooled by Intel's marketing.

 

Perhaps your correct in my not noticing a difference, but I " feel " better about having more than less.

Maybe the full voltage i7 is not right for everyone.

I just bought a very expensive laptop, (with my hard earned money) loaded it with the fastest ram, going to install a RealSSD 258 SSD next week, to get the most - what I think- out of it. to me having a full voltage i7 is a more complete, more attactive option than a few more minutes of battery life.

The whole tech market is about marketing from proformance, to duribility, to battery life, all the companies strech the truth.

And again in regards to that review, way off base. I know its stating total power comspumtion , so was I in regards to my x201.

The only differnce between the two is a larger screen (12 vs 15) on the other, and no way would that cause it to register nearly twice the wattage.

 

Another factor that probably results in the abnormally high wattages in the NotebookCheck analysis is that they measured the power draw from the wall:

The wattages that we Thinkpaders can see in Power Manager are the direct power consumption after the AC adapter.

If we take into consideration the efficiency of the adapter (let's say the adapter is 80% efficient), the numbers become much more reasonable. With Bluetooth and WiFi on, display at max brightness, and CPU at peak load, I'd say that 50W or so isn't too far off.

But that's kind of beside the point, since the significance of the test is not in the raw wattages, but in the differences between the wattages.

With a Core i7-620M, SSD, and plenty of RAM, you'll have a beast of an ultraportable

 

Sure... But I'll be broke and eating PB&J for a while

 

and have much shorter battery life.

 

Not really. SSD conserves more power. If you meant the processor, then we're going back to the old debate.

 

Alright, let's put this battery life question to bed.

Oldghost post your wattage (as reported in power manager) on battery. Do this for idle (CPU fixed at slow, radios off, & LCD at minimum), normal (CPU adaptive, radios on but Not transmitting, LCD at 10/15 brightness), and load (wPrime w/ mark brightness).

People with 35 W i5 and 25w i7 LV X201 and x201s/T respectively please post the same.

For comparison my x200T w/ SL9400 (17w + chipset), LED S-PVA 285 nit display, and 64GB Samsung SLC SSD gets the following:

Idle: 4.5-5.0 watts
Normal: 6.0-6.5 watts
Load: 23.0-24.0 watts

 

I am getting 5.30 hrs doing my normal stuff on a six cell.

( 50% brightness, internet, Office, and downloading files. )

Don't believe all the scary stories about as you wrote " much shorter battery life"

The whole point of my posts was to show
from my experence and needs it does not seem to be causing the chip to draw an abnormal amount of power.

Can I get somewhat better on a lower wattage processor, sure.

I can also get much, much better battery life with an Atom chip too.

Doesn't mean I want an Atom.

 

Ok Jon here goes.

At idle ( EVERY OFF OR LOW) its 10 watts ( with quick lows to 8 watts)
Normal BALANCED with radios transmitting 10-15 watts
Load. AS MUCH AS I CAN HAVE MAXED 15-25 watts.

Please keep in mind I dont not have those programs to really push the cpu.
The best I can do to test the load is play two movies at once, open both Internet Explorer and Firefox with 8 tabs each at the same time. download files ( utorrent ) open and run cs4 and office 2010 beta and have 80 processers running,

Hope this helps.

 

The i7-620M will not give "much shorter" battery life, unless you're comparing at 100% load. Even then, I doubt it'd be "much shorter."

@Oldghost: You can try using the Orthos CPU stressing tool for the load wattage.

 

Run wPrime ( link) it will peg all four thread to 100% for a decent duration of time.

 

Does anyone think the extra power on the i7 is worth it for software developers? I do a lot of C++ compilation, and I often have the CPU pegged at 100% due to the templates I use in C++, which can be a killer. Maybe it's worth it or is the difference still negligible?

 

Depends on how long the tasks run for. In a task that takes a few minutes, you're probably looking at a few seconds to a minute in difference. It's entirely your call whether that difference is worth $150 and a slightly reduced battery life.

 

Hi guys I ran Prime on my x201 with i7-620M

here are the screen shots of running Prime on A.C. and Battery.


Here is A.C. Everything maxed out.

And here is Maxed Out on Battery

Battery had a 90% Charge during these tests.

 

How are you finding the fan on the x201? is it ramping up a lot? noisy at max?

 

Those wattages seem about right. Is the x201 with i7 slower on battery (set at max performance). Post the wPrime (32M) times for plugged in - max performance, battery - max performance, and battery - maximum life.

 

Hi.

I love it.

Not noisy at all. Not hot at all.

On Power source Optimized ( screen at 8 every low with idles at aroung 10 watts with light stuff going on (internet,Word,USB Mouse)

Every now and then I will see a spike on both battery and A.C. where the cpu will go up to 50% briefly not often but it happens- not certain what program is causing it, maybe widows update, one of the lenovo programs or files I may be downloading.

Also keep in mind I am using a 7200 rpm Drive thats gotta be sucking extra juice.

Hope this helps.

 

Hi.

On A.C. at Full Power Running Prime the Wattage was 39 Watts

On Battery at Full power running Prime it was 26 watts

On Battery on Power Source Optimied running Prime it was 21 watts.

And running Prime was slower on battery yes.

 

Thanks Oldghost, you have been really helpful. Rep.

 

Oldghost, how do you find the 3D performance? I realize it's not a gaming machine and it's not a dedicated GPU, but I am really torn between this X201 and the Sony Vaio Z, which is almost as light and thin, and has a kicker of a GPU. Do you have Aero turned on with Windows 7? Any kind of 3D apps at all that you've run?

 

Hi Carrots.

Sorry have not run any 3D stuff. ( if you know of any free trail programs, send them my way, and i'll give it a shot.

Yes I am running Areo.

I know that the i7-620M GPU is clocked higher giving it better results.

My Windows Experience is as follows:

Processor: 7.0
Memory (Ram): 4GB 5.9
Graphics: 4.4
Graming Graphics: 5.3
Primary Hard Disk: 5.9

P.S. I wasl looking at the Vaio Z. Great Computer, But boy is it costly!
Fully loaded, I think it rang about $ 4000.00
The biggest turn-off/Deal breaker was the crazy high 1600x900 native Resolution.
I'am not a kid any more. That rez would kill me.

Nick.

 

Only compared to the i7 LV chip in the x201s and x201T. The normal voltage i5 in the x210 has an identically clocked GPU.

 

my i7 620m with 6-9 watts at idle stated by everest ..
not sure if it is correct

 

Could anyone please call Lenovo US to know when they will provide X201 Core i7 again?

 

I was told "4 weeks" last time I called about i7-620M on x201, which pointed to end of april.

 

Hi ordered my the second day it was available.

here is the break down.

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION QUANTITY PRICE/EA TOTAL
=======================================================
SYS.3249CT CONFIGURED SYSTEM 1 1377.00 1377.00
41W1787 SBB CPK NORTH AMERICA 1
60Y8224 SBB SYSLABW/COMPLID:TP00007A 1
60Y8228 SBB FCC LABEL 1
60Y8233 SBB GEO LABEL US,WLAN,BLUT 1
60Y8255 SBB VERIZON OPTION 1
60Y8280 SBB MECH MISC PARTS 1
75Y0098 SBB OPEN SM CRD VERIZON:USA 1
75Y1342 SBB THPADX200SER6CELLLI-IONBAT 1
44C1408 SBB WWAN STICKER 2 1
44C5216 SBB KEYBOARD US ENGLISH 1
44C8401 SBB ENERGYSTAR 4.0 TIER 2 PACK 1
45M3419 SBB MSLAB.(WIN.7STANDARD) 1
45M4804 SBB IN.CENT.ULTIMATE-N 6300 1
45M4809 SBB IN.MOB.BROAD.(3G)-QUALCOM 1
60Y6006 SBB NEWIN.LAB2010IN.COREI7VPR 1
60Y7340 SBB 4GBPC3-8500DR3SDRM1067SDMM 2
60Y7807 SBB INTELCI7-620M(2.66GHZ4MBL3 1
60Y7816 SBB 12.1WXGALED2X2UCIIAW/C+WBU 1
60Y7820 SBB TRACKPW/FINGERREAD+TOUCHP 1
60Y7824 SBB BLUETOOTH W/ANTENNA 1
60Y7826 SBB 5-1MEDIACARDREADER+MODEM 1
60Y7835 SBB 500GBHARDDISKDRIVE7200RPM 1
60Y7853 SBB WIN7LANPACK US ENGLISH 1
60Y7890 SBB PACKAGING US 1
60Y7932 SBB GWIN7PROF64 US ENGLISH 1
60Y8176 SBB WWANMISCPAR-GOBI2000FULLF1 1
60Y8180 SBB WLAN MISCPARTS-3X3HALF(H1) 1
60Y8184 SBB FRULFORI7-620M AMT/TPMPLAN 1
60Y8205 SBB 12.1WXGA2X2UCIIAWWANCAW/BT 1
60Y8211 SBB CLPLFORX201WLAN+BT+WWAN 1
MFG Part#: 60Y8211

-----------------------

Subtotal Without Shipping & Handling 1377.00

Miscellaneous + 0.00

Total after Miscellaneous 1377.00

Shipping Via UPS GROUND + 0.00

Sales Tax + 122.21

-----------------------

 

(Quote clipped)

@Oldghost: When did you ordered this? Early March?

 

I ordered it March 02 and received it March 12.
Regular Shipping.

 

FYI, the discontinue of X201/s with core i7 caused by Acer who ordered a large number of i7. And Acer has priority over Lenovo.

forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/What-happened-to-X201-with-i7-620M-processor-and-X201s/td-p/220964

 

Yes the shortages not the discontinue. But it doesn't make sense to me because the Core i7 option for T410 and T510 are still available.

 

So has anyone come to a conclusion on just how much more power the 620m consumes over the 540m?

I'm looking at getting the 620m as cost isn't a factor atm, but battery life IS. If it's just going to be 20 mins or less of extra battery life, I'll take the 620m. But if it's an hour or something, I'll take the 540m.

 

Hi,

I was interested in the same answer. Is there any news on this topic?

Thanks.