X201 Core i7-620M Heat and Battery life questions

What will you be doing while on battery life?

 

I think they figure people with the X expect to be at the cutting edge of CPU speed less than people who go for the larger platform T.

 

Personally I would develop (Java/C++) + checking emails/surfing while on WiFi.

Would I notice a big difference bewteen the i5-540m and i7-620m ? What is the minimum duration I could expect with the i7-620m ?

 

Based on what you say you are going to do, I can say with a fair bit of certainty that you won't notice the difference between the i5-520M/-540M and the i7-620M. I'd go with the cheaper option.

It's hard to say exactly how much battery life you should expect, since that depends on far too many variables. You will get slightly less with the i7-620M than the i5 options, though.

 

Thanks for the info. I think I'll try to look for benchmarks nevertheless. Actually the bigger cache of the other laptop could be a "plus".

 

Benchmarks don't really tell you how things will run in real life. Just because a CPU is say 10% faster in benchmarks doesn't mean you'll notice it at all - heck it can be 100% faster, but if you don't utilize your CPU, then you won't notice a difference in that either.

 

Where did you buy it? Thanks

 

So where does all the power dissipate to?


Ive got the 620M, the power consumption is pretty crap compared with my X61, but the power is pretty good. Its equivalent to my overclocked 3.3-3.4GHz Core 2 desktop.

The heat is non-existent, ive ran 100% cpu-loaded programs over 24 hours non stop and its not hot one bit.

 

the i5-540M and i7-620m should be similar in power consumption and processing power. The major difference is that the i7 has a slightly higher clock speed and larger cache size (3 mb vs 4 mb).

The X201 runs cool is a testament to the superior heatsink design. X61 with the T7xxx runs extremely hot, i use to have it and could not use it on my lap, which eventually forced me to sell it. X60s is still my favorite in terms of portability and battery life, it is far superior to any of the netbook out there.

 

Same as my T410 i-540m. Looks like the notebookcheck's test can't be fully trusted.

 

usually it is the smartest to buy the least powerful CPU of that class, as you get most of the performance boost from the new architecture and coding. They also tend to run cooler than the higher clocked units of the same generation or design.

 

There's a really similar post about this on the forums. The guys over at Notebook check don't know how to properly implement power saving. Don't trust that review.

The 620m WILL use more power because it can go higher in turbo boost, but Turbo boost is really only used when the A/C is in. Since the max freq can go higher though on the 620m, it's an apples to oranges comparison. I'm next to certain the 620m has all the throttling frequency states as the 540m especially at the low end of the spectrum (plus the additional 133Mhz).

I have T410 so the larger screen and possibly higher RPM HDD will mean more power consumption, but those numbers look right to me, too for the X201.

 

I have a x201T with outdoor screen, i7 620 LM, 3 GB RAM, Gobi-Verizon. I have been using it for 3 months, and have complained to Lenovo because it runs hot and consumes batteries at a remarkable rate. With "Green" settings and screen at 7/15 brightness, connected to Verizon, I can not go longer than 2 hours on a new 9 cell OEM battery, of which I have 4 in order to do mobile computing. They have swapped out motherboards, fan, and RAM, but it still runs at nearly 30W with WWAN on, lower if off.
Lenovo now wants me to believe that it is within normal specs to behave this way. Any thoughts? I discovered this thread in a attempt to solve the problem. Am a longtime Thinkpad user, with two previous X60s', which behaved much differently. Any thoughts appreciated. Thanks.

 

I don't have the WWAN/Gobi and my heat is low and my battery life is very good. I can only surmise that the WWAN setup is causing this.

Even when strained I don't notice my X201 getting hot at all. The air from the exhaust port will get warm on max settings while playing a game but I wouldn't characterize it as hot and my battery life with the 9-cell seems within normal ranges.

 

the WWAN can get warm under heavy use.

 

I think I have found the problem causing the behavior above, high heat and battery consumption. There is an .exe file running that consumes a steady 25% CPU usage when i check on the Resource Monitor. The file is labeled as: PresentationFontCache.exe. It seems to be very active in the background, but serving no useful purpose for me. Just consuming power and generating heat. I have inactivated it and temp runs now in the 20's instead of the 60's, and battery charge like looks like it has gone from 2 hours to 5 hours. It has been a problem in XP, Vista, and in my Win7,64 machine. I post the reference hoping others with a similar problem will find a solution more easily. Lenovo tech support (phone, on-site, and depot) could not.

Here is a reference to it:
PresentationFontCache

Readers of this thread can at least be reassured that my trouble was not a function of the i7 640 chip.

 

Wow, now that's a damn good consumption under Normal, I could never get that with my X201t i7 620LM... My numbers below:

Idle: 10.5-11.5 W (I have managed to get it down to 8.5-9.5 but that's very rare)
Normal: 13.0-14.5 W
Load: 29.5-30.5 W

I have to say that anyone who'd like all-day computing the X201t might not be the ideal tablet and the X200T/T2010 will be more appropriate choices, BUT if you REALLY want performance, you can't go wrong, I though my X200 was fast but I would never look back, I was thinking of getting a X200 as a backup machine but it will HAVE to be a x201 now...

Worth noting that I have a Seagate Momentus XT rather than my original 320GB 5400rpm Hitachi drive, and the problem with the XT is that the latest firmware prevents the drive from spinning down AT ALL, so consider 2W to be my HDD's consumption.

Other than the HDD this is a "standard" full-loaded X201t (WLAN 6300 Ultimate, WWAN Gobi 2000, 4GB RAM, Multitouch, Webcam, 8-cell battery).

3D Performance is nothing short of amazing for an ultraportable Thinkpad, games that could barely run on my X200 P8600 they are playing great on the X201t, Far Cry with most settings on High (AA off, of course), Left 4 Dead plays very well, FEAR Combat (I couldn't play it on the X200 at native resolution) runs beautifully. If you play the odd game now and then I can say for sure that you will not be disappointed with the performance here. A small tip that I have found useful, you might want to set the affinity of some games that don't make use of multiple cores or HT, it helped performance a lot with GRAW 2 for me.