external graphics card w520

I am going to be buying a w520 in the next few weeks and i was wondering if anyone has tried an egpu with the w520. If anyone has can you please share your experiences?

Thank you.

 

I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. It does have the required ExpressCard slot on the side.

Why do you need one though? You can always get a W520 with the 2000M graphics, which is similar to a Geforce 555M in gaming performance.

 

The price premium is $250 for the 2000M, though. You can get a GTX 480 for that much (or a GTX 560 Ti). On the ATI/AMD side, you can get a 6870.

 

Like the other SB Lenovo laptops, you'll need to use an older BIOS before they switched the TOLUD from 3GB to 3.5GB if you use 4GB+ of RAM. Check the eGPU thread in the graphics forum for more details, there are special steps to get it to run if your SB Lenovo has a dGPU as well.

 

I cannot afford the 2000m currently so i was just wondering how to future proof my machine. If i could make/buy an egpu set it would make things easier.

 

You could do what I did and call a Lenovo rep to haggle with the price. I paid a hair over $1500 for my configuration (came with a 500GB HDD freebie and 4GB stock RAM), before tax. Retail price for it would be around $2000.

 

that is what I am going to try, but i still need to be able to future proof this machine. i will be using it for the next 5+ years

 

Honestly, the term future proofing doesn't really apply to computers in my opinion. In 6 months, Ivy Bridge will be out. With the die shrink, quad core CPUs will probably be mainstream in laptops and hex cores may even appear in the high end. A year after that, Haskwell or whatever it is called will be out, delivering better performance per clock. Broadwell or whatever afterwards will be a die shrink of that, probably bringing hex cores to mainstream and oct cores to high end. That's 2.5 years, half of the minimum of the span of time that you specified, and the high end laptops by then (and the W520 does sit in the high end range) would probably have better performance per clock, equal or higher clock speeds, double the core count, and use less power while it is doing it. On the GPU side of things, things will probably progress about the same.

So, I honestly can't say that I see the point in buying a computer to use for the next 3+ years (for gaming and whatnot), let alone 5+. My plan is to keep my W520 for 4 years (got it for $1091.30 before taxes), but the longest I've kept a machine for thus far is about a month under 3 years. I'm hoping that since I'll game even less in university (I'm not much of a gamer to start with), the W520 will be enough until the planned replacement time (it currently exceeds most of my needs, but that will probably change when I start seriously developing on it). Buy what you need, when you need it would be my opinion on the matter, as it will become outdated pretty soon anyways.

 

well i had my current computer for about 5 years and it has served me well. I am hoping the w520 will serve me well in college and after that i will be able to afford a decent computer. For the next 4 years i need something that will serve me well.


If you want to look farther than than haswell; quantum computing is starting to appear here and there.

 

I think a good rule of thumb to use is 5 years at least between prototyping and mass production for consumers. The last time I checked, we don't even have a prototype for a quantum computer, so it's probably ways off.

I plan on replacing my W520 in university (I have a 5 year program) with like a W560 or something in 4 years. The W series ThinkPads match up to pretty much every preference that I have. I have no doubt that the W520 will serve you well as long as you don't drop it too many times or try swimming with it.

 

interestingly enough there is a commercial quantum computer, owned by Lockheed Martin link: World's first commercial quantum computer sold to Lockheed Martin | VentureBeat

though it is true. my sister has a thinkpad that is about 5 years old. it works great but it is still a bit dated. She has dropped it many times and it works fine.

I feel the quad-core will be enough for the next 4 years and then i will see what happens.