Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

[Thors.Hammer]

I received my W520 yesterday. So far it is working great. It is running much cooler than my W510. However I am very surprised to see that the boot up time is more than 1 min instead of 20 seconds that was claimed. By contrast, W510 boot up time is very short! Do you guys have any thoughts on this?

My W520 is equipped with i7-2720QM, FHD, 4G RAM, 2GB NVIDIA Quadro 1000M Graphics, 500G 7200RPM.

Here is the windows experience index:
Processor: 7.5
Memory: 5.9
Graphic: 4.9 !!!!!!
Gaming Graphic: 6.6
Hard Disk: 5.9

Very interesting, the graphic value of W520 is lower than that of W510 with FX 880M.

Were you using the 170W power supply and Max performance power profile before running WINSAT?

Doesn't look like it.

[ecost]

Yep. better deal.

I'm sure you can find better. Here is what I got:

I7-2720QM
15.6FHD (1920 X 1080)
NVQ2000M
COLOR SENSOR
4GBPC3-10600DDR3 1333SODMM
FINGERPRINT READER
720P HD CAM INT MICR
500GB HDD7200RPM
9 CELLL I-ION BATTERY
CPNAMLC+ 170W AC AD
BLUETOOTH 3.0
IN.CENT.ULTIMATE-N 6300
LENOVO THINKPLUS 3 YEARS - ON-SITE
LENOVO MINI DOCK PLUS SERIES 3 - 170W
TOTAL - $1,882 plus TAX

[X301_NCBI]

Yes, I used 170W power and max performance.

Were you using the 170W power supply and Max performance power profile before running WINSAT?

Doesn't look like it.

[wditters]

Probably because it's partially using the integrated GPU (optimus).

Spot on ... In the Bios you can set the graphics to integrated, discrete and optimus. If you want best battery and slowest graphics then set the Bios to integrated and disable the Optimus aware OS support. If you want to have the fastest settings, then set the Bios to discrete and disable the Optimus aware OS support.

Is you leave it at Optimus (plus Optimus aware OS support) then you get these intermediate results. Perfectly understandable and perfectly normal.

[hrana]

I received my W520 yesterday. So far it is working great. It is running much cooler than my W510. However I am very surprised to see that the boot up time is more than 1 min instead of 20 seconds that was claimed. By contrast, W510 boot up time is very short! Do you guys have any thoughts on this?

Slow boot up times can happen for several reasons. Once I get my system, I'll try to install a completely clean version of Windows 7 and see what happens.

My W520 is equipped with i7-2720QM, FHD, 4G RAM, 2GB NVIDIA Quadro 1000M Graphics, 500G 7200RPM.

Here is the windows experience index:
Processor: 7.5
Memory: 5.9
Graphic: 4.9 !!!!!!
Gaming Graphic: 6.6
Hard Disk: 5.9

Very interesting, the graphic value of W520 is lower than that of W510 with FX 880M.

The graphic numbers seem very suspect. On a Dell XPS m1340 laptop, simply setting Optimus to Max (or is High?) Performance I can get much higher graphic scores and the system is almost 2 years old. You might want to try to BIOS settings as wditters suggested.

Lastly, those of you that have gotten your W520 laptops... have you tried tweaking using ThrottleStop? I'd be interested see the results people are getting with tweaking the Turbo settings.

[polbit]

Almost pulled the trigger on a Macbook Pro 15", however looking on-line before ordering I found the W520. Could not pass it up! OSX will have to wait for me

Intel Core i7-2720QM
15.6" FHD (1920 x 1080)
NVIDIA Quadro 1000M
No Color Sensor
4 GB PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM
500 GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 (3x3 AGN)

TOTAL: $1,583.10 (plus tax) with 10% for being a new customer.

Getting 8Gb RAM from Crucial for $94, and at some point I will drop in a nice Intel SSD in there...

[hrana]

TOTAL: $1,583.10 (plus tax) with 10% for being a new customer.

Getting 8Gb RAM from Crucial for $94, and at some point I will drop in a nice Intel SSD in there...

Congrats on your purchase! The Crucial RAM is a pretty good deal but it is DDR3-1333. The single 4GB module coming with the W520 is also DDR-1333. The i7-2720 (and the 2 higher CPUs available on the W520) can run DDR3-1600. While I'm pretty sure the actual benchmarks may not show much improvement, Kingston HyperX 8GB (2x4GB) kit is DDR3-1600 for $99 from NewEgg. 16GB of RAM for $198 isn't bad at all.

I won't stake my reputation on the W520 being 100% compatible (both with mixing 2 RAM types or with the faster DDR3-1600 RAM alone) without a field report but this is another option. Once I have my laptop, I'll order the Kingston RAM from NewEgg and post a field report both with mixing modules and pure DDR3-1600. If there is a problem then I'll be able to return to RAM. I can always sell the DDR3-1333 4GB module to one of you for a couple of dollars if it all works out.

[LeafHater]

Anybody know how long after you make an order you can cancel it or even if you can cancel it as long as it has not shipped. I plan on being sneaky and ordering on the last day of the visaperks deal. So I can see what the easter sales are on the off chance it is better

[StaticLeap]

Anybody know how long after you make an order you can cancel it or even if you can cancel it as long as it has not shipped. I plan on being sneaky and ordering on the last day of the visaperks deal. So I can see what the easter sales are on the off chance it is better

As a general rule they will let you cancel the order prior to shipment and not charge you the restocking fee (ask and verify anyway when you cancel.)

However, it is has been known for them to ship the order, even up to a week, after cancellation (Been there, done that). If that is the case your card will have the charges on it until you can get the laptop back to them and they can go through their check on it. It could be three weeks or more before you get the credit back. Absolute pain, if you have a limited budget.

[nni123]

As a general rule they will let you cancel the order prior to shipment and not charge you the restocking fee (ask and verify anyway when you cancel.)

However, it is has been known for them to ship the order, even up to a week, after cancellation (Been there, done that). If that is the case your card will have the charges on it until you can get the laptop back to them and they can go through their check on it. It could be three weeks or more before you get the credit back. Absolute pain, if you have a limited budget.

also don't hold your breath that they will put lot of discount on w520 series. I still remember when W510 had no coupon compare to T410 series had good discount... sometime it is weird... just give or take