Thinkpad W500 anyone? (graphics problem)

greets all.
I've recently upgraded from a T60p to the new W500.. I haven't
gotten a chance to give it a spin with Solidworks as its running
vista 64bit & I'm waiting for 2009 sp1.

nonetheless, I've got eDrawings running on here and I'm getting
terrible graphics performance. In fact the "test graphics card"
dialog recommends no graphics boosting.

The W500 has an ATI FireGL which passed testing per solidworks
site.

Anyone out there with one of these machines running into similar
problems?

Thanks.

 

Your biggest problem is probably Vista. The last I heard (and I still think
it's true with some video chip/driver combonations) is the way Vista
controls 3D display. Solidworks uses a very comprehensive implementation of
prfessional OpenGL. Vista converts OpenGL graphics calls to Direct X
graphics before being displayed, which essentially acts as an emulator
between the the program, and whats on the screen. Result, dismal
performance. Desktop machines have many choices with regards to video cards
and drivers, laptops don't. Nvidia Quadro drivers include a large portion of
the extended OpenGL capability, supported by Solidworks, in their ICD. It's
my understanding that they have been able to nullify Direct X emulation in
Vista to some degree with their Vista drivers. It's quite possible that the
FireGL drivers for your laptop don't have this capability, although it's
quite possible that the desktop versions do.

We use XP exclusively, and will continue until it's no longer an option.
Extended support runs through 2014. We build all of our own workstations,
and our laptops (travel workstations) are ordered on-line, where you can
still get XP as a "dowgrade" (what a joke). You may want to see if you have
this option (after the fact) with IBM.

If your planning on doing any serious CAD work, Vista still ain't ready.
(unless of course your very very patient).

Regards

Mark

 

IIRC Vista really needs special Vista-certified hardware.

 

The W500 hasn't been certified for Vista 64 yet. Only a few notebooks
have been and they all use Quadro graphics.

 

Turns out the problem is a bit more "severe" (depending on how
you interpret the evidence). The GPU in the new workstations,
though sold as a FireGL turns out is a mod'd Radeon. Whether
lenovo has pulled a bait'n'switch -- or whether the two GPUs are
really the same (except for driver/software/bios) -- still seems to
be up to debate.

Exhaustive thread here:
http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=W_ThinkPads&thread.id=144

We'll see what happens....