Performance keys for Thinkpads

dobre_dani

Honorable
Mar 24, 2015
3
0
10,510
Hello,

I own two Thinkpad laptops:
- W520, i7, 16GB Ram, SSD, Win7
- X220, i5, 4GB Ram, HDD, Win10. I've tried 8GB Ram without any noticeable improvements.

X220 is too slow to work on, especially after coming from W520, but it's great for portability since it's lightweight. I am wondering if I would sell it and buy another X220 with i7, SSD and 8GB Ram, would that run as fast as W520 or is there something else (mainboard for example) that impacts performance?

If anyone has these two laptops with similar configurations and would like to share it's user experience I'd appreciate it.

Thank you
Dani
 
Solution
Those are very different systems, aside from the CPU, the X model has a much slower drive as well as less RAM. Replace the hard drive, put in 8GB of RAM, will be a lot closer in speed in most cases. You don't need an i7 vs an i5 unless you are doing video rendering and want to speed that up. In normal use the i5 is just as good.

I have an i7 W520 and just got an i7 X230 although I have not directly compared the speeds. There is a difference in that the i7 in the W520 is an HQ model with 8 threads, the i7 in the X230 only has 4 threads. Outside of rendering speeds and gaming performance due to the much better video card in the W laptop, I don't think the boot times and normal application speeds are any different, Solid State drives...
Those are very different systems, aside from the CPU, the X model has a much slower drive as well as less RAM. Replace the hard drive, put in 8GB of RAM, will be a lot closer in speed in most cases. You don't need an i7 vs an i5 unless you are doing video rendering and want to speed that up. In normal use the i5 is just as good.

I have an i7 W520 and just got an i7 X230 although I have not directly compared the speeds. There is a difference in that the i7 in the W520 is an HQ model with 8 threads, the i7 in the X230 only has 4 threads. Outside of rendering speeds and gaming performance due to the much better video card in the W laptop, I don't think the boot times and normal application speeds are any different, Solid State drives in both of my systems.
 
Solution

dobre_dani

Honorable
Mar 24, 2015
3
0
10,510


How does the new chiclet keyboard feel compared to the classic-style from W520? Can your fingers tell there's a difference?
 


There is a big difference. It's not better. I like the older keyboards.