Help Lenovo - they need it !

June 18, 2008 10:06 PM

I want a list of resolutions supported for external screens by a ThinkPad T61P - is this asking too much ?

I'm looking at a ThinkPad T61P - it uses a by 256MB nVIDIA Quadro FX 570M graphics adapter.

Having recently bought a 1920x1200 screen for the office only to discover that a number of the laptops can't drive it I've suddenly become sensitive to the available output resolutions of graphics adapters ! (and man aren't there a lot of them ?)

The T61P uses a nVidia FX570M but if you go to the nVidia site they tell you a lot of stuff about it but then basically say 'for the details you'll have to ask the company building the computer'.

I did ask Lenovo - the answers included : "everything"; "having you tried Google" etc.

Before I give up on thinkpads can anyone tell me where I can find the spec for this device as it is used in a T61P ? (I though maybe LeNovo could have one of those website things on which they could place the specs ?).

posted by southof40 to computers & internet (10 comments total)

NVIDIA Quadro FX 570; Max Resolution (external): 2560 x 1600 / 60 Hz

1920x1200 will not be a problem.
posted by hitopshelf at 11:09 PM on June 18

Specs

Supported Display Graphics : QXGA (2048x1536), 1920x1200, 3840x2400
posted by rokusan at 11:14 PM on June 18

Sometimes specific resolutions are a problem with specific video cards with specific drivers for said video cards (due to the resolutions specified in the .inf file). In most cases this can be worked around. My T60p supports 1920x1080 and 1920x1200, so I don't think you'll have an issue.

I have seen some older cards that I couldn't get to do any widescreen resolution for the life of me, and certain integrated models that will only function at resolutions hard coded into the video bios, but again, a T61p's discrete graphics won't have that problem.

For general Thinkpad information, including esoteric questions like this, the forums at thinkpads.com can be very helpful. I've also found plenty of bright people (but a worse signal to noise ratio) at notebook review's Lenovo forum.
posted by wierdo at 12:44 AM on June 19

To further wierdo's suggestion, if you ask in the ThinkPad T6x Series forum on thinkpads.com, it's pretty much guaranteed that someone will post the answer you need to an easy question like this.
posted by grouse at 1:01 AM on June 19

1920x1200x32bit /8 = 9216000 bytes , or ~8.8MB of VRAM. Any graphics card with 16MB or greater should be able to handle that resolution.

I havent seen any laptops in the past 4-5 years that can't handle ultra high resolutions.
posted by wongcorgi at 1:29 AM on June 19

FWIW, I'm running a 1920 x 1260 screen from my X60 right now. It may be that the video chipsets are similar (my Display Properties / Settings says Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family)
posted by amtho at 6:17 AM on June 19

Amtho, does your X60 allow you to rotate the 1920x1260 screen so that you can use it landscape position?
posted by Eringatang at 8:05 AM on June 19

I mean "portrait," not "landscape," 1260X1920.
posted by Eringatang at 8:06 AM on June 19

As everyone else has already said, it shouldn't be a problem. As some fellow on the Lenovo forums says here: "The T61p with 570M can drive up to WQXGA (2560x1600) plus its own internal display simultaneously."
posted by jbullion at 10:43 AM on June 19

I have a T61p. You'll be fine.
posted by randomstriker at 10:28 PM on June 19