Coming soon - Y470P!

Thought optimus was for Nvidia only. The only switch on the front right side of this computer is the "integrated wireless device switch."

 

Then you could look into bios settings is there isn't a similar switch.

 

Bios settings does not show any GPU.

**Called Lenovo to request a replacement. Same laptop, same model.
Decided against an RMA, hopefully this wasn't foolish.

 

Hey, so I just placed an order for this yesterday (I'm in canada) and considering this will be my first lenovo laptop I had a few questions.
.
1. Is there a significant build quality difference between the thinkpads and the ideapads. One of my friends has had a thinkpad for over 4 years and he's always telling me that it's very sturdy and durable.

2. Is the second generation i7 processor on this undervoltable? I've been undervolting my current laptop for the past four years (both in Windows and Linux) and have noticed a remarkable difference in the temperature (a 20 degree celcius drop under full load!).

3. How good are lenovo's shipping estimates? My estimated ship date is on march the 6th but I've heard that lenovo is very conservative on their dates and you can usually expect it to be shipped a week or two before.

 

1. I went from a Thinkpad to Ideapad and I don't really have any issues with the Ideapad as far as build quality. Thinkpads are great for taking abuse. (Rollcage, spill proof keyboard, etc.) As long as you treat the laptop well, it should hold up just fine.

2. No clue...

3. I would agree that Lenovo tends to give themselves a little wiggle room. Nothing like promising a ship date then turning around and saying it'll be 2 more weeks. I would look at the ship date as a worst case scenario. If it ships before that date, all more the reason to be happy.

 

2. No undervolt.

 

Hmm.. well I'm going to the miss the fun of undervolting but I suppose if the cpu already runs cool and the battery life is good it won't be essential. Thanks for the replies!

 

One data point: When I ordered mine, it said a ship date of 3/12. It actually shipped on 2/7. That's over a month!

YMMV, of course.

A friend of mine who tracks Intel for a living is guessing that they're trying to ship fast so they can get the money before they have to put on more discounts due to Ivy Bridge products coming out.

(UPS tracking says it went from Greensboro, SC, to Nashville, TN, to Kansas City, KS, where it is right now. Lots of hops to get to CO.)

 

Looking to possibly replace my m11x r1 with one of these...how long does their Lenovo weekly sale usually last? Friday or Saturday? I want to get it while the coupon for 750 is still active if I do.

 

WEEKLYDEAL0209 for the y470p ends February 15.

 

Sweet. I just bought one...planning on getting a review up if nobody else has done one yet. It's been a couple years since I bought my last notebook...the 7690m should be a good bump over my 5650m.

 

I couldnt find it anywhere in the thread. How does this compare to the 7690M found in the Envy15/DV6T and 555M?

 

Unbelievable. Now Lenovo is giving me problems with my request for replacement. Acer is looking like heaven right now compared to these Lenovo pinheads. Hopefully they can set things right for me asap.

 

Mine arrived, and I've been playing around with it. Absolutely no problems with it thus far. (knock on wood). The touchpad is a little annoying at times though. I'll be putting up a few gameplay videos since there seems to be a severe lack of 7690m coverage.

Not until I remove some of the bloat-ware. There is no excuse for having 12 icons open in the taskbar on boot, LOL.

 

As requested 3dm 11 scores:

Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2450M CPU @ 2.50GHz,LENOVO Base Board Product Name score: P1338 3DMarks

This was done stock outta the box. Just uninstalled a few bloatware programs, installed 3dm11 and ran it on default settings. I probably could pull some more if I put it on high performance instead of lenovo/balanced power setting.

Max GPU temp during benchmarking was 59. max cpu core temp was 71.

 

Got mine, and have been moving to it. I wrote a review that got too long to post here directly. So I made a blog post out of it:

Lenovo Y470p Initial Impressions

Hope it's useful.

 

I guess I really should include at least some content. Here's the main conclusion:

 

Love it! Nothing like a real user review. I laughed at the part regarding the touchpad, Lenovo isn't the only company that knows how to nearly ruin a laptop with poorly implemented touchpad/touchpad drivers, I review a lot of laptops and HP has a knack of doing that as well.

Thanks for the write up.

 

I completely agree with you on the touchpad Greg....

Edit: I've confirmed it. Changing "palm check" to minimum allows me to type and move mouse at the same time!

 

Yep, I confirmed it myself.

And I checked something else: Changing palm check to minimum also eliminates pointer stability when typing, a major feature for me. It makes the pointer flail around like a leaf in the wind, just like it did on my Vaio.

Too bad there's no way other than chasing through umpity levels of clicking to turn it on and off. :-(

 

Hey, you're very welcome! Glad you found it useful, and entertaining.

I have this impression that no hardware vendor does any software worth the bits it's encoded in. Hopefully except for GPU drivers... at least sometimes...

 

And before I forget again: Thanks! For digging around and finding this. At least we now know where the problem lies.

 

All right, trackpad issues raised and nailed (not solved, but over with.)

Now, what about this furshlugginer VeriFace? Anybody get it working?

Mine just sits there grinding on the registration process; it never finishes that.

I did uninstall it, and reinstall the same version. Nothing changed, still grinds. Interestingly, the install process complained that it was being installed with the wrong options, asked if I wanted the right ones; so I said yes, install completed, it worked like before. VeriFace is apparently an XP program running in compatibility mode. No idea whether that has anything to do with anything.

 

Yea, idk. I dumped Veriface along with some of the other auto-starting junk since it eats up my boot time for breakfast.

Some people actually turn their computer on to do work,

 

Say what??!!

Anyway, on to my next question: Anbody installed Skyrim? Any issues with Steam?

I ask because when I installed Skyrim on another machine, Steam gratuitously ^&*&(ed up the graphics by deciding it wanted to update drivers, or something, and got it wrong.

 

Got Skyrim running! Yay! Runs fine at "high" settings, and looks utterly awesome.

Of course, I'm sure you were all dying to hear that. Hey, it's a big deal for me; it's about 50% of why I got this machine.

Most of the time involved in doing this was spent getting a backup made first, since I was so worried about Steam mucking things up. This time I hit "cancel" when it again started to install its own DirectX 3, and all just went fine after that.

Actually, most of the time spent doing the backup was spent mucking with partitions. First "onekey backup" said was that I had 29GB available on the backup partition, and a backup needed 80GB. Why do they ship them with such unusable settings? Plenty of space I don't need on C:, so I moved some from C: to a backup partition/logical drive. This was *not* trivial because the freed-up space was on the wrong side... Yeah, ... grumble.

Anyway, all's fine now. And I'm playing. And seeing why all the reviews complained about the menu / inventory system. It's a pain. But the game is great.

 

Glad to hear you got it working Greg. I've yet to buy it(skyrim)...I want to wait until the semester is over so I'm not missing assignments, exams, etc .

Yea I think I'm going to look into getting an mSata SSD drive in here. After installing a few of my games and getting all my progs and everything set (except music/movies), I've only used 56gb of the larger partition.

I'll probably get at-least an 80gb intel or the 120ocz nocti....then just use that for the os/programs/current games, and move the other games/movies/music onto the main 500gb hdd.

I'll have to partition it more evenly so it can act as a backup/clone of the SSD as well. Then I'll be good to go.

 

Thanks everyone for the informative posts re: benchmarks, wonky touchpad and other tweaks.
I ordered mine on 2/15. Est. ship date is 3/13. hope I get lucky and it gets here sooner.
I'd be interested in this overclocking business. never done it, don't know what is involved.
Can I do that with my desktop as well?

Also wondering if anyone is planning on installing SSD on the y470p...

 

Redrazor -

Sounds like a plan with Skyrim. It is clearly the black hole of time sinks.

Re mSATA: It sounds like you're implying that there's room for an mSATA drive in addition to the spinning HD. Is that the case?

If so, sign me up. An SSD was one of the key things I wanted but did not get on this system, but the stuff I have is too tight a fit on mSATAs like the OCZ Nocti. But in addition to the HDD, great.

I'll happily watch while you lead the way. Please keep us informed!

 

So after a while of lurking, I decided to finally chime in about the y740p

To get a few negative things out of the way:
-Buzzing / static at headphone jack. Worse when plugged in, idk if it's from the emi from the HDD or I hear it more when moving my usb mouse around. It was to a lesser degree dampened by choosing line-out over headphones in the Realtek HD manager, and reinstalling the audio drivers, but this is still driving me nuts! I don't know whether to send it in for a replacement or not within these next few days.
-A small amount of crapware came installed, not exactly a con since I easily uninstalled them.
-Nonexistent drivers. I mean... WHERE THE HECK ARE THE DRIVERS LOL I really think that the 7690m hasn't been released to the general public yet. Looking on Lenovo's support site, the other drivers are all pretty dated, yet are called the latest; this leads me to raise another point about not being able to update the BIOS. From the utility on Lenovo support site, it just says there is an incompatibility. Therefore I am stuck on the 2.00 BIOS as apposed to 2.09

I ordered mine on 2/11/2012 and received it on 2/17, 6 days ahead of their promise time.

GregPF, You must have a bunch of extra files, because the moment after I installed some of the bloat(mcafee, chrome, toolbars, etc) my OneKey backup had only been 24.4 GB. BTW, thanks for the tips regarding the trackpad, it made it soo much better.

I am likely to install a mydigitaldiscount 64 GB 50mm mSATA SSD to bump my disks 6.9 on the WEI scale. I think it will be pretty straight forward for the physical installation, but properly recreating a Windows installation from a HDD to a SSD has its own problems.

redrazor11, you should do a 3dmark test after configuring and switching to the HIGH PERFORMANCE GPU. I have mine switch to it automatically when plugged in.

Regarding Skyrim on here. It runs it fine on "high" settings at 15 FPS (using FRAPS), but reduce AA and Antiscropic Filtering to 2x each you get going good. Throw on SkyBoost, and it nicely gives you around 30-34ish FPS in most areas.
The hottest I've seen the GPU get while playing is 35 deg C which is pretty darn good. This work awesomely for games as long as your settings are correct, and you are using the proper GPU.

Battery life on it has been stellar, I mean it's a brand new laptop, but I remove the battery whenever I leave the computer plugged in for longer periods of time.
Here's a screenshot of GPU-z

I'm actually really happy I didn't settle for an HP dv7t that would have cost me $50 more. I would have happily paid the extra $50 to get the i7 version, but I didn't see a coupon code at the time for it and had to settle for the i5. I wonder if my battery life would be better since it's only a dual core.
Some people just need to be more aware of the capabilities their computer has, and that it may not be so simple to access those features.
Phew, that was a long first post .

 

For everyone having issues with buzzing through the headphone jack, that is a problem inherent with many laptops. There just is not enough shielding to prevent electrical interference coming through (HDD noise and USB mouse). If you were to buy a better quality headphone, it will go away however. My Sennheisers do not have an issue with this at all, but if I plug in some cheap earphones, I hear static all the time. It is not a hardware issue. If you want to try a trick, try plugging in the laptop but lift the ground (do not plug in 3rd prong) and you may get rid of static as well.

Also, megaprawn, if you look in Lenovo energy managment you can set it up so that you have best battery health. That keeps battery around 50% and prolongs the life of it so that you do not have to take the batteru out.

 

Hi, megaprawn, and welcome.

Buzzing in the headphone jack: I have none of that at all. No fussing with RealTek to get rid of it, no playing around, it has just provided perfectly clear sound from day 1, simply by plugging the headphones (actually, Bose earplugs). I hate to say "send it back," but it sounds like something's physically mucked up there, like a bad ground connection or something.

I know why I needed more backup space, assuming -- and I certainly hope this is true -- it includes user data in the backup. I pulled 46GB of my user data off my old laptop onto this one. So, no mystery. I just have a lot of stuff, like 20GB of pictures alone.

Glad you found the trackpad stuff useful.

Haven't played with the settings for Skyrim at all, but I find it very smoothly playable. No clue what the exact framerate is. Maybe I'll get FRAPS to find out the numbers. Maybe not; I'm happy.

Drivers - I wouldn't be too hard on Lenovo yet. This thing is a very recent offering, so, while in a perfect world they'd have everything out there on day 1, I'm willing to cut them a little slack on it. Not too much, though. If it's not there in a month or so, I'll grouse about it too.

Looks like all God's chilluns want SSD drives. :smile:

 

So aside from sending it back for a replacement, is there a way to increase the shielding for EMI within the laptop itself? ie covering the HDD in antistatic wrapping... on second thought.. I guess not hahah

Anyways, where may I see proof that the best battery health profile may be better than shutting off my notebook, removing the battery, then inserting the power and then using the computer. As opposed to a continuously used battery. Do the batteries need to be conditioned?

Could it be that the way the sound card was designed as.. to use the same audio feed, but resist it onto a smaller current for a line out jack. in a way... the notebook was designed around the speakers. Because they are a higher quality than the two inexpensive, but nicer pairs of headphones that I own. The speakers on this thing are pretty amazing. Overall, it packs a pretty great punch! With a bit more pleasure over business.

Also, BOOM I see that my BIOS is not meant to be the same as the ones on the earlier model Y470, but a [SPOILERS]newer model under a similar moniker[/SPOILERS]
otherwise the more I intake the experience of the laptop, that it is very breathtaking and

 

Looks like mine is being shipped. so few more days and it should be here!
how are you guys finding the fan noise?

 

Near zero fan noise from what I can tell. Surfing on the intel gpu means this thing stays around 35-40...so no need for the fan to kick on.

Light hum when switching to the dedicated gpu and doing any kind of gaming...but nothing like laptops with dual fans or the noise of a cooling dock.

 

Great!

Quite acceptable - totally minimal.

Also, there's a neat slide-over button above the keyboard for thermal management which has a "super silent" option. I've just tried it a little bit, but when I did, it reduced the fan noise to barely, barely audible.

 

Good stuff. I've been looking for a few now and just ordered mine 2 days ago for $799 with coupon 7DAYDEALS0223 avail on Lenovo's site. I got the i7 model though - part #08552LU. Spec sheet found here. Est ship date is 3/28 :-( Hope I get the it sooner than that. I thought about the Samsung Series 7 laptop but read a very long thread about problems with the discrete graphics not properly detecting and switching appropriately. Looks like this one is not having that issue so that's good.

 

Pretty sure you will get yours sooner; that seems to be the trend.

 

megaprawn and GregPf, are you the i5 or i7 model? I can't remember.

 

I ordered my i7 y470p a week ago, first new computer in about 5 years, so I'm pretty excited.

Is anyone else planning on upgrading theirs with an mSATA SSD? I was thinking of getting a 128GB mydigitalSSD. I'm moderately competent when it comes to computers, but this will be my first time installing something like this or doing a clean install of an OS (it seems pretty straight forward after watching/reading a bunch of tutorials). My big concern is that Lenovo hasn't released all the drivers for the y470p on their support site, and besides obvious drivers like graphics, wireless card, motherboard, touchpad, I'm not sure what else to look for. Would it be better to just use a program to copy the HD image to the SSD? I just hate bloatware and want to start out with as clean a slate as possible. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

 

I am definitely thinking about the SSD. Maybe get some use out of the laptop first, let the prices of the SSDs drop and then install and viola, brand new laptop!
First I will get it, then we'll see!

 

Does anyone know if the wireless adapter operates at both the 2.4 and 5 ghz range or just 2.4?

 

I am using the Core i5 model while, if I recall correctly GregPf is on the i7.

Regrading the Wireless: I don’t believe the Wireless: Intel 1000 BGN 802.11 a/b/g/n, is really a a/b/g/n capable card, to allow communicating on the 5 GHz band., which I'm paraphrasing and found it in a comment on this site : http://www.laptopreviews.com/lenovo-y470p-first-look-and-video-2012-02

The drivers that ship with the computer are on a second/recovery partition. I just ordered the 128GB mydigitalssd and I plan on using Acronis to switch everything over. Only because I read that it actively checks when migrating from a hard disk to an SSD and doesn't mess up the sectors or something for SSD disk alignment.

 

What is the battery life like for the i7 version?

 

Mine's an i7. No problems, works fine.

 

So I ordered mine on 2/18 with an estimated ship date of 3/21. Lenovo took the hold off the money on my checking account today but the online status still says that it is "in process". Essentially the money shows up as available in my account instead of on hold by Lenovo. Did this happen to anyone else that ordered one?

 

According to the tech specs, the web only models have the Intel 1000 b/g/n which only transmits in the 2.4 GHz band.

http://www.lenovo.com/shop/americas/content/pdf/system_data/y470p_tech_specs.pdf

Sorry. :rolleyes2:

DragonRider

 

Same exact thing happened to me. I was afraid it was a problem with my bank, but if it happened to you too it might be a problem on Lenovos end.

 

call them. the online updates are a bit slow.

 

I just called and was informed that my order was still active and was almost ready to be shipped. The hold was released because it was being prepped and that the estimated ship date was way off. Here is hoping that they debit my account within the next few days and that the guy knew what he was talking about and I get my laptop within the next week or so.

UPDATE:

I received a shipping notice and the online status now shows that it shipped today, almost a month sooner than originally expected! Still no bank debit though so maybe it gets processed tonight?