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cl91 | 3 years ago

T420 can be modded easily to have 1080p full hd IPS screen, 4C8T ivy bridge CPU and 16GB ram. The only thing it's missing is usb3 which can be solved with a cardbus extension card. W520's full hd screen is not IPS (and can't be modded) so viewing angle is somewhat limited (but still ok for a laptop of its age). The discrete GPU on w520 is indeed better than the integrated GPU in ivy bridge but still hopelessly outdated for pretty much any graphics intensive task today so you are probably better off saving some battery life by not having it.

Btw X220 can be modded to have a 2K 16:10 display (I'm using one rn), although it's a nontrivial mod. W520 is the only model that can't (or at least hasn't) be modded at all.

discuss

callmetom|3 years ago

> The discrete GPU on w520 is indeed better than the integrated GPU in ivy bridge but still hopelessly outdated for pretty much any graphics intensive task today... Btw X220 can be modded to have a 2K 16:10 display

I just replaced my long suffering w520 for the daily driver... with an HP z840. Yes, I intentionally stick with old business-class hardware. I rarely used it as a laptop though - it lived on the docking station and the displayport happily pumped out 4k at 29.xxx hz. No, it couldn't handle modern-ish FPS at that resolution - but it could handle the strategy/rpg games I occasionally play and I never felt constrained with the hardware video decoder. As far as mods - you can definitely hotrod a w520. The CPU is socketed, and my memory is hazy - but I remember it being very easy to exceed the stock thermals with a non-stock CPU. RAM is socketed, and exceeding the spec capacity/clock is pretty common. Various bios mods are out there. For the really adventurous, undervolting isn't that hard - because the board schematics and logic diagrams have been floating around forever.

goosedragons|3 years ago

The W520 screen is actually decent though. At least the one in my unit. I had the 1600x900 T430 (which I think is the same panel option as T420) and it was awful with horrible viewing angles for anything not directly head on.