A Low Cost Lenovo Laptop With DDR3 Memory
Tuesday October 7, 2008
Image Courtesy Lenovo
With Intel's release of the Intel GM45 chipset, it was now possible to get laptops that could use faster DDR3 memory. Due to the costs of implementing this, many companies have opted to use slower DDR2 memory on budget oriented laptops. Lenovo has decided to go against this trend with the new IdeaPad Y530 laptop. Find out in my review what other features the new chipset brings to this low cost laptop and what sacrifices must be made to include them.
Comments
A minor correction. The older Yonah based mobile pentium dual core CPU’s are limited to 32bit…
The Intel T3200 dual core CPU is based on the Merom-2M core, which does support the 64bit instruction set (you’ll need to install 64bit vista to make use of it though).
From what i can tell, the T3200 is just a re-badged Core 2 Duo T5750, with 1Mb of cache instead of 2Mb.
The article should be updated as these machines are still in the stores. I am running a 64-bit Linux kernel on mine just fine [though it took me a long time to figure out that the processor was indeed 64-bit capable, Intel has such a dilute product line].
Also my Y530 came with 3 gigs of RAM. There was a comperable Sony laptop with very similar specs except for 128 MB dedicated Video Ram instead of my 32, but I opted for the Lenovo because I had such great experience with Thinkpads.
I just bought a Lenovo Y530 and I really like it. That being said, I am learning the hard way that this is not a good computer for gaming. I just bought Mass Effect and the graphics card was not up to par to play it.