Thinkpads Forum

HI,

Newbie here.

Just wondering if the T61 can use the T9800 or T9900 CPUs?

Yes and no.

They will work with the 1066 FSB mod, but not otherwise. The 800 MHz FSB CPUs are all that will work without the mod - up to the T9500 and X9000. The Middleton BIOS will eliminate the thermal sensing error at POST that Penryn CPUs throw, if you have an early Merom board.

Thanks for the info.

It already has a T8100 in it from the factory so it's good to go for other Penryn CPUs. However I will be doing the Middleton BIOS anyway for the improved SATA speeds.

Just did the Middleton BIOS update. Doubled the sequential read and write speed from 143 & 126 to 282 & 248. Random times increased to, but only by about 15%. I guess those speeds are more dependent on the drive itself (cheap Kingston) rather than the interface.

It seems the price of T9500 and T9300 cpus are kept high by the Lenovo community. You can get a T9400 for $10 but a T9300 goes for more like $40 and a T9500 will set you back nearly $80.

OneByteCPU wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 18, 2021 3:38 pm

Just did the Middleton BIOS update. Doubled the sequential read and write speed from 143 & 126 to 282 & 248. Random times increased to, but only by about 15%. I guess those speeds are more dependent on the drive itself (cheap Kingston) rather than the interface.

It seems the price of T9500 and T9300 cpus are kept high by the Lenovo community. You can get a T9400 for $10 but a T9300 goes for more like $40 and a T9500 will set you back nearly $80.

To be fair, the T9300 and T9500 are the fastest Core 2 Duos with 800MHz FSB (the X9000 is Core 2 Extreme so it doesn't count), so the price premium is expected. In contrast, the T9400 is the slowest of the 1066MHz FSB T9xxx series.

OneByteCPU wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 18, 2021 1:15 pm

Thanks for the info.

It already has a T8100 in it from the factory so it's good to go for other Penryn CPUs. However I will be doing the Middleton BIOS anyway for the improved SATA speeds.

That's a fine CPU. Enough power for most purposes and cool-running. I'd leave it alone.

As much as I love the given platform, these machines are ancient and swapping in a faster CPU is not going to make that much of a difference.

Your T61, your $$$, your call.

ajkula66 wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 19, 2021 12:33 am

That's a fine CPU. Enough power for most purposes and cool-running. I'd leave it alone.

This machine is rather new to me. However, I am amazed at just how competent a machine it is. It has found a home next to my TV chair where it is used to update documents and browse the Internet. With Win 10 Pro 32bit, 4GB ram, an SSD and the Middleton BIOS it does this job very well. I located a T8300 that I can have for a swap with an i5-520m of which I have several lying around. I am probably going to end it's upgrading to that extent. I spent the last couple of days toying with the idea of going to 8GB, doing the 1066MHz FSB mod and putting in a much faster 4Q CPU, but that route will lead to an investment of about $200 which I feel is too much and possible unreliability. I can get a T430 in really good shape for not much more than that.

ajkula66 wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 19, 2021 12:33 am

That's a fine CPU. Enough power for most purposes and cool-running. I'd leave it alone.

From my experience, the upgrade potential to something like a T8300 or T9300 is like it's both more than you think and not as much as you think in different ways.
In raw performance you are gaining very little by such upgrades. However, if you have the intel iGPU, having a T8300 instead of a T8100 meant much smoother 1080p video playback.
But, once you get the hang of the 1066mhz mods, going with the ultra high performance to price ratio P8700, P8800, T9550 and such brings a measurable advantage for very little money
Then, there's also the other option of simply using that mod to overclock T8100 and T8300 to 2.8 and 3.2Ghz respectively, which I've heard will run perfectly stable and is basically free performance gain for you (at the risk of breaking your mobo of course)

Well not sure how many of you here have tried the FSB mod for this purpose, but I have successfully gotten my Core 2 duo T8100 to run at 2.8Ghz stable without any voltage adjustments at all.
Just modifying the clock generator to disconnect and ground the Bsel B pin and then SPD modding one of the RAM sticks yielded this result of T8100 running at 1066mhz FSB and 2.8Ghz.
I imagine with a T8300, you are getting a whooping 3.2Ghz instead.
It doesn't have any compatibility issues such as running at the lowest multiplier either, while performing BSEL socket mod on a T8100 with GM45 platform did give me that issue.
So, if you are comfortable with these mods and have a Penryn CPU already, maybe you could just do this for essentially getting a T9500 performance for completely free.

Remember a couple things. First, every CPU die is different and results will vary. Some CPUs easily overclock well as yours has; others may not. Second, you also are overclocking your RAM. Just like CPUs, some memory will handle it well and some won't. This is why reflashing the memory SPD to increase the timings helps with this part, though.

theterminator93 wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 03, 2022 5:22 pm

Remember a couple things. First, every CPU die is different and results will vary. Some CPUs easily overclock well as yours has; others may not. Second, you also are overclocking your RAM. Just like CPUs, some memory will handle it well and some won't. This is why reflashing the memory SPD to increase the timings helps with this part, though.

Yeah definitely. I forgot to stress this point.
From what I see on the internet though, it seems like the general consensus is that the smaller, lower end 800Mhz Penryn chips like the T6x00, T8100, T8300 have a lot of headroom for overclocking and chances are it's gonna run perfectly stable with the 33% overclock.
It also seems like, however, that the Merom chips are gonna be much worse at this, and the T9300, T9500 seems to hit a ceiling in the clock speeds that any of these Penryn silicon can run stable at with stock voltages, around 3.2Ghz. So for those you most likely need to feed voltage.
And for my RAM, they needed SPD modding for sure. With my stockpile of 4GB DDR2 sticks, if I don't SPD mod at least one of the 2 sticks inside the laptop, the laptop will restart at POST and bootloop (Dell laptops especially will always do a full RAM check when you first change the RAM and it always crashes during then, or even produce typos on the POST errors if it's integrated graphics).
Moreover, it seems like for every case I've seen, the 965PM/GM chipset itself can handle the overclock. This is however, not true for GL40 chipset, where trying to make it accept 1066mhz FSB will result in 100% no POST.
Fortunately, my Micron sticks are SPD Unlocked and run stable at CL6 timings at 900Mhz, so you are getting much faster RAM speeds too.