Laptops With 128GB of RAM Are Here

rgMekanic

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May 13, 2013
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Found the memory shortage! Today Lenovo has announced its new ThinkPad P52, an absolute behemoth of a workstation laptop. Under the hood is just staggering, the ThinkPad P52 comes packing an Nvidia Quadro P3200 GPU powering it's 15" 4k screen that covers 100 percent of the Adobe RGB color gamut, a hexa-core Xeon processor, and 128GB of memory, making it the first VR-Ready Certified mobile workstation from Lenovo.

As far as price, none is listed, but one can assume it's a "if you have to ask" kind of thing. I think I need one for doing news tho.

"Our virtual reality solutions help clients better understand data and interact with it. Being able to take these solutions mobile with the ThinkPad P52 gives us expanded flexibility to bring the technology to life for clients in their unique environments," said Steve Carpenter, Head of Solutions Development for Virtalis. "The ThinkPad P52 powering our Virtalis Visionary Render software is perfect for engineering and design professionals looking for a portable solution to take their first steps into the endless possibilities of VR."
 
If I could only justify the upgrade from my Thinkpad P50. My P50 with 32gb of ram, quadro m100m, and 6700hq has been a beast. I am sure the P52 will cost a solid 2-5 grand depending on features.
 
I wonder what buyers of this laptop use all the RAM for.

I have 64GB in my desktop, and most of the time it just goes to waste. On the rare occasion I run more than one VM at a time and it comes in handy. I also used to have a ramdisk configured for a game with annoyingly slow load times in multiplayer.

Now, in a server I definitely see the need. My two servers have 192 and 96 GB of RAM respectively, but in a laptop???
 
I wonder what buyers of this laptop use all the RAM for.

I have 64GB in my desktop, and most of the time it just goes to waste. On the rare occasion I run more than one VM at a time and it comes in handy. I also used to have a ramdisk configured for a game with annoyingly slow load times in multiplayer.

Now, in a server I definitely see the need. My two servers have 192 and 96 GB of RAM respectively, but in a laptop???

I'm going to guess the primary target is mobile video editing. 4k edits will eat up a shit ton of ram.
 
Eh, do you need 128G ram on a laptop? Who wants to game on a laptop when you can have a 32"+ screen?

If you are not using your ram least 90% the rest is going to waste.
 
Eh, do you need 128G ram on a laptop? Who wants to game on a laptop when you can have a 32"+ screen?

If you are not using your ram least 90% the rest is going to waste.
Nobody I know would want to game on a Quatro P3200, but I know a lot of people who run drafting and rendering software that will easily gobble 64 GB like it was 64K.
 
Sounds like a machine that would be great for someone that demos tons of stuff using virtual machines, that's about it.
 
I'm going to guess the primary target is mobile video editing. 4k edits will eat up a shit ton of ram.
For 1 minute of uncompressed 4K video you are looking at roughly 45GB, So yes 4K edits do eat a shit ton of ram.
 
Great specs, hopefully they will offer a 17" screen option.

That'll be the P72. Like the P70 and P71.

I'm eying a P51 or P71 myself with the right specs... M1200, M2200, or P3000 if I can find them on discount on Lenovo outlet.
 
Sounds like a machine that would be great for someone that demos tons of stuff using virtual machines, that's about it.
You don't need 100% RGB coverage for VM's you do need it for video animation and edition both of which at 4K will consume upwards of 45GB per minute of uncompressed video, Cannon's new DLSR's will take single still images that are upwards of 1 GB each. Image and video editing gets memory intensive when dealing with hi-res very fast.
 
Impressive, so then future AMD apu laptops will have a 128GB stick on a single channel then ... ;-)
 
That'll be the P72. Like the P70 and P71.

I'm eying a P51 or P71 myself with the right specs... M1200, M2200, or P3000 if I can find them on discount on Lenovo outlet.

If you do actual work, just do it. I picked up the P51 after solidworks broke my i7u/940m laptop. :whistle:



Mine has the 1505-v6 cpu with 32gb ECC, although I only got ECC ram because it was only $20 more and cut the ship time of my laptop by 5 weeks. The Quadro m2200 is basically an overpowered 965m or underclocked 1050, but still walks circles around my gtx 1070 e-gpu in every place that matters. Full thunderbolt 3 is awesome and runs at full speed while docked in the workstation docking station, which I cannot tell you how awesome it is to have a true docking station you can just drop the laptop into. The 4k screen with the color calibrator is nothing short of amazing, although I don't really do photography stuff on it.

The best thing though is 3 year, anything short of it being stolen in home repair warranty. Nobody does that on non workstation laptops these days except maybe some dell models.
 
I regularly use the 64gb in my machine. Video editing in premiere can use a bit.

I have also had corrupt autocad [civil 3d) files that wouldn't open on machines with 32gb but did on my machine with 64.. These were 5mb files btw.
 
I missed it.

I check this site 5 times a day and I missed it.... SO MAD!

Part number:

20HKCTR1WW-PF139568
Processor:

Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1535M v6 (8M Cache, 3.10 GHz)
Operating System:

Windows 10 Professional 64 - English
Memory:

64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR4 2400Mhz SODIMM Memory
Hard Drive:

2TB (1 x 1TB 5400RPM Solid State Drive and 1 x 1TB M.2 Drive)
Warranty:

1 Year Warranty
Graphics:

NVIDIA Quadro P5000M
Battery:

8 Cell Li-Polymer Battery (96Wh)


List Price:
$1,149.99
Outlet Price:
$1,115.49
You save:
$34.50

out of stock



It was a 'scratch and dent' unit. It must have been scratched by a tiger and dented by a truck to warrant that price discount. The P5000M alone is worth ~$3k.

https://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/outle...NVIDIA:facetSys-ScreenSize:17.3+in&uq=&text=#
 
I missed it.

I check this site 5 times a day and I missed it.... SO MAD!

Part number:

20HKCTR1WW-PF139568
Processor:

Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1535M v6 (8M Cache, 3.10 GHz)
Operating System:

Windows 10 Professional 64 - English
Memory:

64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR4 2400Mhz SODIMM Memory
Hard Drive:

2TB (1 x 1TB 5400RPM Solid State Drive and 1 x 1TB M.2 Drive)
Warranty:

1 Year Warranty
Graphics:

NVIDIA Quadro P5000M
Battery:

8 Cell Li-Polymer Battery (96Wh)


List Price:
$1,149.99
Outlet Price:
$1,115.49
You save:
$34.50

out of stock



It was a 'scratch and dent' unit. It must have been scratched by a tiger and dented by a truck to warrant that price discount. The P5000M alone is worth ~$3k.

https://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/outletus/laptops/c/LAPTOPS?q=:price-asc:facetSys-Processor:Intel®+Xeon®:facetSys-Processor:Intel®+Core™+i7:facetSys-GraphicsBrand:NVIDIA:facetSys-ScreenSize:17.3+in&uq=&text=#

I've purchased stuff off the Lenovo outlet. It's hard to get it in time since they seem to post new items randomly. Some items will go out of stock almost immediately. I saved the settings and refreshed as the day went by. I think it took a couple weeks before I got what I wanted.

I got this about 9 months ago. manufacturer refurb / p51 / 1505mv6 / Quadro 2200 / 32gb / 2x 1 tb nvme / 4k / colorimeter/ wan for about 1600.
 
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Lovely machine, but what on Earth would you need 128GB of memory for? 16GB is fine for most, and 32GB should work more than ok for most professionals, you know, those that won't compromise in the first place by using a laptop for real work that actually could need 128GB...
 
Nice find - for personal use or day to day office work this would be insane (I have a 7 year old junker for an office computer that does the job just fine)... however for the simulators at my work these would be VERY useful (wouldn't surprise me if the P52 actually is a result of a government contract requirement - easy R&D money for them). Hopefully their power supply and battery is up to snuff as 128GB of ram would sure eat some watts.

I wonder what Shared Services could get these for under their standing offers.... $10-$15K a pop for a ready-made portable VM host to run a ship or gun sim would be a joke compared to the software suite (easily in the stratosphere per seat costing). When it comes to hot swap spares in military circles - workstation grade laptops are SO MUCH easier - undock, toss, grab spare, dock, power on. Only downside - DON'T spill the coffee on it!
 
Lovely machine, but what on Earth would you need 128GB of memory for? 16GB is fine for most, and 32GB should work more than ok for most professionals, you know, those that won't compromise in the first place by using a laptop for real work that actually could need 128GB...

32GB is the recommended minimum to open Solidworks 2018 now. Also, caching in RAM is still faster than I/O (and saves thrashing the SSD on multiple compilations). This laptop seems to be geared for in-field NLVE, though.
 
Well it's clearly not meant for the average office user, not with that Quadro GPU. But if you need the GPU muscle, you probably can use the RAM. I'm glad I have 32GB in my laptop, I frequently set up multiple VMs to test things, and it comes in handy. With 16GB in my old one, I would frequently be using 100%. I should upgrade my desktop at home, since it has a 4C/8T processor. When I built it 16GB was a decent amount. I even have a second 16GB kit I picked up from some deal - unfortunately the MB I have only has 4 DIMM sockets, so I need to swap it all. As long as I'm not running multiple VMs though, 16 is fine.
This machine is in another class, for a totally different use case. Jumping all the way to 128GB RAM is definitely part of the wow factor. Given that servers can now can have 1TB or more of RAM - where's the workstation with 512GB?
 
32GB is the recommended minimum to open Solidworks 2018 now. Also, caching in RAM is still faster than I/O (and saves thrashing the SSD on multiple compilations). This laptop seems to be geared for in-field NLVE, though.
I have an Art Teacher who is borrowing one of our spare servers right now because the class is Editing a 4K video that they are trying to make 3D. They tapped 2 4K camcorders onto a tripod and rigged them to the same remote and recorded the videos that way, they are doing that ting you see with GIF's where they alternate between the two frames to make things 3D either way its cool and looking at the resource usage they are currently consuming 196 GB of ram and have both CPU's pinned and the 1080 I tossed into it isn't keeping up. The video is under 2 minutes in length.
 
I have an Art Teacher who is borrowing one of our spare servers right now because the class is Editing a 4K video that they are trying to make 3D. They tapped 2 4K camcorders onto a tripod and rigged them to the same remote and recorded the videos that way, they are doing that ting you see with GIF's where they alternate between the two frames to make things 3D either way its cool and looking at the resource usage they are currently consuming 196 GB of ram and have both CPU's pinned and the 1080 I tossed into it isn't keeping up. The video is under 2 minutes in length.

Noice! That's a case where Epyc would shine; put in a PO! ;)
 
I've got 64GB in my P50, but I've been toying with the idea of selling it off, as I've split out my mobility to a Latitude 7490, and my gaming to an Inspiron 7577.

I use the 64GB or RAM for VMware stuff. I can emulate an entire ESXi environment on it, and use it for learning. 128GB of RAM would be great, and I'd do it in a heartbeat...if I could buy it at the 2016 prices I paid for my 64GB. Hell, I'm tempted to part out the P50 as selling it and the RAM separately is almost enough to pay for both laptops I've bought to replace it.
 
I use a Thinkpad P50 as well for Matlab, Solidworks, Autocad, CodeV, etc. The specs on that P52 are insane, but I'm not sure I can justify it after recently investing in a Ryzen build.
 
i have a p50 or p51, whatever the prior generation with 64 gigs is. i use it to teach entire classrooms at a time showing global optimization, monitoring, and predictive modeling exercises. next week im hosting 22 vm's in an entirely virtual environment that simulates a multi-continent network with emulators set to match the wan characteristics of each site.

and even I couldnt fill 128 gigs of ram at the moment. i'd loooove to have this thing.
 
i have a p50 or p51, whatever the prior generation with 64 gigs is. i use it to teach entire classrooms at a time showing global optimization, monitoring, and predictive modeling exercises. next week im hosting 22 vm's in an entirely virtual environment that simulates a multi-continent network with emulators set to match the wan characteristics of each site.

and even I couldnt fill 128 gigs of ram at the moment. i'd loooove to have this thing.

Both the P50 and P51 support 64 gb of memory.
 
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