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Dothan vs. Banias

S

Stugots

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Feb 25, 2004
Messages
7,301
I recently got a new(old) laptop. I gave up my Emachines M5310 and picked up an IBM T40. No more AMD in my house ;)

I upgraded the T40 from a Banias 1.5 to a 1.6, I had it laying around. I read that my laptop will support ANY 400FSB Banias or Dothan. So I was looking at upgrading my Banias 1.6 to a Dothan 1.8. which leads me to my questions...

How much faster is a Dothan 1.6 than a Banias 1.6? How much of an improvement would I feel going from a Banias 1.6 to a Dothan 1.8 or maybe a 2.0.
 
i assume youre talking about a T40, as the T20 used MPGA2 cu p3's ;)

the T40, T41, T42 and all P variants of them use the exact same bios. Upgrade to a bios that has been released since the T42 (first one with Dothan) and you can throw up to a 2.1ghz/400mhz/2mb chip in there, im putting a 735 in myself.

you might see an increase in battery life, especially if you undervolt. other than that, you probably wont see much of a difference, the extra MB of cache doesnt do a WHOLE lot, and since the Banias PM's support the same deep sleep states as the Dothan ones, battery life should be similar... but Dothans can be run at lower voltages, and it IS a 200mhz difference.

considering you have a mr7500 (i do too), you arent doing much gaming. what else do you need the power for? They both run at similar wattage levels, my T40 only consumes about 20w with the proc at full load, thats a Banias 1.4 @1.14v (from 1.48v std)

so if you dont need the power, just undervolt :p
 
lithium726 said:
i assume youre talking about a T40, as the T20 used MPGA2 cu p3's ;)

the T40, T41, T42 and all P variants of them use the exact same bios. Upgrade to a bios that has been released since the T42 (first one with Dothan) and you can throw up to a 2.1ghz/400mhz/2mb chip in there, im putting a 735 in myself.

you might see an increase in battery life, especially if you undervolt. other than that, you probably wont see much of a difference, the extra MB of cache doesnt do a WHOLE lot, and since the Banias PM's support the same deep sleep states as the Dothan ones, battery life should be similar... but Dothans can be run at lower voltages, and it IS a 200mhz difference.

considering you have a mr7500 (i do too), you arent doing much gaming. what else do you need the power for? They both run at similar wattage levels, my T40 only consumes about 20w with the proc at full load, thats a Banias 1.4 @1.14v (from 1.48v std)

so if you dont need the power, just undervolt :p
Click to expand...


Yea, I made a typo, it is a T40...

How do I undervolt? Is there any other advantages from flashing to the T42 Bios? What other sorts of hacks are there for these.

I upgraded it to 1gb of ram, 60gb 7200rpm drive, and the P-M 1.6.
 
well, its not really a 'T42' bios, its the bios for the T40/41/42 series laptops... i would just go to IBM and download the most recent one along with the most recent embedded controller program, it just updates things like fan control, MPCI card support (incase you ever want to upgrade to a 2200bg or 2915abg... remember they have to be IBM cards though...), CPU support, big fixes... just a normal BIOS update, making the system better.

you undervolt with a program called RMclock (google it), you can add P state trasitions and change their voltages, my banias runs at 600mhz with .76v (.98 or something normal) and 1.4ghz with 1.16v. the load voltage really helps, shaves about 7w off load power consumption.

a banias 1.6 with a 7k2 and 1gb is still a pretty speedy machine. ive got a banias 1.4 with a 7k2 and 512 and its much faster than i was expecting, but ill have a 1.7/2m and a gig soon. all and all, if youre happy with the performance of the machine, stick with the stuff, probably not worth the cash if you dont need the power. if you want more battery life, get a genuine 7.2ah IBM battery off ebay (there is a guy selling them brand new for 65+6 shipping, search for "t40 extended") that battery gives my GF over 8 hours with her T40 with all power saving options on. shes got a 1.5ghz banias.

there is also a guy on ebay selling the SXGA+ panel for the t40/41/42/43 really cheap (i bought one for 180 shipped)... its a nice upgrade. if you want more info on replacing the panel, just ask :)
 
Thanks alot. I think if I upgrade anything else on this laptop, the first will be the display. 1024x768 is killing me. Is there anything else involved with upgrading the display other than just removing and replacing the display with the better one? Overall, I am very pleased with the performance so far. I went from a Emachines M5310 with an Athlon XP-M 2400, 1gb ram, 60gb 7200rpm. The ram and hdd in that thing did almost nothing for performance because the chipset was so shitty. I benchmarked the who before I traded and in some synthetic benchmarks the IBM was twice as fast as the Emachines.

Emachines
--------------
Memory: 1.1gb/s
HDD: 13mb/s (ON A 7200RPM DRIVE !!!!)

IBM
-----
Memory: 1.9gb/s
HDD: 33mb/s (This is more like it)

The CPU is probobly 10-15% faster according to the benchmarks but coupled with a chipset that is actually worth a shit it feels ALOT faster.
 
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