I have hit what I think is a BIOS bug. I want to know if others can reproduce it. If you have 24/32 GB memory for w530, and set the display settings in BIOS to "integrated only" and "disable os detection for optimus", the machine performs 10X slower or worse (rough estimate, but I can do more precise debugging later). It's very apparent and independent of the OS. Can anyone check ?
Posted Jan 10, 2019, 3:45 AM UTC
I have stock bios on my 32gb w530.... Do you have some hard numbers i can check for you speed-wise? Its running manjaro and w10.
Is your bios gpu settings set to "integrated" and "disable os detection of optimus" ? I'm seeing the slowdown only with that set. Also, which cpu and ram brands if it is working fine ? I did some googling, and found a post from 2012 about the issue on a w520 https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P-and-W-Series-Mobile/W520-Who-is-running-32GB-of-ram/td-p/851029 . It likely is the same thing.
No clue what its currently set at as im not using the system right now for a lack of desk (remodelling the house so im stuck to portable couch laptops). I have messed around with the optimus and graphics settings a lot especially when tweaking my egpu setup and i never noticed any real issues.
Memory incompatibility could be at play here but im not sure if the w520 and w530 share enough hardware to give similar issues. I do know that kingston especially their value ram has historically been problematic on thinkpads but i never really understood why. I usually go for samsung memory, those always work for me.
If youd like me to check some stuff on my w530 let me know, ill dig it up.
If youd like me to check some stuff on my w530 let me know, ill dig it up.
Yes, that would be very helpful.
I think this is a bit of an oddball because it's the integrated one which is causing the issue. I've had my fair share of frustrations with optimus and discrete. I did some debugging of my own (and also bricked it once based on that), but my conclusion is that there is a setting called "Memory remap over 4GB" in advanced settings (not visible in stock bios), that's responsible for this. I strongly think think this is a bios bug. I'm also using lenovo's offiical sk hynix dimms. So less likely to be ram compatibility.
Ok, dug up the old beast (almost forgot how nice it is to work on a machine this big and fast after using the x201 for what feels like forever).
Integrated graphics, optimus os detection stuff disabled, running like a champ. Windows update is going bonkers right now installing a months worth of crap it feels it missed out on and fusion 360 got updated for some reason but cpu use looks just fine given the circumstances, cinebench is OK in the mid 600s and geekbench at 3.5k/11k.
Double checked my memory; two sticks of hynix and two samsung.
Anything in particular you'd like me to check now that i have the machine dusted off and warmed up?
W530 here but I’ve only got 16 GB. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help though.
Sorry, T530 max is 16GB, only 2 DIMM slots.
T530 dual cores have 2, quads have 4 slots just like the 'W' (they are very similar machines).
According to psref:
All variants of T530 have two DIMM slots.
What do you mean with " It's very apparent and independent of the OS "?
Do you see real live performance decrease? Or is it just the perf output you mentioned?
Which bios version?
It's apparent as in the system is basically unusable. Takes 5 minutes to even boot as opposed to 5 seconds. This is with the latest bios (2.73), but I did go back a bit to see if it's recent. It's not. I can reproduce this with older bioses too. I didn't go too far back though. I can provide good and bad dmesg outputs if you are interested. I am thinking of filing a kernel bug too since it is quite strange. I found a similar w520 thread from 2012. If it is indeed the same issue, this dates back to several years.
Takes 5 minutes to even boot as opposed to 5 seconds
I see... Interessting find.
Yes, indeed, I saw this issue also on my machine, but I never thought of a RAM problem. In the beginning I often switched to Intel-only graphics to safe some energy when I had to work on battery. I had no issues. When I was stuck in that very slow boot the first time, I was assuming that this was related to a new Win 10 version or driver conflicts. I can't remember when I upgraded my RAM from 16 to 32GB, but maybe it was around the time the boot delays started.
After the slow boot finishes, I don't see any further performance impact. So I was always researching Optimus and driver related problems - to no avail, of course.
Do you still have this machine and can you reproduce it?
I was warned that switching to "Intel-only" graphics could break Optimus. So I didn't dare to test it again. But you made me curious ;) My machine is busy at them moment and I have some work to do, but I try to do a test asap.
I'm still trying to test, but some of the new bios versions seems to have broken the ENTER menu. So I', still struggling to boot from a USB stick. F12 seems to work, but unfortunately I broke my boot stick.
I'm still trying to confirm your observations, but it will take some extra time.
Finally I found some time for testing. Took a while to get everything running, to prepare a new boot stick etc.
To make it short: I can confirm your observations.
As I mentioned earlier, I saw the described regression also on Windows 10. Because I was warned that booting with "only integrated graphics" could mess up Windows Optimus drivers, this time I booted a Fedora Live Linux for testing.
Thinkpad W530 (244743G)
You can't run a Thinkpad W530 with "integrated graphics only" and more than two memory modules.
There might be some useful info for you on the front page sticky.
Those bios issues are for different/newer systems and the other way around (i.e., with optimus and/or discrete). This is a pretty old laptop actually, and the issue manifests with integrated only + os detection of optimus disabled if you have 32 GB RAM.