Lenovo ThinkPad Edge Refresh Gets AMD Kabini Inside

[Over_Lord]

According to a couple of new listings in Austria and Germany, Lenovo is preparing to launch a refresh of the ThinkPad Edge. This time round, the internals will pack AMD hardware. More specifically, the CPU will be based on AMD's Jaguar architecture, part of the company's Kabini platform. The listing reveals a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E145 powered by a 1.4GHz dual-core E1-2500 AMD APU, which is a 15W TDP part and packs AMD's Radeon HD 8240 IGP (128 compute units) clocked at 400MHz. You get a 11.6" 1366 x 768 display, 4 GB of RAM and 500 gigs of storage. The display is said to have a matte finish, doing away with any glare issues whatsoever. Connectivity is covered by two USB 3.0 ports, WiFi 802.11n and Bluetooth 4.0. There's no info regarding weight, battery rating or expected battery life yet. We do know the expected final price, to lie between the range of ?460 to ?505 as per retailer listings. According to the report, stocks will land in a couple of weeks.



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[Frick]

Yay Thinkpads! The older Edges are pretty damned good.

 

[Over_Lord]

Yay Thinkpads! The older Edges are pretty damned good.

I just LOVE thinkpads. They get the essential things write, comfortable to use and good displays. None of that "good looks" and stuff bothers me if the laptop ain't comfortable to use, doesn't have a great keyboard (ThinkPad keyboards are amazing!), etc.

 

[zallkool]

cool

i bought a thinkpad x131e a few weeks ago with an ivybridge cpu

its really amazing

 

[Jorge]

Kabini will provide good performance and long battery life.

 

[Frick]

Kabini will provide good performance and long battery life.

I'm sort of hoping for an Intel version (with HD4xxx graphics).

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

now, are we actually going to get these in the US, or are we going to get passed over like the edge e435 and the previous 11 inch edges?

 

[Frick]

now, are we actually going to get these in the US, or are we going to get passed over like the edge e435 and the previous 11 inch edges?

You didn't get them? My sister have the Edge 135, and I sort of fell in love with it.

 

[xvi]

As much as I like AMD, I have a E-1200 (Dual 1.2 GHz) at work and it's just not.. what's the word I'm looking for. Fast. Anything GPU is great, but anything single-threaded (complicated AJAX webpages) just dies.

E-mail, light web, youtube, light gaming (which I promise I've never tested on my work computer), etc. Does okay for all that, but trying to get any actual work done.. just doesn't happen.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

You didn't get them? My sister have the Edge 135, and I sort of fell in love with it.

nope. the american lenovo page only sells the 431, 531, and 535. we dont get the 14 inch amd laptops or anything from the 100 series.

EDIT: While we didnt get the edge 130, we did get the lenovo x131e with windows. while it seems to be more aimed at school children, with a large tough top cover, it appears to be nearly identical in construction and specs.

 

[Thefumigator]

As much as I like AMD, I have a E-1200 (Dual 1.2 GHz) at work and it's just not.. what's the word I'm looking for. Fast. Anything GPU is great, but anything single-threaded (complicated AJAX webpages) just dies.

E-mail, light web, youtube, light gaming (which I promise I've never tested on my work computer), etc. Does okay for all that, but trying to get any actual work done.. just doesn't happen.

the E-1200 is a bad choice for work, its kinda an intel atom on steroids with a much better IGP. I own an A6-3400 (1.4Ghz) quad core llano based laptop, which is much faster than E1-1200 and E2, while virtualization and gaming is very good for the price I paid, single threaded applications run kinda slower than anything I ever had. I have however, superb battery life for tea time while reading docs and doing excel.

Now Kabini is a different story, it should be faster and have better battery life than these ones

 

[Melvis]

I have a x131e with the AMD E2-1800 1.7GHz and its a great little laptop. What makes this laptop seem slow is that the amount of bloat ware that is installed. Once you cut it all down with a nice fresh install and on a SSD the system should run very snappy, which i plan to do in the near future. Also i can get up to 9.5hrs of battery life out of this even with all the bloat ware, and play some games on it like Dota 2, Torchlight 2 etc.

What id like to know is this new CPU going to be as good or worse then what im currently running? it seems to have everything that ive got now apart from the difference in CPU Arch.

 

[Frick]

I have a x131e with the AMD E2-1800 1.7GHz and its a great little laptop. What makes this laptop seem slow is that the amount of bloat ware that is installed. Once you cut it all down with a nice fresh install and on a SSD the system should run very snappy, which i plan to do in the near future. Also i can get up to 9.5hrs of battery life out of this even with all the bloat ware, and play some games on it like Dota 2, Torchlight 2 etc.

My sister complains her Edge 135 (which has the same CPU) is slow. I might suggest that actually.

 

[Melvis]

My sister complains her Edge 135 (which has the same CPU) is slow. I might suggest that actually.

Yea get rid of all the crap ware and see what happens? My x131e is using 90+ Processors just at idle which is about 40 to much.

Id like to install some faster Memory (1333 to 1600 or above) to to make it perform even better (Faster RAM = Better FPS in games with any APU) , but in the BIOS I cant change anything

 

[Thefumigator]

Yea get rid of all the crap ware and see what happens? My x131e is using 90+ Processors just at idle which is about 40 to much.

Id like to install some faster Memory (1333 to 1600 or above) to to make it perform even better (Faster RAM = Better FPS in games with any APU) , but in the BIOS I cant change anything

You can't change mem speed in a laptop, not on regular laptops at least.

Crapware is a problem, but also, when my customers tell me their system is running slow, I look if there are 2 antivirus or more. I also take a look at the energy icon at control panel and see if they switched to minimum performance. And of course, a classic, when a system hangs for some seconds, with the hard drive led turned on completely, i check the hard drive for bad sectors

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Yea get rid of all the crap ware and see what happens? My x131e is using 90+ Processors just at idle which is about 40 to much.

Id like to install some faster Memory (1333 to 1600 or above) to to make it perform even better (Faster RAM = Better FPS in games with any APU) , but in the BIOS I cant change anything

you have to replace the meory inside the laptop itself. the x131e has 2 memory slots, so id pick up a 2x4GB 1600 mhz memory kit off of newegg and install it. about $50-60 bucks. or more if you get a low voltage kit.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I wonder if we will get one of these with the a6-5200? quad core, same gpu, 25 watt.that would be awesome in an 11 inch form factor.

 

[Melvis]

you have to replace the meory inside the laptop itself. the x131e has 2 memory slots, so id pick up a 2x4GB 1600 mhz memory kit off of newegg and install it. about $50-60 bucks. or more if you get a low voltage kit.

Yea I know and that's what i was going to do, but i just realized that the memory in this laptop is already 1600MHz but is running at 1333, 1 4GB stick. How do i get it to run at 1600? I cant change shit in the BIOS

 

[agent00skid]

Yea I know and that's what i was going to do, but i just realized that the memory in this laptop is already 1600MHz but is running at 1333, 1 4GB stick. How do i get it to run at 1600? I cant change shit in the BIOS

The highest officially supported memory frequency for the E2-1800 is 1333. So you probably won't get it higher than that.

 

[Melvis]

The highest officially supported memory frequency for the E2-1800 is 1333. So you probably won't get it higher than that.

Yea i noticed that, then why in the world would they put 1600MHz memory in from factory?

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Yea i noticed that, then why in the world would they put 1600MHz memory in from factory?

simpler to just order all 1600 mhz memory rather than specifically order 1333 for these smaller machines?
although, this would be solved if lenovo put the a6-5200 in one of these laptops.

 

[Thefumigator]

simpler to just order all 1600 mhz memory rather than specifically order 1333 for these smaller machines?
although, this would be solved if lenovo put the a6-5200 in one of these laptops.

they should, the A6-5200 is very interesting,
The choice for 1600Mhz memory could be also because of failure rate, most likely a 1600 mhz memory with a failed cell will work ok set to 1333 speed, I believe. On the other hand, a 1600mhz module could work better than a regular 1333Mhz by lowering cas latency and setting it to 1333Mhz. You get a slightly speedier 1333Mhz memory, It will depend on their choice in the factory bios, who knows...