Re: Upgrading a 701C IBM Thinkpad

[ross@math.hawaii.edu (David Ross)]

The first good reason not to do an aftermarket upgrade on a 701 CPU is
that it will void the warrantee.  Personally, for all its problems the
3-year EZ-serve is still one of the most valuable features on the
machine (mine will soon go in for the second time).

The second reason is that it likely won't help performance that much.
My 701 consistently scores lower on whole-system application-based
benchmarks than my desktop, despite the fact that (a) my desktop is only
a Cyrix 486DX2-66, (b) my 701 has 24 megs ram to my desktop's 8, and (c)
on disk benchmarks they are almost indistinguishable.  The explanation
(I think) is that the desktop has CPU cache, the laptop does not; also,
the desktop's bus speed is 33mhz, the 701 is at 25mhz.  Changing the
chip might help the former problem a bit (I think the 586 has a small
built-in cache), but not the latter.  In any event, I don't think CPU
speed is a big bottleneck.

BTW, has anyone tried monkeying around with memory refresh rates on the
701?  I have a program which will increase them (and thereby compensate
a bit for the slow bus), but am reluctant to try it yet since my machine
is already acting a bit flaky (hence the imminent trip back to IBM).

- David (ross@math.hawaii.edu)