- Oct 9, 1999
- 5,062
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I’ve been searching for a new laptop for about four years now and I found one that ticked all the right boxes; The Lenovo ThinkPad t450s. Here are some of my important considerations:
- 14” IPS Matte screen
- Broadwell CPU – With Broadwell right around the corner I wanted to wait for the more power efficient 14nm process.
- 2.5” hard drive - I want the ability to swap out and upgrade to various SSD’s as performance increases and more importantly prices come down. I’m willing to accept the thicker design this format necessitates.
- A really nice keyboard – Good key travel and key placement
- Good build quality – For me this pretty much amounts to picking up the laptop (with the screen open) from one corner and have no flex in the unit.
- Less than 4lbs ready to go
Some Background
I’ve had exactly three laptops to date. A circa 2002 Compaq EVO 600c with a 1.2 MHz Pentium II Tulatin (130nm) processor, 256MB memory (stock), 30GB hard drive, and 1400x1050 TN 4/3 aspect ratio display. I paid $1900 for this laptop. It served me well and I actually still have it although I have to admit I haven’t used it in a few years but it is still good for web browsing.
After the 130nm Tulatin Intel released 130nm Northwood P4 and the 90nm Prescott but the performance per watt was terrible so these parts never tempted. In 2006 Intel released the 65nm Conroe Core 2 Duo processors which were not only the new performance champions but they were also amazingly efficient in terms of performance per watt so I decided to buy a Merom based Dell 620m laptop.
The 620m has a T7200 Penryn 2.00GHz processor with 4MB L2 cache and a 667Mhz FSB. The display is a 16x9 14.1” WXGA+ UltraSharp TFT Display with what Dell calls TrueLife. It’s a TN display with a glossy surface. It’s only saving grace is that it has a relatively high (for the day) 1600x900 resolution. I have never liked this display but merely tolerated it. A couple of years ago I swapped out the 120GB drive for an Intel 320 120GB which gave the system a new lease on life and is probably the reason I waited so long to upgrade. I’m torn on the issue of the display aspect ratio. Outside of watching movies I think for me the 4/3 aspect ratio of the old Compaq Evo 600c is better for the work that I do on the laptop. But 16x9 makes for a better balanced laptop when it’s sitting on your lap (lower center of gravity) or other unstable surface. It’s also a little easier to carry around as it’s more like a book and not a square. 16x10 is actually my ideal display aspect ratio. The measured weight of this laptop with the battery is 5 lbs 7.5 ounces.
After the 65nm Merom Intel released the 45nm Penryn core, and then came Nahalem (also 45nm) but these were only quad core desktop processors. Westmere at 32nm came after Nahalem and basically was a die shrink of Nahelem with dual core parts. Sandy Bridge was next at 32nm and as we all know it was another huge performance boost from what came before it. This is about when my new laptop search started. Ivy Bridge at 22nm came and went as did Haswell at 22nm. It was until Broadwell at 14nm did I start to really get serious about a new laptop. Broadwell seemed like it would be a significant upgrade in terms of performance and performance/watt from my Merom based T7200.
Setup
I ended up purchasing the t450s from the Lenovo site. I deleted the $40 m.2 cache drive as I knew I’d be installing a 128GB m.2 SSD which I did and it was pretty painless. On the first setup “pass” I cloned the 500GB mechanical drive to the SSD and used EasyBCD 2.2 to “tell” the t450s to boot from the m.2 SSD. But as I started deleting all of the Lenovo junk apps I decided to just start from scratch so I used the Microsoft “mediacreationtool.exe” to load up a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 onto a USB drive. From there it was easy to set the USB drive as the first boot device and install windows and ONLY the Lenovo drivers I needed. Windows picked up the product keycode from the BIOS no problem so I didn’t even have to enter it. If anyone tries this here are the drivers I ended up installing:
Synaptics Thinkpad Ultra Nav – Install this one first to get the trackpad working smoothly
Intel HD Graphics Driver
Intel Chipset Drivers
Intel Chipset Management Engine Interface (not sure I needed this one actually)
Intel 7265/3160 Wireless LAN Driver
Intel Pro 1000 LAN Adapter – Gigabit Ethernet Driver
Intel Collaborative Processor Performance Control (CPPC) – To enable CPU power savings
Lenovo Power Management Driver – I don’t know if you really need this one but it does get rid of an exclamation point in Device Manager for “Unknown PCI device.”
Thinkpad Monitor INF Driver
Integrated Camera Driver
Intel 7265 Bluetooth Driver
Enhanced Performance USB Keyboard Driver
Realtek Multicard Driver
Realtek Audio Driver
I was actually quite surprised at the performance of the Transcend 128GB m.2 SSD. It scored 1136 on AS-SSD and according to HD Tach an average read speed of 407MB/sec. The write speeds aren’t off the charts but for a boot drive that’s not really an issue.
The additional 8GB of memory installed without a hitch so now the total is 12GB.
I struggled just a bit deciding on the processor for the t450s. The base processor is the 5200u and for the ridiculous amount of money they want for two to four hundred MHZ more I personally couldn’t justify it. I’m thinking I’m probably a lot like many of the Anandtech over-clockers in that we have a hard time paying for simply a different multiplier And yes, I realize that the best chip they offer does have an additional 1MB cache. Now if that additional money bought four cores instead of two or 6000 series graphics with 48EU’s I might have gone for it.
Comparisons
Keyboard – All three of these laptops have very nice keyboards but the Lenovo is definitely a cut above the rest. The keys wiggle around less and the click at the end of the travel feels good to em. I’d say the Evo 600c is just a little better than the Dell.
Trackpad – I know there was a lot of commotion in the Lenovo community when Lenovo did away with the physical button below the keyboard for the trackpad with the t440s. They did bring them back with the t450s but I have to say while the trackpad is okay I don’t love it. First of all I prefer to have the trackpad inset into the laptop frame so I can feel the edges with my fingers when using it so that I know when to “reload.” I’m finding that I will move to the edge of the trackpad and the movement of the mouse will get sketchy. In addition I don’t like having the buttons at the bottom of the trackpad being built into the pad itself. I find that when I left click to grab a scroll bar that the action of left clicking will sometimes move the mouse off of the scroll bar. On the other hand the track pads and button placement (below the pads) on the 620m and the 600c as well as the action of the trackpads themselves are perfect. Over the last week I have increased the speed of the mouse pointer which has helped the trackpad action because there is less scrolling. Also the rough surface is starting to smooth out with use which makes use a little more precise. I’d still rather have a smaller trackpad with physical buttons below it.
Display – No comparison the 1080p matte IPS display on the t450s destroys the other two in terms of off angle viewing, contrast, and color rendition/saturation. The 600c is probably a little better than the 620m to my eye just because it’s a matte screen but they’re both pretty terrible in comparison to the Lenovo.
Performance - One very outdated metric I still like using is the old Ziff-Davis CPUmark99. It only measures old school integer performance and it doesn’t take multicores into account yet it still seems to provide somewhat meaningful comparative results. The 600c scores 111, the 620m 279 and the Lenovo 467. Another way to look at this is how many MHz each processor requires to “earn” one CPUmark99. This is a somewhat crude way of estimating IPC improvements for this one old bench. The Pentium III Tulatin in the 600c needs 10.8MHz for each CPUmark, the Core2Duo T7200 in the 620m requires 7.2MHz/CPUmark, and the Broadwell based 5200u in the Lenovo requires 5.4Mhz/CPUmark. It is interesting that Broadwell is nearly twice as efficient per CPUmark99 as the Tulatin PIII, the Core2Duo fits neatly in between both of them. Somehow I managed to upgrade at just about equal performance increase levels when looking at CPUmark99 IPC.
There was also a Handbrake benchmark on the forums a while back that I also ran. Unfortunately I couldn’t run it on the Evo 600c, I kept getting a “not a valid Win32 application” error and honestly didn’t want to spend the time to track it down. Suffice it to say it would have been unbelievably dog slow. The 620m ran the bench at an average frame rate of 25.7fps while the Lenovo did it at 85.5fps. Note I did not run the “nightly” Handbrake build. The Lenovo was 3.3 times faster than the Core2Duo at compressing this video. And if we look at the MHz required of each CPU to render at an average frame rate of 1fps the Core2Duo requires 77.8MHz to do 1fps while the Broadwell only requires 29.2MHz. Besides being much faster overall Broadwell is over twice as efficient IPC-wise as Core2Duo when rendering this Handbrake benchmark.
Battery Life - I didn’t run any tests because the Evo 600c battery has long since given up the ghost and the Dell battery (a replacement) isn’t very strong either. I haven’t run any battery life tests on the t450s but I’m thinking 5 or 6 hours of my normal usage. I realize I gave up some battery life to get the display and some other features I wanted and I’m fine with that trade off. The t450s has two batteries. A built in 23.5Whr and a removable 23.5Whr one just like the t440s. I have also noticed that the laptop will use the removable battery first then move to the internal. I’m thinking (hoping) that since the internal battery doesn’t see much use perhaps it will last longer. The battery is also hot swappable so if you have two of the externals you can swap them while the computer is on. There is also a larger battery available that sticks out the back a bit if you need really long battery life.
Size and Weight - The Evo 600c measures 1-5/16” inch thick x 12-3/16” wide x 9-78” deep. The thickness measurement is taken from the surface the laptop is on to the highest point. The manufacturer’s claim will be a little less because they probably don’t include the feet. It weighs 5lbs 12.5 ounces on my digital scale. The Dell 620m measures 1-5/8” thick x 13” wide x 9-5/8” deep and weighs 5lbs 7.5 ounces. The Lenovo t450s measures 15/16” thick x 13-1/16” wide x 8-7/8” deep and weighs 3lbs 7.5 ounces. As you would expect it feels significantly thinner and lighter than the other two when you are handling it.
Build Quality – As you would expect of a ThinkPad it’s solid. As I wrote earlier if you open the screen and then hold the laptop by one corner there is zero flex in the chassis. Of course since it only weighs three and a half pounds there isn’t a lot of mass for inertia and gravity to act on. The lid closes tightly with no gaps and the hinge is tight without being too tight. There is no latch for the screen it just kind of snaps into place and stays there. I like it. The 600c is pretty well built as well but not quite as solid from a subjective point of view as the Lenovo. But again, it’s 13 years old and has held up really well. While the Dell hasn’t fallen apart it isn’t nearly as solid as the other two. The hinge constantly loosens and you have to pull half of the machine apart to tighten it every 6 months or so. There are pretty big gaps between the body and screen when it’s closed and the latch to open the display doesn’t have a nice “feel” to it, it’s kind of sticky but I guess I could put some Teflon lube in it.
Features – For the price I think the Lenovo is pretty well equipped. Integrated camera, Intel Bluetooth, Intel Wireless, 3 USB 3.0 ports, a SDHC reader, and a micro HDMI port. I really can’t fault the other laptops for lack of features because either the technology wasn’t available at the time or I didn’t want to pay for it.
Price – I paid $1930 for the Compaq Evo 600c back in 2002. I also had to buy a PCMCIA Wifi card that I think was about $40 for a total of $1970 not including tax. I paid $903 for the Dell in 2006 plus $95 for an additional 2GB of memory for a total of $998. I’m not going to include the cost of the SSD upgrade because for most of the 620’s “life” I used it with the mechanical drive. The t450s was $879(purchased from the Lenovo site) plus $65 for a Transcend m.2 128GB SSD and $70 for 8GB Crucial Ballistix Sport memory for a total system cost of $1014. Looking back I think I really got ripped on that Evo 600c for what I got. Then again after 13 years the thing still works!
Conclusion
Of course it could be ridiculous to compare technology that was released at different points in time. Newer processors are going to perform better and use less power, the wifi will be faster, the storage bigger and faster, and so on. But there are some things that aren’t as bound by time. Fit and finish, build quality, keyboard layout and feel, trackpads, etc.. Despite new and better technology manufacturers find a way to mess up these staples all the time so I thought it worth comparing them to my older devices.
Outside of the so-so trackpad, which may just be me learning how to use it, the ThinkPad is pretty damn good. I don’t want to say nearly perfect because that would require a better trackpad. And “perfect” would require a quad core processor, a faster gpu, and about double the battery life in a smaller and thinner package. We’re quite a few years away from that I think. Perhaps Cannonlake will get us those 4 cores in ultrabooks.
In conclusion I think the Lenovo t450s is a pretty good deal if you need a solid relatively thin and light laptop with a really nice IPS matte screen for most business tasks, video and audio editing, and perhaps some really light gaming. Remember it only has a 5500 series integrated GPU. Thanks for reading and I hope this little write up was helpful and semi-enjoyable to read. I wanted to give a little back to the amazing Anandtech community that has provided so much knowledge to me over the years.
- Mark
- 14” IPS Matte screen
- Broadwell CPU – With Broadwell right around the corner I wanted to wait for the more power efficient 14nm process.
- 2.5” hard drive - I want the ability to swap out and upgrade to various SSD’s as performance increases and more importantly prices come down. I’m willing to accept the thicker design this format necessitates.
- A really nice keyboard – Good key travel and key placement
- Good build quality – For me this pretty much amounts to picking up the laptop (with the screen open) from one corner and have no flex in the unit.
- Less than 4lbs ready to go
Some Background
I’ve had exactly three laptops to date. A circa 2002 Compaq EVO 600c with a 1.2 MHz Pentium II Tulatin (130nm) processor, 256MB memory (stock), 30GB hard drive, and 1400x1050 TN 4/3 aspect ratio display. I paid $1900 for this laptop. It served me well and I actually still have it although I have to admit I haven’t used it in a few years but it is still good for web browsing.
After the 130nm Tulatin Intel released 130nm Northwood P4 and the 90nm Prescott but the performance per watt was terrible so these parts never tempted. In 2006 Intel released the 65nm Conroe Core 2 Duo processors which were not only the new performance champions but they were also amazingly efficient in terms of performance per watt so I decided to buy a Merom based Dell 620m laptop.
The 620m has a T7200 Penryn 2.00GHz processor with 4MB L2 cache and a 667Mhz FSB. The display is a 16x9 14.1” WXGA+ UltraSharp TFT Display with what Dell calls TrueLife. It’s a TN display with a glossy surface. It’s only saving grace is that it has a relatively high (for the day) 1600x900 resolution. I have never liked this display but merely tolerated it. A couple of years ago I swapped out the 120GB drive for an Intel 320 120GB which gave the system a new lease on life and is probably the reason I waited so long to upgrade. I’m torn on the issue of the display aspect ratio. Outside of watching movies I think for me the 4/3 aspect ratio of the old Compaq Evo 600c is better for the work that I do on the laptop. But 16x9 makes for a better balanced laptop when it’s sitting on your lap (lower center of gravity) or other unstable surface. It’s also a little easier to carry around as it’s more like a book and not a square. 16x10 is actually my ideal display aspect ratio. The measured weight of this laptop with the battery is 5 lbs 7.5 ounces.
After the 65nm Merom Intel released the 45nm Penryn core, and then came Nahalem (also 45nm) but these were only quad core desktop processors. Westmere at 32nm came after Nahalem and basically was a die shrink of Nahelem with dual core parts. Sandy Bridge was next at 32nm and as we all know it was another huge performance boost from what came before it. This is about when my new laptop search started. Ivy Bridge at 22nm came and went as did Haswell at 22nm. It was until Broadwell at 14nm did I start to really get serious about a new laptop. Broadwell seemed like it would be a significant upgrade in terms of performance and performance/watt from my Merom based T7200.
Setup
I ended up purchasing the t450s from the Lenovo site. I deleted the $40 m.2 cache drive as I knew I’d be installing a 128GB m.2 SSD which I did and it was pretty painless. On the first setup “pass” I cloned the 500GB mechanical drive to the SSD and used EasyBCD 2.2 to “tell” the t450s to boot from the m.2 SSD. But as I started deleting all of the Lenovo junk apps I decided to just start from scratch so I used the Microsoft “mediacreationtool.exe” to load up a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 onto a USB drive. From there it was easy to set the USB drive as the first boot device and install windows and ONLY the Lenovo drivers I needed. Windows picked up the product keycode from the BIOS no problem so I didn’t even have to enter it. If anyone tries this here are the drivers I ended up installing:
Synaptics Thinkpad Ultra Nav – Install this one first to get the trackpad working smoothly
Intel HD Graphics Driver
Intel Chipset Drivers
Intel Chipset Management Engine Interface (not sure I needed this one actually)
Intel 7265/3160 Wireless LAN Driver
Intel Pro 1000 LAN Adapter – Gigabit Ethernet Driver
Intel Collaborative Processor Performance Control (CPPC) – To enable CPU power savings
Lenovo Power Management Driver – I don’t know if you really need this one but it does get rid of an exclamation point in Device Manager for “Unknown PCI device.”
Thinkpad Monitor INF Driver
Integrated Camera Driver
Intel 7265 Bluetooth Driver
Enhanced Performance USB Keyboard Driver
Realtek Multicard Driver
Realtek Audio Driver
I was actually quite surprised at the performance of the Transcend 128GB m.2 SSD. It scored 1136 on AS-SSD and according to HD Tach an average read speed of 407MB/sec. The write speeds aren’t off the charts but for a boot drive that’s not really an issue.
The additional 8GB of memory installed without a hitch so now the total is 12GB.
I struggled just a bit deciding on the processor for the t450s. The base processor is the 5200u and for the ridiculous amount of money they want for two to four hundred MHZ more I personally couldn’t justify it. I’m thinking I’m probably a lot like many of the Anandtech over-clockers in that we have a hard time paying for simply a different multiplier And yes, I realize that the best chip they offer does have an additional 1MB cache. Now if that additional money bought four cores instead of two or 6000 series graphics with 48EU’s I might have gone for it.
Comparisons
Keyboard – All three of these laptops have very nice keyboards but the Lenovo is definitely a cut above the rest. The keys wiggle around less and the click at the end of the travel feels good to em. I’d say the Evo 600c is just a little better than the Dell.
Trackpad – I know there was a lot of commotion in the Lenovo community when Lenovo did away with the physical button below the keyboard for the trackpad with the t440s. They did bring them back with the t450s but I have to say while the trackpad is okay I don’t love it. First of all I prefer to have the trackpad inset into the laptop frame so I can feel the edges with my fingers when using it so that I know when to “reload.” I’m finding that I will move to the edge of the trackpad and the movement of the mouse will get sketchy. In addition I don’t like having the buttons at the bottom of the trackpad being built into the pad itself. I find that when I left click to grab a scroll bar that the action of left clicking will sometimes move the mouse off of the scroll bar. On the other hand the track pads and button placement (below the pads) on the 620m and the 600c as well as the action of the trackpads themselves are perfect. Over the last week I have increased the speed of the mouse pointer which has helped the trackpad action because there is less scrolling. Also the rough surface is starting to smooth out with use which makes use a little more precise. I’d still rather have a smaller trackpad with physical buttons below it.
Display – No comparison the 1080p matte IPS display on the t450s destroys the other two in terms of off angle viewing, contrast, and color rendition/saturation. The 600c is probably a little better than the 620m to my eye just because it’s a matte screen but they’re both pretty terrible in comparison to the Lenovo.
Performance - One very outdated metric I still like using is the old Ziff-Davis CPUmark99. It only measures old school integer performance and it doesn’t take multicores into account yet it still seems to provide somewhat meaningful comparative results. The 600c scores 111, the 620m 279 and the Lenovo 467. Another way to look at this is how many MHz each processor requires to “earn” one CPUmark99. This is a somewhat crude way of estimating IPC improvements for this one old bench. The Pentium III Tulatin in the 600c needs 10.8MHz for each CPUmark, the Core2Duo T7200 in the 620m requires 7.2MHz/CPUmark, and the Broadwell based 5200u in the Lenovo requires 5.4Mhz/CPUmark. It is interesting that Broadwell is nearly twice as efficient per CPUmark99 as the Tulatin PIII, the Core2Duo fits neatly in between both of them. Somehow I managed to upgrade at just about equal performance increase levels when looking at CPUmark99 IPC.
There was also a Handbrake benchmark on the forums a while back that I also ran. Unfortunately I couldn’t run it on the Evo 600c, I kept getting a “not a valid Win32 application” error and honestly didn’t want to spend the time to track it down. Suffice it to say it would have been unbelievably dog slow. The 620m ran the bench at an average frame rate of 25.7fps while the Lenovo did it at 85.5fps. Note I did not run the “nightly” Handbrake build. The Lenovo was 3.3 times faster than the Core2Duo at compressing this video. And if we look at the MHz required of each CPU to render at an average frame rate of 1fps the Core2Duo requires 77.8MHz to do 1fps while the Broadwell only requires 29.2MHz. Besides being much faster overall Broadwell is over twice as efficient IPC-wise as Core2Duo when rendering this Handbrake benchmark.
Battery Life - I didn’t run any tests because the Evo 600c battery has long since given up the ghost and the Dell battery (a replacement) isn’t very strong either. I haven’t run any battery life tests on the t450s but I’m thinking 5 or 6 hours of my normal usage. I realize I gave up some battery life to get the display and some other features I wanted and I’m fine with that trade off. The t450s has two batteries. A built in 23.5Whr and a removable 23.5Whr one just like the t440s. I have also noticed that the laptop will use the removable battery first then move to the internal. I’m thinking (hoping) that since the internal battery doesn’t see much use perhaps it will last longer. The battery is also hot swappable so if you have two of the externals you can swap them while the computer is on. There is also a larger battery available that sticks out the back a bit if you need really long battery life.
Size and Weight - The Evo 600c measures 1-5/16” inch thick x 12-3/16” wide x 9-78” deep. The thickness measurement is taken from the surface the laptop is on to the highest point. The manufacturer’s claim will be a little less because they probably don’t include the feet. It weighs 5lbs 12.5 ounces on my digital scale. The Dell 620m measures 1-5/8” thick x 13” wide x 9-5/8” deep and weighs 5lbs 7.5 ounces. The Lenovo t450s measures 15/16” thick x 13-1/16” wide x 8-7/8” deep and weighs 3lbs 7.5 ounces. As you would expect it feels significantly thinner and lighter than the other two when you are handling it.
Build Quality – As you would expect of a ThinkPad it’s solid. As I wrote earlier if you open the screen and then hold the laptop by one corner there is zero flex in the chassis. Of course since it only weighs three and a half pounds there isn’t a lot of mass for inertia and gravity to act on. The lid closes tightly with no gaps and the hinge is tight without being too tight. There is no latch for the screen it just kind of snaps into place and stays there. I like it. The 600c is pretty well built as well but not quite as solid from a subjective point of view as the Lenovo. But again, it’s 13 years old and has held up really well. While the Dell hasn’t fallen apart it isn’t nearly as solid as the other two. The hinge constantly loosens and you have to pull half of the machine apart to tighten it every 6 months or so. There are pretty big gaps between the body and screen when it’s closed and the latch to open the display doesn’t have a nice “feel” to it, it’s kind of sticky but I guess I could put some Teflon lube in it.
Features – For the price I think the Lenovo is pretty well equipped. Integrated camera, Intel Bluetooth, Intel Wireless, 3 USB 3.0 ports, a SDHC reader, and a micro HDMI port. I really can’t fault the other laptops for lack of features because either the technology wasn’t available at the time or I didn’t want to pay for it.
Price – I paid $1930 for the Compaq Evo 600c back in 2002. I also had to buy a PCMCIA Wifi card that I think was about $40 for a total of $1970 not including tax. I paid $903 for the Dell in 2006 plus $95 for an additional 2GB of memory for a total of $998. I’m not going to include the cost of the SSD upgrade because for most of the 620’s “life” I used it with the mechanical drive. The t450s was $879(purchased from the Lenovo site) plus $65 for a Transcend m.2 128GB SSD and $70 for 8GB Crucial Ballistix Sport memory for a total system cost of $1014. Looking back I think I really got ripped on that Evo 600c for what I got. Then again after 13 years the thing still works!
Conclusion
Of course it could be ridiculous to compare technology that was released at different points in time. Newer processors are going to perform better and use less power, the wifi will be faster, the storage bigger and faster, and so on. But there are some things that aren’t as bound by time. Fit and finish, build quality, keyboard layout and feel, trackpads, etc.. Despite new and better technology manufacturers find a way to mess up these staples all the time so I thought it worth comparing them to my older devices.
Outside of the so-so trackpad, which may just be me learning how to use it, the ThinkPad is pretty damn good. I don’t want to say nearly perfect because that would require a better trackpad. And “perfect” would require a quad core processor, a faster gpu, and about double the battery life in a smaller and thinner package. We’re quite a few years away from that I think. Perhaps Cannonlake will get us those 4 cores in ultrabooks.
In conclusion I think the Lenovo t450s is a pretty good deal if you need a solid relatively thin and light laptop with a really nice IPS matte screen for most business tasks, video and audio editing, and perhaps some really light gaming. Remember it only has a 5500 series integrated GPU. Thanks for reading and I hope this little write up was helpful and semi-enjoyable to read. I wanted to give a little back to the amazing Anandtech community that has provided so much knowledge to me over the years.
- Mark
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