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Is the ThinkPad P53 still a contender?
- Thread starter CM_1986
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Was it ever? It is a rather different laptop. A more traditional design for simpler times and a really bulky one. It is a solid performer (except the battery is crap if you go for a decent quality screen), but I don't think that there is anything exiting about it and if you are looking at a 2.7kg heavy and 3cm thick laptops anyway you can probably do better.
I'd say no, because its competing for a different market demographic.
For people who want a mobile workstation, its a fine option.
The P1 is a much closer MBP equivalent, but the P53 has its place. It's a much thicker, heavier machine that will probably run the same CPU 10-15% faster. I saw one datapoint(The Verge) that the new MBP with the 2.4 gHz i9 settles in at about 3.2 -3.3 gHz after sustained Cinebench. It runs faster to begin with and in bursts, but if you're encoding all day, it'll go about 3.2 -3.3 on all cores. For comparison, I believe that a 27" iMac with the 9900K hits about 4.2 or 4.3 gHz under similar conditions - the processor turbo is the same, but the iMac has a higher TDP, more power delivery and more cooling. The P53 might settle in between 3.4 and 3.7 gHz. More like an MBP than an iMac, but in between.
Lenovo also puts a significantly more powerful GPU into the P53, compared either to what Apple uses in the 16" MBP or to what Lenovo themselves use in the P1. The P53 can take up to a Quadro RTX 5000 (the workstation cousin of a Mobile GeForce RTX 2080), while the P1 uses a Quadro T2000 (related to a GeForce 1650). The Radeon 5500 in the Mac benchmarks between a 1650 and a 16660 in NVidia terms.
Razer crams the RTX 5000 (or its GeForce equivalent in other configurations) into a machine about half a pound heavier than the Mac, and nearly a pound lighter than the P53, but it compromises battery life and other components.
The other advantage to the P53 is expansion. It'll take 128 GB of RAM (for a price, of course), and it has every port you might want, including wired Ethernet. While it has 2 NVMe SSD slots and (in some configurations) a third drive bay that seems to take both SATA and PCIe drives, the only way to get it to Apple's 8 TB maximum storage uses three drives, the largest of which is SATA and 20% the speed of the Apple SSD. Such a configuration is also even more expensive than even a maxed-out MBP, and not officially supported. There's no reason it shouldn't work, but Lenovo lists the maximum storage capacity as 6 TB and doesn't sell SATA drives >2TB. Oddly, the SATA bay seems to disappear with 8-core processors - this could just be a glitch in Lenovo's configuration engine?
Lenovo also puts a significantly more powerful GPU into the P53, compared either to what Apple uses in the 16" MBP or to what Lenovo themselves use in the P1. The P53 can take up to a Quadro RTX 5000 (the workstation cousin of a Mobile GeForce RTX 2080), while the P1 uses a Quadro T2000 (related to a GeForce 1650). The Radeon 5500 in the Mac benchmarks between a 1650 and a 16660 in NVidia terms.
Razer crams the RTX 5000 (or its GeForce equivalent in other configurations) into a machine about half a pound heavier than the Mac, and nearly a pound lighter than the P53, but it compromises battery life and other components.
The other advantage to the P53 is expansion. It'll take 128 GB of RAM (for a price, of course), and it has every port you might want, including wired Ethernet. While it has 2 NVMe SSD slots and (in some configurations) a third drive bay that seems to take both SATA and PCIe drives, the only way to get it to Apple's 8 TB maximum storage uses three drives, the largest of which is SATA and 20% the speed of the Apple SSD. Such a configuration is also even more expensive than even a maxed-out MBP, and not officially supported. There's no reason it shouldn't work, but Lenovo lists the maximum storage capacity as 6 TB and doesn't sell SATA drives >2TB. Oddly, the SATA bay seems to disappear with 8-core processors - this could just be a glitch in Lenovo's configuration engine?
If they are running the RTX 5000 they can also be useful for things like Machine Learning and AI. ML/AI GPU acceleration is a Nvidia only. Consider that before selecting a MacBook Pro for these tasks.
I ended up with this:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1499937-REG/lenovo_20qn001tus_p53_xe_2276m_64gb_1tb.html
as an engineer I needed to finally rip the band aid off and part ways with Apple despite preferring them in my personal life. I always tried to make it work dual booting. Just not practical.
Anyway, I do not think even the highest spec 16" will touch what I just ordered.
Don't you already have this question posted in this forum but in a different way? Sounds like you need to head over to the forums at Lenovorumors.com