*HP EliteBook 8740w Owners Lounge - PART 1*

Late to the report party, and I don't have good news to report

My 8740w is either going to be sent back or be serviced

I hope you guys don't have the same problem. But here it is: FREAKING ELECTRONIC INTERFERENCE NOISE from the speaker! GAHHHHH

I am pretty tolerant to noise (considering that I sleep right next to a loud AC everyday...) but the noise generated is the intermittent high pitched kind that you can hear even when you have the laptop's fan at full speed...

I don't know about the laptops that you guys got, but I have a feeling that the one that I got didn't have any shielding on the speaker wire at all So you can actually hear all sort of buzzing noises coming from it. The high pitched ones comes from the damn USBs...

Sigh... But other than that, the laptop is running great on my own installation of windows 7.

Oh and my stats (as ordered):

| 7-10-2010 | 820QM | M7820 | 1x2GB | FreeDOS| DC2 |

I have on hand 2x4GB Crucial DDR3 Ram, 160 GB Intel G2 MLC SSD, Seagate Momentus XT 500GB. Was hoping to get all of them installed too... sigh... more waiting for me...

 

Have you tried turning off CPU power management in the BIOS? I've had this problem on ThinkPad's both on older models as well as on more recent ones.

 

I have not tried that, since it was something easily reproduced by simply plug in a USB device. But I will take a closer look at the bios, and see if there are anything that I can tweak.

 

That really blows; I doubt there's anything that can be done in software. I never have outside sound off -- tv or music -- but I'm going to have to try mine in a quiet environment.

 

Heresay is that ATI's TDP numbers don't include the memory and so the 'real' TDP is higher than quoted. I can't say whether this is true or not or how much of a difference this makes.

 

For one thing, the MBP has far weaker hardware and auto-switching graphics, which probably helps a lot.


Also, MINE SHIPPED!!!
(Naturally, since I had just gotten some helpful advice from NotebookGrail on how I might be able to get my order replaced with an 840 without losing my place in line. )

Of course, the tracking page has this helpful info:
Carrier: FDE
Ship Via: BWY
Package Weight: 0.00
Package Ship Date: 00/00/0000
Delivery Date: 00/00/0000
Freight Charges: 0.00
Item Part #: <blank>
Item Description: <blank>
Quantity: <blank>


Config status page too:
Order Allocated / Config Reviewed 06/14/2010 4:46:32 PM 07/19/2010 09:09:30 AM
Wave (Picking Process) 07/19/2010 09:09:30 AM 00/00/0000 00:00:00 AM
Staging (Preparation Process) 00/00/0000 00:00:00 AM 00/00/0000 00:00:00 AM
Configuration Build 00/00/0000 00:00:00 AM 00/00/0000 00:00:00 AM
Review Hold (see comments) 00/00/0000 00:00:00 AM 00/00/0000 00:00:00 AM
No Comments
Bench Hold (see comments) 00/00/0000 00:00:00 AM 00/00/0000 00:00:00 AM
No Comments

Total Number Of Business Days In Config 34


BUT FedEx says
Estimated delivery: Jul 22, 2010 by 10:30 AM


This (re-)order is from June 14.

 

I made my rep investigate this same issue when I was considering the 8540w. He took it to the product specialists who took it to the engineers. No real answer came back, my rep was simply told that the larger power source was spec'd for the M5800 so that's what it gets sold with. No reasons were given why.

 

Just called HP SMB Hardware Support and registered a case for the issues we are having so far. I also gave him the DC specialist (Greg) contact to talk to about this - as obviously the support person has no clue on DC2, 10bit, etc (Greek and Latin i suppose). Let's see what he comes back with.

I suggest you folks as well to call and register the issues, so it gets the needed attention.

 

That's true Both Nvidia and AMD specify their TDP differently and it's really difficult to find out the true TDP of their cards.
I assume that the idle CC of the M5800 should be lower than that of the Greens, average would be the same and max is probably higher for the Reds. But I may be wrong.

 

Guys, do you know that Dell starts offering Precision M6500 17” Mobile Workstation with 32 GiB memory. See this article: Another First – Dell Precision M6500 17” Mobile Workstation Now Available with 32GB

Will HP offer the same in 8740w?

I'd be interesting to see the reply here.

 

I think someone said that the mobo supports 8GB sticks, so if you buy 'em, you already can have that.
The Dell announcement seems to indicate that existing 6500s will support this, so it's the same case with them. The chipset used in both mobos maxes out at 8GB sticks, iirc.

Basically, I think this "first" announcement is simply because they were the first to get shipments of 8GB sticks.

[And seriously, you want to buy the RAM from a third party; the *lowest* RAM markup I've seen at a system vendor is 100%]

 

Yes, 8740W's board/processor does support 32GB (maxes out at 8GB/stick). I was the one who posted this couple of weeks back. By the way i don't see a need for 32GB.

Edit: Link from Intel refer to the Memory Specification

 

If I keep this laptop as long as my last, I might actually go up to 32GB. At the very least, these 8 GB sticks will eventually force down prices for the 4 GB sticks making 16 GB more affordable.

 

It's known fact that chip set can support 8GiB per stick. I just need to make sure that there is no any artificial limitations inside 8740w that prevents usage of those memory sticks.

All my laptops have some kind of limit that killed them in a while. In most cases it's a limit of memory that could be installed. For example my old Dell i8100 has 512MiB limit (total, in 2 slots). I'd be glad to put new memory sticks there that are bigger then 256MiB (and there is a plenty of chip offers now), but it's "providently" limited. And it's the only reason why I have to ditch the otherwise nice notebook. It's not malfunctioning or has any other problems. The main reason is - I need more memory now to run virtual machines in it.

So, while now it looks like 16GiB is enough, I'm pretty sure that I will need more in future. That's why I'm asking here if 8740w will support using 8GiB memory sticks or not. I'd be nice to hear some official (or a semiofficial) word here

 

The info referred to above came from a passing comment in an interview with someone from HP linked back somewhere in the middle of this thread

Mobile Workstations & film editing, an interview with Chris Convertito

But like you say, there are sometimes undocumented hardware limitations that prevent the use of the full theoretical amount of RAM -- I'm assuming the quad core 8740w really can utilize 4 x 8 gb of RAM, but I guess until someone actually tries it (not me!) we won't know for sure that it'll work in practice.

 

@ nbr99,
If I guess correctly your old Dell has a 133mhz memory. It's too old even compared to my ThinkPad R40, which after 7 years was recently upgraded from 512 to 2GB with no issues. You won't be able to keep a new laptop for that long. Mayan calendar ends in less than 2 years

 

I'm 99% sure the the DC2 has an RGB LED back light. Was this already known?

My 1% is my unfamiliarity with IPS screens for long periods of time.

 

I heard the 8750w will have support for 64GB RAM.

Wouldn't it be cool to have that much?
It sounds very impressive...I can't wait.
In the meantime, I'll be upgrading to 32GB as soon as it's available.
This 16GB limit we have right now is really cramping my style.

 

I just saw this also after finding the 10 bit color setting under the "Workstation" tab of the CCC for the first time...I was playing around with that because the HP Display Assistant again disappeared spontaneously off my screen menu and wouldn't run at all off the start menu either, even trying to run it as administrator which had worked on a previosu occasion. It took a couple of reboots to get it back.

But I was assuming that if you have the Full/Native color space selected on the HP mobile display assistant, then you're getting 10-bit color even though that setting isn't checked in the CCC tab. Is that correct?

 

Sure, and it's very likely it will have a 16:9 screen. No, thanks

 

Nope. You are confusing color gamut with the number of distinct steps of color, which is now over 1 billion with 3 channels at 10-bit. So you can have wide gamut with 16.7 million distinct colors (8-bit), or wide gamut with over a billion distinct colors (10-bit).

 

It's an RGB edge light instead of a direct backlight which is typical for a notebook display to keep it as thin as possible.

 

Ah, thanks.

And while I don't regret going for the 16 (32 will be ridiculously expensive initially), I do have some data sets in the 30GB range; I currently have to downsample to work on them - that's okay, but it would be nice to have the option to work on the original data in full. So, chalk that up alongside of "adding more VMs" as a useful application of ridiculous RAM.

 

Update: HP is currently testing both hardware and software fixes for both the crashing and freezing issues. The software fix would be a BIOS update to address "timing issues" (believed cause of freeze) and preventing the fan from going to 100% (to address the crashing). They are also looking at a hardware fix to address both issues instead.

My assumption then is that new owners are getting the hardware fix, but HP is praying they can fix the problems in BIOS for laptops already in the wild.

Again, no word on how long this might take.

 

64Gigs?? What will you do with all that RAM?

BTW, I think that the CPU and BUS (stays at 1333mhz) will become a bottleneck. SB is only ~20% faster and more efficient. It means that only a few high-end processors will beat the current top performers (840QM/920XM/940XM). Also, the extremes can now be overclocked using Throttlestop and setfsb by 20% with no issues. And even with this overclock level they throw a white flag in VT before 8GB of RAM does. We have yet to test video editing and see if the situation is different there, but it looks like it would be awhile before 8GB becomes a bottleneck, not even talking about 16GB.

 

I think, you and all who suffer from crashes will receive a due replacement.
I hope you get a fully loaded system with DC2 for all your time and trouble.
Cheer up!

 

Exactly.

 

Reminds me of the "128K? What are you going to do with all that RAM?" days...

I'll tell you what I'll do w/64Gigs. Disable Virtual Memory / Paging File for probably the rest of my life.

BTW, want to mention; don't recall reading this. Whenever I start the HP Mobile Display Assistant -> Tune Display it starts as the very bottom program on the stack of windows. And it doesn't show-up in the Start-bar list. And the HP Display Assistant icon in the start-bar notification area is worthless; right-click or double left click offers nothing useful. And it doesn't always show-up in the Alt-Tab list (sometimes does; weird). So perhaps sometimes when we think it doesn't load, we have to 'move' windows out of the way. Also, if you minimize all windows to show desktop then restore, suddenly the Display Assistant is on top.

 

Yes I see this too.

Maybe...but other times this is not the explanation. There are times where the Display Assistant disappears off my screen menu and I'm unable to start it from the start menu, or the HP software, or any other way that I can find -- I just get the hour glass that says searching for compatible display and then it goes poof (even if I wait a significant time for it to continue). It definitely has a few kinks that could be ironed out.

 

silly me...

You can disable the VM/Paging with 8GB just as easy

 

Tho I find memory on a 64-bit machine doesn't go as far as it had on a 32-bit OS. I suspect a whole lot of browser windows open and long session with Lightroom and PS CS5 will bang the ceiling w/8Gig.

 

Does anyone else's screen randomly turn yellowish?

 

I'm running 16GB in my iMac (which co-incidentally takes notebook (SODIMM) RAM), and I'm loving it. OS X keeps frequently used programs in a state called "Inactive RAM", so besides all of my programs, which I never shut down, my Windows 7 and Linux VM's all run without any paging going on.

If the 16 gigs ever do run out, the flash memory of my SSD takes over, so that baby is always quiet as a mouse and furiously fast!

 

Nice mate. That is what I've got planned when I upgrade except that I'll probably start off with 10gb ram

 

hai guys! I'm enjoying my MacBook Pro (got tired of waiting for DC2) but am back to say hello and consider it again now that the DC2's seem to be trickling out.

so how are the owners of DC2 panels (and others) enjoying these things so far? I skimmed the last few pages and saw some concerns about drivers and bios...not surprising. new product and all. are any of the DC2 purchasers actually print media designers/creators or video guys?

also, what's the battery life looking like...or does nobody even try to find out?

thanks!

 

Update on 8-bit option: No blank screens, forced re-boot, cold boot issues, end of world screen, etc.. Looks like the default option is working fine.

I do see a bunch of logs from the 10bit enabled days. It says Windows Desktop Manager has encountered a fatal error. That is is one that does the Aero theme.

 

Hi all. Thanks for all the info here. I'm just chiming in as another potential 8740w owner, but with thoughts of canceling. I ordered 7/12. Still no real status given as to a potential ship date though. I know there were serious delays for a while with DC2 configs, but my hope is that things are moving along consistently and more quickly now. I can't afford a significant delay and thus the M6500 keeps looking better and better. (Even an m17x looks nice if it comes in on time.)

I was never an HP fan, but I've been using an HP 8540w for the past few months because it was supplied by the client, and I've been really impressed by the build quality. I'm no longer working with the client though and they want their laptop back. Of course my own laptop (Dell M1710 w/ SSD) died about three weeks ago due to video card failure. Thus... 8740w on order. Not sure if I can wait long enough though.

The various issues being reported here are a little concerning, but seem mostly to revolve around enabling 10-bit. I ordered the DC2 to get the best screen, but I won't need 10-bit color so I'm hoping the laptop proves mostly stable out-of-the-box otherwise.

I wanted to ask if anyone has thoughts about combining 1x2GB DIMM with 1x4GB DIMM. I just need 6GB...but then realized I might be taking a performance hit since I think dual channel requires matching stick sizes? I ordered the 4GB from HP, but given HP prices, I'm thinking I might be better to cancel that and just order two 4GB from somewhere else. Like here. Thoughts?

---------------
8740W | Ordered: 7-12-2010 | 620M | M7820 | 2x4GB | DC2

 

From what i have experienced with my longest wait in history, its worth it. You should see yours ship in the next 2 weeks for sure.

Yes, its mostly stable as i reported in the previous post if 10bit isn't enabled. Even with 10bit enabled, its not a pain compared to crashes people had with the non DC2.

Yes, you need to have matching sticks. Refer to this link - as long as you stick to the rule mentioned in the link, you will be fine. Also the link you referred for memory is a 240 Pin. The one HP uses is a 204 PIN and is CL9. If you want to save money, you can buy the exact same memory HP uses without the HP branding from here or search for part M471B5273CH0-CH9



---------------
8740W | Ordered: 7-12-2010 | 620M | M7820 | 2x4GB | DC2[/QUOTE]

 

If that one doesn't come back in stock, here is a G-Skill 4GB stick for $110. It's 204-pin DDR3 1333, CL9, and is in stock as of right now. Who knows if that website will get more of that unbranded HP RAM in?

For dual-channel capability, do you need the sticks to be exactly the same, or does it just have to be the same capacity and speed?

 

My first laptop came with Samsung RAM, the one I have now has Micron MT16JSF25664HZ-1G4F1. But I can only find it a few places and it seems really expensive for 2GB.

 

How significant is having dual-channel (or triple/quadruple-channel?) by putting in 2, 3, or 4 of the exact same chips in, as opposed to mixing two 4GB ones and two 2GB chips? Is there really a noticeable difference?

@NBR: How much did you pay for your 4GB chips, and where did you order them from?

Thanks!

 

FastPictureViewer | Download Page

FastPictureViewer

1.0.122.0 - 2009/12/18 - Pro update: defaults to full raw conversion when jpeg preview is smaller than the screen.
1.0.121.0 - 2009/12/07 - Added support for 30-bit display mode (Win7) and Direct3D 9Ex (Vista), bug fixes, optional alternate CMS.
1.0.119.0 - 2009/11/30 - Right-click zooming enhancements. Also fixes a serious (but rare) bug.

 

There's no noticeable difference in performance when mixing RAM. Officially, the best is to keep all pairs the same size, but in reality, no gain or loss.

 

I think you addressed the question to me.. If so, i bought 2 single 4GB HP branded RAM (AT913UT) sticks from overstock.com for $133. Usually it lists @ 200+, but couldn't pass the 35% cashback.

 

Thanks a lot for catching that. I totally overlooked the pin count.

Cool. Thanks. Here's a generic NewEgg search that also includes a few other brands (at higher prices): newegg search link .

__________________
Kaliatech 8740W | Ordered: 7-12-2010 | 620M | M7820 | 2x4GB | DC2

 

I don't like the HP consumer notebooks at all, but I think their elitebook line is terrific.

Well, to put things in perspective, most of the stuff discussed here is us picking at little details. Here's a brief summary of the issues I've seen:

1) Every once in a while (and not at all often for me) the laptop boots into windows with a dark screen, and you have to reboot from the keyboard. This isn't a 10 bit issue, since I've been getting runinng 8-bit. (Don't know if this happens also with the non-DC2 panels).

2) Aero doesn't run with 10-bit enabled in the Catalyst control center. (This is with the ATI card -- not sure if it happens also with nvidia cards).

3) Fan remains on medium after resuming from sleep. (Known issue which is apparently fixed in an upcoming BIOS).

4) HP Display Assistant software to control DC panel is a bit funky e.g. occasionally disappears off right click screen menu.

My laptop has been completely stable out of the box. No sign of crashes with 4 DIMMs that happened on some earlier units (which is a serious issue).

I have to admit I don't need the DC2 either for my work, but since I don't like to bother with an external monitor/keyboard with my laptops I like to have the best display possible, and the DC2 is definitely very nice. It's well worth getting if you can afford the price and the wait --- but I don't know what the realistic wait time is for recent DC2 orders, so I guess you should really check with HP on that (if nothing else to demand a discount when they fail to meet their promised shipping data ).

 

Ok Folks. Really need your inputs here from those that have experience in Installing Windows 7 on SSD.

I just received my 240GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD. Before i go about doing anything, let me list what i am planning to do and you can correct /advice me.

1. Enable ACHI in BIOS.

2. I will put the SSD on the main Drive bay and the HDD that came along on the optical bay. Before i put the HDD on the upgrade bay, i will use it to install the OS from a DVD. Later when i am all done, remove the optical bay and put the HDD.

3. Install windows 7 - Should i use the Windows 7 restore DVD that came along with the 8740W and restore it to the SSD or clean install from a image. I read that a clean install will enable some of the nice things for a SSD by windows (like disable Defrag,etc).

4. Page file - Should i restrict the windows page file to 1GB and point it to the SSD itself or point it to HDD?

5. Use the provided HP driver DVD and install the stuffs that only need and ignore the bloatwares (though there isn't much on these elitebooks).

What do i do with the F drive(HP tools) - just copy it elsewhere and clean the HDD out or leave it alone.
plus Anything that i missed.

 

FYI, it wasn't me who suggested this. I have no opion on the matter as I'm still using my HDD, and won't upgrade to SSD for a while.

 

Oops. Sorry, Too many names to remember. Corrected the post.

 

@ NotebookGrail,

Check this thread - > SSD Tips and Tricks

Les is one of the most knowledgeable guys on these boards as far as SSDs are concerned Check his sig.