*HP EliteBook 8740w Owners Lounge - PART 1*

No difference in my 9s. I have thrice now had a small crumb or pebble stuck under a key though that caused it to sound/feel different (or stop working altogether) . Not sure if these keyboards are more susceptible to that sort of thing or if I'm just getting clumsier with my lemon poppy seed muffins.

Fwiw, I've been running F.05 since it came out. No real issues. Sometimes wireless seems not to connect after sleep, but that could be Windows. I don't mess with the color display settings much. It has been stable as can be.

Cool. Just to follow-up, HP sent out a support rep and they replaced my sound board. It made no difference though. (As expected.) I really think the underlying problem is driver related, although it's almost a non-issue now. I am able to the integrated mic without any issues too...I'm not sure what the static noise was that I was hearing initially, but I can't replicate that anymore.

Now, the power supply is probably the loudest buzzing component. (On that note...I was considering getting a 90w supply for traveling. But I hooked up a kill-a-watt meter and was surprised by how fast this machine pulls more than 90W.)

 

For anyone interested, I picked up a 2nd battery for traveling from here:

http://www.techforless.com/cgi-bin/tech4less/KU533AA?id=YY2qGTy3&mv_pc=178 - Hewlett-Packard KU533AA - Lithium ion 8-cell - 73 Wh

I paid ~$30. Looks even cheaper right now. This model # isn't an exact match to the battery these machines come with and I'm not sure what the real differences are. (I suspect something with the "smart" component of the battery.) It has worked fine for me though. These are open box so who knows if they are consistent or what chances are of receiving junk battery. I figured it was worth the risk for $30. The date on the one I received was from earlier this year. The life seems comparable to the original battery I received, though I didn't do any exact measurements.

 

On the F.05 probation here.
Will see if the fixes rise above the new issues

 

What was the peak wattage? I bought a 120w advanced docking station because of a sweet open box deal on ebay and the 120w power supply was able to keep my laptop charging while gaming.

 

I think this may be of interest for you all:

Version 9 for the Quick Specs is already available.

The most interesting part is that DreamColor specifications have been already published, and the most outstanding ones are the following:

You can see these specs on page 23. I'm a bit disappointed with contrast. I expected at least 1000:1, like its big brother, the 2480zx. Anyway, that value is very good, at the same level than my NEC 2490 WUXi H-IPS. Color gamut coverage is awesome as you can see, exceeding the Adobe RGB coverage by 14%.

On the other hand, it seems the WUXGA+WVA panel is NOT 8-bit:

So this display is different from the DreamColor 1 (8-bit TN, 800:1 contrast and 300 nits brightness).

Oddly, HP remains without listing the 840QM processor as configurable one

 

Great find!
I'll post it in the reviews section.
+1 rep.

 

That sux for the WUXGA+ WVA owners. Thought that might only be for the lower rez options but guess not.

 

Yep...

Also, I still think the backlit keyboard is a fail!
It's so flimsy. It should have been reinforced with an extra metal plate, IMHO.
I like it... and hate it!

 

Dude thank you so much for your post. I was wondering why my video playback skipped so much. It got worse when I did other things at the same time, such as web browsing.

Since the Precision M6500 has the Firepro M7820 option, I was able to hack their more recent drivers to work with my Elitebook 8740w. It seems to have fixed my video playback skipping! Now I'm going to see if Starcraft II runs any smoother

 

Wow! Could you please also run Tom2D benchmark and post your "hacking" method?
Will rep you for the efforts!

 

Did this thing ever got resolved. My OCZ is not really performing upto the standard. I tried both SSDs and same thing. Amazingly slow. Any suggestions?

 

Here is mine

 

Here is the Tom2D benchmark. Looks like the newer Dell drivers provide quite the improvement over your numbers Aikimox.


As for my hack:

You need to look at these two files (assuming x64):
\Packages\Drivers\Display\W76A_INF\C7_95796.inf - HP's FirePro Drivers
\Packages\Drivers\Display\W76A_INF\C7103067.inf - Dell's FirePro Drivers

Take the entire "[ATI.Mfg.NTamd64.6.1]" section from HP's INF and overwrite the same section in Dell's INF. Apparently the device id's are a bit different.

This is the actual section from HP's INF that you need to overwrite Dell's INF with:

I was able to update the video card manually through Window's device manager.

I wasn't able to get the catalyst setup from the Dell to install the new display drivers. It was able to update other things like the displayport audio driver. I'm guessing you to update more sections of the INF and/or other files.

You can get the updated M7820 drivers from Dell.

If I ever get the motivation, maybe I'll work on getting Mobility Radeon drivers to work with our FirePro's!

 

I see the improvement but it's still less than a half of what Gaah scored here.

Would be great if we could use the 5870 drivers, but we don't know if the DC2 will be fully supported (I mean the 10-bit mode).

 

That's amazingly slow? 4k speeds magnitudes faster than hdds?

 

For all those that have SSD's installed and are having low 4k scores (assuming all), please report it as a problem to HP. I have raised it to my HP engineer. He is going to test it out with a Intel SSD and confirm and work on resolving it. The more the people report this issue, we will have a resolution/reason for the same.

 

Haven't visited here for a while. Glad to see everyone is still going strong, including you HiddenUser even if I gather you still don't have your laptop.

I ran CrystalDiskMark a while back and didn't know what to make of it then, so I ran it again and the results are still pretty strange:



You tell me what that all means.

 

Ask and you shall receive. I got the 5870 drivers working! The steps are kind of similar to hacking the Dell drivers. But before going through with my steps, I recommend uninstalling your existing FirePro drivers and running driver sweeper.

I added the following to the [ATI.Mfg.NTamd64.6.1] section of CH103697.inf from the latest Catalyst Mobility 10.8 drivers:

Update the display manually through Window's device manager, pointing directly at the modified inf. Restart your machine. Then run the catalyst setup.

I still get the workstation area which has the "Enable 10-bit pixel format support" option. I don't have a DC2 panel to test this though.

Here's the download for the latest Catalyst mobility drivers:

 

I was particularly referring to the write speed.

 

That's just great! Can you run that benchmark now?


Need to wait a few more hours before the system allows me to rep you. Great job!

 

I thought the M7820 was running on par with 5870 in gaming already. Why bother?

 

While searching for the Tom2D benchmark, I came upon this link. Looks to be the basis analysis from where the driver concerns stemmed from. So just an FYI for anyone that hasn't seen the Tom's Hardware 2D discovery:
Tom2D Conclusions, Preview Of Part 2 : 2D, Acceleration, And Windows: Aren't All Graphics Cards Equal?
That is the conclusion page; go back from there if you want the basis for that conclusion.

 

Holy crap! My daily workhorse a Dell E6500 w/just a T9400 processor and integrated Intel grafix benchmarks at over twice the speed average; with some individual tests dramatically higher... and that's against the better performance from yesterday's hacked driver, not the one I'm using! ...not happy.

 

That's the question I'd like to have answered after the benches are run. So far, I see some cases when the stock HP drivers provide a poor performance. Ideally, I'd like to use the latest 5870 drivers.
I hope, Sheltem will run some tests to confirm his findings.

 

Anyone with Nvidia graphics want to post Tom2D benchmarks?

 

Just to be clarify (maybe) ... I think the original post was primarily pointing that it seemed weird the 4k speed didn't change between single drive and RAID0 setup as did all the other tests. (I agree... I can't see any explanation for that.)

Fwiw on the overall 4k speed question though, I'm seeing similar speeds in my non-RAID setup. (My readings below.) I think the 4k reads/writes should be faster as well, but not necessarily significantly so. Maybe 2x? I was researching earlier and came across this post (and others): OCZ Vertex 2 100GB SSD - Bjorn3D.com . Notice the difference in 4k speeds once the drive was aligned with the OCZ Toolbox (which AFAICT, hasn't been released yet). I believe Windows 7 automatically aligns the drives now on install...but still seemed interesting. Of course, I could have my terminology mixed up too.

 

Here are my Tom2d numbers:


Wow, my score is more than doubled!

 

Daaamn That is convincing!

What Driver Sweeper did you use? 2.01?

 

Hello,

Would it be possible to switch the cpu in this laptop later on
My school offers a i5-520M processor, but i'm afraid it won't be strong enough for latest autodesk software. So would i be able to fit in an i7-qm later on?

 

Nope, as far as I know you can't. There are two motherboard versions/revisions, - one for dual core CPU's and 2 memory slots and another one for quads with 4 slots. You can try asking HP techs directly though.

 

Driver Sweeper 2.1

 

And even 10% faster than my machine w/a T9400 w/integrated grafix... ( dang, 2D on the 8740 so ' slow'?!)

Fantastic work there sheltem. I'll be giving it a go when I have time to turn the machine on. Your post/rep ratio should be going to go thru the roof from all ATI equipped owners!

 

The previous quote is from a previous post of mine, and it may be important for SSD users. I think it's highly recommended all SSD owners of this thread post the results into that thread, so the 8740w/8540w potential (and current) owners know if the QM57 chipset does HAVE (or NOT) this issue.

Yes, I don't have my 8740w yet. I'm waiting confirmation from my rep for all requested components. It's not easy to get a CTO EliteBook in my country (I've asked before to another reseller and he eventually gave up my request).

Very good work indeed. I'll rep you soon. However, if you install the modded drivers, what will happen if you update your system via the SoftPaq installer? Are the modded drivers overwritten with the stock FirePro drivers? I know there is a site where people modify official drivers of professional cards too, but only for NVIDIA cards ( Laptop2videogo).

 

I'm pretty sure you won't be able to install FirePro drivers until you switch your video card back to a FirePro M7820 manually through the device manager.

Another way is to uninstall the Radeon mobility driver, run driver sweeper, reboot and install the FirePro drivers.

For new Radeon mobility driver releases, you'll need to edit the INF file each time.

My mod is pretty simple. I took the device ID from HP's FirePro M7820 inf file and inserted them into the Radeon mobility INF file. Read my previous post for more details.

 

It's working!
I followed the steps and got the following Tom2D result:

3X more, lol.

Thank you again!
Now I'll test the gaming and temps.


>>>> No more lagging in Worms Reloaded! King's Bounty runs smoother as well!
Temps stay the same.
I wonder if the 3Dmark06 and Vantage will improve...

 

Worked for me too. Thanks sheltem!!!



Haven't tried Vantage, but 3DMark06 scores are just a tad bit slower.

Before - 13,317
SM 2.0: 5,404
SM 3.0: 6,357
CPU: 3,473
res: 1280x1024

After - 13,215
SM 2.0: 5,358
SM 3.0: 6,296
CPU: 3,464
res: 1280x1024

Forgive my ignorance but what are the risks of modding video drivers? I'm not going to smoke my 7820 am I?

 

^ that's a difference of less than 1%, well within repeatability I think...I'd say no change

I'm really curious to see if this improves my poor experience using AutoCAD LT 2011, but I'm too chicken to try it at this point. What are the risks, and if something goes wrong, does this void the warranty?

 

I don't think there's any risk other than a small chance to ruin your OS install. But if you set a Restore Point in Control Panel -> Recovery Options, you can revert back if something goes wrong. BTW, I forgot to make one, lol.
You can also make a OS image with something like Acronis TI or Norton Ghost, just to play it super safe.

Not too sure if you will have more performance in CAD since MR5870 drivers aren't optimized for it,... but you could try.

 

Just enabled 10bit and Aero seems to work fine now. Before windows would automatically revert to the basic theme.

 

I wonder if it's really enabled and working properly?
Is there a way to test for sure?

 

From my experience, the M7820 drivers aren't optimized for it either.

 

Then you have a win win situation

 

I don't know of a way to test for sure, but it seems to be working.

Before, when I enabled 10bit, pixelated artifacts would flash on the screen when booting in and out of Windows. Now that I changed to the new drivers it's doing the same thing.

This in no way confirms that 10bit is working properly, if anything there are still issues, but it does tell me that that settings are being changed when 10bit is enabled.

One other thing to note. Before the driver change, StarCraft II wouldn't even open when 10bit was enabled. Now it opens and I can start a game, but the screen flashes when panning around. For now I'm just going to shut off 10bit when gaming.

 

For all us dumb people, can you tell us how to enable 10 bit

 

Yes, read THIS. In that link you can find how to test if 10 bit is working properly too.

@sheltem: Impressive benchmarks. Repped

 

Thanks Sheltem. Rep given. What a difference in Tom2D scores.

I wonder if it's noticeable in day-to-day operations. As a minor aside, previously when I ran FurMark it would stutter every second or so. Now when I run, there is no stuttering. So perhaps there were some improvements on 3D side as well.

For whatever reason, I was unable to update the display manually via the INF. I received a message about incomplete package if I ran the root setup.exe, and something about missing information when I tried updating with INF directly. I eventually ran InstallManagerApp.exe and that installed everything fine.

 

Hmm, I see that the results significantly change from run to run. I ran the tool again and got 1390 points.

 

No it should be pretty safe. Clock and memory speeds are set in the video card's bios. All I did was trick the Catalyst drivers into thinking the the 7820 is a Mobility Radeon 5870.

Here's a faq on modded INF files. It's specifically for Nvidia cards, but the concepts are the same.

 

Bad news... with 10bit enabled, I'm getting banding on the ramp.psd file.

Can someone with the 7820 drivers, please test this out?

You can download a trial of CS5, if you don't have it already.

 

Is this how your banding looks.?This is from 7820 Driver with 10-bit enabled.