***ENVY 14 Gaming Lounge***

Envy 14 res 1600x900, 1280x768, 1280x720 same score on 3dmark 06
It's not the resolution it's the cheap 5650 card in the envy 14

 

That poster was right. You know you're always supposed to run 3DMark at the default settings when comparing scores, right? Otherwise there is no point.

 

How do you get settings to "stick" in MSI Afterburner? Every time I hit "apply" the sliders go back to their stock positions :\

*edit*

Nvm, found it. Was running SC2 with everything on Ultra at 510/850 stable Havn't attempted any fine-tuning yet, may go higher later today once I get home from work.

 

Just checked the voltage under stress, and it jumps up to 0.95v

I also tried oc'ing to 650/800 but it crashed. I'm going to try 625/800 when I get back.

 

What do you guys use for stress testing GPU overclocks?

 

I personally recommend OCCT. It's not quite as bad as furmark for the GPU but I still wouldn't run it for the full hour.

 

Would it be worth the money to have 6gb or even 8gb of RAM for gaming? I plan on playing Starcraft 2, SWTOR, and COD. Also out of curiosity did anyone shell out the extra 200 for the slim fit battery?

 

played SC2 for 'bout an hour at 550/800 because 30 fps on medium/high at 1600x900 wasn't enough for me.

also had to drop to 1280x720.


*shrugs* whatever it still looks great. temps peaked at 80C processor and 78C GPU. so...that's fine too. No crashes.

 

Not at all. Next to zero performance benefit vs. 4gb.

For gaming, including SC2, you may be better off putting your money into a computer with a faster GPU (oh, snap).

 

kinda sad that.


oh well. if we could force shadows to low it might run better on high.

'dem realistic shadows screw with the card

 

I've been reading about the GPU problems you guys have been having, but even considering that I really like the combination of performance and portability this computer has. Hopefully HP will do something about it, I've made calls and even a forum post on their own website with no response

Edit: Though I'm still curious if anyone payed 200 dollars for the slim fit battery. It seems a tad expensive considering the cost of the other slim fit batteries on the other envy's

 

can someone explain to me why it's so laggy when i play sc2 on medium Q_Q

 

blizz only half fixed things + shadows hate us.


I'm gonna try messing around with variables.txt in a minute to see if I can get some settings lowered.

 

Best game I ever played. Has infinite replayability potentiality ajfajfjajjbality, mumbojumboability. Get it, kid. I was in line last nite from 10pm to 12:01am. Buncha 20somethings up to like 30somethings. People are so nerdy, lol. Oh, and I did see one of those fangirls that I was describing in my post in the Backpack thread

Btw, SC2 runs fine on low on my dinodesktop. Lith + Magus : go test it on ULTRA please.

 

*glances at the hdr setting in variables.txt, sets it to 0*

oh hey. after setting lighting to low and shadows to medium doing this one other thing has gotten me 60 fps. 'course this may only be in the tutorial mission.

online is being finicky (keep lagging out)

 

roughly 48-60 fps with hdr = 0

do get a few weird stutters here and there but I'm gonna chalk that up to either b.net lagging or uh something else I can't pinpoint yet (may just have to blame effects or physics or something being on high)

 

Can you test it out on Guest/Offline mode on high/ultra and report your findings?

Thx boss.

 

I can try. keep in mind that on high or medium normally it gets kinda low fps due to shadows and/or lighting and/or hdr lighting.

edit: turning off the hdr in the variables.txt helped out a bit...if it actually turned it off. can't really tell.

 

Are you serious? Are you saying that 5650 can't handle SC2 on high? That's really disappointing

 

you try playing an rts on high with full blown hdr and good shadows and stuff.

now the in-game cutscenes play better than the game itself on high for the campaign.

I mean you get 40ish fps on 1280x720 but it's low 30s to upper 20s at 1600x900

now hdr = 0 gave me mid 40s to 60/61 at 1600x900 and I can't tell too much of a difference (not that I have two screenshots in front of me)

 

K, truthfully, I dont know what are good FPS to achieve for rts on high. A video might help though, if that's not asking too much 5secs would be enough, if during midgame or something

 

Every time i try to play a game (warcraft 3), it automatically tabs me out for some reason. I can usually overcome this when im on firefox (as opposed to the desktop, which is when the issue occurs). weird


anyone know whats up? thanks

 

just played some BF:BC2 singleplayer. medium settings 1xAA 2xAF low shadows

it was very playable

 

Could you make a video (not using fraps), but use your cellphone or digicam or watever, and post it? And, could you a 10sec one that's enough to demonstrate what "playable" means? Pwwweeeeeaaaaesseee?

 

Hey everyone, just got my envy 14 today, let me know if you want me to try any games for you. Just tried retail copy of star craft 2, early in 1 vs 1 skirmish against computer I am getting 40+fps on high with shadows on medium at 1600 by 900.

 

Are you adjusting the volume by chance?

 

I can get 50-70ish fps on "ultra" shaders at 1600x900 in Starcraft 2

it's more of custom shader setup where shadows are just blobs like on low, lighting is hdr8bit again like on low settings and well reflections might be turned off. everything else is set on ultra.

lord knows what'll happen in a big battle.

also creep drops it to 30 (I may want to set creep on low as well...but *shrugs*)

 

could you make like a little tutorial of how to do this? =D

 

So anyone confirm whether or not E14 will play on High or Ultra? (Not setting individual things to high/ultra, but using just that one tab that turns them all to High/ultra).

 

Quick question, what is everyones temp during SC2, Crysis BFBC2 or whatever....CPU and GPU. After 15 mins of Crysis my CPU is like 55-60 and GPU is like 75 and the notebook get pretty hot. Should i be panicking? please no :[

So kind of temps are you guys getting?

 

panic time ain't til you're in the 90s.

 

messing around with variables.txt some more and the only thing that seems to drop my fps is well...

the mineral patches and vespene gas.


wat?

edit: I'll do a tutorial on this stuff in a few. Still messing around with it.

 

So far, your experience with SC2 (not even on high/ultra) seems disappointing. Please confirm playability+graphicability.

 

it's playable fine on 1280x720 at 40ish fps on high with a 550/800 OC and looks nice, shadows set on medium only real change.

this was campaign only.

it's playable fine on 1600x900 at 55-70ish fps on "ultra" which is more a hack job of ultra but non hdr lighting and blob shadows. but you know..doesn't look as nice without hdr lighting and stuff. So it's more like a super medium or something.

 

So what's the best looking setting to play on, in terms of best performance the E14 can pump out with stock settings?

 

do you want good looking hdr and shadows?

if yes you're gonna go on 1280x720


do you not care about those things. mess around with the stuff in variables.txt while starting off with everything set on high.

I had something working nice with things starting out on medium.

but then random fps drops from outta nowhere at random for no good reason (this is on a replay, going back and looking at the same scene again and the slowdown doesn't happen).

sucks. still working on things. still not quite sure what some of the things mean.

 

just 5 more days until I can start playing with mine! Magus... Remember when you and I both ordered on the same day and mine just shipped and you have had yours for 2 weeks?

 

I ran some tests as well.

450/800
6770

500/800
7078

550/800
7390

585/800
7597

610/800
crashed

Max Proc. Tempers ~77, GPU ~ 69

 

damn hp has sent me 2 envy's before you even got your first

 

The game looks nice enough on medium. Its an RTS I can care less about graphics.

 

yeah. damn iim3. you're unlucky.


anyway I played around in sc2 campaign without messing with the settings since I wanted hdr and shadows on.

eh..30s-40s fps 450/800 (stock, no OC) 1600x900.

only issue was one of the in game scenes early on was kinda slow (got down to low 20s) but it's playable and enjoyable.

online wouldn't work well at this fps but for the campaign so far it's fine.

 

Tried out sc2, on high settings with ultra texture detail I got 32-35 fps.

 

Any chance someone could post a short set of instructions on how to "force" the 5650 to run at the 550mhz it was meant to run it? I think someone mentioned dx11?

 

You can force DX11 in some games. In BFBC2, you can force it by going to Documents/BFBC2/ and modifying settings.ini so that:
DxVersion=auto
becomes
DxVersion=11
Note that this is usually not necessary, as games that can take advantage of dx11, should take advantage of it when set to auto.


Overclocking to 550mhz is stable for some, and instable for others. I personally can't get past 520mhz. This card is overclockable by using MSI Afterburner.
Go to "MSIAfterburner" in your afterburner folder and modify:
EnableUnofficialOverclocking = 0
to
EnableUnofficialOverclocking = 1

 

does going from 450 to 520 give you significant fps boost?

 

I ran mine up to 525/800 using the MSI utility and was able to run Fallout 3 for a couple of hours without problems. GPU was around 64 C in a room that was about 78 F (sorry for mixing my units, haha). I'm going to try to "overclock" it to 550 today. Things seem a little smoother, but Fallout 3 isn't the most taxing of games, I suppose...

IIM3: That sucks! But I bet you will enjoy your Envy. Despite all the constant complaining in these threads about keyboard flex or build quality problems or whatever, I have to say that I am pretty happy with my unit.

Of course, getting an Envy with a dent in it is unacceptable, but I think a lot of forum members have unrealistically high expectations ("when I stand on the keyboard, it flexes! I'll use double sided tape to fix this stupid design decision.") The underclocking on the graphics card definitely sucks, but I am still pleased with the purchase. The 4820TG feels very flimsy compared to the Envy 14, and, of course, the Envy 14 has a beautiful screen.

 

do you need any specific software to switch between the vid card and the integrated vid or is this auto after a clean install??

 

install the hp drivers first.

 

The only video drivers I put in where the ATI one is there specific HP ones

 

well configure switchable graphics pops up for me after I install the 10.3 Catalyst drivers from HP (using the installer not just the inf).

so...not sure what's wrong