***ENVY 14 Gaming Lounge***

oh so the E14 is lower clocked? interesting. I'm glad I ended up not getting the Envy14. Got really hyped for it in the old owner's lounge but seems like it wasn't for me. Anyway awesome and keep up the benchmarks peoples, I like looking at these.

 

it's clocked at 450/800 (like the sony vaios that had the 5650) instead of 550/800 like the dv6t and acer 3820tg and 4820tg.

so. *shrugs* oh well. still like mine.

 

Not sure I get what you're saying. Your sig says you went for a MPB, which still has a quite slower GPU even with a low-binned 5650 by comparison...

I'm actually very happy with the current results I'm getting. I managed around 25-27 FPS in Borderlands' time demo and 30 FPS in Dawn of War 2, both at native resolution.

 

Got Borderlands, tried it out, getting 30+ FPS on medium-high settings at native res (dynamic shadows take a /huge/ drain on performance in the game). IT's quite fun.

So far, the Envy has been able to play all my games at excellent settings (<3 you UT3) for the eye candy without taking away from performance. Quite pleased.

 

Just a quick video I made with some gaming + screen viewing angle comparison with the Macbook Pro 13". Feel free to add to the 1st post if you'd like. Thanks for watching:

YouTube - HP Envy 14 Screen Viewing Angles + Gaming

 

wow, bad company 2 doesn't look all that too bad on the Envy 14 after all

 

How are you guys clocking your cards? I tried the gadget and couldn't get it to work.

=Jason-

 

*finishes SC2's campaign*

whelp.

 

10character

 

What settings have you been playing on? Low? Medium? High? Ultra?

 

medium works well enough at 1600x900.

high works at 1280x720 well enough if you drop shadows to medium. least for campaign.

 

Hey, I just watched your video, and was especially attentive to the SC2 segment. What CPU do you have again? It seems that it's relatively playable on yours, and on High/Mediums, which is acceptable for a 5650. Don't really need Ultra everything, but if Highs are achievable, then thumbs-up.

I look forward to your response. Thanks!

 

I read the first 20 or so threads and didn't see anything, so I thought I'd ask...
I'm going to order an Envy 14 with the i5 450, 4m RAM (2 Dimm) and radiant screen, and I want to do some really light gaming.
I wanna install Call of Duty (the originial) and BF2, and I want to know if anyone has experience with BF2 without any overclocking?
I'm sure COD will be fine... I'm not too worried about BF2 , as it's fairly old by now but it can still get a demanding depending on settings

 

Both will be fine! Considering I am playing COD WOW/MW and BFBC2 at 900p and medium/high settings, it will breeze those old games!

 

I accidentally played a game of SC2 on Intel integrated graphics yesterday. I didn't notice that my cord was unplugged when i started a multi player co op game of 3v3comp.

When the game started i thought that my graphics card had died since it was running at the lowest image settings till i realized the issue. Not wanting to drop out of the game to change the settings i played it through. It actually did very well. No lag even with large fights and aside from the low image quality, everything was really playable.

We ended up losing though but it was a pretty nice test of the integrated card and how well SC2 can scale stuff down.

 

I played a game of Sins of a Solar Empire yesterday. It lasted about 3 hours or so before it crashed (the game is notorious for crashing in long games with huge fleets). It was in a "Random Huge - Multi-galaxy" map with five galaxies, three human players, and 7 AI players. Fleet sizes were set to "Huge." All of my graphical settings were set to maximum, with 2x anti-aliasing.

The graphical settings didn't lag my Envy 14 at all, but a game of that size is enough to bring even the fastest PC in the world to it's knees after a couple hours, simply because Sins of a Solar Empire only runs on a single thread, and tons of AI calculations are done on that single CPU thread.

Still, the Envy 14 handled it admirably, maybe even better than my old desktop PC did! I was hosting, too.

Oh, and the first time I started Sins of a Solar Empire I was on my integrated graphics. It ran great! I would have never realized it until I noticed that I could not enable anti-aliasing, then I immediately realized what I had done.

 

Can anyone tell me what FPS they are getting in 25-mans in warcraft, and if they can run Ultra?

Thanks.

 

Has anyone tried playing Supreme Commander on this?

I've tried running the benchmark, but I always end up stuck in an audio loop when there's lots of action on-screen. If I leave the game alone for a little bit it seems to fix itself, but it can take 20 sec of high-volume looping with everything locked up before it comes back to normal.

I'm thinking it has to be something with the audio drivers.

 

bump shadows down a bit (not maxed out) and it runs fine apparently (somone posted this halfway through the gaming lounge)

 

well they did update the audio drivers. you update yours? check the envy 14 (intel) page on these forums

 

Yeah, the game is playable on all max settings, although I only get around 20 fps like that, which is of course unacceptable when trying to raid... Moving the shadows down one notch seems to remove the NPC shadows which greatly increases the FPS.

 

Magus (or anyone else) - did you notice any performance differences going to 1.7a compared to the stock drivers? I'm happy with the performance I'm getting now but would upgrade if there's a marked increase.

 

eh....not that I can tell.


I mean it'll give you AA in SC2.

and 10.7 supposedly makes AA and AF work a bit better in borderlands but *shrugs* it can be a headache to get going if the patch doesn't work.

edit: oh right. there's a new codec being used by streaming places that crashes you if you had hardware acceleration in flash going and are using 10.6 (or 10.5...or older..but since none of the envy people have really noticed it, probably not 10.3)

10.7 fixes the problem.

 

I just did that. Struggled with them a bit as the HP site's drivers are wrong and the drivers wouldn't install through the installer provided.

With the drivers manually installed it seems to be working better - I can still hear it struggling (some sounds will play a few times in a small loop instead of playing simultaneously), but it didn't lock up yet. I'll run the test a handful of times and cross my fingers!

 

That's awesome, thanks for the quick reply!

 

they installed fine on mine. I just grabbed 'em from the drivers page on this forum.

 

Is it worth going from 10.3 to 10.7? If so, how do you get 10.7 to work. Installer from AMD keeps on giving me unsupported card.

 

you have to download it from a different link that gives you the drivers AND the CCC.

then well. gotta install and wait the black screen out for a good 5 to 8 minutes.

after you think it's done (after the hdd light stops blinking for awhile) you can go and restart the computer through the power button (make sure that's set to restart not sleep).

then it should boot up fine. if not, reboot in safe mode and revert to 10.3 and try it again but with the open gl 2.0 beta drivers or the 10.6 alpha drivers or something first, then install 10.7 ontop of them.


never uninstall 10.3 first or else you'll lose the ability to switch between the ati and intel cards.


it being worth it depends. 10.3's still good drivers. 10.6 was a bit better than them but not by too much from what I've heard. I mean I get 'bout 40 or 50 higher on 3dmark06 with 10.6 and/or 10.7 (compared 10.3) so it's probably negligible.

 

The engadget review is up for those who don't follow the Envy14 owners lounge.

 

how do you check which version of catalyst your running?

 

Hey guys, I've been playing a lot of SC2 lately *brag* finally got finished with all the single player achievements *brag*, does anyone want to play some games?

 

go to the Catalyst control center and check the version.

8.713 is 10.3b is HP drivers.

the others should tell you what version they are

 

Magus get to pCSX2 yet? You, 2.0 and my boi htwingnut are the only ones I completely trust on here with regard to E14 know-how. With your 3's blessings, I will make the purchase (also if price permits).

 

lol... ill play wit ya when i get my NV on somewhere on 20th

 

Does it take a 520m to play on High-everything? Or does it really all depend on the GPU?

 

It really depends on the GPU. There will be extremely little if not any difference between the i5-450m even the i3 processor and the i5-520m. And there will also be no improvement if you have the i7.

 

oh yeah definitely, but my reason for considering the Envy 14 was the GPU, meaning I put that on the top of my list for the E14. If I put that on top and it with it being a lower clocked GPU, I think I would have been disappointed since that was my #1 reason for looking at the E14. But I decided I'd rather give up GPU for all other things the MBP13 provided, then I'm okay knowing what I was getting with the 320m. Not to mention the battery and touchpad of the E14 wasn't what I was hoping for either. Rather give up one thing for a few other things on my list =)

 

How does the HD 5650 in our Envys compare to the 8600m gt ddr2 in my old Vostro? Haven't gotten a chance to play any games yet still being trying to get stuff transferred from old laptop but will play COD4 and CODWAW when I get the chance.

 

It should be significantly faster than the 8600M.

I had a 9600M GS in my old notebook, and the 5650 blows it out of the water.

 

Not that 3DMark means everything, but my Dell Vostro with 8600m GT OVERCLOCKED managed 3DMark06 of ~ 4100. HD 5650 with 450MHz GPU (less than "standard" 550MHz) will score ~ 6800.

 

I recall my 9600M GS had trouble playing Left 4 Dead at medium settings at 1366x768, while my 5650 can play Battlefield Bad Company 2 at medium (low effects), 2xAA, and 4xAF at 1600x900. This was on DirectX 11, haven't tried DirectX 9.

 

Alright well it sounds like I'll be able to up the setting from what I was used to .

 

uhh im not really good with computers so can somebody tell me step-to-step guide to how to over clock?

 

MSI Afterburner. Crank it up. Close the prog. Open it, crank it up some more. Ask Magus for exact details.

GL HF DD KA, GG.

 

My E14 should be arriving today in the mail, so I'll tell you when I get it

 

don't forget to mess with that one thing in the msi afterburner.cfg (allowunofficialoverclocking needs to = 1, not 0)


also your card could be crappy and crash at any OCing or it could not give a crap. depends on your luck.

 

Thx for the replies, but how do you exactly cha ge that enableunofficialoverlcoking to 1 instead of 0. I tried editing with notepad but when i tried to save it , it said access denied or something.

EDIT1: Ok i was able to change it to 1 but when i try to change the core speed and memory and press apply, it keeps going back to 450/800. whats the problem?

EDIT2: Btw my ccc version is 10.3 i think. Its out of the box without fresh install.

 

Are you sure the file saved once you made the change?

Also, I think you need 10.6 or later driver for it to work.

 

I don't think it's a driver issue. I have the 10.3 drivers and it works for me.

The MSI interface is a little tricky; maybe that's the problem. When you've set it to the numbers you want, click Apply, then make sure the little lock icon in the lower left is unlocked, then click save, then click the present number you want, then lock it with the lock icon. That should work.

 

does anyone know would oc the card cause a shorter life span?