***ENVY 14 Gaming Lounge***

@strikes, Magus: Or, even simpler, you google "warcraft 3 widescreen" and get this

Mostly any old game can be altered to run in widescreen.

 

Broodwar goes to widescreen automatically without touching anything.

 

that'll work too

 

Broodwar != Warcraft III?

It's good that Broodwar does it automatically, but I don't see what it has to do with WC3...

 

Does gta 4 work on this laptop without over clocking?

 

Uhh, for those having problems with sc2 overheating, there has been a post by blizzard for a while now about it:


EDIT: Actual Blizzard blue post


Certain screens make your hardware work pretty hard

Screens that are light on detail may make your system overheat if cooling is overall insufficient. This is because the game has nothing to do so it is primarily just working on drawing the screen very quickly. A temporary workaround is to go to your Documents\StarCraft II\variables.txt file and add these lines:

frameratecapglue=30

frameratecap=60

You may replace these numbers if you want to.



You may also in general want to press cntrl-alt-f to watch for screens where your fps will spike over 200 and avoid staying on those screens for very long (the only screen where I have continued to have this problem is the mission archive screen in campaign and during black screens in the campaign where it just says "hyperon 5pm etc").

 

thanks for sharing with me the wc3-tft widescreen fixes

 

Could someone give me step by step instructions on how to overclock the gpu? I can't even play fifa09 on high settings which to me is a joke. And I have to play battlefield: bad company 2 on low settings as well. This is crap, I'm vry disapointed. And heat is not an issue, the hottest my gpu got during batlefield was 58 degrees Celsius.

 

I'm a college student computer science major and I got my envy 14 a few days ago, and I'm returning it because of a dead pixel to get another. I played games on it for the past few days and really enjoy however... I played starcraft 2 and it played on mediocore settings, and I wished it was a little better. I was wondering if anyone thinks that the 17 inch is worth it more? I don't really want to lug a heavier computer, however the bigger screen and power is really something that intrigues me. Also note that I do not have a desktop, however I will be carrying this laptop everyday. What do you guys think is more important, gaming or my back?

 

I overclocked my 5650 to 500mhz. No problems so far, but I've only been playing Penumbra Overture and other low-resource/old games.
How should I make sure It's stable?
I played Penumbra for about 1:30 followed by Alien Swarm on max settings, no issues beyond tearing during Penumbra (First time I've had to enable v-sync)

 

How did you overclock it? in bios? I can play alien swarm without shader effects on high

 

Start at NUMBER 4 like I said initially! It's past the registry edit.

Basically, select "adapters and displays", click the little down triangle in the little screen at the bottom, select configure, then choose maintain aspect. You have to be at a resolution you want to configure for it to be available and hold.

 

Depends whether you have a desktop or not. I do and it's powerful enough to run everything around right now at high settings, so the Envy 14 is perfect for me - light/medium gaming on the go with the serious stuff on the desktop. If this is your main computer, however, the choice is different. You might want to look at the rated weight of the computer online and then shop around for laptops of similar weight (not to buy them, to lift them) and see how it feels to you. Your stature is also an important criterion.

Personally, I'd rather keep my neck happy (using a messenger bag) and I find a lighter laptop easier to lug around from place to place even outside of the bag.

 

Thanks man I appreciate your input. This is actually gonna be my main computer/desktop. I don't want to have to lug it all around as I am ony 5'8 at 140 lbs, however I need a gaming rig. Tough call. Anyone else think I should return my 14 for the 17?

 

If you don't carry it often, then you might consider the Envy 17, for that matter, you have other options like the Asus G73 if you're going 17". Envy 15 is the obvious middle man though, only has no DVD drive.

 

Yeah that's true, but Envy 15 has no backlit keyboard and has a heating problem doesn't it? I liked the envy 15 but I just wish they made the 15 instead of the 14. The 17 I'm worried about being too big. I think I want to take it to class sometimes. I also want something that lasts more than 3 hours but I don't think I can find that.

 

Perhaps get an Envy 17 or other 15" or 17" gaming notebook and get a netbook for carrying around?

Also check out the MSI GX640 or GX740 laptops. Fairly lightweight. No switchable graphics but with i5 seems to manage 3 hours on battery and has HD 5850 and weighs 6 lbs. XoticPC.com has a good price on both, and they also have their own version based on same basic machine: Force 1656-ID5 and Force 1727.

 

I was able to play Company of Heroes on High with ~50 fps average in the benchmark, which is great. In a 4v4 battle frames dropped into the 20s. Still playable.

CoD 4 runs at around ~30 fps in SP with all settings maxed. With less bells and whistles turned on I still only manage a consistent ~50 or so in MP. Drops to the 20s in smoke. IMO anything under 125 in CoD 4 is unplayable. So I didn't find its CoD 4 performance acceptable.

 

I was playing Battlefield 2 today on medium settings playable most of the time but not when there's heaps of action or smoke. Even on low settings the smoke made it really lag. And I'm pretty sure COD 4 is even more GPU intense so it's not looking good for me. I really want to overclock the graphics card. I am very disappointed in this laptop. I thought it would be able to play COD and Battlefield on medium-high settings, it can't even play Fifa09 on high settings. Very disappointed.

 

That being said, BC2 seems to be able to run on medium-high settings alright. Only played a little of the SP.

 

quick question guys, i plan on buying an envy14 but im not sure what would be the best option for gaming, a fast speed dual core or the slower clocked quad core?

i saw the quads turbo boosts to similar levels as the duals, but will their lower base clock affect fps? i remember with m11x people were getting bad frame rates because the turbo boost didnt always kick in etc

 

If you're concerned about battery life, then get the dual core since they have switchable graphics. And with hyperthreading the CPU can manage four threads like a traditional quad core can, granted not quite as efficient, but if something is optimized for four threads it can still run decently.

 

Been following this thread for a while now. I am just wondering whether if the game performance can be increased by releasing a better driver? It does not make sense when m11x is performing 5x better than envy 14, yet the card is worse than 5650 @ 450mhz

 

How, what, hu? What game's performing 5x better on M11x than the Envy 14?

 

Problem here-

I've been playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 on native resolution, low settings with some anti-aliasing and it has been very playable. In very intense situations, the FPS can drop from a smooth 40+ down to 20.

The problem is, my computer crashed last night during gameplay. The screen just went white, grey, then black. I assume it was because my card overheated? Can this cause permanent damage? Because, I might just be paranoid, but my card seems a lot slower after that...

 

I have a little problem that's causing quite a bit of concern. I need to decide whether to RMA this thing or not

Last night, I was playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 and my computer suddenly crashed. The screen went grey then black. I'm pretty sure the computer stayed on and I had to hold the power button for it to shut down.

Today, I started playing again but noticed huge spikes of lag and generally a lower framerate. To confirm, I tested the card on Left 4 Dead 2, which it runs perfectly and never below 35 FPS. It was running at 40 average and went as low as 15 FPS (same map, settings, conditions)

Someone tell me this isn't a permanent problem and that my graphics card isn't fried and I won't have to RMA. =[

 

Does anyone else get pretty variable performance on Bad Company 2?

On the same maps, sometimes it'll run great with no lag, but now even setting everything to low, I still get pretty bad lag.

I can't seem to figure it out.

 

check gpu-z exodus.


there's a bug with powermizer where your card will be locked in at 300/300 clock speed if you unplug and replug without rebooting or something.

you can fix it by turning powermizer off and back on (usually) if you don't wanna reboot

 

Hah, oh wow, I loaded up FurMark and GPU-Z was reporting a current clock of 300MHz.

That would explain it. I'm assuming you meant PowerPlay though, as PowerMizer is NVIDIA's technology, is it not?

So, did this bug occur in the 10.3 drivers, or is it because I'm running the 10.7 drivers?

 

Thanks man, Yeah I think I may just stick with the 14, it's fast enough and now that I'm running msi after burner I can overclock the gpu and it seems to have helped.

What does everyone overclock their gpu's core and memory at? and what do you think is as far as it can go?

 

Try updating drivers. Check temps. Check gpu stability. If GPU isn't stable, then yeah, definitely RMA.

 

I have no clue.

I think it occurs period. Wingnut was having issues with it (but not realizing it) when his battlefield bad company was screwing up on low.

I'm having issues with it on 10.7a.

think I may have had issues on 10.3 but I'm not positive.

 

Regardless, Bad Company 2 runs amazingly better at 450MHz compared to 300MHz.

At 300MHz, it was almost unplayable on all low at 1600x900-- terrible lag at all times.

At 450MHz, I can play medium/low with 2xMSAA at 1600x900, and there's virtually no lag.

It's making me rethink my stance on the 450MHz vs 550MHz argument.

 

Why is my Envy crashing ever 10 mins or so while playing Counterstrike: Source? This is the only game it does this in.

 

What'd I miss? LOL. Hmm, I"ll have to be running GPU Z and make sure my system is running at 450MHz.

I'm back with 10.3 drivers since I used the HP "minimal install" or whatever its called. I tried to install 10.7 over those and the screen went blank, the fan kicked in high, and got really hot, so I shut down, and then I lost my switchable graphics. So had to uninstall and went back to stock drivers Haven't played BFBC2 much since then though. Maybe tonight.

@ MagusDraco - Were you successful at doing an HP 10.3 driver install then isntalling the 10.7's over top of those? I swear I did that before without issue but now it doesn't work. But that was with a clean install.

Where'd you get 10.7a?

 

I'd just point out the memory clock. THAT is what makes the insane difference. While the core goes from 300Mhz to 450Mhz (sizable but not enough to make a jump of 100% FPS like it does on some games), the memory clock goes from 300Mhz to 800Mhz. THAT is a huge difference, almost three times the clock, and the memory throughput is the difference between being able to load all models and textures on time and struggling to fill the RAM.

I'm afraid the core clock doesn't have as much impact as we'd like... I'd be curious to see a comparison of what an increase in 100Mhz of each clock does. I'd think that the benefits of the higher memory clock tend to get smaller the higher it is.

 

I can play Battlefield 2 with mods on max with 80FPS. Of course, it is an older game. Need to test my modded copy of Oblivion on it.

 

Yeah, memory clocks always tend to give larger gains than GPU clock. I can't run my GPU much faster than 550MHz without an occasional lockup, CTD, or reboot. But at 550MHz it's been pretty solid, and temps remain below 80C. My memory won't clock much past 820MHz either, which is pretty crappy, considering most memory can do a minimum of 10% overclock, this is more like 2.5%. And in all honesty running GPU @ 450MHz vs 550MHz in BC2 doesn't result in a whole lot better fps, maybe only a couple. So not sure if its worth the extra stress on the machine.

 

Holy cow. I don't recall having this much trouble last time, but I finally got Catalyst 10.7a installed.

You can download it here: GPU-75: ATI Catalyst? 10.7a Beta Driver

I had to install mobility 10.6 from here:
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/mobile/10-6_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc.exe

And then 10.7a. I don't know if you need to go this route, but 10.7 would fail driver install. So I installed 10.6 which installed fine. But the screen went blank, had to wait five minutes, then did a Windows key press/release, right arrow press/release, and enter key press/release because that selects "shut down" and it did, booted up and 10.6 worked fine. 10.7 still wouldn't install, but 10.7a so far works like a charm.

 

10.7a worked.

10.7 didn't work.

10.7 open gl 2.0 beta worked.

10.6 didn't work (but I was probably too hasty and shut it off early and never tried it too much from scratch 'cause after I clean installed 10.7 came out)

10.6 alpha worked.

10.7a is a hotfix driver.

I got it on by going 10.3 ---> 10.7 beta --> and then 10.7a came out so I removed 10.7 beta and suddenly had 10.3 again --> install 10.7a and it worked fine


so *shrugs*

GPU-75: ATI Catalyst? 10.7a Beta Driver

all 10.7a has over 10.7 is the ability to force AA in sc2.


but yeah 10.7's regular version never worked for me. *shrugs* least the beta and 10.7a worked fine.

 

I can't get MSI Afterburner to work for me with 10.7a though. Not a huge deal because it doesn't seem to make a huge difference any way I look at it.

 

stills works for me.

and yeah 450 and 550 isn't much of a difference and I've just not bothered with it.

 

With 10.3 and the default settings, my 5650 was dead- slow. I mean it was struggling with games (like Blitzkrieg 2) that the intel hd could play flawlessly. It appeared as if it was throttling down to some very slow speed (100mhz-250mhz).

As soon as I installed 10.7 with the method Magus mentioned, the card really has performed well. I get 7655 3dmark06 with 550mhz/800mhz memory. Not as good as my desktop, but the card actually performs up to expectations now.

 

Wow you OCd to 550. That's good considering the difficulty most other users have been having.. So I'm assuming it's stable for you?

 

After downloading and installing the ATI 10.7a beta version shouldn't it say that version in device manager? It said it finished installing but it doesn't look like it did.

 

Dangit, I get stutter with Bad COmpany 2 now at 1600x900 when I didn't before. I dropped to 1280x720 and it was pretty smooth. I'd prefer to run at 1600x900 if possible. I sure hope HP releases an updated optimized driver in the near future. I don't know that installing driver over driver is always the best solution.

EDIT: Nevermind. I disabled PowerPlay thinking that would help me. It didn't. MSI Afterburner works now too and BC2 was pretty darn smooth with all medium settings, shadows low at 1600x900. I'm using DirectX 9 though, but I'm fine with that.

 

It's best to just to to CCC (display properties), select information center and you should see the driver there.

 

Hello, hello, I've been following this forum for a while now (it's like my main source of laptop information), and just had a question about this...MagusDraco says don't uninstall 10.3 first, but on the HP ENVY 14 Drivers forum it says "It is strongly recommended that you remove all previous versions of the ATI Radeon graphics driver prior to installing the newest version."

Probably a super-noobish question, but should I or should I not uninstall 10.3 if I want to update to 10.7a?

 

I just installed 10.7a and now it seems I have neither the original driver nor 10.7a. No CCC, not even recognition of a 5650 from dxdiag.

I'm going to cry.

 

you install it on top of 10.3 or else you won't keep switchable graphics.