***ENVY 14 Gaming Lounge***

Here you go.

 

Could you comment on its brightness in terms of sunlight/outdoor visibility?

 

It's usable under nearly all conditions. It does get just a little faded when it's mid-day, but I live in the tropics so it really gets quite bright. I've never used it directly under the sun, but I don't imagine you'd be able to see much. Maximum brightness will actually get a little blinding sometimes, even under room lighting.

 

is it weird that i was able to overclock my GPU to 585/925 with perfect stability?i mean temps didnt even go over 75 :S i was even able to get it to 585/975 with a slight artifact every 5 min or so... but i found 585/925 to be the best performance/cooling/stability compromise. is this possible? lol

 

What are you using to overclock your GPU? It could be that you got a good chip.

 

im using msi afterburner

 

I ran Ultra on Sc2 1v1 and it seemed to work fine. I noticed people saying running it on high lags the game or is that 2v2, 3v3's?

 

Only got 62% on my GPU test to run Black Ops. not to mention it is underclocked and I have the 1600x900 screen I regret not getting the envy 15 now for the better gpu.

 

Strange that any GPU benchmark site I go to says that the 5650 can't run anything.

I bought Just Cause 2 because I had seen a benchmark video on Youtube with the 5650, and out of curiosity I checked it against the site, it said I failed the GPU test.
I run Just Cause 2 at pretty high settings with a solid 30-35 FPS without overclocking.

Is there any reliable site I can check that has a list for the 5650? I really want to buy Crysis but I don't want to cough up the money for something that won't run.

Edit: Is it possible that those benchmark sites are reading my laptop as the Intel chip? Whenever I'm at home my PC is plugged in and running off of the ATI card. So I don't understand why it would.

 

yes it's possible they are seeing the intel chip instead.


5650 will run most current stuff at medium, some currenter stuff at low (metro2033, games you try to run at dx11 and well yeah...dun do dx11 mode), and older things at usually medium-high to high.

as for crysis.

*shrugs* not sure what it'll run at. it may go under the metro2033 clause (but I think people have gotten it to run at medium-high...dunno, check youtube or just google the card and the internet)

 

I had the same issue while playing sc2. i was getting a bunch of artifacts and streaks of light all over the place. what seemed to have solved my problem was a complete reinstall of the ati drivers. heres what i did:


-First uninstall all the ATI programs and drivers

-Download and install Driver Sweeper found here.

-Reboot into Safe Mode and run Driver Sweeper.

-Remove everything in the ATI tab.

-Reboot out of safe mode

-Install the latest ATI drivers here.

 

I reinstalled my drivers and I'm also getting the sc2 laser show. IMO I think it's the drivers.

 

just did 3DMark06 oced at 580/910 and got 8049

 

This is weird... TF2 runs very well on my machine almost stock...

 

i probably should have elaborated. everything ran fine stock. i was even able to play through some of the challenges on ultra settings.

the artifacting and laser show did not start appearing until i updated the video drivers. i installed the new drivers over the old without a complete uninstall and apparently that is what caused my problems.

 

Well I got black ops. I can have the res at 1600x900 with the rest of the settings on low but sometimes the frames drop down into the low 30s which isn't too bad but I put my res down to 1280x768 and cranked up the texture quality to high which still looks good and I'm getting between high 50s to low 40s which is very playable by my standards.

 

was expecting black ops to be able to be playable at medium settings at 1600x900, anyone know if its runnable at that ? (im ok with 30ish fps - used to consoles..) was hoping to pick it up on pc rather than 360

 

black ops is broken its bad coding and they need to patch it once the patch comes out then it should be playable at High @ 1600 x 900

 

yeah. that's what's been going around the web.


it'll get patched (hopefully)

 

Will our laptops be able to handle Crysis 2?

 

Im having mouse issues with Black Ops and my Envy.

Right and left click dont register often or they get stuck. Ive tried with multiple mice and the trackpad buttons.

 

I wouldnt test anything with Black Ops at this point. Everything about the game on PC seems to be buggy at this point.

 

my friends envy 14 gets about 40ish frames no aa or af but shadows on.

 

which settings are better (as in look better)? 1600x900 resolution, AA off, sync every frame off, Anisotropic filtering off, shadows on and texture quality on low OR 1280x768 resolution, AA x2/x4, sync every frame on, anisotropic filtering on low, shadows on and texture quality on medium-high?
EDIT: This is on black ops by the way

 

well it probably looks better with the second round of settings.

higher resolution is just to make that slight fuzziness or whatever that you get around the text at lower resolutions go away (among other things)


but after like 20 minutes at the lower resolution you don't really notice it much anymore

 

for some reason my GPU clock is staying at 373MHz when I have the laptop plugged in. I turned off power play and it still is at 373 mhz. I just downloaded GPU Z and it says that the intel graphics are still on even when the dedicated GPU is turned on thru the switchable graphics. I need help! =)

 

well.

gpu-z has a thing you can use to pick which card you're using.

it doesn't auto-swap. it's a dropdown thing near the bottom of the program's window

 

I've owned my Envy 14 for well over a month now and I'm very pleased with everything from the design to the performance, no complaints here. I customized mine, tried not to break the bank, and went with:

Intel Core i5-520 @ 2.40GHz
4GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 1GB HD 5650

My question is how well will this configuration handle World of Warcraft and the upcoming expansion? In addition, I just got this monitor from Dell for my desktop PC - would my Envy be able to handle this monitor @ 1920x1080 for gaming, etc.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

 

For WoW it'll be fine. However the card will have a little trouble with more demanding games like BF:BC2 and such on a 1920x1080 screen. Playable, just not at full graphics.

 

Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it.

The only game I'm really going to be playing here and there is WoW (the expansion, obviously), I figured it shouldn't have an issue really. Any ideas on where abouts my FPS should be?

Also, is investing in a notebook cooler worth it?

 

eh.

envy 14 runs pretty cool imo.

hottest it's gotten for me is in the low 80s for processor and upper 70s for gpu.

both of those have a max range of 100c (so yes things are well within range)

and well, the heat is kept mainly in spots you won't put your hands while playing a game (top right corner, top mid just to the right of the power bar, ya know, where the vents are).


finally fps wise will depend on your settings. I know for 1600x900 with everything high/maxed but shadows people get 60ish. that probably won't drop too much with 1920x1080 (it'll drop a little)

but you could always lower a setting a bit or something.

also this was probably for wrath (not cataclysm) but I don't expect too much of a difference beyond say the water screwing with things some.

but eh, probably won't be too big of a deal again (it's not like this is some crazy demanding gam...well crazy demanding game unless there's like 600 people in the same place and the server is starting to crash)

 

Overclocked mine to 550/850 no problem. Not even that great of a heat increase. Doesnt even hit 70C.

 

Hey,

So i have the Envy 14, and am having trouble playing SC2. I keep getting artifacts, they are really annoying. I did a drivercleaner and removed all old ATI drivers and updated to the newest driver on the HP site, it says im running catalyst 10.10.

Is there any fix for these artifcacts?

Running Windows 7 - 64 Premium, clean install.

I believe there was an update in Catalyst 10.10c specifically for SC2... i tried several drivers including the official 10.10c mobility and DNA-ATI one, doing the f8 bootup for unsigned drivers, still without any success, getting the usual "black screen." Had to reboot to safe mode, run drivercleaner, and then go back to the HP 10.10

I would like to play SC2 without any artifacts, is there any way to fix this?

Thanks.

 

Thanks for replies. Anyone here play World of Warcraft on their Envy 14 with similiar specs - what are your results like? Any issues?

 

@ atomicmonkey

Try disabling the ati graphics and running starcraft 2. I know it's gonna be really choppy, but could you check if there are any artifacts with the integrated graphics on?

My guess is it's some sort of hardware issue, such as a faulty gpu.

 

I guess i was trying to ask if anyone else has artifacts in SC2, or is it just me? Because i figured it was a driver issue.

By running SC2 w/ the onboard Intel Video GPU, i will not only use different hardware, but i will also be using a different driver that is associated w/ the intel GPU. I think the problem is w/ the driver of the radeon hd 5650, rather than the hardware.

So it would be helpful if any other owners of the envy 14 have had experience w/ this!

 

I am going to try a few few more games on my Comp and report back if i have artifacts in those games awell.

yea, I suppose you're right.

I don't get any artifacts at all when I run SC2. What kind of artifacts are you seeing?

In the part of the maps where i havnt yet explored, there are these black flashing artifacts. It is more noticable when i scroll around the map.

 

Hey, so i tried playing MOH and my screen was covered in flashing black lines and white things on the mountains. Seems like i have a faulty video card, i'm going to try an older driver from the HP site, maybe something intersting will happen. In either case, i will be giving a call to HP.

 

Has anyone tried the new NFS yet?

 

do we know the reason why the graphics card is under volted and clocked? I was thinking maybe they put in a dogdey, cheap motherboard that couldn't handle the gpu so they underclocked it? Or is it because of heat or battery life?

 

Nice, have you got the i7 processor? And did you by any chance increase the voltage somehow?

 

it's probably because of keeping costs down and heat/battery life.

I mean it's undervolted/underclocked in the same way that a sony vaio is so...*shrugs* maybe they just went with the sony route.

 

The voltage varies from 0.90V to 1.00V depending on usage and clock. At least that's how it is on my i7 anyway.

 

i5 processor and I havent upped the voltage. I might if I wanted to push it more. Gota play around with Afterburner more.

 

Hi

I just downloaded this from the UK site:

» AMD and Intel Graphics Drivers for Microsoft Windows 7
2010-06-18 , Version:8.713.0.0, 196.27M

Is there a newer release?.

 

yes.

AMD and Intel Graphics Drivers for Microsoft Windows 7 HP ENVY 14t-1100 CTO Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

 

I don't think you can increase the voltage in msi but if you find a way please inform me. And is it true that the 5650 can have a voltage of up to 1.4V?

 

Cross post from owners lounge:

I just got NFS: Hot pursuit, and it runs great on 1600 x 900... with one caveat

I think it might be a little too intensive, because twice now the computer has crashed from what I could only imagine as overheating

The first time, the screen went grey and the second time it just displayed random color patterns.

I turned it (back) on and hwmonitor said that it was ~75 on startup, so I'm assuming it was overheating

I'm in a dorm right now that's being heated, so the ambient temperature isn't helping either, but is there anything else that could possibly be done to avoid this?

 

From what I understand, ~75 is not very high at all and I think it would take a lot for the graphics card to over heat. I could be wrong but that's my understanding.

 

Hi im 14 and im on the market for a new laptop. My preferences are 15 inches or less thing notebooks. i dont care about weight...infact i much more prefer a bit of weight as it is a sign of good build quality. im upgrading from a dell inspiron 1545 (aka spiron) and was looking for some metal notebooks. i need a notebook that will game for me when i need it to game for example hooked up to a big screen tv and have a decent battery life 5 hours minimum when i need it to do regular stuff like check email and such. my inspiron has a maximum battery life of about 1 hour so i really need a good battery life when i go to high school. 2 computer models have caught my attention. firstly the hp envy 14 beats edition that i would order with

-i7 640m (special order on ebay)
-ATI HD 5650
-Normal Res screen (option on ebay is 300 dollars which is too high plus i saw the 720p screen at bestbuy and it looked very nice
-4gb of RAM
-500gb HDD

And also an Alienware M11x featuring

-i7 640UM
-Nvidia GT335M
-720p screen
-4gb of RAM
-500gb HDD

QUESTIONS

I have also looked at the envy 15 but they have stopped producing these and they have bad heat issues and i could feel a difference between the heat on the envy 15 which was very warm vs the envy 14 which was completely cool to touch. I also was wondering if there was such a thing as software based GMA? an i7 720 inside the envy 14 would be superb but the battery life and heat given off on my lap or at school would be large. Also is it possible to fit dual 1.8 ssds in the Envy 14? i noticed you can in the envy 15 and if this was possible in the envy 14 that would be incredible. is there any way to switch out the underclocked 5650 in the envy 14 to a normal clocked 5650?

UPGRADES

these are the upgrades i would later on do on both the alienware and the envy

-upgrade memory to 8gb
-upgrade hdd to 120gb force ssd or 160gb intel ssd
-apply coollabratory liquid ultra on the cpu and gpu

PERFORMANCE

i read on engadget that the performance of a i5 450m envy equals to around 6900 on 3dmark06 while the alienware m11x gets around 6100 NOT OVERCLOCKED. overclocked i saw the alienware get up to 7700. this is much better then the envy 14 and the gpu must be superb since the processor is the weakest link. this made me think a little about the envy 14 since overclocking seems to be nonexistent. has anyone got better results with the envy 14 in 3dmark06?

BATTERY LIFE

i want to let everyone know...i want performance and battery life seperately i do not at all need performance on battery life. i want to plug my laptop in to my big hd screen and play some games. while also having enough battery life to perform basic tasks such as surf the net or work on documents. battery life seems to be equal when both laptops use dedicated or built in graphics.

OTHER OPTIONS

if anyone has any suggestions i will consider them but i will not consider anything plastic. would it be better to just get some sort of gaming notebook and a netbook? im not a fan of this idea because all my files would be on different computers.

CONCLUSION

please get back to me as soon as possible and im buying this laptop with my own money so dont call me spoiled