***ENVY 14 Gaming Lounge***

i just got this laptop i5 460m 6gb ram 640gb 7200rpm HDD (upgrading to ssd soon!) what kind of GPU overclocking software do you guys use? what overclocks have been working best for you? thanks so much

 

how far you can OC is highly dependent on which CTO revision you have and/or how good the gpu is.

short version: I dunno. Figure it out yourself by going through small increments, etc.

My old CTO1000 can reach 550/800 (what is stock for other laptops) but that's it.


also, TRiXX works pretty well. Before using it use the latest gpu-z to see what your voltage reaches while gaming.

don't up the voltage in trixx above that or else very bad things can/will happen. Sapphire Technology - TriXX Tweak Utility

 

k im gonna kill myself....ive downloaded mafia 2 and it wont start at all, i click it and it gives me the loading circle but then the circle disappears and nothing happens

 

I have the same processor in my Envy 14, but with only 4GB Ram and the 500 GB HD. Portal 2 looks amazing (especially compared the PS3 version I initially bought which came with a voucher to get the PC version for free on Steam).

I'm running it at 1600*900 with 4*MSAA, 4*Anisotropic filtering and all of the other settings on high except for Effects on medium and it runs between 30-60 fps with very few dips. One weird thing I did notice is that when I turned off the Anisotropic and Anti-aliasing in hopes of getting a solid 60 fps it actually ran worse! I'm not sure what was going on with that.

 

Always turn off the antialiasing on the Envy 14, its a performance killer.
I am very picky with my framerate, I can feel it when it drops below 60 FPS and that affects how well I play.

 

I think you misread what he said.
He said that once if disabled AA his envy's performance actually decreased.

 

ahhh im totally noobish at ocing my gpu, can someone help me out? thanks

 

also i just ran a benchmark with just cause 2 at high/medium settings, 2x AA at 720p and my average framerate was 20fps!!!! im on high performance in the power management, can someone help me please??

 

Sorry again but i have another problem....every game that i install doesnt load up and i just get a loading circle, this is probably due to a program blocking it but im not sure can anyone please help me? id really appreciate it. thanks

 

there are 3 programs, that i know of, you can use and google will help you use them: AMD GPU Clock Tool, MSI Afterburner, and Sapphire TRIXX

try adjusting the settings, like remove AA and adjust all settings to medium

you should ensure you are using the ATI GPU (not intel). make sure power play is not acting up. or try rebooting the system (seems to fix a lot of issues). i dont know how many of these you have tried, but based on the limited info provided, this is all i can think of.

 

okay okay i got those issues solved and thanks but one more thing, everytime i try to overclock i get these weird stripes on my screen (im pretty sure that means the graphics have failed) but the worst part is i tried to only overclock it from 450-455 mhz......is there something im doing wrong? im useing sapphire trixx

 

that means your gpu hates OCing.

at all.

And/or you overvolted things by accident, I dunno.


Either way you may just not be able to OC.

 

actually, i think crysis for my laptop isnt overclocking "friendly" i ran furmark with 520/870 and it was completely stable and i played just cause 2 with 500/800 but i wasnt trying to go for the highest OC. im gonna try a few other games and see if the problem persists but IMO i just think its crysis 2

 

The weird shapes are called artifacts and are almost always a very bad sign. Games are not overclock friendly or unfriendly, they do not directly interact with your hardware. Just keep in mind that OC'ing your laptop video card is always a dangerous game.

 

Doesnt real matter, i returned my envy and am getting a new one cuz the touchpad was a little quirky on mine

 

Can someone point me in the right direction to overclock my 5650. I cant seem to find it using the search tool on this forum.

Thanks

 

there are 3 programs, that i know of, you can use and google will help you use them: AMD GPU Clock Tool, MSI Afterburner, and Sapphire TRIXX

 

depending on the CTO revision of your envy AMD GPU Clock tool 0.9.26.0 (latest version) may just lock up your computer.

the other two ought to work fine if you edit the cfg for msi afterburner (sapphire doesn't care)

 

On my e14 with i5-580 i can only use MSI afterburner (after changing one option in the config file). AMD GPU Tool would not work at all.

On the i7 i returned, I could use AMD GPU tool.
I am thinking it's because AMD GPU tool doesnt work with switchable graphics (which the i7 doesnt have)

Eventually I gave up OC'ing, I was worried it would slowly damage the GPU overtime. And to be honest, the gain was minimal and the base performance suits me for the games i play on it.

 

yeah, that's pretty much how I am with my envy.

it's not really worth it if all I can get is like 3 fps.

 

hi guys,

i vaguely recall someone posted a set of instructions for clean install of gpu drivers? (uninstall, ccleaner and stuffs)
cant seem to locate the url anymore (tried seraching but to no avail)
would appreciate if any1 can point me in e right direction

thanks

 

Hello. I'm having slowdowns on my envy 14 when playing assassins creed brotherhood on battery. have not tried another game yet. but here's what happens:

on Battery:
About a minute or two into it the game slows down to a crawl. oc does not change the behavior. Power management is on high and matches the AC settings. Enabling the ssd i5 cpu tweaks does not help. Beats audio power management are both turned off. Powerplay is off in the ati manager and in the power settings. I'm on latest drivers 11.4. I've also disabled hybrid video in bios. No change.

Zero problems on AC power. I wonder what is triggering the throttling on battery..ughh. Might reinstall windows to try it without any tweaks whatsoever. Suggestions are welcomed before i do this.

 

on battery do you use the ATI Radeon GPU or the intel GPU ?

Otherwise, check your power proifle it may be that the power profile has the CPU throttled when on battery ?

anyhow playing such a recent game on battery is a bit silly IMO, you wont get more than 30-45 mins of gaming.

 

Brink Releases in 9 hours on steam me and Magus or just me will report on Frames and playability OC'd and stock clocked

 

As i said, i disabled the hybrid capability in the bios. I'm sure it's using the ATI video.Both profiles match. My lunch break is 30min so it's fine. Guess i'll format soon and try a clean install with zero tweaks

 

It may just automatically throttle, as a hardware thing.

even with powerplay off.

otherwise try turning powerplay on then off.

other otherwise try using Sapphire TRiXX and set voltage to 0.95 (standard voltage I think though this may depend on your envy 14 so see what voltage you get in gpu-z when on AC first WHILE in game. The envy 14 will undervolt to 0.9 while not in use. Does that on mine and then maxes out at 0.95 volts while in use) and clocks to 450/800.

 

make sure to also tick the "enable background sensor monitoring in gpu-z when you watch the voltage (oh right use gpu-z to watch the voltage)

 

For what it is worth, I have noticed this as well (after doing the same/similar tweaks). It starts out great, but both Civ5 and Fallout3 start to seriously slow down/chop after just a little bit on battery, with no corresponding slowdown when plugged in.

*shrugs*

 

alrighty. seems i fixed my problem. you need to have powerplay ON and make sure its set to max performance on battery. I played for 30min with no slowdowns (other than the limitations of the gpu heh)

 

ahh. The "Powerplay is retarded but must be used" solution.

wonder if you have what I have where if you go to battery and then go back to AC adapter powerplay is stuck on "yo let's go slow since I think we're on battery" issue.

I always have to turn off powerplay altogether and then turn it back on to fix it.

 

btw.

11.5a hotfix is mobility modded finally: AMD_Catalyst_11.5a_Hotfix_8.85.6RC1_Win7_Vista_MobilityMod_May5-@asder00.7z

AMD Catalyst 11.5a Hotfix - Guru3D.com Forums

 

i havent had a chance to run a game on battery then switch to ac to see if i encounter those problems. thanks for the 11.5a link

update: looks like slowdown came back. it must be some kind of auto throttling since it does that when the fan kicks in. ill try driversweeper then install 11.5a

 

Hey everyone, I just installed BRINK, and as u all might know, I think our envy's 14 came with 2 sound cards or something like that, so Im not able to play the game with my earphones, dont know why, when the game starts only the only thing i can hear is the voice chat in the earphones, and the other gameplay sounds play in the speakers, have you guys any idea how to fix this? thank you
DARSAVIOR: your pc slows down, because the ATI uses too much energy to play the nice graphics of certain games, I have the same problem with almost all demanding games, if you want to play a good game in good graphics, must be with AC.

 

general way to fix soundcard issues: go to beats/idt audio panel.

under playback for speakers and headphones (headphone jack 1, the closest one to you) set it as default playback and communication device.
under independent headphones make sure it is deticked (shouldn't even be active)

under recording set integrated microphone array to default recording and communication device.

 

Hey guys, Well the problem that I thought was just mass effect and crysis 2 has turned out to be the majority of the games I've tried, My computer is crashing entirely, no BSOD, just vertical stripes or checkered screen stuff like that (is that artifacting?) Any ideas why it would be crashing on several completely different games that it should work on?

 

that tends to mean the gpu is dying.

which means you need to replace the motherboard.

 

I've sent it back to hp twice... what have they been doing with it then? lol

 

Has anyone tried the game Hydrophobia? I bought it through Steam but I'm having terrible performance issues. No matter how low I turn the settings and resolution, I can barely get above 20fps on my i7 Beats Edition.

 

probably not realizing there's a problem..I dunno.

HP can sometimes be bad about repairing stuff if they do not know how to recreate the issue.


sucks that you've had to send it back twice.

 

The Witcher 2 plays like poo. Trying the 11.5a mobility mod now. This was definitely my most anticipated game of the year. So it sucks that I can't play it, I'm even considering building a PC to play it if these updated drives don't make it playable.

 

some people are finding more success with the 11.4 drivers.

otherwise..yeah may have to just say "not gonna happen" or lower the resolution

 

Hey that happened to me exactly. Green vertical lines. Call hp and tell them about your problems and don't let them say it's fine. Keep insisting and don't waste time trying to do driver updates updates or anything. They changed my motherboard and the computer works amazing. Also make sure you delete all programs like over clockers and stuff, not that it was the cause, it wasn't at all, but it will give them a reason not to fix it. I can play everything, crysis, starcraft II, portal 2 at 720p with high fps. Just as long as shaders are at low, and everything else high.

 

Hey Magus what's wrong with the new 11.5 drivers? Do you have to use a hotfix? I still have the 10.8 I think

 

11.5 is working on mine.

I couldn't update directly to them.

I had to go from hp 10.6 to 11.2 to 11.5 to 11.5a


'course 11.5 (and sometimes 11.4) seem to have issues with some games. Brink hates everything but 11.3 on some amd cards and loves 11.5a on others.

I'm on 11.5 right now (not on 5a) and it seems fine for now.

I'd honestly try updating to 11.2, then to 11.4 and stop there til 11.6 since at least a couple games are iffy with 11.5

..though I think 11.4 (or was that 11.3) corrupts dvd playback (hardware gpu decoding dvd playback, something like videolan works fine still)

I mean if 10.8 works fine for the games you're playing stick there. Though 11.4 supposedly gives a nice fps jump to several cards for several newer games (5650 included). ...Not really sure what games..they just are better 11.x series drivers minus the hardware decoding mess up

 

*looks at his last post* wow that was a lot of words for "yeah I"m on 11.5. Everything seems fine but brink sucks on it. Though Brink sucks on all things ati right now.

Also I had to use 11.2 as an intermediary, just watch out for that"

 

I noticed a drop in performance going from 10.8 (last sanctioned HP drivers I believe?) and 11.5a, specifically in Heroes of Newerth. Quite ridiculous. I was at like 4x AA and everything else on high. I now have to turn AA off to stay above 30 frames.

 

I'm interested in a bit more info how the Witcher 2 runs on Envy 14, seems i cannot find any relevant information, except that it has a lot of performance issue everywhere. It is really that bad on Envy 14 even if you play with the settings a little (Low, Medium, etc)?

 

huh.

go back to 11.4 then. or try 11.3

if those still drop fps just stick with 10.8 then

 

It is unplayable in my opinion. At medium and at low settings I couldn't get much above 10 fps. I didn't bother trying any resolutions below 1024x768, because at that point the game becomes so aesthetically unappealing no amount of plot or gameplay merits can make up for it.

If there is any *potential* good news, it is that The Witcher 2 seems to be so poorly optimized that later patches or driver updates may have a marked increase in performance, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

Pretty silly to be on AC to play these games without slowdown. There must be extra bios settings to tell it to throttle down on battery and not on ac. anyone fiddled around the advanced bios settings?