***ENVY 14 Gaming Lounge***

Thanks Magus for your reply. For some reason on 11.5a I don't have the switchable graphics settings when I right click. Did that happen to everyone? I just went from 10.8 to 11.5a though.

 

huh. I never lost it (though I went 10.6 hp --> 11.2 --> 11.5 --> 11.5a) since going from 10.6hp to anything but 11.1 or 11.2 would crash the installer and lock up my computer.

I blame my envy being older

 

I acutally went 10.6 hp to 11.5 and 11.5a and lost it.

 

huh. weird.

try starting over?

 

...so there's no way around the throttling when gaming on battery? even tried throttlestop. i wonder why no one has made a big deal out of it...

 

huh.

*checks something in portal 2, gets the same performance plugged in and not plugged in on the ending bit*


I dunno. Mine doesn't throttle.

I mean I did go and turn PCI-Express Link State Power management off, made sure powerplay was set to maximum performance on battery, made sure the cooling stuff was set to active while on battery (this is all in the power options..well minus the ati powerplay stuff..even if that's in the battery options as well with settings that aren't linked to the ones in the catalyst control center).

even noticed that I got full clocks (for the gpu at least, just kinda expected the cpu go work fine)

edit: I just changed all that stuff back to how it was beforehand though since I'd rather not cause extra drain on the battery because I'm not gonna be gaming on battery)

 

So apparently, I'm not the only one...

 

So I was trying to overclock the GPU back to the *real* stock speed of 550/800 and maybe OC the Memory Clock.
I saw some users using MSI afterburner, and read somewhere that it was the only one that supported the Envy 14. However something has changed and I can't OC at all.
Could someone with some experience with OCing this laptop post, or link me to an OC utility that works?

 

The old trick with setting EnableUnofficialOverclocking to 1 doesn't work anymore for some reason. I can't find the EnableUnofficialOverclocking string.

Instead, try Sapphire TRiXX

http://www.sapphiretech.com/ssc/TriXX/

 

How much of a boost can you expect from OCing to 550/800? i've heard this is extremely difficult on the envys and its all luck

 

550/800 is like 3-4 fps in my experience.

 

hmmm....not worth frying my GPU again

 

Hmm thanks for the input on the OC'ing. Today, before OC'ing I was playing NBA 2k11, and I just got a whole screen full of checker board colours. I guess its called artifacting. And ever since then, about half way through a full game (24min in) the computer will either exit NBA 2k11 and hibernate. Or give me the coloured checkered pattern all over the screen.
Is this the drivers problem, or could it be because of overheating or something? I've propped my Envy up so that it gets adequate ventilation and GPU-Z says the GPU core is only running at 75 C.
Anyone know what it is?

 

that is a "You oced too high alright" issue

 

Did you OC ever before this happened?

 

though that being said if it's still happening at stock clocks..well that's not good

 

Everything is stock. Now since the installation of the 11.5b hotfix found in http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...-drivers-switchable-graphics-11-4-11-5-a.html
everything is fine. Must have been a problem with the drivers. Although when playing I was getting temps of 82C. Is that normal and safe?

 

82C is normal and fine. It was probably your drivers, hope it stays fine.

 

hey guys, kind of noobish but i got a quick question
im putting in a new hdd for my envy 14 and was wondering how im supposed to install windows 7 back on it again. Is there a recovery disk im supposed to make? your help will be greatly appreciated

 

^ My bro just ordered his Envy 14, but there should be a sticker on the bottom with your CD-key, download (yes legitly) from Microsoft the W7 ISO. I am guessing Home Premium? It should say on the sticker for what OS specifically its for.

If their are no stickers, then you need to download a tool to read your current installations CD-Key, don't worry its your copy. You should save this key someplace safe for the future. Google "W7 CD key finder" something along those words.

Download Windows 7 ISO (Official 32-bit and 64-bit Direct Download Links) My Digital Life

Download the correct ISO. for example if you have a CD key for Pro, then it wont work for Home Premium, or visa versa. Once you have the ISO Burn it to a disk, DVD is needed since its ~3GB, I used IMGburn which is free to burn the image file(ISO), Pop the CD into the computer, and boot from it, IIRC HP should have by defult to boot from CD, so just pop the CD in and restart it should start reading the CD. And Install the OS. Then You need to get the drivers from HP.

And your done. This is what I am doing to my Bro's Envy once he gets it in. It wont even boot for the first time. Dban format, and reinstall the OS.

I cannot stand all the crap OEM's put on their.

 

It's better to make a recovery disk with all the drivers, it saves a lot of trouble setting up drivers and stuff

And @thescreensavers, You might want to do a minimized image recovery instead. No bloatware, but the drivers are already on there. Wifi on a clean install is troublesome to set up.

You'll probably also want/need some of the utilities HP provides. Also, if you, like others on this forum, want the Adobe software that comes with the Envy, you'll need to write down the serials before reinstalling, the minimized recovery does not include the Adobe stuff (premiere and photoshop elements)

 

what about windows 7 itself?

 

Dont need any of the HP Utilities, Just that one for the function keys, there are not that many drivers to install and all are downloaded to my flash drive already

Thanks for the info on the Adobe stuff, dont think he will need it but Ill ask.

"Wifi on a clean install is troublesome" What exactly do you mean? I did some googleing and could not find anything to do with a "Clean install"

 

It doesn't work immediately out of the install. I'm not quite sure what you need, as installing both the Intel drivers and HP's wireless assistant won't make it work. The adapter will be on and the light white, but windows won't find any networks

You need:

HP wireless assistant to fully control bluetooth
HP support thing if you ever call support (they'll ask a bunch of stuff in there)
HP's beats thingy if you want to control some aspects of your audio out. You'll also need it for HDMI audio-out
HP's graphics driver for switchable graphics on an i5
LAN drivers need the NIC to be out of deep sleep
HP's 3d driveguard thingy
All of the drivers to make the status lights work
HP quick launch

 

if someone has the time, could they write out where i can find the system recovery manager? i searched in the windows search bar and got only a program that restores the envy to a earlier time. And as for windows itself, could you help me out with that too? Im more of a hardware guy than a software guy and im going to get the momentus 7200.4 rite now. I would extremely appreciate if you guys could help me, thanks

 

You can either clone your drive with an external SATA to USB hard drive case, or make recovery disks


To make recovery disks-

Start -> All Programs -> HP -> Recovery manager -> Recovery Media Creation

 

thank you, that helped alot and then the drivers and background i should just load it on to a thumbdrive right? and also, how will i transfer the adobe photoshop software?

 

and also the beats audio software?

 

The recovery disk should make a complete backup of your drive (which might use a LOT of disks). I don't really know, however, so it's better to ask someone else that's made these recovery disks.

If you don't care about the recovery partition, then use windows' built-in backup and restore. You can use an external hard drive for that, plus it'll be a lot faster. You can restore after you reinstall windows

 

IDT High-Definition Audio Driver for Microsoft Windows 7 HP ENVY 14t-1200 CTO Beats Edition Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

^ includes "beats" software

 

@ironman43 thank you soooo much! ive been looking for like an hour for it

 

and lastly i just need a way of getting the adobe photoshop stuff, or should i just get a crack for the software?

 

well if you already reformatted you're outta luck with respect to getting your cd-keys.


(unless you wanna do a recovery disc reinstallation and do some registry searching)

so...screw it. crack it.

 

lol is the adobe stuff even worth it? I deleted on clean install (only turned computer on with the original hdd to backup windows activation). How useful is it?

 

I wouldn't know.

I have corel stuff instead (which isn't worth it)

 

there are decent and better free alternatives out there, so nothing to cry about really.

 

wow, after my clean install i oced my gpu to 525/825 and even with my crummy processor, i still got 7403 on 3dmark06! im really happy now and i really thank all of you

 

one more thing, whenever i play games, and i think this is just because of OC, sometimes the game just pauses, the screen turns a random colour and im forced to put it to sleep. After that, i wake it up and it works fine, but sometimes it does it again. Its not artifacting and its not really happened to me before when i benchmarked, so whats up with it?

 

yeah.

that's 'cause you're OCing too high

benchmarking and playing games are two different things.

you can usually benchmark up to higher OC levels than what you can game at

 

Hey, I'm thinking of buying this laptop and I have a few simple questions regarding gaming. Forgive me if some of these have been asked, since there are 219 (!) pages in this thread.

How does FIFA11 work on this laptop? And how do you think it'll do with games over the next 3-4 years(specifically the FIFA games)?
I'm not a big gamer(and this isn't a gaming laptop), but I do play FIFA and sometimes some others. I wouldn't mind playing them at a lower resolution at medium settings.

 

Hey i play fifa on this too, and its not a challenge at all, since fifa isnt much of a demanding game...remember though your going to need a xbox controller for it, since it doesn't accept keyboard controls (only for fifa though)

 

Hmm alright, can it play it on full high resolution? What about Portal 2, TF2 etc?

 

What do you mean by full high resolution?

Portal 2 gets 140 FPS for me

TF2 should run absolutely fine. It runs at 80 FPS on a 6370, so it should run at more than 100 FPS on a 5650

 

how're you getting 140 fps in portal 2?

'course I mean I"m running on "max out everything but AA"

 

OK, so I went back and took a look at where I got the FPS

I got the FPS a while ago when I was doing throttle on battery testing in the main lounge, and I got it in the elevator shaft scene. I get around 110-140 FPS there on 4xMSAA and everything else on the highest. If I go into a larger scene, I usually get anywhere from 50-100 FPS, with occasional drops.

 

must be the i7.

I get around 40-80 in general areas.

20-30 at the end and in gladdos's room (in chapter 1)

 

Or the BV

10char

 

oh

crap

that's most likely it

 

I meant on the highest graphics settings available in FIFA11.

You guys think it'll handle the next 3-4 FIFAs well?

 

Notebookcheck reports that the 5650 should run FIFA 11 at ~42 FPS on Ultra settings. I don't know how much more demanding FIFA will get in the future, so I'm just going to tell you to wait for the new Envy SB, it's supposed to come out in 2 days