***ENVY 14 Gaming Lounge***

Lately ive been getting terrible FPS drops on my envy i7. Playing starcraft2 with everything on low but sometimes i drop down to 20-30 fps for a minute or so.

Newest graphics drivers installed.

 

1 - in power options, check if you are in not in "power saver" mode, use Balance or High performance
2 - check if you are running the the ATI 5650 graphic card and NOT the Intel GPU
3 - check if your CPU or GPU is not overheating (use HWmonitor while gaming)

 

Thanks. I think the problem is overheating, HWmonitor is showing 90-92 degrees on both the CPU and GPU. I don't have and intel GPU nor am I running power saving mode.

Guess I need to check for dust inside, the problem is the screws is so darn tight and I dont have a small enough screwdriver... sucks. Will need to buy one tomorrow probably

 

yes thats pretty hot, I get no higher than 65-67C when gaming, but I use 85% Max CPU.

You can try one of those compressed air cans to blow dust away. But checking if the fans are working is also an important step.

 

An Update

So I Dban the HD, took long time (750gb) reinstalled Home Premium, installed the Intel wifi driver(from intels site) and Wifi worked.

Everything went smoothly.

 

On Furmark for 30 min

GPU hit 73C

Envy 14
i7

 

Just to give you an update, I bought a small screwdriver today to be able to disassemble my envy. At a first glance it didnt seem to be much dust at all. But I carefully blew it away and now everything works wonderfully again!

After some gaming both the GPU and CPU is stable at about 78 degrees. Its much more quiet too Thanks for the tip!

 

glad it could help, now it makes me realise that I haven't done it to mine since I got it in February
Ill do that tonight.

 

Hey, anyone tried any notebook coolers on the envy? I was looking at the coolermaster sf-19, but it seems kind of overkill and a little bit expensive, but it offers really good cooling. I also looked at the coolermaster notepal ergostand but im wondering if it offers enough cooling.

 

I have the notepal u2 and it fits the envy perfectly. Fry's usually has a "buy 1 notepal u2 get a 100% mail-in rebate" for any large events (e.g. black friday) if you live in the US.

Any which way, a notebook cooler will only decrease temps by less than 5C

 

allright, sounds good...its just that where the envy's heat exhaust is, it gets pretty toasty and i dont want my laptop to get too hot.

 

So I did a fresh install of Windows 7 today, and now I'm trying to set up overclocking profiles for my Envy 14. I just edit the afterburner cfg file, correct? I said the two things to "1" that are related to overclocking and no dice. Fyi I had overclocked the 5650 prior to the reinstall. Also, whenever I try to update my drivers to the latest on AMD's site my laptop crashes and blue screens during installation. Not sure if these two problems are related, but I assume so.

 

Read the last page of the owner's lounge for the OC fix. Try to uninstall the drivers, then install the HP drivers then install ATI

 

Hmm, I checked the last page of all three owner's lounge thread's and am not finding anything about overclocking. Would you mind providing a link? Thank you!

 

Oops, i meant this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-envy-hdx/587044-envy-14-gpu-overclock.html

 

Got it working. Thank you!

 

Okay so now that I have overclocking working again, I've run into another issue. For some reason my card now runs significantly hotter at the same settings post-reinstall of Windows 7 than it did pre-reinstall. Any reason for this? I'm running the most recent AMD drivers. Should I maybe get a can of compressed air for some cleaning?

 

It never hurts to clean out the heatsinks and fans.

How much hotter is the card getting?

 

I never thanked you for recommending uninstalling the GPU and then reinstalling the HP and AMD drivers, it worked perfectly.


Anyways before at full load it would rarely exceed 78 or 79, now it consistently runs at 85-88.

 

Hey, so as some of you know i recently did a fresh install on my envy, but I dont know why, i can't seem to download the drivers for my ati card, and everytime i do it says i dont have a compatible card....Also, i was thinking of getting an external monitor and hook it up to my laptop, and so i could have the big monitor as a primary where i could do my work/gaming, and have my laptop screen as a facebook/ internet page screen...and so i was wondering if i could play games and have my internet browsers open with 6gb of memory, is it enough? or should i just spend 30 bucks to upgrade to 8gb?

Your help is appreciated

 

Try uninstalling your current drivers, installing HP's drivers off of their site, then installing the latest ones (11.6) found here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...-drivers-switchable-graphics-11-4-11-5-a.html

I'm not sure how well your games would work with 2 screens. An FPS would capture the mouse... 6GB of ram is enough if you're playing most games.

 

as an aside.

I still have big issues going from HP's drivers to 11.x drivers initially.

good 'ole insta-reboot part way through.

11.2 is the only one that works fine.

'course once you're on some 11.x drivers it no longer matters and I can go to any of them without issue.

I blame the fact that the 1000 series envy is finicky as ****

 

Thanks @eafd, it now works fine

 

Can anyone recommend a good SSD size? ive been thinking of getting one for a long time and there have recently been sales on them so prices or dropping...but im not sure if i should 1. get it at all and 2. get a smaller, probably 80gb or go all out with a 120gb ssd. Also, should i replace my cd dvd drive with a caddy and have 2 drives? or should i just get an external case for my current drive? Im pretty low on cash and i dont want to spend TOO much on my setup but i would REALLY like to get an ssd in my laptop.

 

It really depends on what you plan to do with it.
documents, pictures? for these small SSD is good (like 60-80 gb)
maybe videos? 256 gb SSD are pricy and still too small for serious video storage
Will you be gaming a lot? games take a lot of space, most serious games nowadays need 5 to 10 gb of space. That makes small SSDs rather useless for that purpose.
Will you be using applications that require a lot of disk access like video editing ? when reading/wrting intensively SSDs will wear out faster than regular HDD, thats something to consider.

 

It's generally a good idea to stick your current HDD in a caddy if youre going to get an SSD. An external is kind of troublesome sometimes (easy to drop especially).

 

well obviously i plan to have windows on it, have a couple documents, all my important software and maybe a game or two and then have my current 500gb hard drive for movies, other games, and everything else

 

+1. i lost one of my external HDDs to a fall. one of the read/write heads broke off.

 

Unfortunately i live in canada so i havent seen any caddys around, has anyone seen any that ship to canada?

 

Im getting a 160gb ssd btw so i think i might just get an external drive case since ive heard several problems with hdd caddys

 

Hi, I've read through most of this thread but sorry if I missed anything.
I'm not getting the performance I would expect, 20-30 fps on TF2 on low settings. I seem to remember it being much better so I started looking for the cause of the problem.
By using GPU-Z and playClaw I can see my GPU utilisation sits at 0, (for the discreet card). I have tripple checked and I am on the high performance GPU setting in CCC.
I have previously seen warnings about the power supply coming from the power brick not being enough for fully charging (or something). But that message has not been displayed for months and I thought nothing of it.
I have also tried fiddling with the powerplay settings, and the core and memory speeds etc are all fine.
Could the power brick still be the problem? Do I need a new one, or should I try updating drivers first?
I am off to the USA for a month in 2 weeks so need to order a new brick soon if this is the issue.
Thanks,

 

yeah

the powerbrick is most likely the issue

if utilization is down at 0% while plugged in (but you've done all the other things like making sure you're on the radeon, seen that the sensors for core and memory speed are 450/800 while in game and all that stuff) then it's most definitely the power brick. You need a 90 watt power brick for the envy 14 (at least for the i5 version, think it's the same for the i7 but it may depend)

 

I haven't changed anything driver-wise in months, and games have been overheating my gpu (and crashing the computer) unless I underclock to 425 or lower. Do you guys think I should risk sending mine in to get a new motherboard?

 

have you opened the back and de-dusted your vents and fans with compressed air ?

 

So, new powerbrick in place. disappointingly, no difference. 0% GPU load, clocks at 450/800 and TF2 is chugging along slowly.
Strangely Left 4 Dead 2, achieves a pretty steady 50-60 fps on reasonably high settings but the GPU load still sits at 0%?!
The GPU temp does go up when in game so maybe the sensor reading is wrong, but then why would TF2 struggle so much more than L4D2.
Halp?

 

So I removed all the drivers, ran CCleaner and Driver Sweeper rebooted and reinstalled the default HP from the SWSetup folder and the utilisation is up from 0 to 60-70 as expected. My FPS have increased etc.
Seems it was a driver issue, mark this one as solved, I"m sticking with HP default for now.

 

ow.

that sucks that the drivers got corrupted.

I'd still attempt to get back to 11.6 eventually (but start with 11.2 I cannot stress this enough because otherwise it will go and auto reboot while attempting to install 11.3 or 11.4 or 11.5 or 11.6

it does that for me and I'm on a 1000 series Envy 14 as well)

 

No, thanks for reminding me. I just did my server and desktop last week and missed doing my envy.

EDIT: What benefits do the newer drivers have? I'm on the newest one from HP's driver site, never tried installing a newer version of CCC after doing so made me lose the dedicated GPU for a while.

 

Better performance in games.

There shouldn't be any driver issues with 11.6

 

Any1 know what our envy 14's can do in F.E.A.R. 3? Dont wanna invest 50$ if it's gonna be slow as hell.

 

according to this :
F.E.A.R. 3 System Requirements and F.E.A.R. 3 Requirements for PC Games

it should be ok ...

These specs are significantly lower than Metro 2033 which really lags my envy 14.

 

hey does anyone play the game "City of Heroes" on their HP envy? My 5650 driver stops responding and the computer restarts itself when i play.. =/

 

Wow, Witcher 2 is unplayable on this laptop. I am very disappointed.

 

Anyone know where i could find a radiance display that ships to canada

 

like UNPLAYABLE in low? Im planning to get it on steam, I dont care if i have to play it on low, wich settings did u use?

*******

and other think, I used recovery manager to reinstall everything to Factory Condition, and now everytime I play a game like L4D of BFBC2 after like 1 hour the screen just shuts down and I hear the "USB 'turu' unplugging sound', might be because of the drivers, or its my card ???

 

the one at the ncix site has radiance. its the 1050ca model i believe. and even better, sometimes the price goes down to $699 or lower.

 

Sorry but i meant just the radiance display

 

just got my laptop today. when I tried playing CS:source im getting 20FPS max. any idea?

 

Have you changed to the ATi graphics card?

 

Theres no way that should be happening, i get over 30 fps while on battery on the intel gpu on powersaver, but make sure you have your envy on high performance on the amd gpu andyou should be fine