Envy 15 (and possibly 14 and 17) - very sluggish while on battery

There's another thread about comparing the Envy 14 and the Alienware M11x. I chimed in about how an M11x I have feels way more responsive (performing any tasks other than gaming) than my Envy 15 while on battery power. I soon totally hijacked that thread so I'm starting a new thread here.

A lot of people know about this but surprisingly there's not too much complaints. What's happening is while on battery power, my Envy 15's multiplier is locked at 9x, so the CPU is stuck at running at 1.2GHz. See my screen captures running wprime. At times just opening files or scrolling in Firefox gets very sluggish, totally laggy just clicking on a URL. Perfect example, when I go to Apple.com and click on the tabs on top (Mac/iPod/iPhone etc), when I click on those tabs while on battery, it would take a second before my click registers; plug the charger in and it clicks right away. Another thing is playing MKV video files with severe dropped frames while on battery, but I worked around that using a different player that uses the video card to accelerate playback instead of the CPU.

I tried Throttlestop to no avail. It has nothing to do with Windows' power management settings as I've already tried all combination of high performance profile and locking the minimum CPU to 100%. There's one complaint so far on the Envy 17 owner's thread about this, so the Envy 14 (and other HP models) may very well be crippled the same way.

Knowing it would go nowhere, I spent an hour on the phone with HP yesterday about this. The rep refused my request to escalate this to engineering (if there's such a procedure at HP). To get me off the phone, it ended with "to preserve your battery life, ONLY run my CPU at 2.2GHz while plugged in", as if I had a choice

I'm really surprised that there are not that many complaints here about this. It was a huge deal over on the Dell Studio XPS 16 about a very similar CPU-throttling. Ironically on the Dell the CPU throttles WHILE plugged in because the 90W charger can't handle the system's power consumption. Because of the many complaints, Dell finally released a firmware upgrade ALONG with replacing the 90W chargers with a 130W unit.

A lot will argue that you can't game for long on battery anyway. Interestingly, the couple of games that I do play are not affected by the CPU being stuck at 1.2GHz. I don't care about gaming on battery. My issue is just doing regular Windows stuff gets sluggish on battery.

So, which of you Envy owners (or any other HP models) notice the sluggishness while on battery power? If so, are you able to bypass it, and how?

 

I just suggested this as a possibility in the Envy 14 Availability thread when someone brought up your earlier posts: you've mentioned that you think this is based on some locked option in the BIOS, though I don't recall you saying you'd pinpointed the option. Is it possible that there's some piece of HP management bloatware that comes preinstalled that allows you to toggle this throttling? Unless you can point to the culprit, I'm inclined to think that you're probably missing something. However, I suppose the non-response from HP, while not surprising, isn't very promising.

Incidentally, have any other Envy 15 owners mentioned this or commented on your struggles with this? You'd think someone would have spoken up sooner, though it's possible that they have in the owners' thread.

 

You might consider calling HP a few more times and asking straight off to speak to their supervisor/manager - when I was having troubles and needed Sprint tech support that's what it took (after 4 or 5 calls) to get escalated high enough to someone who could possibly help me.

 

I very highly doubt this will get fixed as it is likely by design, so there's nothing to fix.

 

No body??

Well my problem is solved. I stopped at Microcenter today to checkout an awesome deal on an openbox Macbook Pro, but then I came home with a Vaio Z What a beauty, some great engineering went into this thing, cramming all this stuff into a 3lbs chassis. First thing I did out of box, run wprime on battery. No problem. I've owned countless Dell laptops and never seen this lame method to save battery life.

 

This is absolutely critical, thank you for bringing it up. We need to let HP know this will not stand. I don't want my PC's making the decision for me when I need performance. In theory, this could be fixed with a BIOS update, but not until we complain about it..and loudly!

Does anyone else have the same problem? Is this limited to current Envy 15s with the i5? What about those with an i7? What about Envy 17s with both dual and quad cores? Can we replicate the issue? Are you willing to try a reinstall of 1) A fresh copy of Windows 7, with driver support but no HP "specialty" crapware that would affect it. 2) Linux live CD or installed? Let me suggest Mint 9 to get you up and running quickly.

If the 14 (with i7 Quad, as I plan to order it) has this issue I have no choice but to go after the Sony Z.

 

it looked like at least one person with an envy17 stopped the throttling by upping the power profile to performance

 

They had a Vaio Z at your Micro Center?

 

Yeah, 18 of them. 17 now LOL. Funny thing. I was leaving the store, walked by the front where the cheaper laptops usually are, and then there sitting at the end was this Z. I just had to have it after playing with it.

The MC here is strategically located in a town that has 3.5% sales tax, Paterson NJ. Well worth the drive for the NYC folks on a big purchase.

This thing ZIPS, everything happens right now even with the semi bloated (clean compared to HP) stock OS! At last I found my perfect laptop.

 

I sincerely hope the other Envy models don't suffer from this. In case they do, I think it will take many returns with the same reason of the return stated for them to even take notice. I briefly read, Envy 15 with i7 is stuck at 933mhz on battery!! Hop over to the Envy 14 discussion thread for the links to a thread in the Hewlett Packard (as in hp.com) forum.

 

How much and what are the specs? They don't advertise the Z online at MC. I'd need at least the i5-520m and 256GB. At Sony site, that config is like $2300! If it was even $500 cheaper I could almost swallow it. But I'd still like something at least as powerful as the HD 5650.

However one bad thing I hear about the Sony's are the SSD's. Since they are proprietary RAID configuaration, they don't support TRIM. Although you can probably do a manual garbage collection if a tool exists.

 

Honestly, I don't understand why you might think that the Envy 14 might suffer from the same problems as the Envy 15? If anything you should take a look at the Envy 17 to get an idea of the problems the Envy 14 MIGHT have. And throttling on battery doesn't seem to be one of them...

Anyway, in a few days we'll know for sure.

 

It is $$$. $1699 - i5 520m, *manually switchable* Geforce 330M 1GB/Intel HD video, 4GB RAM, 2x 64GB SSD, DVDRW, 13.1" 1600x900 screen, Intel 6200N, Bluetooth. It barely got warm on my lap running wprime. How did they do that in a 3-pound package?! This is literally my dream laptop, like the Envy 15 combined with the M11x. Easily over 5hrs on the first battery charge.

I'm not at all concerned about trim. The supposed performance degradation is negligible. These things will become obsolete long before they "wear out".

 

I said possibly. I wanted to make sure people are aware of the possibility, and make HP take action in the event it is the case. I tried to live with it for a month, but I can't stand it when it takes a second to respond when I click on a URL when on battery. If I need to be tethered to AC power, I might as well use my desktop, or buy a $300 netbook.

There was one report an Envy 17 user had this issue, never mind that he thought it was worked around by setting Windows to high performance. Should not have to do that. Never had to do that with any laptops I've ever owned.

 

Was that the SSD version? A SSD will improve responsiveness significantly. I have one in a UL30A (a snail-like SU2300), and it's very responsive and nippy at general tasks.

 

$1699? Whoa, really? Not a bad deal. I'll have to check my local Micro Center just in case the Envy 14 doesn't live up to the hype.

Edit: Here it is, yay!: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0339328

I hear the degredation can really drag it down though. I'm not so concerned about it "wearing out" as I am about performance dropping. These SSD's don't wear out any worse than an HDD. Usually there's utilities that can TRIM your SSD manually anyhow. Do it once a month or so should be fine. I'll look and see if there's something.

Vaio Z only comes with SSD.

 

From what Ive read across the HP forums, the throttling is due to the envy 15's polymer battery not being able to provide the necessary power. There's no bios update that could make it work right without causing problems.
This is a really big turn off to the envy 15
The envy 14 has a lithium ion battery. I hope this means the 14 won't have as much of a problem.