Envy 15 2nd Gen Benchmarks

With Crysis Warhead I played with the FPS on. I was getting between 15 and 35 FPS with everything maxed out. I ended up switching to "gamer" on 1920x1080 and I get about 25 FPS average with the more complicated maps. Still quite playable in my opinion. I have the game set to delta so there is plenty of action. If I were doing online play i'd drop it down to "mainstream" probably just so I could pull 40-50 FPS. It also uses up about 2 gb of ram when I am playing.

 

Wow... Ur saying crysis at 1080p "maxxed" as in everything ultra dx10 WITH AA on? That setup brings gtx285 tri-sli and radeon 5870 xfire to its knees with 30fps averages. Those sytems are pushing 35000+ 3dmark06 scores too. I just don't see how its possible, but I guess ill have to try it to really find out.

If u go on youtube there are mannny people trying to max out crysis and warhead with a lot of high end machines and many are failing down in the 5-20fps range...

 

sucks for them. My 8gb memory timings are 6-6-6-18 @ 1066MHz and I do have the 8MB L3 cache which is pretty handy. not sure why ppl keep bringing up gtx cards....but whatever, my apple is better than your orange. you have my data, enjoy.

 

Oh well, Crysis is a crappy benchmark really as the (three?) year old game is still unable to run at maximum settings with the best hardware available today. Perhaps the insufficiency of the engine itself is the problem!

 

It depends on the video itself. If it's not a DXVA compatible video file, it won't use the GPU, which will drain on the CPU to decode it instead. I could see that killing the battery life.

 

Interesting. Do you have any idea of what combination of of video file format and playback software might use the least amount of energy?

I have not loaded itunes or any media library yet but on other notebooks I have used it seemed to playback video a little more efficiently than WMP.

Another thing that may impact this is how the envy 'throttles' when on battery. By default , when the plug is pulled, we get the CPU locked in LFM (9x or 1.2ghz on the 540m) while the 5830 gets set to a base of 99 Core / 199 Mem and can ramp up to a max of 299/299 (CCC power play on). I played around with the AMD clock tool and found that WMP seems stable playing back video with the GPU locked as low as 60/120. It would be interesting to find a way to measure power draw on the GPU vs. CPU.

FYI; you can disable CCC power play and get full speeds from the GPU while on battery. I ran 3Dmark06 with the 9x CPU and power play on/off with scores of 3466 and 6214 respectively.

 

Here is what i found out about power throttle.

on 65w original HP travel AC
i7 720QM stuck at 7x multi. AC is still able to charge the battery, ~3-4 hours for a full charge from empty

on 90w original HP dv6t AC
i7 720QM stuck at 11x multi. AC is able to charge the battery, ~2-3 hours for a full charge.

on 120w original HP envy 15 AC
i7 720QM multi unlocked. AC is able to charge the battery, ~2-3 hours for a full charge (depend on the usage.)

Battery Life for i7 720QM/8GB DDR3 RAM/320GB HDD/80% backlight/70% headphone volume/Wifi off/Bluetooth off/Mouse track pad off
Street Fighter 4 running at 1080p with medium/high setting 40-61 FPS
The 6 Cell battery last about 70 minutes (from 100% to 8%)
362mb MKV movie (~30 minutes run time) running at 1080p loop with windows media player 12
The 6 Cell battery last about 95 minutes (from 100% to 8%)

 

Here is some evidence of what can happen to a SSD hard drive when the TRIM command is not active:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5853937&postcount=3469

It correctable with the toolbox, but avoidable with TRIM.

 

MPEG2 or DivX would probably use the least energy. But they'd use a fair bit of disk space. Running any DXVA HD video (VC1 or H.264) will crank the GPU up to the max clocks. So really your choice is to either watch HD video, or get better power savings. We can't access the integrated GPU in any way that I'm aware of, so can't even use that as the video accelerator. Not sure how I'd test... maybe just battery life while looping an h.264 copy of a movie, and do the same looping a DivX copy or something?

 

Well i just ran the itunes 'HD' version of Star Trek in itunes and it played for 1:45. This was with the same power plan and CCC setting that I got 2:18 of playback in WMP with the 'digital copy' version of Start Trek that came with the bluray disc. Quite a difference in run time.

For reference the itunes version was H.264 and according to the 'info' i'ts a 3.95GB file and 1280 x 530 resolution, how is that considered HD? although it looked very good onscreen. I'm not sure of the details of the 'digital copy' version since it was erased when I unRAIDed my drives. I guess I'll have to reload that version to see what the details are, unless someone can check the specs for a 'digital copy' they may have on their system (no specs on the disc).

Another trick I used on my old Dell 1705 w/HDD to gain video playback time was to save video in .wmv to an SD card and play directly from the card, this would add about 25min of playback time. Can't imagine that would make much difference now that I have SSD's, but it would save space and read write cycles....

 

It's HD because it's 1280x720 (720p), but in the 2.35:1 film aspect ratio (1280/530 = 2.42). Standard def is 720x480 as widescreen. Basically, anything larger is HD. It probably won't save you any battery with your machine.

 

hi again, question about the 1080p screen. is there any nasty effect when playing games below native resolution? Let's say I were to play crysis at 1300x700 on the standard screen and on the full HD one...how much different would it look?

 

I haven't noticed any issues. It's quite good scaling, just make sure you try to keep the right aspect ratio. 1280x720 would be a good resolution to use.

 

Is there anyway to make a fresh windows 7 install? without going pirate
All I can see is the recovery which also installs all the ty programs

 

1f 1920 is to taxing, then 1440x900 looks best to me personally. 1280 is fairly blurry.

 

Edit: Oops, meant to post this on the 2nd gen owners lounge. Sorry.

Heres the link if you want to read HP's confirmation that the i5 versions of the envy will work without throttling on the HP 90W adapter;

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5871484&postcount=1872

 

...................

 

Okay. I just received, my i7 620M. I will post SS and Pic later on this weekend with benchmark scores.

FYI. I have returned my super overclocked Envy 15 i7 720QM (600/1100 stabled machine)
The current one I have can't even get 540/1100 stable... sigh... might be the new 10.1 none supported driver problem.

driver 10.1 3Dmark2006 at default scored a 8006.
i7 720QM 8GB 1066 DDR3/320HDD/ATI 5830 @ 500/800

 

I wouldn't pass judgment or give up hope until at least the 10.2's come out. Noticed a lot of ppl at Guru3d and overclockers forums having issues or problems with getting the 10.1's to work right. Took me 2 tries at installing the 10.1's on my desktop system to get them installed and working right and then only after using driver sweeper in safe mode. Also have you tried to modify and use either of the 10.1 hotfix drivers? I know there supposed to address some issues with 5800 cards.

One thing I noticed in you sig about the fingerprint deal and sort of recall an earlier post about someone being told they were getting one to make up for some other issue. Was that you and have you actually been able to confirm this? I was thinking maybe they had some external USB device they were going to send but I couldn't locate anything like that in the HP Store

 

no idea. ATM I'm using the HP mistake shipped envy 15. I ordered the laptop by accident, and told the CSR to cancel it. They were able to cancel the order, and refund my money, but for some weird reason, the laptop still shipped to me last week. Shurg... I contacted the CSR manager about this, and they are still trying to find what went wrong on their end. So for the time been, I'm playing around with this laptop, until they send me a return label to ship it back to.

I should be receiving my correct new Envy 15 probably this weekend, or Tuesday the latest. They send me an email earlier last week about missing parts for the webcam, and replace mine with some other stuff?

" HXXXXXXXXXXXX URGENT: Regarding your recent PC purchase

Dear XXXXXXXXX,

Thank you for purchasing an HP notebook computer. We would like to inform you that the webcam option you had selected has unfortunately become unavailable. So we have upgraded your order to include both a webcam and finger print reader at no additional cost to you.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and feel free to contact 1-866-217-6014 if you require further assistance. Thank you again for selecting HP as your product of choice.

Sincerely,
Customer Service"

I take this as a probably mistake email from HP part, but if it is true... then all the better.

As for the driver, I will probably change it back to the standard driver, and test the system with it.

 

Sorry wrong thread....

 

Don't get your hopes up that it is the driver causing the bad overclocks. I can't get past 520/1100. I've tried the out of the box HP drivers, 9.11 from strags, and modded 10.1.

 

Hope my replacement envy has a least as good a chip on it as my last one. The one I sent back did 540/1001 no prob, but I never actually tried o go higher so not sure what it was capable of to be honest.

 

Stupid question, but when does the turbo boost kick in? And is it possible to manually set it to always turbo boost?
Tried to stress the machine with some games, but no change in frequency :S

 

hopefully there will be a bios update to deal with the multiplier issue, or throttlestop fix. My 820qm jumps into turbo mode at seemingly random intervals when i'm doing cpu-intensive stuff.

 

hmm...a phylosophy I've been learning with pcs is "don't fix it unless it's broken".
"fixing" in this case being doing a clean install of win 7. how much of a difference would that yield in system responsiveness compared to simply opening up the control panel and uninstalling every hp-branded program?
that way I wouldn't risk having driver reinstall issues.

 

you are looking at ~5% increase in performance max when you fresh install.
It will decrease even further as memory increase. ie. if you have 4GB of DDR3 Ram, You will see ~5%, while 8GB of DDR Ram will be alot less, maybe ~2% tops.

FYI: my est ~5% is just a EST. meaning, you will probably not going to notice the performance drop/increase. just like how 1066 DDR3 Ram vs 1333 DDR3 Ram. the difference is about ~5% on paper, but in real world application you will not notice any performance difference.

Unless you are doing extreme overclocking, to see the maximum performance for the pc, there is absolutely no need for ANYONE to waste 2-3 hours reinstalling windows/drivers, and programs.

 

in my dual ssd setup in did a clean install of windows 7, mainly to rid myself of all of the hp junk that I have no need for. it took maybe an hour to do all of this (reinstall + install drivers). compare that to the process of uninstalling via revo all of the crap, and there's not much of a difference, not to mention you even admitted the performance increase...

 

Well, Most of the increase in performance will be the RAM, and hence the reason why the more RAM you have, the less the impact. HP usually loads up about 5-10 their programs when the windows starts. ie OSD, Media player, etc. By uninstalling those program via Fresh install or revo, you are only removing those programs from loading on to the system ram, thus the speed increase.

the performance hit is only at the windows starting or some other minor application's loading process. ie. instead of taking 40 secs for windows to fully load up to it takes 42 secs. Is the extra 2 secs noticeable? I can tell you this right now: NO, 80-90% the user will not notice the 2 secs impact.

It is only that those Computer Mag's - hint* PC world, Yes I'm looking at you!!. made it sounds like "OMG, Computer manufactures put in extra programs purposely to slow the new pc down." thus, cause the popular misconception.

 

I didn't know the HP Envy 15 has the option for Finger Print...I wonder if this is an indication of a refresh to Envy 15 chassis to meet up with the new 2nd gen Envy 15.

 

ok, but what's the difference between manually removing the programs one by one and reinstalling? is there "hidden" bloatware? I ask this because I'd much rather spend half an hour more on the control panel and not risk ending up with something like the audio volume driver not working properly...

 

for me it's less of a hastle to just format and totally be in control of what is installed on my machine. considering it took an hour or less do to this (installing windows + all programs), it really wasn't that big of a deal. i also never had an issue installing drivers.

 

Okay.. I gave up on my mistake/free Envy 15 i7 720QM. This system can't OC for ... MAX GPU oc right now is 510/950 and still crashes 30% of the time, compare to the old bad hdd one 600/1100 stable.

going to wait for my new envy 15 to be delivered later today to do further testing.

 

wow, can't believe you had to give up on your old one, your new gpu makes me glad mine can hit 520/1100

 

But can it stay stable at those clocks?

I did 550/1000 but the GPU crashes after 1 hour of crysis gameplay. If you are telling me that you can overclock the memory 300Mhz more without any side effects you are either living in Antarctica or I dont know.

 

Here is my new run with the 8.700 driver. My Vantage score went from P4528 to P4838.

3DMark Vantage Score: P4838
GPU: @Stock clocks
GPU Driver: 8.700
CPU: Core i5 520M

 

Hope your new ones better. I'm almost dreading receiving my replacement but going to keep my fingers, and toes, crossed. At what the Envy costs the odd/weird noises the first one made just concerned me too much not to take a chance. I've really never had an ATI/AMD graphics chip that didn't do a decent OC so gonna try and keep the faith, so to speak.

Out of curiosity has anyone else noticed how it seems that selecting 2 day shipping seems to always guarantee 5 days or longer in actual ship time? My one that shipped normal showed up in 3 days and the one HP expedited to 2 day method was shipped out on the 10th but won't arrive until the 15th

 

I am having problems installing a fresh windows 7 copy with the external DVD, it complains about cd/dvd drivers, I guess it is for the optical drive.
Anyone got any idea what this is about?

 

Which port are you connecting the drive to? IIRC to use USB, and prolly the DVD as well, you need to use the combo eSATA/USB port as its the only one that does USB 2. The other 2 ports would need you to provide/install a driver because their USB 3.0.

If you have a spare USB Thumb drive you can put the Win7 install on it and then, again using the combo port install from it. I find USB thumb installs go much faster than DVD anyway. The only problem I have is I have yet to find out if there is a function key you can hit at boot up to get the system to boot from the flash or if the only way is to change boot order in the bios. Anyway here is an easy guide to creating a USB Thumb install of Win7 and once you make it you can, if there is enough room on the drive you used, copy the entire SW folder and subfolders and have it all in one place.

Use a USB Key to Install Windows 7—Even on a Netbook
Here's just the txt:

•Launch the DiskPart utility by typing diskpart at the Start Menu.

•Then run the list disk command to check the status of your drive.

•Now run select disk 1 where the "1" is actually the corresponding number of your USB drive.

•Run clean.

•Once the thumb drive is clean, you can run create partition primary.

•Now make the partition active by entering active

•Then you need to set up the file system as Fat32 by running format fs=fat32 quick (quick, of course, specifies that you want to perform a quick format to speed up the process).

•Entering the assign command gives the USB drive a drive letter, making it easy to access from Windows Explorer

•Then you can copy everything from the Windows 7 installation DVD onto the USB key (a simple drag and drop will do).

•Now you can insert the thumb drive into the system you want to install Windows 7 onto and boot the system. The installation will now proceed as usual—but faster.

Cheers

 

I think the procedure missed one important step to make usb driver bootable.
You need to run bootsect /nt60 drverletter: after copying files.

 

Nope no need to do the bootsect step. If you follow the steps as described above exactly it works perfect. Is how I've made install drives since early win7 beta's and it never failed. Now perhaps there may be an issue working with SSD drives I'm not aware of but otherwise following those exact steps has worked like a charm.

Don't take my word for it tho. Feel free to visit the link which is an actual Technet article and even has a vid if you mistrust my repost.

 

Stay on topic, installation problems and such go to the onwers lounge and what not.

 

Sorry, wasn't paying attention to which thread we were in and was only trying to help Riceboiler out. Besides its all HP's fault. If they had gotten my replacement shipped 2day like it was supposed to I'd be benching not helping, hehe :tongue:

 

Has anyone compared the effect on battery life with using fans always on vs not always on in bios?

I think it's better for the notebook to have the fans always on as it makes it close to cool to the touch compared to warm when the envy isn't using the fans.

 

God... Whoever is receiving my Free/mistake Envy 15 in the future... I feel sorry for you.

New problem... now this bull GPU can't even get a stable clock under normal use, as it cashes every 5-10 mins while playing MW2. Luckily I have my new one coming Tuesday... time to ship this crap back to hp ASAP

 

If your having trouble with stable OC's check the following: (This is how I broke the 10,000 barrier on 3Dmark06)

Reboot before test runs or games

Using the correct amd clock tool 9.26 for the 5870 ( http://downloads.guru3d.com/AMD-GPU-...load-2383.html)

Do not 'set' voltage in clock tool

Turn OFF Power Play in CCC, Set 3D 'standard' tab slider to high performance, Set catalyst AI to 'advanced' (left)

Use 'high performance' power plan

Turn off or unplug all unecessary programs, apps, accessories, services, wifi...

P.S. I had best luck with OC speeds of 1:2 ratios, like 533 / 1066. Could be nothing but it works for me.

 

JJB I already tried all that...
the Laptop i just send back to hp is horrible. the video driver would stop working after about 10 to 20 minutes into ANY game and then the system would just lock up. BTW this is just a fresh install with everything reset back to default setting. No OC or anything, Default clock as well.... 500/800

 

Sounds like the one you sent back may of had more issues than just a wimpy GPU. Glad mines on the way already so I know they won't be sending me that one LOL

Make sure you sanitize your hands before you touch the new one their sending you. Just in case its something contagious:wink:

 

okay.. update...
First of all, the new Envy 15 I received has Intel SSD G1 160GB HDD. So If you are thinking about sending yours back for a replacement, your SSD might be a G1 as well.

I tried to swap the i7 CPU, and find out something quite interesting: Even thought my new envy 15 comes with 4 RAM slots, with Dual core processor ONLY 2 of the 4 slots are enabled.
My Envy comes with 4x2GB RAM in all 4 slots. So after I swap out for the i7 620M CPU, my Envy would just stuck on POST with no display. At first I thought the CPU was at fault, but then I remember how i5 and i7 on the HP page configured differently. So I tested out the memory theory, by placing the RAM in the same configuration as the i5 Envy's. Hence Slot 2+4 empty, and Slot 1+3 filled with RAM. Vola! The comp posted. Right now I don't really have the time to fully test the i7 620M system, so I placed back the i7 720QM into the comp.

More to come for the next few days.

FYI: This system is able to OC the Graphics to 565/1050 Stable. not as great as my first Envy 15 refresh, but it is ALOT better than the last crappy one.

 

Humm, seems strange they would include but totally disable the other 2 slots. Why even put the darn slots on the board at all if their not going to be usable? I'm sure you already checked this but did you look in the bios concerning the memory? Maybe there is a switch you can change to enable the other 2 slots.

Also glad to hear the GPU is better than the last one at least. Really does sound like the one you sent back was a lemon.