HP DV3T hits the HP site!

BTW... you can always underclock the 105M. Get RivaTuner and you can really push those clocks lower. See if that will help.

 

I tried Riva Tuner with my last one (returned) but did not work...it installed ok and showed me spec and all those but did not provide an option to downclock or slow down the fan..perhaps I'm doing something wrong?

PS: I put it on power saver mode to see how much difference it would make. Youtube HD was choppy after I put it on power saver mode..but instantly back to normal when i put it back on HP recommended...very interesting.. I knew there would be a difference just never knew that acute...

 

Oh by the way, I just got done playing with my co worker's new DV 7 with AMD + ATI 3200 HD video...and listen for the fan noise. Work is noisy so its not that apparent, but putting the rear vent near my ear..man..his laptop wind is noisier and louder than my DV3T. Also Remember when I was shopping for laptop...at bestbuy.i picked up whit DV4Z with AMD cpu and ATI video..that fan was like a tornado. I guess this is HP...At least with this fan,,,,there will be no fried GPU down the road..

 

I was actually referring to the clocks of the GPU itself, not the fan. You really shouldn't have that much fan noise in Power Saver mode along with the fan setting turned off in the BIOS.

Ya AMDs run a lot hotter...

 

ha..let me check it out when i get home..still at work....after some shooting and stabbing..all quiet and boring now...one thing hard to let go of the dv3t is the stunningly beuautiful LED display.

 

OK I have decided, I am keeping this DV3t. LED is beautiful, speed is very satisfying and the overall physical construction is very very solid. With P8700, 4 GB ram, and a 512mb video card, I can either choose for it to be silent but burning up sooner or later or have and fan on w/noise but cools it down but not both. It's a reasonable compromise.

Also having set it on power saver mode for an hour or so and just surfing the noise is very tolerable. Should I need it for light gaming, i won't care about the fan noise anyway at that time. Thx for the input

Question now is...refurb GTX 280 for 239.99 from newegg or new GTX 280 269.99 from Frys or Refurb GTX 285 from Newegg for 279... all has 9.75% tax in CA.. choices choices..

 

Returned my DV3T w/ 105M, ordered a DV4T with a 4500MHD. Hoping it will be quieter. My brother's cheap $500 Compaq from last year has the quietest fan ever--you can be in a room with no other noise and you won't even hear it. That can be a bad thing though I suppose, as last night the fan quit working while I was using it and I didn't notice it. Laptop overheated and shut down haha. Freaked me out since the laptop's warranty just expired the day before, but thankfully I just needed to reinstall the BIOS.

 

Yo Howard, good call. I made the same decision. This is corny but I just feel like this is my laptop and didn't want to send it back. Yesterday I streamed some curb your enthusiasm and man it was perfect and clear. I agree about the display, georgous. I also used skype for a while and did not hear the fan once. This is a quality machine. I think we were just reading and worrying too much. Once I committed to keeping it everything seems normal. My cousin has a 13 Mac and is always calling my brother (also a Mac junkie) asking about fan noise, so I think keeping it off the bed etc is a must. I am also still running Vista until I get my upgrade so I hope with 7 it gets even better. Good decision.

 

Also, Gauden44, could you please let us all know how your 4500 works out? I was contemplating the same thing but opted to stick with the Gforce considering I may use some video cutting software and "subconsciously" think somehow it may improve performance and graphics when I connect it to my HDTV. I know it is only in my head but what the heck. Thanks to all for the great threads.

 

Howard:

Get the ATI 4890 or the GTX 275. I did like a weeks worth of research and after looking at performance numbers, temperatures, and noise I landed on this. It will run basically as fast as the 285, if you overclock it it can even best the 285. It runs cool and quiet. For $200 it simply cannot be beat. I mean, it runs with the 285s neck and neck and even bests it in some games. Down the line you can add in another in Crossfire and two of these will just about destroy anything out there.

If you're more inclined towards Nvidia, then get this. It runs cool and quiet along with being already significantly overclocked.

Either of these will give you basically the performance of the 285, but will run significantly cooler and quieter.

 

wow looks like that thing is gonna fly out of my computer lol...yea came across my mind but my problem is I have a GTX 260 with 192 core now. (1st generation one) and the 275's have the samd bandwidth and same amount of ram......thats why if i were to upgrade gotta be the 280s..........4890 looks awsome and cheap but hearing about the heat it puts out @)@

 

yea thanks I just feel like its mine.... lol...having tried two machines...waited couple weeks for it, picked the configuration out..waited for it...and beautiful sturdy...I dun much like the fan noise but at least the wind coming out of it is cold ha

 

It doesn't put out anymore heat than the others and it actually runs about 10C cooler than the other cards without it sounding like there's an airplane taking off.

If you have a 260 then why not get another for SLI? Two of those would be better than any single card.

 

Cause I bought the dog on wrong motherboard my Gigabyte EX58 was only able to do crossfire not SLI ....

 

Oh. In that case well, the 4890 is calling you.

BTW, you're putting too much stock into those specs. Do some reading on the net, the 275/4890 go toe-to-toe with the 285.

Here is some reading for you...

Sapphire 4890 Review
275 Roundup
4890 Roundup
4890 vs 275

You would be pretty surprised at how routinely the 4890 beats the 285 and obviously it would quiet easily best the 280. The 285 performance is included in all the charts in those reviews for comparison.

On any account, I would recommend waiting for the DX11 cards to hit the seen. They should be upon us shortly with the launch of Win7. AMD already has their card running... check it.

 

THANKS! LET ME CHECK IT OUT! i been kinda looking but was concerned over lack of physix but thats not a big deal, however do you think the lack of cuda will be noticeable? (thats the video processing offloaded to GPU)

Also I'm afraid to get the 4890, BECAUSE if i get 1, im gonna wanna get 2, then im gonna have to upgrade my antec 650W PSU..it all goes downhill from here....

 

Physix is really just a gimmick, I don't know if there's more than a couple of games out there that make use of it.

Regarding Cuda vs ATI's solution, Stream, I don't know. Tom'sHardware had a little comparison that you can read about here. ATI has an alternative and as far as which is better, I think Endgadget summed it up a week ago or so by saying that the ATI was faster but the Nvidia had better quality... or something along those lines. So basically it's a toss-up. I personally haven't read it though.

haha...... very good point. Heck, when the next cards hit they would probably give the performance of 2X of any of these cards so you might want to sit tight actually.

Anywho. I don't want Padme coming and banning me she's already not exactly too happy with me so.... hit me up via PM if you got any questions about this.

 

So Gouden when are you expecting your new laptop. I am curious to see the tradeoff from the G 105 to the 4500. I am happy enough for now but if the fan noise gets back in my head then not sure if I will send it back. Keep us updated, thanks.

 

now that we are settled with the fan noise ... any good ideas for after market upgrades?

 

Get an SSD. There simply isn't a more dramatic improvement in performance from any other upgrade.

 

So, I noticed that the dv3t didn't have an option (or place) for an integrated TV tuner. I did some searching and found that AverMedia recently released an ExpressCard 34 tuner that fits flush against the laptop. When inserted, it'll look like it's integrated into the laptop itself.

AVerTV Express mini
http://www.avermedia-usa.com/AVerTV/product/ProductDetail.aspx?Id=478

Lowest price I could find was on Buy.com with Bing cashback. For me, it came out to be about $77 after tax which is coincidentally priced the same as HP's integrated tuner configuration option. Currently waiting on mine to arrive. This will be the first time I'll have used the Expresscard slot on my laptop. The only downside: I won't be able to store the HP media remote in the ExpressCard 34 slot anymore.

 

I was wondering about the TV tuner. Thanks for the info. Also, I noticed you had the bad batch of NVIDIA GPU that died. Is that why opted for the intel 4500w your dv3t? Also in terms of overall performance, noise, and heat, how do you compare your current integrated GPU to the old dedicated NVIDIA? Any comments would be appreciated.

 

Whoaa that looks like a cool idea. Be sure to follow up and tell us how it is! How would it work though? Don't most tv tuners require you to plug in the wires into the tuner? haha that's how my last tuner worked....would that mean we could watch tv on the go?

Oh nvm I saw a little more about it and saw how you hook up cables and stuff. Still would like to know how it turns out though

 

That's definitely one of the reasons why I opted for the GMA 4500MHD this time around. I'll be avoiding Nvidia mobile GPUs for at least several years since they won't find out about defects until a year or two afterwards.

The other reasons why I opted for the 4500MHD over the 105M:
-I didn't want to deal with the lack of Nvidia mobile driver support anymore.
-The performance improvement you get with the 105M over the 4500MHD is rather slim in my opinion and definitely not worth an extra $150 (not to mention the extra heat and power drain).
-I wanted longer battery life.

I had a Geforce Go 7200 in my last one. The GMA 4500MHD is definitely noticeably faster than the old 7200.

Windows Vista (64-bit) WEI subscores for Intel GMA 4500MHD:
Graphics: 4.1
Gaming Graphics: 3.8

Windows 7 RC (64-bit) WEI subscores for Intel GMA 4500MHD:
Graphics: 4.1
Gaming graphics: 4.9

I also tested Blu-ray playback on mine. I hooked it up to my 46" 1080p LCD via HDMI, and it handles it perfectly. CPU usage usually hovers around the 30%-35% range during playback.

My unit runs very cool. The air that comes out the side vent is cool air most of the time, although I do leave the "Fan Always On" option in the BIOS enabled.

 

I don't know if the HP integrated TV Tuner option in the dv4t, dv6t, dv7t, and HDX models have some sort of internal antennae of any kind, but they all do have a small connector hole on the side where you can attach an external antennae. That AverTV Express mini looks to have that same hole and includes an external antennae. I'm sure you'll need to use the external antennae in any case if you want decent OTA reception. It also comes with an RF cable adapter so you can plug a cable in directly.

One interesting feature I noticed is that it gives your laptop video input capabilities, so you can use your laptop's screen for playback from other devices like an Xbox or iPod (granted it's standard def with composite cables).

Newegg has some pics of the card itself and what's included:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815100045

 

Received my laptop on the 12th of Aug. and I must say I love it. I have not experienced and heat or continuous loud fan issues. Here are my specs:

HP Pavilion dv3t Entertainment PC
• Espresso Black
• Upgrade to Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
• Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor P8700 (2.53 GHz, 3 MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
• 8GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
• 512MB NVIDIA GeForce G 105M
• 13.3" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP LED BrightView Infinity Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
• Lightscribe Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer
• [For BrightView Infinity Display] Webcam + Fingerprint Reader
• Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini-card with Bluetooth
• HP Mobile Broadband (Choose either Verizon Wireless, AT&T, or Sprint, service activation required)
• Full Size Backlit Keyboard
• High Capacity 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• Microsoft(R) Works 9.0
• HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

 

Dayam..what are you gonna do with that laptop? conduct cyber warfare?

 

I always go big so I don't have to regret or look back a year from now and wish I had maxed it out.

 

can anyone tell me what a normal temp for the gpu while you're gaming? i have the nvidia and when im just typing/chatting/ browsing and what not it sits anywhere between 47-53 Celsius depending on if im youtubing or something. I tried Battlefield Heroes last night and it soared up to 80 C ...is that normal? jw

 

YEP

I had Asus G51 with GTX M260 gaming laptop, gaming temperature was 80c and above. I have desktop GTX 260 nvidia card gaming temperature on COD was 80 C... though this was not designed to game, but I won't be surprised its in line with other variants of Nvidia card.

 

So its safe as long as the temp drops back down when i'm done right? sweet

 

YEP! you should be fine~

 

I'm expecting the DV4t with the 4500MHD either tomorrow or Tuesday. I'll let you know about the fan noise.

 

Great. After some more research I am now extra confused abou the whole NVIDIA vs. Intel issue. It seems that Intel with the 4500HD tech has caught up to the low end GPU dedicated processors. It will read blue ray fine and will run apps like Google earth and play games. I do not play games at all so I am thinking why I would need the NVIDIA. So if you could give me an analysis that would be great. I look forward to it. I still have around 18 days to make up my mind. Thanks.

 

What about this one Alex

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9358063&type=product&id=1218090589096

2.4 ghz cpu. 4 gb DDR 3 ram 500gb 7200rpm HD, only thing bad about this one is it get quite hot and its CCFL backlit LCD not as bright and crisp as HP's LED screen. Or does that matter to u?

MY DV3T has some lag sometimes, very strange, doesnt feel like a P8700 at all.

 

Regarding Nvidia vs Intel, it's really simple: If you play games, get the Nvidia, if you don't, get Intel.

For everyday tasks and HD playback, the Intel is more than capable. It will also run cooler and give better battery life.

Howard:

Did you do a clean-install?

 

no clean install..I uninstall all the crap that came with it and use cc cleaner and defrag it.. i should but not too motivated knowing I'll be doing a clean install on Oct 22nd (windows 7 release date) I ordered 3 copies

 

I may have to stop by Best Buy and take a look Howard. Although the HPdv3t is nice and I do like it. Also, I heard that the "goal" with MS is to eventually offload many of the CPU functions to the GPU down the road using Windows 7. As it stands now the NVIDIA is overpriced but if they do implement something like that then it would be worth it, right?

Now I am back to thinking the G105 isnt that bad...man this is confusing?

 

G105 isnt bad at all, whats bad is the noise.

 

to all and admin, please forgive me, I know this is not related to computer but you have gotta watch this...

scroll down on the page to see video

http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/16/wales-produces-exceptionally-graphic-educational-film-about-the/

 

Man with 9 cell battery at 100% and cold boot. Profile set to power saver with wireless ON and brightness set to minimal. Typing my term papers and surfing NON-FLASH based web sites, I'm down 10% in 30 mins....

 

i think you might have a virus or a lot of background programs running with those same settings with the nine cell i can easily get over 4-5 hours

 

Hey Gauden, did you get your pc today? Interested to see how you rate the performance and sound of the 4500HD.

 

Can someone send me the directions to do a clean install for the Windows 7 installation. I am confused about the difference between and upgrade and a clean install. Which one is better?

 

Virus? no way but I do believe its all the sucky process in the background thast eating my battery up and generating heat for the video card, like I posted previously when I first got my DV3T (with G105M) and setting up and indexing, video card temp hit 70C.

Since I have to wait at till at least oct 22..if not later for win 7, im gonna install windows 7 RC 1 right now on my DV3T

Will post back here shortly with result, depend on install speed

 

NEVER MIND the bluetooth question, I figured it out. We all have A2DP, 2.0 capabilities.

 

Yep, received it. I haven't used it too extensively, but I can give you my initial impressions. It is much MUCH quieter than my DV3t with 105M. With the DV4t, at first the fan was constantly on and was kinda loud, but I turned off the "Fan Always On" option and now it's super quiet--the way I would expect it to be. The DV3t on the other hand was the loudest laptop I've ever heard, even just idling with the Always On option disabled.

I also like the CCFL display of the DV4t... LED monitors make me feel weird and they always have a cold blue/purple tone to them.

 

Damn...pissing me off.. installed windows 7 on DV3t with G 105m, NO DRIVER for G 105m. Driver from nvidia site wont install, driver from HP site wont install citing diff OS used. went to laptopvideo2go.com NO CAN DO either. HP written code to it in a way only their own proprietery had to be used. So in Windows7 I was stuck in 1280 x 768.. weird resolution with no aero support. Installing vista and drivers back now, at least this will be a clean install let me know hwo the fan noise will e.

I was at class today with my DV3t, the fan noise could be heard over the lecture..how about that...

 

Howard, is there anyway we can decide to ship them back and go for the Intel4500HD. I know you said you need the NVIDIA but is it really that beneficial. I am close to pulling the trigger. Thanks Gauden for the initial review. Let me know how the overall pic is as you use it more. Check out google earth and let me know how it works in terms of graphics, performance.

 

oh you can always call to ship it back within 21 days of delivery. I have returned more than one HP back before due to LCD problem. THey even pay for return shipping and credit u back within 3 days of receiving it. Problem is I dunno if the coupon is still active. If you do not want nvidia may I also suggest this one. I been watching it, lots of good review and battery last nearly 7 hrs in real world usage

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9366562&type=product&id=1218092151327

Google earth will have no problem on HD4500..come on bro.. at work there is a ty computer that has something lower than intel X3100 and handle google earth and 3D view perfectly.