HP ENVY 15 (Intel Core i7-4712HQ + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M 4GB DDR3) CPU Benchmarks

I am interested in purchasing an HP ENVY 15-Q178CA, specced as indicated in the title. I had been browsing here and there looking for a thorough review of this laptop and couldn't find any until I found this helpful review by T2050: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...q-nvidia-gtx-850m-haswell-maxwell-review.html

However, before I was into this laptop I used to like Lenovo Y50 before I realized that its i7-4700HQ suffers from limited Turbo Boost capability (i.e. only active for a few seconds before returning back to base clock speed in a stress test), which makes it fare low on CPU benchmarks.

If anybody has done or is going to do a CPU benchmark (e.g. Cinebench R15) on any type of HP ENVY 15 sporting the same processor, please post the results here so that I know what I'm getting out of this laptop. Or at least, with a proof, tell me if the Turbo Boost of the processor in this model functions well without any problems like the aforementioned faulty in Lenovo Y50.

Thank you in advance.

 

You're wrong.
Turbobust mostly depends on how cool is your CPU.
Meaning: better heat dispenser = better turbo frequency.
These CPUs (i7-4xxx) have unlocked couple turbo bins (for ex mine i7-4900 able to overclock more than 4GHz but theres no reason as it is not able to keep this frequency under heavy load)
Use Intel XTU to adjust maximum turbofrequency and undervolt your CPU a bit - it results in more consistent turbobust frequency.

 

Well then, I'm wondering if the HP ENVY 15 suffers from weak cooling system as in Lenovo Y50. I do understand, though, that inadequate cooling is the reason for the limited Turbo Boost in Lenovo Y50. I know that this throttling scheme in Lenovo Y50 can be bypassed with ThrottleStop but I don't really want to install such additional software. Furthermore ThrottleStop could cause spikes in temperature and power consumption (which is unacceptable but the blame is on Lenovo, not ThrottleStop). So... anyone has done CPU benchmarks with the HP ENVY 15 w/ i7-4712HQ?

 

I would assure you ...
HP ENVY isn't have best cooling system but its decent one ...
According to mine experience HP ENVY TS 15 with i7 4900 MQ can keep forever:
3.8 GHz with one core active
3.7 GHz - 2 cores
~3.5 GHz - 3 cores
3.2 - 3.3 - all four cores active

of course it depends on ambient temperature and GPU usage (GPU heat have impact on overall temperature)

PS: I have enabled XTU profile which undervolt CPU a bit. see the screenshot

 

Ah, that quite relieves me, thank you. Is the Turbo Boost stable enough and capable of running for a long time, say, 1 hour? Have you done any CPU stress test with it and seen how it fares?

By the way, i7-4900MQ?! Hell, man, that's one SICK laptop!

 

I would say it stable but depends on what exactly you're doing ...
Most real-world usage scenarios will give you consistent turbobust performance ... (see my notes above, 3.2-.3.3 GHz under 4 and more threads run simultaneously)
This is exactly what I have when compiling very large C++ solution -> my CPU around 80-100% usage, temperature ~90-95 C and frequency ~3.3 GHz, full rebuild takes around 10 minutes and temperature stable on this 95 C mark, assume you can continue this workload forever without risk of CPU thermal throttling)
When you run "synthetic" CPU tests (for example prime 95) - they can get you CPU much more hotter as these tests mostly stress your FPU, even so your CPU will be stable above 2.8 GHz.
Anyway, depends on your work scenarios - you can adjust turbo ratios which meets your workload ...
You might see that I even reduced turbo ratio for all 4 cores active by 200 MHz - just to keep CPU temp bellow 100 C (100 C - this is the mark where thermal throttling occur)

 

Ah I see, thanks for the useful info! One more question, though this might be off-topic: how does its hard drive perform? Would you please try running CrystalDiskMark or HD Tune or whatever HDD test you may know? Thanks in advance.

 

Well... I cant say you about it now.
I bought SAMSUNG 840 EVO 500 GB + PLEXTOR PX256M5M - these guys performing very well.


PLEXTOR results:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 505.094 MB/s
Sequential Write : 404.294 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 379.109 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 382.093 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 29.270 MB/s [ 7145.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 65.307 MB/s [ 15944.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 309.095 MB/s [ 75462.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 246.984 MB/s [ 60298.8 IOPS]

Test : 500 MB [C: 82.9% (197.5/238.3 GB)] (x2)
Date : 2014/07/12 23:14:20
OS : Windows 8.1 Pro [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)

Concerning SAMSUNG - there no reason to test as I have enabled RAPID mode. All synthetics fast like hell when RAPID enabled and shows results above SATA3 available bandwidth.