*HP ENVY 17 & 17 3D (2XXX series) Owners Lounge*

Consider this. The new Firefox is newer than your video drivers. Not sure what version video drivers you are using. Most up to date on HP website are 8.800.8.2000 try those

 

i'd say envy 17 3d. if they are the same screens, the envy 17 3d still has the edge because of the edge-to-edge glass that covers the display, which increases viewing angles among other qualities.

 

Thank you
I didn't realize i was on the intelHD battery, which was why there were no GPU temperature reading, but now i can see it.
I really love the laptop so far

 

You're right I haven't updated those drivers so
I think that could help, it's weird that they've only appeared twice. But I'll update the drivers it's a good thing to do anyways too

 

Okay I have now updated the video drivers, went smooth.

Is it a good thing to update the IDT High-Definition (HD) Audio Driver too?
Version: 6.10.6328.0

 

I'm far from the most knowledgeable, but I can try to answer a few of these:

1. Most people recommend that if you want to do a clean install, you first copy your SwSetup folder (which contains the drivers you'll need), as well as the Tridef folder. The only other thing, if you want, would be to copy the Adobe folder or get the keys for that software so you can reinstall it. But my point is that it 100% NOT difficult to keep all the software you want to keep.

2. Not sure about Linux, maybe others can answer.

3. All accounts I've seen is that the SB Envy runs much cooler than the 1st gen Envys. I never had one before, but my new one runs very cool (much cooler than my last computer, which wasn't nearly as powerful).

I had to use my battery for the for the first time yesterday. I have a 6 cell, and I turned the screen way down. Half the time, I was online, and half the time I had the Wifi turned off. I used it for about 3 hours and still had some battery left in the end. I'm very satisfied with the battery life of such a large computer. I can't wait to pick up a 9 cell some time.

4. The 3D screen is brighter than the 1080p non-3d screen. I don't know about the color gamut and viewing angles, but both are supposed to be very good in those areas. But the 3D screen is brighter.

The 3D screen also has a 120mhz refresh rate, which may or may not matter to you.

5. Both hard drives support Sata 3.

There is room for the larger 12.5mm HDDs, like some of the new 1tb drives. Mine came with a 1tb drive that is 12.5mm. I moved it from the main HDD bay to the #2 bay to use as a data storage drive (and put another drive in the #1 bay to use as the system drive. The 12.5mm drive fits in either bay.

Hope that helps a little. Others can add more info, but I hope this starts to answer a few questions.

 

Yes,

I would update the IDT High-Definition (HD) Audio Driver, if I were you. It gives you an updated version of the Beats Audio Control Panel, which is MUCH EASIER to configure. It also gives you this cool beats audio logo with a spinning disc that shows up whenever you raise/lower the volume.

 

Oh cool thanks then I'm gonna go ahead and install that one too

 

Where do you go to download this? My Envy has been acting up lately.

 

It's located on HP's site, go to the download section or search for the model you have. IDT High-Definition (HD) Audio Driver HP ENVY 17-2090eo Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English) that's for the 2090, I guess they're same like most updates.

 

I recommend the Audio update now, It's much easier to navigate, it's better looking and as iwantanenvy said, when you turn up/down the volume a nice spinning CD with the beats logo on it appears, small things that just raises the experience

But great controls in the beats app now.

 

Just ran across this for those of you who are looking at getting that "Free 360" deal.

HP® Official Store —Buy HP Laptops, Notebook PCs, Printers, Desktop Computers, Handhelds, Scanners, Monitors, and Calculators direct from HP

Am I mistaken or does it look like you can't customize an Envy in order to take advantage of this deal?

It seems like it lists the "quick ship" models but I'm not 100% sure. On the other hand HP says that this promotion will last till June 30th or as supplies last. So that's good.

 

I've had my Envy 17 3D for a bit over a month now and have finally gotten to using it heavily. I'm having a few issues and I was hoping I could get some suggestions cause I don't know how to search a specific thread. Anyway, here's the problems I'm having:
1. System Exception BSOD.
2. Wireless disconnects and hangups (on multiple networks).
3. Extremely slow coming out of hibernate.
4. Random freezes.

Also, off topic, I was wondering if anybody knows any spec details about the Envy 14?

 

Thanks for the info, I'll see if I have such issue and report back. So far its been great.

You might wanted to use different browser and see if same issue occur.

 

I have envy 14...what would be your question?

 

I was able to do a little more throttle testing with the new BIOS (F.15). Overall, things seem to be much better. I did however notice one corner case that I am curious if anyone else is encountering.

With Cool Sense 2.0 set to "OFF", and running Furmark at 1600x900 (without Prime95), I appeared to have a case of near thermal run-away (GPU temp kept creeping up to the high 90s before I eventually stopped it at 99). This was over a period of about 15 minutes. The GPU temp quickly rose to the 90 range and then added a degree or so every few minutes. I am fairly sure it would have exceeded 100 had I let Furmark continue running. I am not sure what critical thermal protection mechanisms are built into the GPU (if any). I believe I read that the 2820 shuts itself down if the temps exceed something like 100-105.

According to Real Temp, the CPU was running fairly steady at around 3.2 GHz with a Core0 temp in the high 80s to low 90s (all other cores were in the 70 range). The Core0 temp was also slowly creeping up over time, and this may have contributed additional internal heat resulting in the gradual rise in the GPU temps (maybe the two were feeding on each other, although the 2820 was at less critical temps). My ambient room temperature was around 75 degrees F during the test.

The Cores all throttle back (in reasonable fashion) if I run the same test with Cool Sense set to either "ON" or "AUTO" or if I simultaneously run Prime95.
The laptop was on a table top (not moving around), running on AC power, and I left the Envy Power settings set at the HP defaults.

I am not much of a gamer at this point, but it would seem to me that someone might possibly encounter this situation when running GPU intensive games for an extended period of time (with Cool Sense set to "OFF").

Is anyone else seeing this? Any recommendatons on additional testing to try (although I am somewhat hesitant in wanting to run the GPU temps up that high again)? Maybe I can repeat the test running a log with Real Temp?

 

I figured I'd post this here since we all use the same batteries and this will get more views, but my laptop is not SB. Nevertheless, does anyone know where I can get a fully functional extended-life battery? I bought a dud on eBay a while ago, and while I don't want to pay HP an absurd $120 for one, I certainly don't want to waste my money on another dud. The one I bought cuts off inevitably even if it's fully charged. Its only purpose now is placing my laptop at an angle, which I do like.

Another question: Approximately how much battery life should I expect to get from the extended-life battery? The standard battery is abysmal.

 

I got an el-chepo 9 cell extra that i keep in my bag just incase off of amazon, figured that way i could always return it

 

Does it work well? How much did it cost?

 

I just re-ran the test with Real Temp logging turned on. My ambient temp was higher this time (low 80s), so the test was terminated a lot quicker than on my previous run.

I started Furmark at time 18:26:20 as seen in the log. The CPU ramped up to 3.3Ghz and the core temps started in the 50s, and core0 quickly rose into the 80s and then climbed into the low 90s over a period of about 4 minutes. Unfortunately, I don't see a way of correlating the GPU temps with what Real Temp is showing for the CPU cores. The GPU temp jumped into the 80s fairly quickly, and then slowly climbed to 99 where I stopped Furmark. This occured at time 18:30:37.

The CPU core0 reached a maximum of 94 degrees before Furmark was stopped.

The parameters for this run were: Furmark 1.9 set at 1600x900. This was with BIOS F.15, Cool Sense 2.0 set to "OFF", laptop on a tabletop, running on AC power, and using the default Envy Power settings.

View attachment RealTempLog5.txt

 

Well it works well, was 55 bucks, i had a gift card for 25.

It has about 50% more life than the standard one from what i can tell but i had about 7 chrome windows open, 8+ tabs each while doing quick searches on the wireless using a bluetooth razor mouse with med-to-high brightness on the screen (had to show boss what i was seeing/testing - video conf software). I let it get to ~10% before i told it to hibernate, and as i said, it seemed to have ~50% more battery life.

I got myself batterybar and plan to use it to test the 9 cell more when i get a chance.

I'm trying to decide if i want to get a small external battery or not to be able to plug in my laptop and swap batteries when on flights / ect....

 

I take it you Have the 2820? I don't know what to make of it, to be honest. I know that when I tried to turn CoolSense 1.0 up, it went back to throttling somewhat. At the very least, it bottom out much lower. After I ran a test after fiddling with coolsense, I resent it back to Optimized setting, rebooted, and ran the test again. It was back to normal (bottoming out at 1995 or whatever i is at x20, and then once at 100% load at x19).

 

I see another one on eBay for about that price, and it has a six-month warranty. Hmmm

 

Also, I think what HP did was Disabled turbo under full loads. Turbo kicks on for me, just not at 100% load. Perhaps turning cool sense off disables their safeguard on the turbo.

 

jgt_fz6: Your testing shows a cooling solution that was under designed. You only have 1 out of 8 threads at full load but the CPU is already up to 94C in your log. It doesn't make sense to use a powerful CPU and GPU in a laptop and then cheap out on the heatsink and fans.

 

I have never used a laptop cooler before...but in this case....might be a very useful thing.

 

thanks dude!

 

Thanks chockyy, unclewebb and Bobmitch.

It seems pretty apparent that HP cut corners with the thermal design of the Envy17 units. At first I was thinking that this may have been an isolated corner case not seen by most users. But I am now wondering if there might still be a significiant risk here (even after the F.15 BIOS upgrade, which does seem to have improved things).

Basically, I am wondering if there is a thermal race condition in this design. If the GPU does not have a method to throtttle itself independent of the CPU (when thermal conditions warrant), and HP is counting on the CPU to provide the throttling under all cases (and reach thermal limits first), then maybe there is an exposure here for cases where the GPU reaches thermal limits prior to the CPU (as seen in this test case).

Questions remain though:

Is this an isolated case (as in bad unit) or are others experiencing this issue as well?

Does it only occur for those of us with the faster processor (maybe HP needs to downgrade those of us with 2820s)?

Does the GPU have a built in thermal protection scheme when the tempurature exceeds 100 (that my testing stopped short of)?

 

I wonder if Throttlestop wouldn't be a good alternative. Create profile 1 as normal and then create a profile 2, where you do as I experimented with and actually downthrottle your CPU on your own. My profile 3 had turbo disabled and when temps reached 88C, I made the processor downclock to 1.6 GHZ. My temps rarely went over 88. Experient with TS until you find a comfortable zone where you are good with the temps

 

Thanks Bobmitch, I thought about using Throttlestop to cover this case as well, but I wanted to see if this was an isolated case or not. I still have almost two weeks left on the 21 day return period on this Envy. I would hate to do that though since this unit seems perfect in every other respect. In addition, since I am not a hard core gamer (at least not yet), I don't know that I would run into this case in actual use.

I wonder if Real Temp could be tweaked in order to track the ATI GPU temp and load as well. It would make it easier for analyzing the logs since you could visually see where the GPU temps were relative to the CPU core temps. I see that there is a setting for GPU with the alarm box in the Real Temp settings menu, but I suspect that is for the GPU on the CPU itself. I guess adding a separate GPU tracking feature could get rather cumbersome though since different PCs could be using different GPUs. BTW, Nice job unclewebb on Real Temp and Throttlestop. They are incredibly useful tools.

It would be a real shame if there was a thermal race condition between the CPU and ATI GPU on these Envys. I think I read somewhere that they might actually share a common heatsink and fan? HWINFO32 shows some additional data for the ATI GPU including the tracking of a GPU fan speed (which seems to be always stuck at 30%). Not sure what that's all about.

 

This is really a noob question but can someone tell me how do I use autoscroll on the envy?

 

The comment I made earlier about a cooler was for real. I have not experienced the heat that you have. During the test after the bios update...I topped off at 90C, which is still within decent tolerance. However, the machine felt really warm. Not like the first gen Envy owners complained about where they couldn't even touch the machines. It was very warm...but I was able to hold on my lap (tried it to see). Laptop coolers are cheap in comparison (good ones are around $49 and cheap as 9.99). They help any machine dissipate heat. I do like Hwinfo32 alot and they update it frequently. Another app you might try that does work with ATI cards is MSI Afterburner. It is more for overclocking, ask Crimsoned...I had him try it and he could push the 6850 significantly higher. It will monitor temps, but not help with fan speed. YES...the CPU and GPU on the Envy share a common heatsink...and then spread to double heat pipes. Remember the function of the Envy...it is a direct competitor to the Mac Book. Smaller footprint, much lighter (about 3.5 lbs lighter than the Dell XPS 17) and thinner. You asked earlier if the GPU had thermal protection built in. As with most desktop cards, the only warning you really get is when the video you look at begins to distort...this is pretty much a warning...that's it. If you really plan to use the machine for gaming...then you have a few alternatives. 1. Alienware 2. Asus G73 model (however, now Asus owners are envious of us...Asus has not issued a bios fix to correct throttling issue) and perhaps Toshiba Qosmio, which was my other alternative to the Envy. The Toshiba has the GTX460M graphics card from Nvidia. The driver releases for the laptop cards come out when desktop drivers are released. The GTX460 was the first Nvidia card released with the 110 chip rather than the 100...so it helped Fermi become a more solid platform. Another alternative...send the Envy back and wait a month for the Asus G74 model with the GTX560M. Now that doesn't guarantee that Asus will fix the bios in that machine, either. I would call Customer Service and set up an RMA. See how long you have between the time you set it up and when you have to send the machine back. You only have a couple of days...so you don't have a lot of time. If you do it this way and let's say that you have seven days to return the machine...that buys you a couple of days to get to a Case Manager in the Technical Support dept and sort your issue out. I don't know what the time frame of an RMA is, but I can tell you that you will be credited to your account once your machine leaves FEDEX terminal for HP in Memphis. You drop off...it gets entered into the system. Once the machine is put on a truck for Memphis..HP credits you. They want to make sure you don't go back and pick the machine back up from FEDEX.

As far as real world vs the benchmark test...There are a handful of games that will push your machine that hard. Perhaps the original Crysis might be one. It was written for multicore and it was a forerunner in the Direct X 10 game...will your temps run that high...only playing a game will tell you.

BTW...another feature of Afterburner...you can set it up to monitor what you want and during a game...do on screen monitoring. On my desktop, it has GPU temp, fan speed (for desktop cards...they have their own fans) and fps...on screen in the upper left hand corner

Get the most up to date version here:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=344032

To run Afterburner on a laptop...you have to change a few settings in the .ini file...this thread will help you:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=338906

 

Has anyone else overclocked their 6850? I got mine to 675/1000 from the base 575/900 and it held steady @84C on my lap without a cooler. Is 100C the max as far as temps go?

 

I know that the desktop version has a max of around 100C. It that is the case...this should be the same...not sure I would push any of them that high

 

Thank you Bobmitch for the very detailed information. This forum is a such a great place for sharing knowledge and experience. Seems I have a lot of research and experimenting to do. I am overall very happy with the Envy. Yes, HP made some tradeoffs with the thermal design. Understanding those limits and possibly using a cooler (or TS) when necessary seem to be reasonable workarounds. Thanks again for your advice.

 

About BIOS update F15, the throttling is really gone, vanished which is awesome!! My temps have raised a few steps tho, when gaming only tho! They are getting slightly higher now since F15 then they did with ThrottleStop, interesting Don't know if it's because it's getting really hot outside but I think the room I'm in is the around the same. But the temps are still really good I've never hit 90C not even close either. But F15 is the way to go

 

On the Envy 17 3D description page, it says that the Envy has a 45% color gamut. I hope that's not true

 

That's odd, I know members here posted that its 72% color gamut.

KJ

 

The screen looks absolutely gorgeous in person, I wouldn't worry too much about percentages on a paper

 

Do you think it's better than the Hi-res screen on the macbook pro?

 

My 3rd envy replacement so far hasnt let me down. I would like to share some pictures regarding the minor gap around the edge.

 

I'm not going near a macbook any time soon, so I can't compare, but I don't see how a normal 17" screen can be any better.

 

Hi, I replaced my first envy because the gap was much too big. Far bigger than on yours. You even could see through the gap into the power connector. The new one has a minor gap on the right side which is "ok".

I ordered a 9cell battery on ebay too but it got caught by the customs department including my HDD drive bay. Hopefully that won't be too expensive. I'll keep you updated when I get it. The one I odered has 1 year warranty.

 

If compared to the 2011 17 inch MBP, then I would say no, but a definite close. Probably the closest screen you can get to the MBP. There is just something about that screen that is incredible, FWIW.

 

Greetings all, where can I find this update ? My Envy (quickship 2070) does NOT find any new updates when searching via: Windows Update NOR HP Support Assistant.

Where can I find the update for the Audio Driver ? (just really looking to get that spinning disc volume icon, as I had it on my dv7 Pavillion)

Thanks everyone

 

You can download it from HP support website. HP.com-support&drivers,etc.

 

The update is actually only for the 2xxx models, so you should be able to find it in the appropriate section.

 

My Envy has a slight gap on the left side. I decided not to bother with a replacement. I would expect something worse.

 

I tried latest IDT drivers for the 2100. But it kept maxing out my bass and treble and made it sound terrible.

 

Go into the Beats audio applet in Control panel and adjust the audio the way you like it. There are presets...and the ability to do custom. I never like presets...