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

It looks as though they average a driver release about once every three months. Once new model Envy's come out...with a newer generation GPU...not sure what the timetable will look like. I remember Dell releasing drivers for my old Inspiron about every three months...then the later model came out and they never released drivers again...had to mod them my self to get them to keep working...let's hope HP doesn't do that

 

Let's hope they don't. Will be checking their site regularly so I don't miss anything, thanks for all the help again

 

Many thanks to whoever posted the Geekweek30 discount code. I called up HP the other day after seeing that code posted here. I was within 30 days of placing my initial order and still within my 21 day return window. I asked if I could be credited any amount of money back since 30% is a decent chunk of change, the CSR said no, I asked to speak to a supervisor and he said no, so I requested an RMA and reordered the Envy 3D with the same exact same configuration I had, except for I opted for the full 16GB of RAM. Screw it, I’m not losing out on hundreds of dollars. Here’s my the configuration for my now third attempt at owning an Envy 3D

 

He can't refuse to let you speak to a supervisor....

And I find it ironic that you didn't want to lose out on hundreds of dollars but you got 16 GB of RAM

 

The CSR didn't refuse to let me speak to a supervisor, what I meant was the the supervisor said no to any type of credit. Why not get 16GB of RAM? If I would have stayed at 12GB and wanted to upgrade to 16 down the road, I'd have to toss out the one 4GB stick. Seemed like a total waste to go with 12GB.

 

Not many people actually need that much RAM....4 GB is enough for most people.

I figure by the time you actually need 16 GB of RAM you'll probably get a new computer anyways.

 

yeah, i agree with the ram. By the time you need it, it'll probably be cheaper too.

 

Don't care whats good enough for most people, I want the best, I want the most.

 

In the interest of playing devil's advocate, would the 16GB be useful if you did a lot of audio or video editing, programming or VM work? I'm doing fine and dandy with my 6GB, but I thought I'd ask.

 

Bobmitch: Small update, looks like my issue was Cool Sense 2.0, I turned it off and it appears to have resolved all my gaming issues. Was able to play Dead Space 2 at High settings, 1920x1080x120hz with no issues...albiet the fan is on a fairly high rev and the left side of the system gets a tad warm, but nothing like the old Envy17 1xxxx series where you can melt sand into glass.

Thanks a lot for the help. I might revert back to the older drivers only as from reading from your last post, there's not much difference in way of performance boost and you do lose the hotkey on brightness and so on. Right? I don't think 100 points is a lot.

Thanks a lot for the help, esp. at the super late night hours. Didn't want to bother HP people, so this helped greatly.

 

You would definitely see a practical improvement on having 16GB of Ram if you were doing serious graphic/audio engineering. Could load more tracks, ect. But it wouldn't improve performance in that area I believe. Also, to some degree this depends on the application itself to utilize that Ram.

In way of gaming, or any other use it wouldn't make much improvement. I have 8GB of RAM on my system, and that was because I luckily had a spare 4GB from another notebook to swap out the 2GB stick in my current Envy system.

16GB is nice, and if you get it dirt cheap or free than why not, but in reality it's just a large number. I think 8GB is the highest one should go on notebooks.

 

Bobmitch: You have mentioned several times about the refresh rate bug in the HP driver and how it's resolved in the 11.6 AMD driver set.

Just to make sure I'm correct on this, but with the old HP driver. I would of course have to set the refresh rate manually to 120hz. Once this is set, does it stay set this way after shutdown, restarts, switching graphics? Or do I have to set the 120hz each time after each of those events?

Thanks again and sorry for overloading the thread lately.

 

Actually the 11.6 Catalysts do not fix the refresh bug. When switching back and forth between AMD and Intel...you will manually have to reset refresh to 120 HZ. Once you set it...it will stay that way, until you switch graphics again...then you will have to reset. The 8.820 drivers from HP do this, the 8.800 HP series drivers are fine!

 

Feels like my games have started to lag now too, which I don't get since they ran fine before "/

 

Check the refresh rate on your monitor with AMD card. Did it stay at 120HZ. Right click on desktop, choose "Screen Resolution" then "Advanced Properties"...then "Monitor" what is the refresh?

If it continues...I would suggest using driver sweeper in Safe Mode and removing all AMD drivers. Then reinstall the 8.820 from HP. Perhaps there might be some rogue files left from attempting to install 11.6. Also, how often do you defrag your HDD???

 

It says 120Hz. Well I've had this laptop now since May I think and I did a full system recovery like a week after since my Power DVD was whack, since then I haven't really done anything like that and no defrags. I think the lag might be as you says the 11.6 I tried to update and I did as I told you on PM some updates with the one on HP's site and that seemed to just be messed up now.But what should I start in safe mode, the hole laptop or just the program?

 

Reboot the computer...hit f8 to enter safe mode. Then in safe mode, run driver sweeper. Check AMD Display. Let it totally clean out the AMD drivers. Then, reinstall the latest HP drivers.

 

When do I press f8? Weird question.

And when it's done with that it don't need to restart or anything before I reinstall the drivers, AND is it this AMD High-Definition Graphics Driver HP ENVY 17-2090eo Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English) I should install?

And oh, I see you have drive sweeper 3.0.0 should I take that one too and not the newest one that was on the link you gave on PM.

 

I tried DS 3.1 and ran into some wierd issues....went back to 3.0 and it worked. As far as getting into Safe mode...usually when Windows is starting. I don't always get into it successfully, and certainly don't want to give you bad ideas, but one way to assure you can get into safe mode...remove the battery and pull the plug while the machine is on. It will bring you to options when you turn back on...including safe mode. When I can't get there through f8, that is what I do...

Once you remove all the AMD drivers...Driver sweeper will ask if you want to reboot...say YES. Don't freak when you get back into windows in VGA mode...that means all drivers were removed...

 

Best way to get to the Safe Mode menu is to just repeatedly keep pressing F8 as you first boot up your system, anytime before the Windows 7 animated logo appears. On average I just hit F8 once I see the little text saying "press F10 to enter bios settings". To each your own.

 

Yea weird colors and stuff right? But did you check the link, is that the one I should use when it's all done? I think I really need to do this but it freaks me out just a little afraid I'm gonna mess something up "/

 

Hmm the lag seems to be gone, don't know what fixed it but I did two things:

Defrag and I remembered that I was playing around with settings for gaming in CCC and that just hit me that maybe I had changed something there and forgotten to turn it back, and yes there was one setting that was still changed from standard and that was A.I catalyst was on advanced instead of standard and well, I changed it all back to standard values in there and the lag is gone, don't know which of the two that fixed it, most likely the CCC thing right?

Don't even know what A.I catalyst is but seems like it's better to just keep it to standard settings, especially for me that don't know what it does or is

 

I, honestly, NEVER touch CCC. One thing I have learned through the years...ATI / AMD driver writers are not as good as Nvidia. Game controls are usually the best for the game. I get that they create profiles...but remember that most drivers are tweaked for Desktop cards. By changing the values in CCC back...you most likely freed up resources that CCC was using...good to hear!

 

Yea makes a lot of sense. Tho I have bad experience with nVidia in the past but this is actually my first AMD card ever

But yea it helped out so I guess I shouldn't have touched the settings in CCC, good thing it's easy to put it all back to standard

 

Well now that I think everyone's video issues seem to be Ok, I wondered, and I think I saw a post on the forums that I can no longer find.

But, do anyone of you here use Tridef 3D for gaming? how is it? Is it worth the money to upgrade to the latest on that?

 

To upgrade TriDef is Free. TriDef support says NOT to remove the older version for the upgrade. Basically, you download the latest and install on top of the existing one you have. This way, the license is intact and active.

TriDef - Downloads

 

Think I'm gonna do that too, the 4.5.1? Tho I haven't done much gaming in 3D but it's good to keep things updated

 

The 4.5.1 upgrade also comes with the TriDef 3D media player...so you can watch DVD in 3D and the like. I still like the PowerDVD10 quality better

 

Cool I'm gonna try that out


EDIT: Installed, no problem there And it's pretty neat that you can watch Google earth in 3D with it, gotta try that one day

 

cool, I'm gonna give it a go later today. I honestly don't care for 3D, more of a fad in my opinion, but I have the ability so why not load it up for a moment.

Thanks for the info and help Bobmitch.

 

I've been thinking about one thing pretty long now, can the Envy burn blurays too?

 

Unfortunately no, just plays Blurays and burns DVDs.

 

presently, no. Even the newly refreshed Envy 14 cannot burn blu-rays. I suspect this is a limitation of the slot-load optical drive. I note that the traditional optcal drive found in the DV7s can burn Blu Rays.

 

Okay thanks guys for clearing it up, I've just been wondering so long thought I'd ask

 

I believe this is correct, as there actually are no slot loading bluray burning optical drives yet made in the OEM market, the only notebook designed blue-ray burner is by Sony, at 2X speed. I think that plus cost might be the concern.

 

If anyone remembers when I got like black thin lines flashing in my firefox a while back and I got a little scared something was wrong with my screen and I got the explanation it was firefox doing something and it only happened twice so I didn't think more of it.

Well right now I'm pretty sure I saw white lines instead but this time in WORD, so that can't be cos of firefox, that of course was running but it shouldn't show if I have word over it right? Now I'm starting to think what it is, if it actually is something with the screen. I'm pretty sure I see it I mean it goes so fast, and it's only maybe what it looks like five thin lines that flashes super fast and then there's nothing. It's really hard to actually say what kind of lines it is. So it's not all over the screen this time it was right where I was typing in word and not all the way to the sides either, just a little area.

Anyone has any idea what that can be? This is like the third time overall I see these, those other times where in firefox so that was kinda reasonable it could be what that guy explained..

 

yea, not to mention the fact that between WiDi, portable storage solutions, and modern blu-ray players, the premium laptop user is becoming less and less likely to require an optical writer to produce such content. the need for blu-ray optical playback will be there for some time, but it wouldn't surprise me if the Envy's never supported a blu ray writer -- which would only be required if one absolutely had to produce such content for a legacy system that cannot support an external storage device or network connection, WiDi, etc.

 

I have seen the Firefox flicker thing, I think there is a way to tweak and edit firefox to improve the graphics, speed, and maybe reduce the flicker. I'll see if I can find that info.

As far as this happening in Word, not too sure but it could also be firefox that's causing it still. I would try using Word without Firefox and see what happens. Firefox apparently does take some control of the gpu for rendering and that could just be prioritized. Otherwise, drivers could be related to this. I'll look into it.

 

good advice 13th; isolate firefox first and beyond that it sound like a graphics problem, in which case one test of interest would be to switch GPUs to see if it's related to the 6850 or the iGP.

 

Hmm, then it might still be firefox causing it, since it has only happened in there before, and well still only when firefox was running. I've never seen it in word before, never anywhere else either. Not in movies or gaming but firefox is never running when I do that so it might also be reasonable. I hope it's as easy that it's only cos of firefox I can so live with that.

 

It sounds like a Firefox problem. Google Chrome has problems with GPU acceleration of web pages as well - I get a flashing screen using that with my Dell Inspiron.

 

Yea cos I have firefox open 90% of the time when my laptop is on so.

Do you get that in other places too when chrome is open?

 

Nope - just Google Chrome when its using the GPU

 

Well then my problem is still a little different since I saw it in word this time. Guess I'll close it when I'm not browsing and if it shows up again it's something else, but since it's so rare it's hard to see if firefox is the problem or not.

 

This might be useful, just for enhancement sake, and maybe to resolve your issue possibly:


Enable Direct2D and DirectWrite Hardware Acceleration for Better Graphics Performance in Firefox

 

Thanks but I can't find one string he says in the article mozilla.widget.render-mode So I don't know if it's gonna do any good But I really really hope the lines are only cos of firefox, the thought of it being the screen is just pain... honestly..

Thanks for all the help I really appreciated so you know!


EDIT: Oh stupid me, should have read it trough ones more, I could create it if it wasn't in there, oh gosh

2: Done that now, Can't really see any changes yet but it might be good in the long run Thanks for the help.

 

My Envy 17 3D just arrived and the the tape has been cut already.....there's a hole in the box too...

 

Was the tape totally cut...Was it open to where someone could access the contents of the box? Contents of an Envy 17 3D should be the wire for your PSU, the PSU, a box for the Shutter glasses and some paperwork. Get back (if you can attach a photo, please do) and let me know

 

It was cut enough where you couldn't pull out anything or open the flaps. But it appears deliberate. I'm thinking it was FedEx or customs who did it

 

Is everything inside the box alright? Inside the box is two black boxes. Small box is 3D shutter glasses. Much larger, very nice box with an Envy wrapper on it...inside is the Envy, wrapped in a beautiful black cloth wrapping. Also in that box is your PSU. If you are saying that the contents were not accessed...then you should be OK. My son's Pavillion arrived with the box dented and partially opened as well. The machine was perfect!