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

Just an example. Look at the choices for DDR3 1600 at Newegg

Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Memory, Laptop Memory, DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800), 9

Mind you...all the memory is CAS 9. So if in most cases you are seeing DDR3 1600 CAS 9, then you are really not gaining any benefit by purchasing 1600 memory. You gain overhead for overclocking...pretty much it. The only way to gain performance is that you have to find 1600 memory with CAS 8 or lower...AND...you have to hope that the Envy's bios does XMP profile for the memory...for there is NO advanced settings in the bios

 

I'm just wondering if HP is going to ship the new 1600MHz with the CAS 8 or lower.... Is the CAS # printed on the actual RAM chip if someone wanted to take a look at it when they open the memory compartment?

KJ

 

I started Googling the whole CAS 9/8/7....as I've never heard of it.

On overclock.net the user, Tater Tot, states, "Cas 7/8/9 wouldn't matter at all on DDR3 1600/1866/2000. Your machine would be quicker with the lower Cas, not by much. But a smidge. Really, the whole RAM with awesome cas thing is for us memory fanatics, or the uber overclockers."

Makes sense to me.


DDR3 1600 Cas8 vs Cas9 - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net

Maybe the Alienware guys will care for a "smidge" better. We still love you Alineware/NBR folks.


KJ

 

Corsair, who makes high performance memory...only lists DDR3 1333 and CAS 9

SODIMM - Standard DIMMs and SODIMMs - Memory

No one makes DDR3 1333 with CAS lower than 9...

Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Memory, Laptop Memory, DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)

If anyone would...I expect it to be GSkill...and even they don't. If memory rated to be slower (1333 vs 1600)...has CAS 9...then the only way to get lower CAS is to go to DDR3 1066...NOT!!!

 

Don't forget too...that you are reading about Desktop memory. Laptops aren't made to be clocked the way desktops are. The cooling systems just wouldn't take it. All in all...the DDR3 1333 is plenty for these Envy's. CAS9 is the best you will get...and without being an overclocker, as you stated, is CAS9. There isn't even a setting in the bios to overclock. Imagine...If the default speed of the Radeon HD6850 is 650Mhz...and HP clocks em at 575...HP isn't gonna send out CAS8 DDR3 1600. First...doesn't seem to exist...and I imagine if it did...would be extremely expensive!

Now...depending on what Alienware does (would have to be settings in the bios to overclock the memory)...you might squeeze a few settings of CAS faster. Example...On my desktop, I have Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600 rated at CAS 8-8-8-24. I am able to squeeze it a bit to 8-7-8-8-21 and still make my machine bootable. If I set the CAS to 7-7-7-21 or anything like it...my machine won't even boot up. I get a memory error and please hit F1 to enter setup. Normally the higher the MHZ of the memory...the higher CAS. With desktop memory...high MHZ and low CAS is also taken care of with large memory heatsinks. Can't do that on a laptop...

The HP Envy 17 / 17 3D with DDR3 1333 MHZ memory is plenty fast! If anyone has found DDR3 1600 Laptop memory running at CAS8 or lower...I would like to see it. Even so...doesn't guarantee that our machines will run it at the Faster CAS rating. No way to adjust the timings. Worth it?????? I don't think so...just my 2 cents

 

Well said. Anyway, I am happy knowing I've made a great purchase, great specs to last me for the next (hopefully 4 or so years), that will perform 100% of the tasks I throw her way.

Given all that, believe it or not, I still did not open her up. Yeah, just eating some lunch and after a nice hand washing I'll give the box an open and see what I find.

KJ

 

My Envy 17 3D base model arrived yesterday and i have not opened it yet due to work. Now hearing the new option of 2x640GB 7200 RPM HDD option available, i called HP trying to get an exchange from 750GB 5400 RPM HD to the new option ($90). But they refused to give me the same 25% discount i had.

I explained i had the 640GB 7200 RPM drive with my previous dv7 tqe order and with the previous exchange to envy i actually downgrade the hard drive.

Just wonder if anyone has successfully request and obtain an exchange?

I told them i can get a XPS 17 3D now with $450 discount but rather stay with HP. but its not helping...

I think my request is reasonable and am willing to wait more time for a new machine to come and pay for it for a cross shipping. I really don't understand why it is not accepted...

Appreciate any advice... I know i can always purchase another hard drive to swap it out but very relunlant to do that cause i don't know what i will do with the swapped out 5400 RPM Drive.

 

How could you control yourself?????? I would have skipped lunch and played. You are a much cooler, collected individual than me...

 

I have the ssd / hdd configuration with raid now disabled! I've got steam installed with a bunch of games including portal 2and all work fine. I've also got some stand alone games such as quake 4 installed and again works fine - no issues.

 

I only have one game installed. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat (wanted to see DX 11 on ATI card). Installed it to D: drive and no issues at all.

 

I replaced my son's 5400 rpm drive with a 7200 rpm on his Pavillion a couple of years ago. Luckily...I kept the 5400 in a drawer. At one point, I had to send his machine in for service. When I did...sent it in with the 5400 (vista came loaded on it) and removed the 7200 with Windows 7. Had I NOT done that...they would have wiped his 7200 rpm drive and he would have lost thousands of dollars in itunes. They did wipe the 5400 and reimaged it. Could have been a pretty bad situation. Just a thought.

 

We can't wait. The suspense is killing us.

 

LMFAO~ Well hyperboled, if my guess is right, there should be an Envy 17 3D SB in that box. All kidding aside, just want it to be as close to perfect as possible. I suppose being an artist also helps me stay a bit more patient/cool as Bobmitch stated.

KJ

 

So, can't do any thing with the swapped out drive but to put it in a drawer for waranty. Good point. Maybe just use it as an external drive for data storage

 

You COULD do that, too. Suggestion here. If you do put in an enclosure for data storage...DON"T DELETE the recovery partition. Leave it intact. Should you ever need to put the drive back in the machine to send it in...do an F11 and sent it in with an OS on it. Only uses about 20 GB of the space on the drive. I would highly recommend that. BTW...you can get a 640 GB 7200 rpm Samsung Spinpoint from Newegg for about $69. I can't imagine HP willing to take your machine back AND give you the original discount. They can only sell your machine as a refurb...which looses $$$ and to turn around and discount the new machine...more lost $$$. Don't think they will do that. If they do...I would be shocked! Plus...if your machine is in very good shape with little or no blemishes...why take a chance that the second one will as well.

 

If the drive came as RAID 0, wouldnt disabled the RAID on BIOS will ruin all the data?Including the 20gb backup. Not sure if that is on the master or slave drive, but I assume it will be on the master.

 

Breaking up a RAID array will destroy all data...YES. I was unclear if he had one or two drives. If two drives...then just remove them as is and do not break up RAID. Then, if need be later on...he can go into bios...enable RAID and put the drives back in...If a two drive config that is NOT RAID...then the C drive would have the recovery partition I have the SSD / HDD combo and the recovery is on the SSD...what a waste of premium space.

 

The gods and FedEx have realigned themselves. Having checked the FedEx tracking status for the zillionth time, I just read the most beautiful phrase: "on FedEx vehicle for delivery". Killa Joe, if you don't hurry, I may open my Envy before you. The race is on.

 

Go Hyperboled! Glad to see you are delivering today. Wow...this is gonna be a fun thread for the next week or so...

 

I know that I'll be dealing with the RAID drive, as soon as I get the SSD. One of these drive will be the slave and one is out for external backup. In that case, would you recommend to take it out the drive without disabling RAID first and move it to slave compartment?Then disable RAID, install win 7 on SSD. Or either way the drive wont be recognizable since I'm going to disable RAID eventually with the SSD setup.

 

Please clarify...do you have ONE drive or two in RAID??? When you purchased...did you get one or two drives? I based my original response on the belief that you have ONE HDD. If you have one...you are not in RAID

 

Apropos choice of words. The anticipation is much like childbirth. lol!!

 

I have two 750GB 5400RPM drive in RAID config. Planning to change the config to SSD and HDD combos.

 

Envy + NBR/you guys on here = Makes my day A ok!

Ok, here is the Verdict on Cosmetics/Packaging:

1. I was glad to see the new changes to the packaging from the previous Envy 17 3D. As in Stephan C's video, I too had the little silca gel pack which was never put in the previous Envy 17 3D packaging.

2. My 3D glasses still had the battery tab on! Love that, so I know its fresh. Will test it once I turn on Envy later tonight or tomorrow.

3. The big fold out now has the Envy 17 3D printed on it, not just saying Envy 17.

4. I like the new cloth bag too.

5. As to the Envy cosmetics..... The outside and sides are flawless.
I too have the very slight gapping on the left and right toward the bottom(closer to the clickpad then the screen) and I have to tell you, its very, very normal in my opinion. It is a custom made laptop, and it should be expected. No worries. I'm very pleased. There are no blemishes, scuffs, dents, scratches, metal warps.....its clean and sweet. The only things that got me a bit questionable, had a couple black specs. One on lid, the other on right of click pad. After a moist cloth rub, came right off! Whew, they must have been some speck dust or whatever, they are gone.

Edit: Clickpad seems pretty flush on mine.

She passed stage 1 with flying colors. Stage 2 is to turn her on, and take very good note of the display. I repeat, there will be NO TOLERANCE for any dead/stuck pixel. Please let there not me one.....

Stage 3 should be no RAID 0 to the SSD/HDD drives of course.
Stage 4 should be performance. Will update, delete nonsense stuff, etc....then the fun of using the Envy can truly begin.

P.S. I'm just glad all of us are here and working to get the most out of this baby.

KJ

 

That clarifies the situation. If you choose to replace the drives...you will have to remove them, without breaking up the RAID array. The data is striped across the TWO drives and they act as one, thus you get the 1500 GB capacity. If you break up the RAID array...you lose all data striped on the drives. Now you can do that...but you MUST first create your recovery DVD's, for you will lose your recovery partition once you break up the RAID. Once you do that...you have two independent 750 GB drives that you can use...perhaps one for storage in the machine as drive D and one in an external enclosure as a USB drive. If you are contemplating replacing the TWO 5400 drives with TWO 7200 in RAID...then the performance enhancement will most likely only be in seek time. Avg seek speed of 7200 rpm hdds is around 13-15ms, where slightly higher for 5400. Remember, too...that the size if your current HDD's pretty much infers that your platters are about 375 GB each x 2 x 2, so by putting in two 7200's in RAID...you might gain a few ms seek speed...but total output may be the same, for maximum and minimum throughput is also a product of platter size. If you are saying that you want ONE 7200 in combination with ONE 5400...then you are probably better off leaving your configuration the way it is...

Make sense for you???

 

So happy for you. Sounds like a good batch so far. Cannot wait to receive mine. Looking forward to your posts about your setup and hope all goes well.

 

Thanks. I'm sure yours will rock too!

Almost forgot to mention. The click pad seems pretty flush on mine.

KJ

 

I agree with you in general ... But i have not even opened the box yet. It is a brand new machine. Why can't HP sell it to other people who orders the base model. This is not a refurb. That make me wonder for those cases when we cancel an order too close to ship date HP tells us just return it when we receive it to get the refund back, would that machine be a refurb too?

I have another question, does any one know the HDD score in WPI for a RAID 0 configuration of two hard drives. I know that the read/write speed of a RAID 0 of two HDDs double of those from a single one ( up to 180MB/s), which is not too much lower than a SSD (read 240MB/s, write 100MB/s for X25-M). The access time, though remain a bottle neck (13ms vs. .1ms from a ssd). as such I don't expect the boot time be improved that much from a RAID 0 config.

 

The TRRS Y plug worked! I can now use my microphone headset in one plug!!

 

I'd make a back up of all that data if I were you.

 

Soooo...drove to FedEX and picked mine up...then went shopping and then to Best Buy for some Acronis (gotta have the latest of that!). I've unboxed her and so far she looks *awesome*!!!! There is a slight raised edge to the back left of the clickpad, and I do mean slight. May have to work on that but other than that she looks perfect I'm taking pictures now (cuz that's what I do) and for some reason I'm hedging turning her on. Hopefully everything is in order...:holds breath:

 

OK that's good news, one more mystery solved.

 

Okay. I am done.
HP did indeed have the laptop delivered today, Wednesday 27, 2011.
No issues with the audio, however it throttles worse then my previous Envy 17 SB. This one doesn't even take seconds to kick in and make the computer slow to a crawl, heck I dont even need to turn on furmark to notice the slow down.

I am going to go ahead and put the laptop for sale at a reduced cost for whomever wants a discount and wants to see if HP can fix it. They are offering me a replacement, again but I am just tired of it. OFFERS ARE WELCOME.

 

Crimsoned forgive my confusion...but if you just got it, why would you sell it at a loss instead of just getting 100% of your money back from HP?

KJ

 

KJ, I went thru the same checklist as you did, all successful. Glad to hear yours was too. Im currently at your step 4. What exactly are you doing to test performance and would you mind telling me what nonsense stuff your uninstalling? Id like to do the same.

 

My guess is he got it some time ago and beyond the 21 day? What he got yesterday might be an replacement for problem repair?

 

Because this was a replacement for a Envy 17 Non-SB that cost me $1344, as refund would only cover the $1344+$72 in shipping charges for a total of $1,401~.
I will likely make a little money from this transaction but hell, the amount of problems HP has given me does not even come close to compensation.

 

Did you fix the settings in Power applet in Control Panel? That should fix the throttling issue. Set Minimum Processor on Battery to 30% and on Power to 100% and then Maximums to 100%. Throttling should disappear...

 

Yea, but I'm not going to use HDD as my boot drive. I will replace it with SSD. The reason I choose this config is because the included HP caddy, the original one cost about $100 or so. I know the knock off is about $40, but I'm an OEM guy.. Plus I get a secondary HDD which I can use for NAS setup.

Seek time for me is not a big deal, since the 5400 will be a backup drive, reability is more important. Will benefit from SSD for the boot drive anyway. Thanks for the suggestion, I never work with RAID before but very much literate in computers.

 

Then just make sure you create your Recovery DVD's first. Then burn a copy of your SWSETUP directory on C and the TriDef directory (contains the activation for your TriDef software). Then go ahead and break up the RAID array in bios. First, you have to hit Ctrl-I on bootup and break up the array. Then reboot into bios and set RAID to disabled. Then put in the SSD as primary and keep one of the 750's as D. Save, exit and go ahead and do either a clean install or Recovery. Since you are going from RAID to non RAID configuration...make sure to get a copy of my guide on breaking up the array...if recovery option...for your MBR might be set to RAID on the recovery disks as well. Easy enough to fix...If clean install...no need

Hope that helps

 

That is not a fix, it is a way to lessen the throttling.
I tried it on the new Envy 17, however no effect.
I also tried it on my previous Envy 17 SB while it did better it, it still throttled just less often and less severely.

Anyways Envy 17 3D with an i7-2820QM, 6GB of DDR3, 3D goggles/screen, 2x640GB 7200 RPM hard drives is up for sale $1700+$40 shipping.

 

While this is probably obvious, was CoolSense setup for Performance Optimized Mode for both stationary and mobile profiles?

 

Yes, however moving them around does nothing.

 

Well then all I can say is use a hardware monitor to check your core temps to see if they coincide with throttling. Mine only throttles when the cores hit 90C.

 

They don't coincide, can throttle at any time, even at 60c to 70c.

 

Oh my geeeezzz Crimsoned - I can't believe that is happening to you!! They need to give you on site service and just FIX IT!!! That's ridiculous...I hope you can figure it out. It's making me nervous to turn mine on. I love the way it looks, but is it going to work??? Oh well, I'm about to find out...firing her up here in a minute. Here she is fresh out of the box...sweet!

 

Odd, the only time mine did that was when I was on any CoolSense mode other than Performance. Sorry dude.

 

What???? How is that your Envy? That looks like a professional ad shot from HP..... OMG, don't tell me you are actually a professional photographer...I know you take photos...but if so, you are a pro, and I'm not just saying that. Love the black background, the lighting, the fact its in black white....the shine of metal...very sexy.

Edit: Peaches07, just clicked your photo and went to your flicker account....my jaw hit the floor. You are super talented. I hope you are making a killing with your photos. If you were in my town I'd hire you to photo models for me to paint. Keep it rockin!

KJ

 

Looks like I'll be receiving my envy a day early! Since I've just switched (had a imac and powerbook) could someone provide me with a step by step on how to perform a recovery of windows 7 to DVD's including everything specific to us envy owners such as the tridef folder i need to backup? Also I can only burn to DVD+R and not DVD-R or DVD-RW correct? Seems like this is the first step everyone is taking. Thank you guys and girls in advance.

 

I theory, DVD (+ or -) R should work. DVD-RW does not work.