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

Ignorance is so bliss...its true.

Just reminds me of the 1st Matrix film lol. Classic...

 

Ok. I don't think I can thank Crimsoned enough today regarding his thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-envy-hdx/575817-hp-envy-17-sb-throttling-test.html

I stress tested my dv7-4283CL which has an i5-480M processor, ATI Radeon Mobility HD 6370
With the parameters that are stated in Crimsoned's thread here are my results:

Min Temp: 63C
Max Temp:75C

Min FPS 4
Max FPS 9
Avg FPS 6

Now, I suppose the most important information we are all trying to garner is the Core Speed. I was planning to write down at various times the speed changes, but to be honest it was rather constant throughout the test wich I ran for a good 30 minutes.

My Core Speed was rather constant at a nice 2,660.8 MHz not fluctuating more than about 120 MHz towards the end so it never got below about 2,525.4 MHz or so.... If indeed I performed this test correctly....(I'd be rather proud of myself, never having done it before ) then I can see why some of you more seasoned computer folks are speaking up about this throttle issue.

I can see now there is a problem indeed....if my dv7 did not "throttle down" and the Envy 17 3D SB is going down to about 800 MHz when its supposed to be in the thousands...maybe 3,400 MHz for the max on the 2820? I want to learn more about this...and hope there will be a fix like they did for Alienware....

KJ

 

My favorite movie(s). I know..sometimes I'm thinking reading all this wonderful information has made me second guess and scrutinize my system way more than I ever would have without reading everything It'll get fixed though...I have faith. I've started the long and arduous process of shifting all my mess over from my desktop to the laptop, so I guess I have fully committed at this point.

 

Latent it's usually 16.5v to 20v for laptops, but yes there are several power phases to upvolt or downvolt. The most common type is 19.5v and 18.5v.

It is not a driver, or software related. Processor drivers are not drivers so to speak so to speak. ACPI drivers are typically provided by Windows as a universal standard, however it is NOT unheard of for the chipset manufacturer to provide ACPI drivers in certain situations (Some thinkpad's use special ACPI drivers iirc for improved battery life).

The only way to get something similar to this without pointing at hardware is through low level operations that work outside of windows, and sometimes outside the BIOS and of the other option is the BIOS it self having a power indicator to throttle when too much power is used.

For now I would like it if everyone to focus on the test at hand, and to try running it for 30 minutes and see if any major throttling occurs. It more then likely is not low level operations, nor BIOS. Something tells me looking for low level operations or BIOS induced throttling is not something I'd be looking for.

I am using a Envy 17 SB that does throttle but doesn't lock up, I am currently testing a few things outside of this particular tests to see if I can get an exact diagnostics but with HP not divulging information of when the bios's thermal throttling kicks in or specifics on the motherboard (max power input that can safely be run).

So far I have tested thermals (induced hotbox, although to be quite honest it only spiked temps to 90c since the throttling it kept it from overheating past that), and drivers as well as fresh windows installations.

Right now I am experimenting others, however without spec sheets on the motherboard my hands are getting tied quick.

 

I recommended that in Crimsoned's thread...

MSI Afterburner

MSI Afterburner

In order to get it to work on the Envy...one is gonna need to modify the configuration file of Afterburner...

HOW TO: Enable UNOFFICIAL overclocking mode in MSI AfterBurner - Guru3D.com Forums

which will let you under or overclock the card. I recommended that you downclock the 6850 by 25 MHZ at a time until the throttling stops...My thought is that the 6850 is drawing power away from the CPU, in essence starving it. I would imagine that what Alienware may have done is downclocked their video card. I think this an AMD issue...the card is rated at something like 45 Watts...for a laptop card...pretty hungry.

 

So the question remains... can one play Crysis2 and still be ignorant of the throttle issues? In other words, can the user actually be getting less performance in a game like Crysis2 and not realize it because there is no real throttling in the game at the time, yet its really there anyway? I hope the question is clear, lol.

KJ

 

KJ, very few laptops I have handled ever throttled even one bit. So yes that's why it was very alarming to some of us.

Yes it really is. Sometimes I wish I wasn't so anal about my laptop being able to perform 100% of it's rated specs...



and then seeing it can push it some more.

 

Think I'm gonna order an Alienware and see if I like it at all. If I do, then there'll soon be a Envy17 out cheap on Ebay

 

Thanks joe...Not sure that the issue will arise with that video card. I think the 6850 and maybe even the 6870 may cause this. Based on the posts about Alienware throttling as well....and they use the 6870 in their 17" the rest of the Alienware line is Nvidia

 

You can, but you will also notice it runs good, then suddenly it runs alot better for a few seconds, then back to normal again. I thought this was some other issue like maybe how much stuff was happening at once in the game (games tend to slow down when alot happens), but it turns out after I did some tests that it was actually the CPU throttling up and down.

5 seconds every 30 seconds it runs at full speed while gaming... That's not even 20% of the time. And to think I paid $350 to get the best CPU possible. lol...

 

Games such as Crysis are also CPU aware. Didn't they modify the code in Crysis to acknowledge quad core?

Perhaps the question is...under what normal circumstances would we push the machine this hard and find the issue other than the benchmarking. I think Crimsoned also did some encoding.

 

So did I perform the Stress Test properly?

By the way, as predicted, the system did slow down, but I could even use IE and check this forum while it was testing, and it never locked up, just slow....

KJ

 

Okay I overclocked 75 mhz so far so good. Wonder if it will go to 700 mhz, that would be INSANE.

 

Soooo...why 30 minutes? Bob and I have both done it and it happens *immediately* upon starting Furmark. I've tested that multiple times and same thing each time - as soon as Furmark starts - it throws it down to 798Mhz.

I'm not liking the fact of how sure you are that it is sounding very hardware related. I mean, it wouldn't bother me so much if I felt confident they would fix it after owning up to it...it's the owning up to part that I'm having doubts about.

 

Example of you responding to my post.

Thanks again for proving my point.

 

Yes the stress test was good. Yup. You should have kept that type of functionality during that test.

Okay 3 minutes at 750 mhz core... This is ridiculous a 175 mhz overclock... That is very... very... good. I am so tempted to putting this sucker under watercooling and seeing how far I can take it.... idc if I waste my $1400...

30 minutes because it takes 10-15 minutes for my previous 2 envy SB's to slow to a crawl and become unresponsive. It was like clock work. Every 10-15 minutes. 30 minutes will give enough time to see if such a massive throttle occurs.

I know I am being confusing. >.< I am sorry but just hold on I can't say anything yet as my diagnostics are heading into territory I can't follow without blindly frying my laptop.

 

I'm only confused about whether you are looking for it to throttle even worse than the 798Mhz we have already proven? I mean...if I do this thing for 30 minutes are you saying you believe it will throttle even worse than that?

And I didn't get an answer about if you were currently running Win Pro?

 

As a quick update. Pulled the SSD from my envy today and plugged it into the 3 port of my desktop. Bootable disk in and the firmware flash worked like a charm (about 20 seconds). Went very smooth. Funny as is, Crucial is saying you can flush to 0007 on either IDE or AHCI, well it does not work on the ENVY, guess we have HP mode only .
As for the GPU/CPU throtteling. I believe we all have the same results. I would agree with Crimsoned, mut be power consumption. I recall that my CPU can be pusched on average about 0.2GHz higher on PSU as on Battery. So I would assume the GPU is draining it like crazy. Definit flaw in design.
I am hoping they will find a fix soon. It fortuntely does not affect me, since I use either or (my BIM flythrough and modeling uses minor CPU but major GPU, and my rendering uses major CPU but no GPU), the switching is kind a annoying though.

 

I am not expecting the processor to go below 798 mhz but I am expecting some people to report the system becoming unresponsive. Everything should slow down to the point moving the mouse requires a couple seconds wait.

No I am not currently running Windows 7 Professional but I was with my 1st Envy SB.. Did you have a question regarding it?

 

Was just interested in finding someone to take a peek at their local group policy settings to check power settings, no biggie.

 

Wait. If we are basing throttling solely on what CPU-Z reports. When I play crysis I'm consistently over 2.5ghz , how would I "really know throttling is there anyway"? My intel turbo boost monitor jumps up and stays there? How am I getting less performance and not realizing it?

 

My question was a good one right? Anyway, I did like Apoxxx's answer posted below. Seems you can have throttle and you notice it here and there in bits...anyway, I like his reply.

KJ

 

From my understanding Crysis 2 was supposed to be about as resource hungry as the 1st Crysis, however it seems to have been optimized or dumbed down for xbox 360/ps3 use as well.
Remember the original Crysis wouldn't have have even been able to run on the 360 or Ps3. Yet how is Crysis 2? Optimization or dumbing down. Either way Crysis 2 would not be something I'd test it with.

eba0922, CPU-z communicates with the bios (if I am not mistaken) to get reports of the speed. While yes it can be inaccurate if the processor is say brand new and not even announced, others have cross referenced with hwinfo32.

I don't have $60 to pop on crysis 2, nor do I want to spend $60 on the game so I can't double confirm with you guys on the exact usage.

However using Afterburner by MSI one can find out GPU usage. Using CPU-Z or HwInfo32 one can find out the frequency for the CPU. And finally using Window's resource monitor one can get a graph for the CPU usage.

See if the GPU/CPU really are being pushed to max speeds!

 

First, Apoxxx I would like to know what "tests" were run to finally determine the throttling up and down is what was causing your game to change in performance every few seconds ( I haven't notice any such changes during gaming). Secondly, to Killa Joe, if every real world performance test I perform returns great results without any hiccups, but running Furmark throttles me down to 798mhz, which of the two really matters? If there are envy's throttling and under performing real world tests then I would agree thats a throttling problem, but in my case throttling has only occurred when running furmark which holds no water for me anyways since I cant reproduce the throttling in any other test thus far. Enlighten me Killa

 

eba0922

The throttling issue is not a CPU-Z error. It is very real. Playing games results in momentary drops of FPS while playing only to resume to the avg FPS after the momentary throttle.
League of Legends should be enough to run, and experience the throttling if your system is affected.

 

No tests, I ran it windowed and had the hwmonitors CPU bars in the background. From that you can clearly tell that the CPU throttles back.

 

What kind of drops in fps are we talking here? I always run Fraps while I play my games (Metro 2033 and Crysis) and my fps are usually steady except when things sometimes get intense, which I've found to happen for all the machines I've used. Unfortunately, I don't have League of Legends to test it out. Has anyone performed the stress test you suggest, and not throttled down when using the 6850?

 

Thats the same way I tested crysis to see if it throttled back. Does this happen to all games you run on the envy? and how low does the throttling go? and for how long?

 

For me the difference here in World of Warcraft is 20fps vs 80fps. I run at 20, then suddenly it goes to 80 for a few seconds then back to 20... Same happens in other games.

So basically it's no drops in fps, but rather a momentary boost.

Yup, every game or program that uses the 6850M GPU. It throttles to 797Mhz, and stays there for around 25 seconds, then goes up to 3200Mhz for 5 seconds and back down again for 25 seconds... It's annoying me like crazy.

 

I can only imagine how annoying that must be! I've only had my envy for a week and so far so good, knock on wood. My fps would deviate from the average only about 3 or 4 fps, nothing like going from 80 to 20.

 

Actually, if you read AMD's specs...the 6850 is supposed to be clocked at 675MHZ...HP buys the clocked down ones. If 675 is the True rating...You should be able to hit 750 to 800 without breaking a sweat!

 

Fraps is inaccurate in quite a few games.

The drop in FPS varies, that's why I wanted people to do the Prime95+Furmark test to see how many slowed to a crawl.

For example both my previous SB Envy's slowed down to say 1-3 fps in games where typically it runs close to 80+. This would occur for a good 10-20 seconds.

In this current Envy which doesn't slow to a crawl, we're talking about a dip from 80+ FPS down to 30s-40s with some dips below that. While 30-40 are playable, the lag is very noticeable. This only happens momentarily, usually every few minutes.

Correct however if HP is really buying the non binned GPU's (lower stability), then chances are they weren't originally supposed to clock at 675 mhz.
Still 175 mhz over the stock speed is considerable. I just did a 40 minute league of legends game at 700 mhz no artifacts or crashes.

 

I am gonna load the original Crysis and run the Crysis benchmark tool on it in a bit...I will let you know what happens...

 

Awesome, that's a far more conclusive test given Crysis has a history of being both CPU and GPU dependent.

 

Actually another benchmark tool you can use...Heaven 2.5 and set Tesselation to extreme. See if you get a slowdown in that as well...running that right now

Actually the problem with Heaven is that it slows down a GTX580...fps are low to begin with. I am looking for extreme slowdowns where I know they exist...in the dark mainly...Started out 4.4 fps...up to as high as 23.9...average around 10...Crysis may be a better indicator

 

May be better if we stick with programs that can produce high enough FPS that the throttling can become visible. :|

 

I am running 3D Mark 11 in Extreme 1900 x 1080 mode and during Physx test...slow down from 17 fps to 12 back to 18...where under normal conditions, it stays around 22 when default setting

 

BTW...you mentioned that maybe HP bought low binned 6850's...I don't think that's it. With all the complaints of heat in the first generation with the 5850, I think they purposely clocked these down to keep em cooler...

 

Installing Crysis now

 

Thought...do you think the 120 HZ refresh rate does anything to this issue? It is mainly there for 3D gaming and entertainment. If you cut the refresh to 60, does it put less stress on the GPU?

 

My vertex 2 just died on me. I've had it for 2 weeks.

Was playing mass effect 2 all fine and dandy, then it froze up, I hard powered off, then on reboot it wouldn't get past the hp logo. Rebooted again and it said no boot drive found. Popped in my win7 disk incase it was just an mbr issue, disk couldn't find the ssd either.

Gonna go to bed and deal with this crap in the morning. At least it didn't die during one of my finals. I might've gone to ocz's hq and hurt somebody.

/rant

 

ATI tray tools can lock gpu clock speeds(not sure it will work on Envy with proprietary drivers) and rumor has it there is/are registry settings to lock clock and keep it from throttling down at least while gaming. search ati tray tools on google and places like guru3d will have it. I write this on Envy one I'm not playing too much with as Envy2 has been ordered and this one is going back. I'm of belief mine has b2 stepping and hopefully the new one is void of known issues with my current. back on topic.....

 

Wow! That is lousy. I hope they get you back into a good one fast!!!

 

The GPU doesn't throttle down...it causes the CPU to do so. My guess is that it draws too much power from the CPU...they sit right next to each other on the motherboard. Get the service manual and you will see that they are both under the left side of the keyboard...maybe an inch apart. I think the GPU draws more power...makes me wonder if the 120 Watt PSU that comes with the Envy is enough.

 

ZeroDude, welcome to our "little" Envy thread. This ATI tray tools sounds interesting indeed. I wonder what our more seasoned users have to say about this....

Edit: Nevermind, I see Bobmitch mentioned above its CPU speeds we are interested in, not GPU...oh well.

KJ

 

HP website swears up and down that if you check your serial number and the first three numbers are higher than 108, then you don't have B2. Intel even wrote that in order to not write new drivers, etc...the new chips are supposedly tricked out to detect B2. Only true way to know is open up the machine and look. Someone did on the Pavillion thread and found B3.

 

Bobmitch...that is one crazy good idea! I wonder if anyone here has a bigger powered brick they can use to power our Envy and see the results..... Imagine if more power actually stops the throttling?@ HP would have to send us all higher power bricks, lol. Just a thought.

KJ

 

Once Unwinder developed RivaTuner, which is now EVGA Precision and MSI Afterburner, there was no reason to work with ATI Tray tools. Granted...that Precision and Afterburner can only work with overclocking and underclocking...but on a desktop, even ATI users prefer Afterburner. Voltage controls, Fan speed controls to keep video cards cooler and more. PLUS...doesn't crash. My encounters with Tray Tools was not a good one. Now Ray may have really stepped up to the plate in the past few years...but I have used Precision and Afterburner pretty much exclusively

 

Wow, I am typing from my new Dell Inspiron 15R. i5-2410. I just returned my Envy 17 3d yesterday, and I'm glad to be done with it. My Dell has No random freezes, no driver issues, no graphics failures. And it starts up in 22 seconds flat! Including loading all drivers! (I put a Vertex 3 SSD in there, which by the way is the hardest drive install that I've ever done! I had to take the screen off, the keyboard, the RAM, the DVD Drive, And the Motherboard out! It's like they didn't want me to switch Hard Drives!) With the Envy 17 3d, you can render video faster, play games at higher fps, and have a backlit keyboard. But I'll tell ya, I enjoy this Stable system so much more than my Envy. And see if you can beat my startups, shutdowns, and program load times!

Ok, I'm done feeling special now, and hating on the Envy. But seriously I'm glad I made the switch.

 

I am currently updating Crysis to v1.2..will reboot...and give the benchmark tool a try