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

Isn't all of them HM65? SO they went with the cheaper board for the new model. Interesting.

 

WOW, if ALL of the 3rd Gens have the Intel HM65 chipset, that would explain why they did not include a RAID option in the BIOS, since that chipset doesn't support RAID! I thought they were running with the HM67, but apparently not the case! Yeah, I'll stick with the 2nd Gens....

 

I read the Intel siite and the HM65 is a value chipset. The price difference between the two is only $8 but HP took the cheap route. I called to cancel the order but it is too late so I will return it when it gets here. I was looking for a desktop replacement and raid is something I like to use for the speed boost.

 

Why not go SSD. HM65 does SATA III and once you do that...RAID is mute...

 

It very well may be that with the new designed case...that the Pavillion motherboard was a better "Fit" Sounds like the Pavillion motherboard in an Envy

 

Dang... mine is HM65 also... and I thought all this time I could do hardware RAID

 

Wow! Going cheap on a premium laptop! Bad boy HP!

Not a deal breaker for me because I am not that much into RAID on a laptop. RAID0? No way!

 

Now the owner of a HP Envy 17. Dont know if im liking the comments about it on here. The general review seems to be send it back for a Macbook? Grateful for all feedback!

Merry Christmas everyone.

 

Something doesn't add up cause I swear when I got my laptop it said HM67 Chipset somewhere and I remember being happy to confirm it. But ever since my clean install with a new SSD most programs will say HM65. I feel like it's being recognized as the HM65 because HM67 is so new and programs aren't recognizing it as easily. Similar to how the 7690M XT shows up as the 6770 in some places or programs.
If it really is HM65 then I'd be really angry. They'd either have to replace it with a true HM67 or I guess I can suck it up and be okay with it. It's just awful when you expect the HM67, confirmed it says it even on the PartSurfer website as the replacement part, and find out it's really an HM65. Just downright cruel. However HP's support is great and I am extremely happy with everything else on this laptop. Graphics is the only area where you can see a weakness or see limits but that's only when you really opt for extremely high settings + resolutions. Bring it down a few notches and as long as it's playable I'm happy.
I remember reading that there's extended returns because of the Holidays up to January 15 so I'll be watching updated programs during this time frame to ensure HM67 chipset.

 

The HM67 isn't new. The previous envy had it and it identifies as hm67

 

Merry Christmas...

Not sure that a step toward a Macbook is a step up! Most times, Macs will be behind with the hardware. Also a learning curve to learn Mac OS. Macs are PC's with their own OS. To get something equivalent to the Envy...you are looking at Toshiba Qosmio. Again...read through all the posts on other brand boards. Asus and Toshiba have the "throttling" issue that HP fixed long ago. When you stress the CPU and GPU at the same time...the CPU speed drops to 800 Mhz. Toshiba owners fix the issue by finding the original bios to the machine and flashing back to 1.01. All brands have things going on...depends on what is important to you. HM65 chipset may not be a RAID 0 board...but it is SATA III. AND...it's as fast as HM67. SSD's are almost as cheap as HDD's right now, because of the flooding issue in Thailand. Go for the 300 GB SSD option and get premium space with a decent Intel SSD. Other than that...very little compares to Envy

 

I'm jumping on board. Once my screen is repaired, I am selling my current Envy. I've already ordered the new one.

 

If it were me and I wanted the Envy 3rd gen, the only way I would buy one is with the SSD! Since it has the HM65 and not the HM67, you cannot use Hardware RAID. So to resolve the chip issue, just go with an SSD. Heck if you had a 2nd gen Envy (with HM67) and had a SSD and an HDD, you couldn't use the RAID anyway. So problem solved, just ensure you order your Envy (3rd Gen) with an SSD!

OR

If you cannot afford the SSD option (like Me) and need the RAID 0 speed boost (like Me), because your into heavy gaming, than just buy an Envy 2nd Gen. You'll get the HM67 with Hardware RAID and you'll be good to go, but I would suggest waiting a month or so, since the price drops should start hitting about than!

Either way, an ENVY is the right PC to have, it is IMHO the BEST PC laptop on the market! Just ensure you know what your ordering and order the Envy that best suits your needs (2nd or 3rd Generation) with the options you can afford...........

Good Luck and Merry Christmas / Happy Channucka!

 

My touchpad still does not scroll. I have the reils app and the latest driver for the touchpad but still no go.

Can someone put a step by step guide on removing and installing the drivers and software to make this work properly?

Also can they include the proper settings to use between the Synaptics software and Reils?

Maybe even as a new topic.

I am sure there are others in the same boat and this would really help us out.

Otherwise everything else is working great.

Thanks for any help on this one problem.

 

It was too late to cancel the order so I will be returning it. I have been looking at the Qosmio from Toshiba which has a much better video card Nvidea 560M and supports raid at a lower cost. It's weird that HP would downgrade their performance laptop line. I have two 64GB SSD cards that I planned to use in the laptop using Raid 0. Since it isn't possible I feel I got gimped because the laptop isn't cheap.

 

Don't quote me on this, but I think I read some where awhile back that you cannot run a RAID configuration on SSD's. Can anyone else comment on this ability or lack there of??

 

That's not right. You can absolutely RAID the SSDs. RAID0 doesn't buy you much (**) on SSDs but you can sure as hell RAID them.

** - RAID0 is useful to increase the sequential transfer bandwidth of the drive like you put two 100MBps drives in RAID0 to get a ~200MBps speed drive. SSDs' sequential bandwidth is already 3-4 times more than the traditional HDDs. So, this is moot. Loading a game in memory at startup will be faster by a couple of seconds for 2 SSDs in RAID0 vs a single SSD but that's about it.

The best thing about SSD is not its sequential bandwidth (its a given) but its the random access time and speed. Access times on HDDs are of the order of 10ms, whereas they are of the order of 0.1ms on SSDs. Random 4k access speeds are 1-2MBps for HDDs and 50-200MBps (depending on the drive you get) on SSDs.

These are order of magnitude higher speeds, and the biggest selling point of SSDs. It allows many applications to do IO against the drive without blocking each other. e.g. You can do a backup or virus scan in the background and still play the game at its full speed in parallel. With HDDs, you would get hickups. And no amount of RAID0 on HDDs will help with that because its a random access issue and not a sequential transfer issue.

 

What do you mean raid does not do anything for SSD? It doubles the performance. A 500MB SSD will give 1000MB in raid. I have two 64 GB SSD drives and performance doubles in raid and the difference is very noticeable.

 

I thought I did explain that. Just getting twice the sequential bandwidth doesn't mean anything if there is nothing in your system which will use that bandwidth. The only example where I can think is game load at the very beginning. Or you are reading a large media file in RAM for editing. Again, 500MBps vs 1000Mbps will only make a difference of few seconds compared to the difference you will see going from HDD to SSD.

The bang for buck for SSD comes from its random access bandwidth, which makes it not block the applications when many of them try to access the disk at the same time. e.g. boot sequence (many many services reading disk at the same time), backup & game play, virus scan & video editing etc.

May be the difference is noticeable with 64GB you have because 64GB typically have less NAND modules in them and hence less parallelization (NAND modules are internally arranged as RAID0 inside the drive to increase bandwidth) and hence lower bandwidth. Try a 256GB Crucial M4. Once you go 520MBps, you sort of saturate most of your applications. Of course, 1000MBps is faster but of not much use most of the time.

 

YES...you can run RAID 0 on SSD as they are now. NO, you do not get TRIM support...so over time, your performance will degrade. Until Intel releases the version 11 Rapid Storage Manager, TRIM is on the RAID wishlist. There will be RSM v11 in the first quarter...but for right now...you cannot get TRIM to work..so deleted files stay...

 

I never saw HP release touchpad drivers that would scroll in the 2nd Gen Envy, either. In order to get finger gestures, scrolling, etc...you need Scrybe...and only get it from Synaptics. In order to install their drivers...leave the HP drivers installed...then install Synaptics on top and everything will work as you wish...

Drivers | Synaptics

 

Well, I officially hate the volume dial. I like the idea of fine audio control. But it's interfering big time with the volume adjustments in other programs & online. I use my notebook connected to the tv a lot & DO NOT want to get up and screw with this dial every time i need to adjust. Anyone else having trouble with it? Can it be reassigned to the master volume instead f the headphone jack? Otherwise, I'll just try to disable it.

 

Anyone know if our license for Tridef Ignition will allow us to use Tridef Media Player? If so, how?

 

No, It won't. I may have used my HP license file from the 2nd generation I have next to it though.

 

Ok, short version my thoughts on the 2nd vs 3rd gens. I think the 2nd generation is a more mature design. I think HP started over with the 3rd.

• Very annoyed that hp went with the HM65. A laptop with a msata should be able to raid the 2 data drives together, PERIOD. That being said, I will be multibooting so, wasn't going to raid anyhow.
• Despite the dual fans, and the whole back being a heatsink, this one is much louder (and hotter, nothing like gen 1 though), most likely cause the exahust is up, so the fan noise is also.
• The bluray drive is loud.
• I can't keep the damn thing clean

*edit - ohh, and not being able to upgrade msata firmware (even if its destructive, sucks), I want TRIM!!!

 

Does anybody know if i can watch 3D youtube videos on the envy 3d, if so, how?

 

Heads up - I'm currently adding the Proximity Sensor Utility to the driver thread. Please thank Trader05 for uploading the utility.

Any owner here write a (comprehensive) review of your ENVY 17 / ENVY 17 3D? If so, let me know and I'll link them to the first post. I need to fill up that section.

 

I'd honestly LOVE to write a review for it, but I'm enjoying the damn thing too much for me to stop and do that!

I'll try and find some time, but my album translations and boxing day come first.

If you want a quick pre-summary of my review, here it is: If you want a powerful, fully featured, portable, 17" laptop - with the power to play most modern games, and still get 6+ hours of battery, go with the ENVY 17 or 17 3D. You won't regret it.

 

Like I said, Do NOT Quote me.... I was pulling off of some old deleted memories, that were over written several times and the memory just didn't restore properly.. Sorry about that, but I did put out the applicable forward warning, LOL!

 

Thanks for the link BOB!

 

Is there any difference between the 17" and the 17" 3D? Ill never use the 3D glasses, so im wondering if there's any benefit to getting the 3D version, since the majority of people here seem to have ordered the 3D.

 

I wasn't particularly interested in the 3d either, I just ended up ordering the 3D over the regular 17 because it was actually cheaper (thanks to the coupon for the 3D only). The screen on the Envy 17 3D is brighter and has a higher refresh rate (120HZ rather than 60-70) than the regular 17 to accommodate the 3D feature. However I don't think it's worth paying extra money for. If you can get a 3D for the same price, I'd say go with it... the brighter screen and higher refresh rate is nice, and the 3D is a neat gimmick to impress people with and maybe watch the occasional 3D BluRay if you're into that. If you don't care for the 3D feature, however, I wouldn't spend the extra $150 or however much it is to upgrade to the Envy 17 3D just for the screen.

Aside from the display there aren't really any other differences. The 3D comes with 8GB of RAM as the base option (the 17 comes with 6GB base) and I think the 3D only has one option for the display, the 1080p one.

 

Thanks so much for the reply! How much discount was the 3D coupon?
I wonder if i wait for this 30% coupon to expire this wednesday whether a better deal will show up

 

My config gave about an $850 discount with the first coupon.

I doubt better than 30% will ever come along.

 

Hello! Provide links to these program tests, please!
What tests will U recommend to test Your new Envy 15 for overall usage condition? I mean CPU, HDD for errors, temperature and so on...

Thanks!

 

Here's furmark: FurMark: VGA Stress Test, Graphics Card and GPU Stability Test, Burn-in Test, OpenGL Benchmark and GPU Temperature | oZone3D.Net

Wprime: Downloads | wPrime Multithreaded Benchmark

Hardware monitor: CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting

Run all 3 at the same time to really push your envy but keep an eye on the temperatures and abort at 95C if it reaches that high. The best test i can think of would be using it for your normal activities .

 

The deal I got was a 33% off coupon for the Envy 17 3D only, bringing the $2200 list price of the machine I configured to about $1450. That one has since expired, but the 30% coupon should be working. I wouldn't advise waiting for it to expire since it seems extraordinarily unlikely to me that a better deal will appear.

 

Im away for theholidays right now and have no access to my money back home. Hp rejected my credit card cause of some silly thing with my bank, so the earliest i can order it would be jan 5th. I wonder if some new coupons gonna show up, or whether theres gonna be no Envy for me afterall?

 

I am going to order one of these and was wondering if anyone knows if the mSATA slot is SATAIII 6Gbps? Would like to put one of those new Runcore drives in myself - Runcore T50 6Gb/s mSATA 120GB SSD Review - The Verdict - The SSD Review

 

Mines getting returned. I see little reason to sacrifice 50% of my disk IO speed as compared to my Gen2 when everything else is at best a lateral move. I'm glad they made the cooling better, but I can deal.

Good luck everyone, see you when the Gen4's come out.

 

I dropped off the Envy 15 @ FedEx and have about 2 weeks before I can have my new Envy, hopefully defect free!!

Now my issue is deciding between the 15 and 17.

If i get the 17, i lose the IPS display, but gain the possibility of having a SSD for my OS/programs and HDD for music and movies...

If i get the 15, i get the display, but i'm stuck with either a slow 750GB hdd, or a small 300gb SDD.

Any of you who have both the 15 and 17, how inferior is the 17's screen?

 

I have both and I like both a lot. While the 15 does have a better screen as it is IPS, the 17 3D also has a great screen in my opinion. Unless you're doing some ultra serious photo/color work, I don't see why the 17 3D wouldn't work for you.

 

Hi all!

I have a 17 3d with a 160 SSD. I think the recovery partition is on the SSD - is there a very easy way to recover that 20GB partition without changing any other setting?

Thanks!

Steven

 

When you say recover, do you mean eliminate? If so, go into Computer Management (Admin Tools) and you can delete the Recovery Partition to regain the disk space. Just make sure you have created your Recovery Disc's prior to deleting that partition...

 

If I ordered the recovery DVD... any point in keeping that partition?

 

I am thinking the mSATA slot with be 3Gb/s because as the intel HM65 spec shows

taken from Intel® HM65 Express Chipset

Therefore I guess the two 2.5" HDD slots will be 6 Gb/s and the mSATA slot will be 3 Gb/s.

Can anyone confirm?

 

Yes - wondering same thing - is there anything to consider as I am working with a SSD - thanks again - I also have a recovery disc.

 

There is an option to burn the recovery to DVD or backup to another storage. No need to buy it. I usually just delete it since it serves no purpose and I usually do a clean install.

 

Yes... I realize that, but I didn't want to spend time making a recovery disc.

So, for those of us who did buy it, any point in keeping the recovery partition?

 

If you have it on a disc why would you need the partition when the disk has the same thing?