*HP Envy 15 (11XX / 12XX series) Owners Lounge!*

Here are my temps for i520m using F.24 bios.
TZ01 48
Core #0 43
Core #2 38

GPU temps from GPU-Z
GPU Temp 49
GPU core clock 100MHz
Fan Speed 30%

This is on my new system without overclocking and original install, doing regular work like browsing the internet, word, excel. I have not done any game tests yet.

 

What kind of battery life can I expect on an Envy 15 while just browsing the web or typing a Word document? These would be my specs:

Core i5-430
ATI MRHD 5830 1GB
500GB HDD (7200rpm)

 

You'll be looking at 1.5-2 hours.

 

Ouch, I was hoping for 3, lol. Thanks!

EDIT: About how much does the extended battery slice add?

 

Makes it 5-6 hours I think.

 

Oh, well that's acceptable. I'll have to reconsider the Envy 15 then. Thanks!

 

I would recommend people buy 2nd 6 cell battery instead of slice , it's much lighter and cheaper with almost close performance

You only need to pay $75 extra if you order with envy 15 CTO

 

I can get closer to 3 hrs on my 6 cell browsing the web and about 7ish+ on the slice.... Also if anyone is interested I get about 3 hrs playing dragon age and 4.5hrs playing counter-strike source. These are with a custom power plan I made. Even though the cpu is locked at 9x on battery I can still play these games at full 1080p and with all the graphic settings on high

I recommend the slice battery if when you use your laptop your going to be at a desk for an extended time and not moving around. The battery does add some weight but if your stationary its not a huge deal...(like when I am gaming on the go)

 

@js2393

I agree with both Texanman and Yun. I get a minimum of 2.5hrs browsing and with wifi off and just a simple app like word open I easily get over 3 hrs. And as Yun posted, I agree that an extra 6 cell is a much better option if you plan to be moving around or travelling, it weighs .8 lbs and is ~ 4"x8"x3/8" vs. the slice at 2.7 lbs and ~ 14.5"x9.5"x5/8" (includung latches), the power capacity is 53WH and 93Wh respectively. On long flights I carry 2 extra 6 cells and it's still lighter than the slice and gets longer life.... FYI, I get around 2:20 playback time on HD movies (DVD digital copies) using WMP with the 6 cell.

 

Thanks for the heads up! I just downloaded VLC 1.1, it is 95% better than 1.05. I had severe dropped frames while on battery running 1.05 playing mkv files I converted from Blurays. Watching the same video there were still couple of scenes with dropped frames, but after those scenes it was 100% smooth. CPU utilization remains around 25% so I don't know what really changed.

The Envy 15 absolutely refuses to run the CPU at more than 1.2GHz while on battery. Funny that I just realized it while trying to watch my mkv's on the Envy and seeing the severe dropped frames, so I ran cpuz to monitor it. Even running Prime95 this thing is stuck at 1.2GHz. This totally explains why my old Dell XPS1340 felt more responsive to me. This is so totally lame, HP!

 

Well its a way to save power when on battery... Personally im ok with that since anything I am going to do that will require more cpu anyways I will do plugged in

 

Some interesting findings about USB 3.0 that may be of interest to those on this board with an Envy with these ports. It seems that booting from a USB 3.0 device is impossible even while plugged into the USB 2.0/eSata port. I don't know if this is USB 3.0 device specific or if it has to do with the Envy BIOS. I currently don't have any other PCs or Notebooks that have USB 3.0.

 

The downside of carrying multiple batteries is you have to shut down/hibernate and then switch. With the slice, you just keep running. I find the slice much nicer for gaming while flying/traveling.

 

A better option is MPC-HC (Media Player Classic Home Cinema version) which uses the HD5830 GPU for h264 decode. Takes less power, less CPU utilization and its better video quality IMO. Just make sure you encode to DXVA standard like most everything x264 on usenet.

 

YES, I knew there's another player I meant to try out for the longest time. Thanks for the reminder.

Playing that mkv file beautifully, CPU barely breathing at 3-5%. 100% smooth, on battery!

 

Can you please share the settings that you changed for your custom power plan?

 

TZ01 42
Core#0 35
Core#1 33
GPU 42

Ambient temp is about 75F

I have the i5-430, and 500GB hard drive. I don't know what impact the lower power draw of your SDD will have on core temps. I am also running with pretty much all the HP bloatware still installed while I decide whether or not to return it. I'm not adjusting well to warm palm rests at all!

Sean

 

Has anyone tried overclocking their 5830? Do you guys think it would be possible to reach the level of the 5850 with overclocked memory? They have the same number of shader processors.

 

That's impossable, maybe you can get close to 5850 GDDR3 speeds, but you will be far away from the GDDR5 (envy 17) version. It doubles your memory bandwidth, which is rather important.

 

yeah, the GDDR5 puts the 5850 way ahead of the 5830. They did release a notebook for the 5850 with GDDR3 according to notebookreview, and it was not very impressive.

 

Theres a Thread mostly dedicated to ocing the 5830 that can be read here....In a nutshell it is possible to reach much higher scores in 3dmark by overclocking

 

I am using the 6500K profile and it feels a little too warm for me. Im not sure if it is because we have different panels or if it is because I am so used to the blue. I had been using a manual calibration of mine that turned down the blue quite a bit, but even that is much much bluer than the 6500k.

I am "warming" to it though, especially when going back and forth between the 6500k and uncalibrated. It looks absolutely terrible without any calibration at all. Pretty amazing how are brains are able to more or less compensate for that huge difference in color.

 

So if I get the single 2.5" hard drive bay, does that mean there isn't a way to modify it in the future for dual 1.8" drives?

 

You will need a bracket and a second mini-sata cable. It isn't impossible, but you will need to find a way to get those things from HP. The bracket isn't even necessary if you use SSDs and duct tape.

 

JJB, with the 7500K provfile, I can more or less only see the bottom three squares, up to 20, in this test: Black level - Lagom LCD test what about you? On the white test, I can see all but the last two.

With the 6500K, I lose the bottom row on the white test. On teh black test, I can see everything but the first line.

Without calibration, I lose most of the second line on the black test and cant see any of the last line on the white test.

The 6500K seems like be best compromise, but I still can't help but feel that it is slightly too red.

 

you will need a bracket and 2 micro-sata cables. the standard cable that comes with the 2.5" drive is not compatible. best bet is to buy the mounting bracket with the 250Gb HDD (will also get 2 cables) and then buy your 1.8" SSD.

 

Hey guys new the the thread.
Im using

2G Envy 15
Core i7 720 QM
8GB 1333MHz
HD5830 1GB
320GB 7200RPM
1920x1080 Gloss

My plans are to replace the 320gb (only 20gb used) with an 80gb SSD (with clean windos PRO) since I use externals for all my LARGE files. My question is, should I be looking for a spacific type of connector on the ssd? or will any ssd work? Not sure how all of this works. I was going to drop it in and install clean windows but didnt know if it was that easy. Thanks in advance guys. -Mike

 

Hello Mike, and welcome to the NBR Forums!

Congrats on your Envy and welcome to our little threads here haha. Anyways, about the SSD, may I ask which one? Is it an Intel X25M based on the 50nm?
Basically as long as it has SATA connectors, it is as simple as plug'n'play (ok, not that literally), but you replace the HDD with the SSD just like you would replace HDD for HDD.

 

How much does a SSD shave off the weight of the laptop?

 

Cool. I just didnt know if it needed a female or male connector. I want a good combo of price and quality. Any ideas? 50nm??? no clue. How about this....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167016

 

Not that much of a difference apparently. Notebookcheck: SSD versus HDD in comparison

 

So, I posted a while back in... I don't know, one of the envy 15 threads, about universal laptop batteries. I purchased an XP18000 because they're cheap, sturdy, and not attached to the bottom of my laptop. While the battery came with a plug that fit the Envy, it didn't work, so I emailed xpal. In short, they said, "ur laptap doznt fal wit'in are product range, lol sry." Thanks to some helpful advice I received here, I found the tip I believed would work with it ( AB13, which doesn't look like that, and requires some shaving to fit), and everything works great now. So, thanks for your help!

If you're wondering what an external battery can do for you, I did the following test:
Running the laptop on only the battery at full brightness with wifi/bluetooth on I got 1:25 (i5) playing back 720p video in VLC
Running on the battery and the XP18000 combined with the same settings got me 3:25 of playback
Since I can usually get just under 4 hours out of the laptop in conservative settings in class, I estimate that I will be able to get somewhere near or above 9 hours of use in class using the XP18000, this pleases me greatly.

I'm sure this will work similarly well with any of the universal laptop batteries out there, this is just the cheapest one I could find with LiPo cells and a fairly high capacity.

I hope the info is useful to some of you!

 

Well that sucks. O well, the laptop is already light. I just need to sell my laptop and get some extra cash to buy this.

 

But you do get the extra speed, the non moving parts, apparently more battery life and the such...if you can find a good deal, it is the best way to give a good speed boost to an already fast laptop/

 

well, my most recent issues are due to some changes in the apartment after which I have to work further away from the wifi router.
I tried one with a more powerful signal but I'm still getting extremely poor speeds (1 Mbps, sometimes less), so I'm starting to think this is the Envy which cannot broadcast it's own packets in return with enough power.

Is there any way to improve the outbound power of our wifi antennas?

 

If you go into the device manager and open the properties page on this wifi, there is a provision for setting the strength of the signal. The default is about half if I remember correctly.

seer

 

Mine is set as highest and it shows still very poor performance in general...

 

Serg, this is very strange, especially since we both have the gen1's. I've got my FX 6860 about 4 feet closer to the wifi hub than my envy as I'm wriring this and I have 4 bars on the envy and 2 on the fx, and the fx is a very good receiving unit. Running Internetfrog's wifi test, give essentially identical results, i.e. QOS on the test with the FX was 99 percent, on the Envy 100. I'm in my guest house which is about 60 yards from the main house where the wifi is originating. On a std DSL line i'm getting identical 1.2Mbps downloads, and 1.66Mbps uploads w a 250ms (vs. 267ms) round trip time.

Can you put up your adapter's settings and I'll compare to mine. You *might* have a bad antennae installation in the lid or questionable internal connection.

seer

 

I have a gen2 and transmission power is set to maximum at default. is there no custom firmware for the wireless device that allows further customization, like tomato for routers?

 

Have to check with intel on your specific model, my understanding is that gen1's like mine have the 5 series wifi and you have the 6 series. Couple of things to keep in mind, wifi's are not operating in a vacuum. The biggest problem are the cordless phones all around you (assuming you're talking residential. The frequencies are similar (depending on whether you're running N or G std, the phones throw a much broader freq spectrum which results in LOTS of 'noise' which will drastically degrade the perfromance of you're unit. Things like microwave ovens, all sorts of other electrical gear throwing a dirty signal etc. will cause problems. The solution is to find a band and a channel where you're all alone good luck with that LOL.

seer

 

A new BIOS was released today, F.28 A. Has anybody tried flashing it yet? It is supposed to resolve issues with freezing, black screens, etc.

 

They specifically say the solution is for the ATI 4830!!! Does that mean it wont fix the 5830 gpus???

 

PhatCat, thank you very much for posting this screaming warranty deal from Costco. I've just received it from Costco.

I can confirm it works on the Envy 15. I had a bit of trouble registering it online, so I called HP to register it. I looked up my Envy 15 on the HP warranty site, and it now shows that my laptop has "PICKUP AND RTN S/PACK W/ADP 2 YR IN WRTY".

+1 for you!

 

I installed the F.28 bios. They've reclocked the 4830 down to 399/699.

seer

 

The F28 is crippling my i7.

Seer, would you mind checking max performance on your i7? Mine cannot reach more than x11 multiplier, which means a top 1463MHz of speed instead of my 1.6GHz...

 

I've had 2 black screens so far (during gaming). Do you know if we can use the new drivers from the ATI site, or are we limited to using the ones from HP (which are 2 months outdated)?

I ask because I tried the ones from ATI, and I pretty much had to reboot in safe mode and get an old driver installed by windows update... never had that issue on nvidia cards on the DV6t..

 

Serg, sorry, was out and just saw this message. pull up cpuz and while watching it, switch your power setting to "High Performance" Core 0 on mine runs right up to 2790.5 Switching back to the "Microsoft Signature Power Plan" which the Redmond boys cooked up for this version which they were selling, drops the mghz like a stone down to 931mghz...and that's supposed to be a on demand type setting..if i fire up two instances of WOW in windows, I can push it up to 2640 or so.

I will tell you, pushing my gpu clocks up to my preferred game settings of 500-900 I got a new 3dmark06 score of 9276, which is quite a bit better than my previous mark under the original bios F.05.

seer

 

Drecca, I couldn't get the newest ATI drivers to work either.

 

One other thing, under my "microsoft" power setting the gpu gets clocked down to 299/699....under F.28. jeez.

 

I have 2 envy 15 G2.

One is PERFECT, and the other had the black screen problem a couple time per day. I just got it back after weeks of being at HP service and all they did was "re-image the hard drive"

I tried the new f28 bios, still froze 2 times in the last 2 hours.

NEXT!