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

i thought envy 15 already has a backlit keyboard, am i right?

btw how is the gaming performance?

 

The envy line has never used any Nvidia cards...

The current envy 15 does not have a B/L keyboard and there has been absolutlely nothing from HP indicating that there will be one in the next (gen 3) release or any upgrades of video card options, the new user manual shows an added 5730 option and the newer CPU quad core options and that's about it.... Anything beyond that is PURE SPECULATION!

 

The 360 GTS is only possible in the e17, since it consumes almost the same as the 5850, if I'm not mistaken a bit more.

And why would you want that? The 5830 is faster than the 360....

 

When is HP going to refresh the E15? Should we expect an on board optical drive and back-lit keyboard?

 

@Black_Meddal

Sorry, but maybe you should re-read 3 posts up...

 

Ahh, sorry I must have skipped that. Anyways, when do you expect to see the refresh? Go ahead and speculate if you must; even a ball park estimate will satisfy me.

 

Hey, JJB,

What are the temperature for your CPU & GPU under heavy load?

Mine is 50 C and 65 C under heavy load (playing starcraft 2), I guess all the fans are working

The problem is, the heat is transfered to case very well . All the body feels super hot, included battery.(AC mode)
I just took a look at battery, the safty temp is 0 to 60 C, make me scared.

 

@YUN

You must have something going wrong, even when I do a 100% burn in test with everest and run a Furmark stability test at 633 / 1133 O.C. (at the same time) my case barely gets warm on the top side and the bottom isn't even what I would consider 'hot' , the warmest spot is about under the on /off indicator on the touch pad (on bottom of computer). I am looking for an older post of this burn in test that has actual temp screen shots etc. , will add to this post when I find it .....

Here are my temps at idle, room temp ~68F: HERE

HERE is the 100% burn in post (I was wrong the O.C. on GPU was 625/1125). The max temps are shown in the attachment. This test maxes out the computer to 100% load on all 4 threads on the CPU and the full OC'd GPU furmark run at the same time for 20+ minutes, I stopped the test since the temps (top and bottom) showed no sign of increasing after the first few minutes. So considering that my core temps were in the mid to upper 70's sustained for 20 minutes and the case never got very warm it seems you must have something going wrong with your cooling system

Another posssiblity is the heat sinks on the CPU and / or the GPU may not be in full contact with the actual surface of the die, I recall a few posts where people found this to be the case and significantly reduced temps by reapplying thermal paste to the processors....

By the way, the warmest I have ever felt the palmrests was yesterday, I had left the computer open near a window in direct sunlight and when I got back from a meeting (~2 hrs) I could barely touch the palmrest it was so hot. Funny thing was the computer was not even on

 

I guess I have to send it back to depot,
I found there are so many flaws in this envy 15, it start discoloring on the case

BTW, what is your room temp,

My room temp is a little high , 86 F

 

In the E14 thread a guy from Germany tested his and it doesn't throttle on battery. Of course he's probably using an i5.

I liked my E15 but in the end the E14 is more of what I want. I'll get switchable graphics for long battery life, brighter screen for outside viewing, E2E (finally don't have to deal with that crappy scratch bevel), backlit keyboard, and HDD caddy for 2nd HDD. Even though it's 1.11" that doesn't seem too bad.

 

I'm sorry, I'm sure that this has been asked, but I didn't see anything towards the front of the thread, so I wanted to check. HP isn't selling the Envy 15 w/ the i5 anymore, which kinda kills it for me because it shoots battery life to hell. However, I just looked, and it seems like the Beats edition is still on sale w/ the i5; what I'm concerned with is whether or not that i5 allows graphics switching, and if it does, where does it put E15 battery life? Anyone?

 

@StealthReventon

Not sure where your getting your info on the 14?? It has a 'Radiance display' which means higher color gamut not a brighter display, it is not even listed as an 'Ultra brightview' which is HP's term for an extra row of LED backlights. Also there is only 1 HDD bay so I'm not sure where your planning to put a second drive. As for battery life I would wait for actual real world test results, even the HP specs are stating 2 Hours which seems low to me especially since HP is notorious for over stating battery life, yet they state up to 13 Hrs with the slice ... Oh, and how did someone in Germany get a hold of a 14 already? it was just released in the US only so far.

@headinmysights

I can get a consistant 3:15+ hours with the 15 540M wifi on with the 6 cell battery or 2:20 min of 720p video play back in WMP (wifi off, + headphones). There has never been a switchable graphics option on the 15 due to the PM55 chipset but the 5830 has a fairly good power saving mode on battery. The i5's will be coming back to the standard 15 but it is unknown when the next revision (gen 3) will be released.

 

Is there any speculation? I've been surfing this thread and I know that nobody has any solid dates, but if I could throw an i5 into the 15 without having to pay the Beats edition premium, that'd really lock it up for me. Why'd they eliminate the i5's anyway? It seems like most people here bought them with that configuration.

 

Sorry but I try not to speculate, it's pointless. You can call HP and see what they tell you, LOL, so far I have seen at least 3 different dates, posted here, which have all come and gone....

 

JJB he might be planing to replace the dear dvd drive with a hd.

and yes the envy 14 was released in germany at the same time as US, and since there no customization options they were all quickship, so some people have already got their hands...'

but since the e14 thread is filled with speculation and concern about late deliveries the info on how much battery life is a unknown to me. But some people state that after a few charge they get 4:10 hours....

I would still get the e15 if the battery life is so negligible.

 

bumpbumpbump

 

I don't understand why people are so hyped about the envy 14's battery life... it's only about an hour more, and in all other respects aside from E2E in place of that scratch-magnet bezel, the envy 14 pales in comparison to the envy 15.

 

Then why are you waiting for the E14 in your sig? LOL

 

The radiance display is supposed to be 350nit and I thought that meant brighter, at the very least it's better color gamut range. I don't need 1080p for a 14.5" so IMO the screen on the 14 should be better than the 15 as far as quality of image and colors.

I'm going to install a 2nd hdd (wd 750gb) in the odd. Don't need odd.

The guy from Germany posted pics and all kinds of stuff so he really does have one. He got 4:10 battery with 60% brightness, wifi on. He didn't do any power optimizations like you do to get 3hrs with E15. Most people think with lower brightness and best power saving settings, disable turbo boost, etc. that 5hrs is easily achievable.

And he confirmed with CPUZ that the cpu doesn't throttle on battery. Cool!

I don't game so GPU is moot. 1.11" is probably moot as well.

So in summary, it pretty much has everything I need. If the E15 had E2E and backlit I would much rather take it. Although I wish it had support for two 2.5" hdds. But that's no biggie. I'd still take it with 1.8"s.

 

too lazy to change it XD

 

Envy 15 display specs:

Envy 14 display spec (raw):

Edit: I just found the 'typical' brightness spec in the 14 manual of 200 nits, here is a screen shot of that:

So the 14 is about 10% dimmer than the 15 glossy..

Edit 2: Just noticed that a glossy screen is all that is offered in the configuration options even though the manual shows only a A/G option, so my above info on brightness may be incorrect depending on what screen type HP shows specs for in the manual.

 

@JJB

They don't even offer it with the lower res display on hp.com. So were talking only the Radiance display.

Hmm... I thought I read that the 15 originally had brighter screens on G1 that really were around 300nits and then they reduced 'em to 220nits etc. So I was under the impression that the E14 screen would look brighter than the E15's at 350nits. Maybe your raw numbers thing is correct though.

Either way, I'll see cause they have a good return policy and I've had the E15 Glossy and A/G to compare with.

I don't care at all about weight, more so about thickness.

The thing I hate about the E15 is the absolute crap bevel and no switchable graphics for better battery life. Backlit isn't that big of a deal but is nice.

 

To clarify, what I am calling 'raw' brightness specs are the LCD vendors (LG) specs which are measured without any graphics, drivers or software, just a calibrated backlight 'source' and the LCD TN display being powered so all pixels are 'open', it essentially is a measure of how transparent the display is for light transmission from back to front. In our discussion we are talking about 370 nits (15") and 350 nits (14"), this spec is commonly used by most manufacturers as the "brightness" of the screen, as you can see it is very misleading since once you add just a basic driver, LED backlight and blank white screen 'image' the real world brightness is 220 nits on the 15".

Conversly same thing is tested when all pixels are 'closed' to measure how opaque the screen is, since there is no driver or software (ie; a black screen image) the contrast ratio from the manufacturers is generally shown as much lower than what is actually measured in the actual finished computer display (with driver, software + image). Example; the 15 is spec'd at 200:1 yet at full brightness (which is lowest contrast level) I measure 550:1. Funny that HP has not caught on to this and listed the 500+:1 spec, I guess the higher brightness level is what they want to market....

 

It's so weried, I bought a arctic silver adhesive and applied on both GPU and CPU

I found all fans are working

It doesn't really help at all, the case is still hot..

 

Well all I can think of is to keep task manager and everest open and monitor the CPU % usage and the 'powers' level to see what's causing the heat. My 540M drops to 0% within about 2 seconds of completing any 'task' and the powers at idle fluctuate between 5.2W and ~7W.... Maybe you have something causing excessive backround use of the CPU

Another test is to run the everst stability test on the CPU and see if it stays within the normal temp range under full load on all threads, this could show a faulty fan or something.... I get to 77C max on the 540M with just the CPU and FPU boxes checked (no cache or memory or drives checked) which seems to generate the highest temps, that's at around 70F room temp.

Also some thermal paste takes a few days to cure and acheive maximum conductivity... Burning in at high temps can help speed that up

 

CPU usage is only 30% to 50%.........

Memory usage is around 3.4G/4G.....will this problem cause by OS?

 

Just wanted to note that my Envy 15 also has an esata port that's busted. Broken esata, uneven keyboard on the right side that raises around the semi-colon [doesn't cause any issues, however], but great besides that. i5-420, 1080 display, it's great.

 

OK those numbers seem very high. What is your machine doing when using so many resources? Is that during gaming?

How many processes are running?

At idle my CPU is at 0% and memory usage is 1.2GB (of 8GB total)

 

at idle any cpu should be at 0-4% nothing more than that

 

My Envy 15t is on the way, from China???

I thought the Envy's were put together here in the US?

.

 

@JJB

Thanks for clarifying about the screen brightness. I really wish HP would refresh the E15 cause that would be my ultimate lappy. I guess I'll try the E14 and see how it goes, really wish the E15 with switchable and e2e was out tho.

 

I'm looking to buy one, but does anyone have overheating problems, especially when gaming?

thanks a lot!

 

only had overheat once when overclocking. dialed it back and haven't had issues since.

 

Okay.

I guess the overheating problem is causing by memories

That is why I said the battery is serisouly hot.

I don't know if it's ture though

but if this problem is caused by memories, what if I buy two 4G , will it help?

 

the problem is that there is some software nagging all your resources, when idle the pc should be at 0-4% nothing more than that, the consume of memory is also over the top

 

It's not caused by the memory but whatever program(s) is using all that memory. There is an easy way to figure out what it is-- First close all open programs and the open task manager and make it wide enough to see all the columns then click on the 'processes' tab and 'check' the box that says 'show processes for all users'. Next click on the 'CPU' text at the top of the 3rd column, this will show what programs are using any amount of your CPU in decending order. So any programs or apps at the top of the list that show CPU usage are the ones that are running in the backround.

You can do the same to figure out what is using all your memory up, just click the word 'memory' at the top of the 4th column and it will change the order to show how much memory is being used by programs, largest users at the top....

Here is a screen shot of what mine looks like with the 'memory' column selected to give you an idea what you should see. I have a bunch of IE8 tabs open and some apps running in the backround so my memory usage is highe than normal right now...



Edit: I am adding 2 more screens which I just took with everything closed just after a reboot, 1st one is same as above but with fewer processes and second on is the 'performance' tab view, note that you can click on the 'resource monitor' button on this tab and view much more detail on what is running in the backround;

 

soo, I've been looking at the 500gb seagate momentus XT and it all seems to be very ssd shiny for a fraction of the price, I'm thinking of getting one for my envy..has anyone done the same?

 

It doesn't have anywhere near the performance of an SSD. It only has 4 GB of flash memory, and stores some commonly used programs in there. So it'll be faster than a HDD when using certain programs, but for the most part, it will perform like a HDD.

 

In case your not aware: There is a NEW ENVY SUBFORUM here! It consolidates all the envy threads under the heading "HP Envy & HDX", you're actually in it right now, look at the top of the page, if you click that heading you'll see the list of all Envy threads....

 

As EOM stated, it's faster than a HD, and slower than an SSD.

According to the benchmarks, when two (2) are set up as a RAID 0, it does match an SSD.

Seagate Momentus XT 500GB ST95005620AS Review - Overclockers Club

For the price, $129 for a 500 Gb HD at Newegg.com, it's cheaper than an SSD.

.

 

I'm obviously not expecting it to match an SSD, but for the price having MUCH faster bootup times and faster access to firefox, matlab and live mail would be a much better investment than having, say, chosen an i7 over the i5-520.
In the end, that is what I use most. I can't say I am ever hampered by load times in games...
I am simply asking if anyone has considered doing the same or has done so already or has strong points against buying one.

also, is it ludicrous to believe I might get slightly better battery life by reducing access to the HDD by my most used programs in favor of the solid state memory?

 

thanks for the newegg hint, but I'm in Italy and they don't ship here, so I'll either have to buy it off ebay or dish out 140 freckin euros for it...

 

JJB,
One of my program takes like 1.3G, I need to use it though

So if I purchase new memories ,will it help?

Idl is around 1.6gb

 

In general, to execute a thread of software, you have to have a processor to do that. So the rule of thumb (which as all rules of thumb are generally, as a rule of thumb NOT a rule of thumb) suggests that Threads = Cores.

However threads is not necessarily Cores. The i5 (and i7's) do clever tricks to "fool" the OS into thinking that it has twice as many cores as it really does ("Hyperthreading"), but that's because a single physical core (on the i5's and i7's) can really perform tasks on 2 threads of software at the same time (subject to a couple of limitations).

So from the OS's perspective, the i5 CPUs "look" like they're doing up to 4 things (on 4 threads) at the same time, when in reality, due to some clever tweaking that Intel has put together, they're really doing that on 2 physical processors.

 

Okay, I found this thing,

Newegg.com - Sunbeamtech Copper Notebook Memory Heat Spreader Cooling Model NMHS-C RAM Heatsinks only

Do you think it's thin enough to fit in envy 15?

 

I've noticed that turning off ground detail clutter (can't remember the setting off the top of my head) makes a substantial difference, too.

My desktop has started having some general slowdowns with WoW recently (HD 4890 - faster than the 5830m in the envy 15), and is averaging closer to around 30 FPS in many areas now.

Note that the Envy 15 does show WoW at smooth settings in any of the pre-BC content (and even some in the BC content).

 

considering the bottom range Envy ships with 4 gb, why worry?

 

the various CTO configurations available for the Beats as well as the quickship version all come with the Radeon HD 5830 graphics card, no switchable graphics.

The main problem with the current CTO options for the beats edition is that you can only order up to 4GB RAM and... if you take the word of the phone sales reps, they have rearranged the mobo so it only has one DIMM and can never be upgraded beyond 4GB (?!) that sounds quite hard to believe, especially as the quickship Beats is still available with 6GB

 

It's overheating....:cry:

 

send the envy back, its not possible that a lowly memory of laptops is overheating

conduct some memtests and confirm it