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

Have you turned 'write caching' on for your SSD ? It makes a big improvement in speeds.

Also you should try the 'snipping tool' built into win 7 for your screenshots, I find it much quicker and easier than uplaoding to something online, just save it to desktop as a .png file and you can uplaod directly to your posts with the attach / browse feature...

 

Write caching is on for both drives. I checked driver version and I did not have the latest. Just updated and speeds essentially the same (gained a few mb/s in a couple of tests, but could just be random variance).

I wonder if it's a firmware difference. Mine are 2CV102HA.

That snipping tool looks very convenient. Thanks

 

I have the same firmware version so it's not that.... How about the intel Rapid storage tech driver? I'm on the newest one, v 9.6.4.1002.

Another way to test things is to load up the CPU as much as possible, I use the Everest stability test which loads all 4 threads to 100% load (2.8Ghz ea) or any other burn in test or even run Super PI, then run CDM and see if the 4K numbers improve anymore. This is how we figured out that the C1E idle state was causing the bottleneck, counter intuitivley the CDM #'s went up the higher the demand on the CPU was loaded when running the test....

Another thing to check is if you have Superfetch enabled or not, for me it does not make a noticable difference either way, but others have reported big gains with it disabled. Also depending on your settings, High performance power plan makes a difference (that's what I set the 'disable idle' tweak to run on).

EDIT: I just remembered about Win 7 indexing, it is not needed with an SSD it can actually slow things down, mines been disabled since day 1....

 

Just curious, what kind of battery life numbers are you guys getting? I just bought mine and mine seem low, barely breaking 2 hours, so I'm wondering what you guys get.

 

I can easily get up to 3.25hrs with wifi on and light browsing. You don't mention what CPU you have.....

I have done a clean install, run 0 HP software and done several tweaks to improve battery life. I have posted all these multiple times here and really don't have time to search for them right now... Also I have SSD's which use much less power than HDD's.

 

Okay, I hadn't done any optimization yet, I'm going to find your posts and do what you've done. Thanks for the help.

 

If you have a quad core, you won't get a whole lot better battery life. The i7's are much more power hungry than the i5's that JJB and I and the people claiming ~3 hours have.

 

I'm having major issues with overheating while playing Starcraft II. It's completely shut down on me 3 times now with a fan blowing directly on the computer. The thing is, it doesn't feel like it's actually getting that hot when it shuts down versus other times when it gets REAL hot and the fans just kick on high.

I know for certain the fans weren't on high last time it shut down, and when I rebooted quickly and checked the temps, the GPU was at 60 and decreasing. Is this normal behavior?

For reference, I'm currently idling at the following temperatures with only firefox and thunderbird open, with a fan blowing on the computer from the right side.

 

@RogerMurdock

Those are higher than my idle temps, especially the GPU, unless one of the open apps is using the GPU. I'm idling now at 34C / 23C CPU and 41C GPU in a 70F room with 10 tabs open in IE8.

First of all I read that SC2 has some major known heating issues with GPU's, I would google it and see what's up there. Also you didn't say if you were OC'ing the GPU, what you describe sounds more like it's crashing from OC'ing than temps, but your description of " It's completely shut down on me 3 times now with a fan blowing directly on the computer. " really doesn't tell me what happened. How did it 'shutdown'? Black screen freeze and had to hold power button down to reboot? = OC crash. Total shutdown to power off? = could be high temp shutdown.

 

I'm not running any sort of OC, but when it shut down I mean it SHUT DOWN. Complete power failure, no warning. Screen goes black, all audio stops, all lights go dead.

That kind of shut down I assumed only meant one thing: overheating. I checked again and I'm idling at the same temperatures as earlier (maybe 4-5 degrees lower on the CPU), but then again I'm sure it doesn't help that my dorm room is about 85F right now. Hence why I have a fan blowing on the computer. Are you using a laptop cooler or something similar? Describe your set up for me if you would.

I have looked into SC2 causing the overheating and I am aware it has no default frame cap. I had heard that the issues with overheating had been fixed in a recent patch but I added a frame cap anyway now, so we will see if that helps.

Thanks for the help though.

 

Try enabling the logging of hwinfo, storing that to a file and then running SC2. That'll tell you the temperatures when the machine crashes.

 

Wow, that tweak really made my laptop noisy! Thanks very much to Sarssen and JJB for cracking the caper of the 4K read speed.

My 4K read speeds doubled. For some reason the 4k write speed doubled as well; however in safe mode it dropped much lower than what it was previously.

Here is my drive (Intel X18-M G2's in Raid0) before disabling idle:


With idle disabled


With idle disabled and in safe mode

 

That's the driver I updated yesteday. No significant change after that.

Tried this, numbers still essentially the same.

I did not have Superfetch or indexing disabled. No significant change after disabling both.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'm okay with the actual speed of the machine for my use, but it does bug me a bit that these drives and controller should be yielding higher test throughput. Particularly, when looking at moviemarketing's numbers - zoom zoom!

 

There is probably a simple fix that i am overlooking.

Go to THIS thread and scroll down to "Discussion of SSDs:" and read the 3rd link down, it may not improve your speeds but it has some good tips to gain back several GB of space on your SSD.

 

Thanks, that helped! I checked all recommendations in that thread. I had already done some, but needed to turn of hibernate and set custom (smaller) page file settings. Did those two things, rebooted, and bam, my write speeds for 512k, 4k, and 4kQD32 all doubled!

 

Interesting, I wouldn't think those two settings would effect R/W speeds.... Anyway glad your numbers improved.

I assume those are with the 'idle disable' tweak ? Also what idle temps do you get with idle disabled and no load on CPU?

 

I also didn't think those would help. I just re-enabled hibernate, then ran the tests - still doubled. I then disabled hibernate and set paging file to system managed - still doubled. So, I'm also not sure why I'm getting much improved write speeds.

However, one thing I do know, the initial paging file change did get me to reboot, which I don't do often (I usually use sleep). Perhaps, an earlier change I made needed a reboot, but didn't prompt for it.

Idle disable tweak is in place for all of my A/C power profiles.Temps in 57-59C range.

 

Hey guys! I have a couple questions about this laptop's display, particularly the 1366x768 version:
- How vivid are the colors? My current laptop's display is somewhat washed out, so I'd like to make sure I don't get another bad screen.
- How are the vertical viewing angles? My current laptop's screen also has VERY poor viewing angles. They're so bad that I can't find a single spot on the display where there isn't color distortion somewhere else.
- Does it have a left or right connector?
- Finally, could anyone give me the model number of the displayand who makes it? I'm looking to buy a replacement screen for my laptop, and I'm hoping this will work.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Well now that I thought about it a little, I'm thinking that the 768p envy 15 screen may be the same one I have. If the viewing angles are poor aswell, then it probably is.

 

My wife ordered an Envy 15 with 1920x1080 display a while back and HP made a mistake and shipped the 1366x768 display. We both hated it. After becoming accustomed to a 1080p display, 768p looked blocky and lines and images were not as smooth. 768p is comparable to the "safe mode" display.

The E15 viewing angle seems OK for me. There seems to be a wider horizontal viewing angle than vertical.

Here is a page where you can order replacement screens from Screen Country. for some reason, they also have a 1600x900 display, which is not available from HP.
http://www.screencountry.com/index....O BEATS LIMITED EDITION&brand=HP-Compaq&size=

 

Thanks for the input! I'll check out the link as soon as I'm done posting this.

Btw, out of curiostiy, what is your occupation? I was reading your signature and noticed you have some extremely high-end and powerful computers.

 

I have a company that does trailers, posters, animated menus and outdoor advertising for films.

 

Oh alright. That makes sense.

So I checked out the link you posted, and that 1600x900 screen would be perfect. However, it doesn't say wether it uses a left or right connector, so I'm going to contact their customer support and ask about it. Thanks again!

 

wow... I sent in my envy for repairs, which they received at the 24th of august.

I was told today that there was a 90% chance I receive my envy tomorrow (by someone at the repair plant) and when I checked the online CSO status later today, it now says the estimated delivery date is TWO WEEKS from today.

EDIT: screw hp and the envy, ive gone through hell with this laptop and hp's service. im going have them send it back without repairs so i can return this junk to costco

 

I received a 2.5 hard drive mounting kit from HP today and it came with no screws. I thought it was supposed to come with screws. Any one knows for sure? Where else can I find screws for this?

 

It will probably use the screws from your existing kit.

 

I am hoping for that. Though the existing kit is a dual SSD thing, which is for 1.8 drives.

 

can you tell me where to find the dual micro sata connector?

what type ? what ...number? thx

 

While the information is appreciated, I'm sorry but in my opinion this is not a solution. Disabling one of the major power saving features on a mobile processor, which will drastically increase heat and reduce battery life, and overall wear and tear on the components, is just not acceptable.

I would consider this more of a hack/workaround, than a real solution. And I might even call this workaround unsafe if you want your system to last for any length of time.

I don't see why the processor speed should have much if anything to do with the hard drive transfer rates, considering how fast modern CPUs are, even mobile ones.

There is a design flaw somewhere in the system, and that should be addressed to really solve the problem.

 

It's not an Envy 15 issue, all moblie PM55 and HM55 chipsets have it. We actually have a much better solution that is causing no heat or idle speed issues, and idle is not disabled. I'm actually running it now on battery (2:10 with 32% remaining) and I have ~ full SSD read write speeds (4K random 23MB/s R / 59MB/s W), the whole computer feels much snappier when throttled on battery now.

There are about 2 dozen people trying this out fix as of this morning and so far only one issue has come up on an older core 2. Will be updating here with new info soon.

 

Ok... What's the deal with my battery... this laptop is less then 5 months old yet the battery already has 12% wear... I contacted Hp and they said it was "normal" My dad's 4 year old dell's battery is still perfect...why is this one already wearing out?? Is there anyway to convince hp to send a new battery?

 

what is a good gpu overclock?

550/1050 furmark stable..
570/1100 3dmarkstable 9990 score

i have a envy 15 with i7 and a 5830

 

I've just received my envy 15. Guess I'm one of the last i7 buyers before hp took it off the processor list

 

Well, after playing with my Envy 15 for almost a day I'd say I'm pretty enjoying it a lot. Performance is great, it is really stylish. The only problem I'm having right now is that for some reason the touchpad and the keyboard stops responding and comes back after a restart. Do you guys had the same problem/find a solution? I did not reinstall OS, just removed hp crappy programs.

 

How can I determine what SSD drives I have? I went into the BIOS and did not find them (they're in raid0)

 

Found a 2nd generation envy 15 limited edition beats it is manufacture refurbished for $1200 i believe it has the infinity screen correct me if i'm wrong,it doesn't have an internal optical but it comes with an external,i'm on the fence rather i get this here are the specs
* Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-520M Dual Core processor (2.40GHz, 3MB L2 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 2.93GHz
* 4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
* 320GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
* 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 5830 Graphics - For i7 Processors
* Beats(TM) audio for superior sound
* File sharing with iPAQs and cameras via 2-in-1 digital media card reader
* External Tray Super Multi 8X DVD+/-R/RW w/Double Layer Support with 2 USB Ports
* Built-in webcam
* Intel Wireless-N Card with Bluetooth
* Genuine Windows 7 Home Premiuim Edition (64-bit)
* 15.6" diagonal High Definition LED HP Brightview Widescreen Display (1366x768)

 

its not worth at all.

for that amount we can get the normal version with dual ssds, refurbed of course

 

Not worth it...For the same price you can get a bigger hdd and screen brand new from hp...

 

Is this problem you're having like when the system hangs - for example, if it happens during video playback, does the screen freeze, or keep playing?

 

Thanks 4 your reply. I couldn't determine a behavior that causes this issue. It just happens. Yesterday I was reading the posts here and when I decided to use the keyboard it was not responding. Today I was benchmarking with 3DMark, had executed it twice with different power plans and it stopped again. Restarted executed 3DMark again and it was ok.

But I can use my external mouse without problems, no glitches or screen freezes.

 

@AndreSilva

where did you buy your envy? Im from SP too.

dont tell me that you paid the 4000 dollars that Hp is asking for it

 

Hi,

I friend of a friend was returning from the US and brought it for me.

 

ahhhh that is good

 

Ok this is probably a stupid question, but the 5830 can do switchable graphics as long as you have an i5, right?

Also, where can I get a refurbished envy 15? I can't find any on HP's website.

 

No switchable graphics on the envy 15's. If you really want that look at the envy 14 or 17.

 

Hey, I have a couple of questions about the Envy 15 before I buy it. I'm returning my dv6tse, probably for this, mainly due to the horrible screen on the dv6tse.

1. Can you buy an extra battery from HP separately from when you buy the computer? I don't see an Envy 15 battery on HP's website, other than the slice.

2. Is it easy to replace the 500GB hard drive on the Envy 15 specifically with a SSD drive? I've never done so before. You can open up the back and reach it easily and stuff?

3. Should I get the i5-430m or the i5-520m? I will mainly be using this for internet, gaming, and standard student things like Microsoft Word. I do like to mess around with photos a bit for fun, however, and I also like to multitask a lot.

4. Does it have any keyboard flex?

5. Should I get the external DVD drive option that comes with the laptop, or should I get a separate one?

6. Anything else I should know? Unfortunately I thought of some questions earlier while I wasn't at my computer, and now I can't remember them. This is really frustrating me trying to remember. Hopefully as soon as I stop thinking about it I will remember.

 

@eight35pm Wow. Those questions are almost exactly what I was wondering. However, I probably won't be puting in an ssd until their prices come down and their capacities go up. The 160 gb I got with my dv6tse is now down to about 75gb of space, and I havent even put any games on it.
Also, in response to your 2nd question, I found this post by Rustican on another thread on this website: "From watching the dis-assembly videos for the envy 15, switching out the HD and accessing two slots of memory for the i7 required the whole top panel of the laptop to be taken apart. There aren't any easy access panels to get to those components."

 

JJB I saw that u are a photographer. What is your opinion about the Envy for a photographer?. I decided to go Envy so that I could play a little, work using virtual machines and for my photography work using LR basically and some CS. What is your opinion about the ultra bright screen?

Unfortunately I've not tested LR yet because I broke my arm in a car accident and it's really annoying to use just my left hand.

My system is
HP Envy 15 2nd Gen| i7-720QM | ATI 5830 | SSD 160GB G2 + 250GB 5400RPM | 6GB @ 1333 | USB 3.0 | 1080p Ultra Brightview | BIOS F.2A

 

1. yes you can...just search hp's part list and it should come up..if not ebay has them cheaper then hp..

2. It's not difficult to replace the hdd with a ssd.... its just a lot of screws... more then the average laptop, and then 2 annoying ribbon cables

3. if your going to use it for what you stated then the i5 -430 should be fine

4. nope

5. if you NEED a drive you can get one cheaper off newegg or amazon

6. If you choose to buy it I recommended a clean install... theres too much hp bloat that you will never need

 

@Texanman Out of curiosity, what do you use your envy 15 for? I noticed you have the i5 520m, and yet you said that the i5 430m should be fine, even for gaming.

 

@Texanman

Thanks for the info. I still can't find an extra 6 cell for the Envy 15. I looked under "laptop batteries," but none of them say they are compatible. I only see the slice for the Envy 15.

And I still can't remember the couple other things I wanted to ask...