*HP Envy 15 Owners Lounge! PART 2*

...and the Intel wireless adapter is newer.

 

well just went ahead and bought a 1.8" mounting kit from hp parts, comes with a 250GB 1.8" HDD I will sell eventually. Want to do dual SSDs...

 

So today is the last day to return it...

What are you guys doing?

I went to check out a macbook Pro 13 today and I felt it looked kind of rough. I really wasn't impressed by it.

The keyboard and touchpad are nicer than the Envy ones though, and the screen bends back furhter.

 

Anyone have instructions on how to install the driver from Strag? I've downloaded the zip file and extracted the contents. What's next?

 

Furmark. If you start seeing blck/yellow/purple artifacts onthe fur, youve gone too far. Also, if your computer crashes or bluescreens... you should probably lay off.

 

Wait, what???? There is a preview and an actual????

I thought the 10.3 was not due till March at the earliest.

 

They sent the preview to review sites and it got leaked.

 

Happy to see someone saying this..

I return it!!!!


1. Sth. seems loose in the palmrest.
2. mine is not ssd,
3. keyboard is soft...bad feeling

although I really like the design and the calc key....

Now I really hope that I can DIY sth. based on envy 15.

5830 is good but I thing the thermo-design will be ok if
uses 5850 or 5870. of course dual gpu will be great.

i7 720 is will reach 80c when I do the video coding.
And the cpu should be cooler when idle.

I really like the matte screen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but I have told the hp and request the rma and will return
it on Monday.

Bye..my envy15.
Hope you will be mine in the coming future with
a new xxxxxxxxxxx.

 

Yes, the lowest, because they are WHQL certified for Mobility Radeons including the HD 4830 and the others aren't. They seem to have special tunings for power saving and such...

 

According to strags, the 10.3's are non-WHQL certified, but they have posted some 10.2's that are WHQL certified for the Mobility Radeon HD 4830 and 5830 in the Envy 15s - downloading now...

 

I believe you have to manually do it thru device manager.

Theres another link but I couldn't find it off hand but here's one someone was kind enough to post along with a modified inf and instruction on how to install the 10.2's.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5904279&highlight=C7_95693#post5904279

Someone else probably has the other post bookmarked


EDIT: I'm so slow typing, lol. Now that I see about the 10.3's at strags am tempted to try them. With those do you have to do the manual method as well or will they install properly using standard install?

 

I'm going to claim furmark as an original conception amongst friends.

 

As long as the drivers support powerplay it shouldn't matter which driver you use. The powerplay states are in the bios. This is why drivers intended for desktop adapters work just fine on mobile cards.

As far as I know WHQL certification is just a Microsoft blessing that it won't cause problems with windows.

 

The Kensington 120W PSU Model #K33336US seems to work normally with the Envy and does not throttle the Core i7 clock. I've run wPrime and have seen the clock crank up to 20x to 2.6 Ghz while using 1 core.

Although the PSU is light it is wide and the cord for the wall power connection is absurdly short.

 

Price has dropped again on 4GB DDR3 1333's to $135.99 with coupon code 'BIGCAT10' Here's the link;
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=D3-13S4GS

 

Yep, the pre-release 10.3's on strags aren't WHQL certified, but they are SIGNED. That's all that matters to me... honestly WHQL certification means next to nothing in real life, especially if this is a pre-release version of a driver that intends to be run through the WHQL tests. Note that buggy drivers can still pass the WHQL tests.

So far the 10.3 pre-release package is working fine on my i5 Envy 15, the bonus is that all the ancilliary bits like CCC and the drag and drop decoder tool were also installed, so everything is bleeding edge new.

 

well i tried installing the 10.3 preview for my 1st gen envy and it crashed...

 

Anybody running a single SSD with TRIM enabled?

I just installed a OCZ 60GB drive, and want to know what the storage controller driver is the you have installed.

I am showing the "Intel ICH8M-E/ICH9M-E SATA RAID Controller".

I also installed the same drive in my desktop and the driver for it is the "Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller", which from what I've read is the standard driver that comes with Windows 7 and is supposedly the only driver that allows TRIM commands to be sent to the drive.

I thought the driver was installed when installing the chipset driver on my Windows install, but I sanitary erased the drive and re-installed it, and without loading any software or updates I still had the Intel drive loaded from the start. No matter what I did, I could not get the driver to change to the Microsoft driver.

 

I was referring to the .inf files, and the corresponding entries in the .msi files in the drivers package. There are more differences between mobile gpus and their desktop equivalents than just names, as if you examine the sections in the .inf files you will often see special entries that only exist for the mobile gpus.

Also, it may not make as much a difference on 2nd gen Envys, but on my 1st gen anything less than full WHQL has eventually caused a crash...

 

Well, to me pre-release means BETA, which I am not going to install on a crash prone Envy 1st gen when the 10.2s don't crash it and the only difference so far between the 10.2s and the 10.3s are Eyefinity improvements...

 

How much did the the 1.8" mounting kit cost? I was looking to also get this kit to install multi-SSDs

 

My Gen1 Envy Crashed used the 10.3's up on teh strags website. But i believe that is due to the ATI HDMI Audio driver. can anyone else confirm this?

I think if you do a Custum install and not install the HDMI Audio Driver I think it will be fine.

 

So far 10.3 is working good on my gen2 and the install was easy!

 

same here. no issues and it was easy

 

Anyone else have any luck with the 10.3's and the Gen 1 envy?

 

All WHQL certification for a driver means is that the driver was submitted the driver to MS and Microsoft Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) certifies that drivers work as intended and is virus clean. Beyond that it means very little. They can still be buggy for some users and it used to take forever to get MS to put its "Good Housekeeping" seal of approval on em.

 

Hey, just wondering if anyone had any responses concerning the above.

To drizek: Well, while the video card or the CPU might not be overheating, the laptop does get a little warm (and really warm in top left corner) during strenuous use (or a mild warm during some random times when I'm simply web-browsing), even with a plastic Targus cooling pad I'm using.

 

I haven't received mine yet, but this is what I picked for a notebook cooler.
Cooler Master Notepal U2 Notebook Cooler with Two Fans R9-NBC-8PBK-GP

I found this cooler because of a post in the previous Envy thread, and I like the looks and the fact that you can position the fans wherever you want. Excellent price as well.

 

Very interesting post about the 90W Targus being able to drive the i5 model without throttling, does anyone know if the same is true for the i7 model?

 

mounting kit has to be bought with a 1.8" hard drive, so I bought the 250GB SATA HDD (cheapest 1.8" on the list). I will use this and a 128GB micro SATA as well for now. It cost me $167 for the mounting kit and 250GB drive (tax and shipping included)

 

I could be wrong but think you have to have a 120 supply for the i7 as it has a higher basic power demand, but I could be wrong...and often am

 

Tried the latest drivers, and they killed my gpu, almost...not the 10.2 nor the 10.3 not even the older one, 10.x worked for my 4830

 

Thats a bummer. The 10.3's installed perfectly with my Gen 2 and all in all they seem better than past drivers. How did you install the 10.3's, ie did you try just installing over the old drivers or did you do a add/remove programs and uninstall the old drivers first? Did you get any sort of error mssg or did they just not work after install?

On my system I had the 10.2's running and just ran the preview install file and it took without any problems here. Wonder if its some issue with the 4830 chip. Hopefully when the official release 10.3 comes out it will work for everyone.

EDIT: Just thought I'd mention I went ahead and ran the install on my desktop PC which has a Sapphire 5970 and installed smoothly there as well. I just installed over my 10.2 install

 

No idea. but the 4830 seems like a fail...it is not supported by almost anything...it is not fair...

I installed them as you install ddrivers normally, just download and hit play...

Results, changed my resolution to the minimum, I couldn't game at all, and gave me errors...

 

To me that sounds like the 1st gen has been abandoned by HP and ATI.

If that is the case then that warrants a very nasty phone call to HP.

 

I recall that I was able to get the 8.681 driver loaded with my i7 / 4830 version back when you had to use the mobility modder program (from; http://www.hardwareheaven.com/modtool.php).

Here is the link for the .zip file from strags.com; http://dl.strags.com/8.681.0.0000.zip I believe this has been modded since I installed it, it now says it is WHQL'd.

I believe that 'lsramair' was able to upgrade his 4830 to a more recent driver after he got this version installed, you may want to P.M. him for advice....

EDIT: I just remebered that to update the 4830 driver you had to choose the 'have disk' option in device mangers 'upgrade driver' options and then browse to the folder that has the new drivers and make sure to check the box that says something like 'incliude sub files or folders'

 

I suppose you could send AMD/ATI an mssg about it. Even tho its a preview and no real support by letting them know now it may help get it fixed before the final 10.3's come out. If nothing else make a post over at the AMD Games forums. They read those forums plus maybe someone else has a solution. In case you don't already have a link here you go:

http://forums.amd.com/game/index.cfm?FTVAR_SUBCAT=258&nocookies=y&subcatname=AMD Technology

Cheers

 

I think AMD knew that this was an issue about 5 years ago.

 

I installed 10.3 on my laptop, and now SC2 Beta decreased the video resolution recommendation from 1920 x 1080 x 32bit down to 1600 x 900 16bit.

=( =(

 

Thanks, that looks like a pretty good option (and cheaper!) for the Envy. Do you know if the attachable fans for it are sold separately too?

 

I have the Cooler Master cooler for my Envy.

It's awesome. Works great.

 

How's the beta running for you? Can you set everything on ultra + extreme shader?

I'm still waiting for a beta key. I really want to try the game on my desktop and probably will buy this laptop to play this game.

 

Have you tried measuring temperature difference with cooler? I am just curious how effective those cooler are.

 

What programs do you guys suggest to measure the temps?

I haven't tried setting everything at ultra. I'm currently running it at 1920 x 1080 at medium settings. I'll try ultra and report back. =D

On medium, everything runs silky smooooooth. Computer fans are barely taxed. I just turned the graphics up to ultra, gonna give it a few games to stabilize (option menu says the graphics will cause the next fee games to stutter due to recompiling?)

Update:

Game runs pretty well with everything maxed out. There is a noticable drop in frame rates, it's not silky smooth, but smooth enough to play. I think with a little bit of overclocking, it'll be perfect. Currently running everything at stock.

On a side note, so far I haven't experienced anymore black screens of deaths after I installed the 10.3 drivers.

Oh well, already called HP, I bought yet another Envy to replace this one, maybe they'll be nice enough to give me a G2 SSD, if not, oh well. =D

 

I think this should work.

http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

 

Thanks very much! How are you liking it (the game and the beta ) so far?

 

Not familiar with SC2. Did you try and ignore recommendation to see if it plays worse?

 

Ignored the recommendations, played it at 1920 x 1080 32bit anyways at medium settings. Game runs sooooo nice, it's beautiful.

Turned the graphics up to ultra just to see what would happen, noticeable frame rate drop, down to maybe like 12-15 fps subjectively, still very playable, just not as smooth. To be honest, the games doesn't look that much better at ultra.

I love the beta so far, my only gripe about it so far is that theres no chatroom function (maybe they don't want people to idle around when they're not actively testing the game), theres voice chat now which is really nice. I don't know if the game is balanced well or not, but Protoss can be really cheap with void rays.

I'll let you guys know more about the temps with the cooler later, I have to do some studying, got a final on Monday. So far loving the game and the laptop, was looking at the G73jh earlier today, but thought better of it.

Seems like the 10.3 drivers really fixed the black screen of death though. Not one crash since I've installed it. Will see if it continues to run stable.

Damn, just checked resource usage while SC2 is running. Ram use at 3.19GB out of 4GB... Looks like I'll need to get some more RAM.

 

@KAMZU

In case you missed my earlier post, 4GB DDR3 1333 (Samsung) on sale for $135.99 here: http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=D3-13S4GS Use coupon code 'BIGCAT10' NOTE: ends tomorrow 2/21/10

 

Wow, thanks!

=D

Can I buy more than 1?

It says limit 1 per customer. =(