HP Envy 17-1181NR -where does this fit in ?

Ok - I have a chance to buy one of these with 6gigs of RAM and the 1080p screen - but I'm soooo confused with all these threads, is this a 1xxxxx, 2xxxxx, does it suffer the cpu throttling isssue and is there a final fix for this, also now I see talk on an issue with SATA ports.
Now I'm scared I'll be disappointed with it. Can someone please give me a summary on this model, envy 17-1181NR
Thank you.

 

Best I can tell you is that it is an older Pre-Sandy Bridge model. Gonna be a lot of heat. I would either wait for the 17t-2XXX model with Sandy Bridge. They run cooler...have more updated hardware. Unless you are talking an unheard of price...wait and get the newer model

 

As Bob said, this is the first gen model and you may have to deal with heat issues. As for your other questions:

• CPU throttling does exist in the prior gen but it wasn't as bad nor do I think the BIOS was as affected in the first gen models. I don't think you will have a problem but you can always use throttlestop to fix. Ensure you are on the latest bios to to avoid any known bugs if you do buy the laptop.
  
  
• The SATA issue only affected the latest SB versions and it has been fixed by Intel. The first gen are not affected by the SATA bug.

 

Maybe I should wait to see if the 17-2070 model gets some discount coupons here soon. The price difference between the 1181 and 2070 is about $220.
But heres what I dont get, if the 2070 runs cooler, why is it more susceptible to the throtttling than the older hotter running 1181 model ?
I believe I read the graphics cards in them the 5850 and the 6xxx series were about equal in performance, but with the 2070's on board gpu, it would be less of a drain when doing lower demanding applications like surfing the net.

 

The Sandy Bridge model is far cooler than it's predecessor...by far. The throttling issue was something on the 2XXX model that HP addressed and fixed a few bios revisions ago. Seemed that under full GPU / CPU load, that the CPU would revert to 800 MHZ...no longer the case. With that said...when you are under full load, the machine does get warm, with CPU temps in the high 80's C range. The older 1XXX model, from what I have read, gets so hot that you can hardly stand to touch the left side of the keyboard during gaming...

Graphics card in the 2XXX model is the 6850M, which is a renamed 5850M...not necessarily a bad thing. The card is on par with the Nvidia 460M...and gives really decent performance.

Other big difference with the 2XXX model...on a six cell battery, with brightness on 6 and leaving blue tooth ON, leaving the USB ports active and NOT turning off the backlit keyboard, I get 3 hours and 25 minutes on six cell battery. The 1XXX model won't get you near that. Put in a nine cell battery and you are going to get over 4+ hours of battery time on the Sandy Bridge.

Keep an eye on coupons...and keep a watchful eye here...people post the codes when they become available.

Good luck...glad you are going to wait....$220 is not a big enough difference to jump into the 1XXX pool...