*HP HDX DRAGON Owners Lounge, Part 1*

Not kidding? Oh well, at least I'm on the coastal West Coast, and I'm sure it has to FLY from China to the US, then I'm only one day away once it gets here, compared to being on the East Coast, where I could expect another 4-5 days transit!

funny, because right after I ordered it, the status showed it was being drop-shipped to the factory. I guess now, that meant sent from the US to a China factory? How can that be cheaper than doing it all in the US?

 

^ my first dv7t shipped on wednesday, went from kunshan to shanghaii. then to alaska, then directly to nyc. it shipped out wednesday and i had the unit in my grubby paws on that friday, at 9:20am sharp. 3 days only and that's with regular shipping.

so there is no 4-5 days extra for east coast shipments. the shipping to anywhere in the US takes approx 3-4 business days regardless of location.

 

And that was with the FREE GROUND shipping that HP offers? Doesn't sound like they used GROUND for any of that trip (except maybe to drive it to your house once it landed in NY!)!! And, really, that's only two days...Wed to Thurs = 1 and Thurs to Fri AM = 2 days!

Woohoo! I might have it by Tuesday! (since there is no labor day in closure in China!)

 

play by play action, l0l

 

I'm guessing you got very lucky. Normally, rules disallow the drivers from delivering GROUND packages during overnight delivery times (ie., before 10:30AM)...

We'll see how I fare...

 

From the "if anybody's interested department."

I purchased Mass Effect last Thursday after seriously debating whether or not I wanted to deal with another online activation scheme. In the past, I've been burned on The Witcher, Bioshock, and Oblivion add-ons and absolutely despise this kind of DRM.

The bottom line is that the game looks and runs excellent on the HDX at 1680 x 1050 with all settings are maxed except for textures--high instead of ultra high. Gameplay is buttery smooth!

The worst part is that the 8800 averages 73-76c. I do have a second monitor (17" 1280 x 1024) on my HDX which could be causing it to run warmer than it normally would. But, that monitor allows me to watch the system temps without interfering with the game (among other things).

I haven't looked at FPS or experimented with the texture settings yet. It's been a long and busy week at the office and I just wanted to relax and unwind over this long 3-day weekend.

Mass Effect IS what the last two decades of Star Trek games should have been. If you're into action/adventure with a sci-fi theme then you're sure to like this game.

 

There's no reason at this point for HP to bother with the Montevina for the HDX - according to Intel, the X9000 C2 Xtreme, (2.8ghz,6mb L2 cache) runs about 10% faster than the Monty. However, they also say that the Monty is a bit better at processing Wi-fi and multimedia functions - but hell, that's what it was designed for.

I ran my configuration through the HDX store dreambox to see how much it's come down the last 2 1/2 months. My HDX has every top upgrade possible that was listed on the configuration checklist (hardware - that doesn't include non-OS software like Office, etc.). With all discounts (50% memory discount, iinstant rebates, and HP Employee Discount, and adjusting for accessories purchased at the same time, the HDX itself priced at around $4300 and it's about $3900 now after I ran the same configuration through earlier today.

The speed and processing capability of the X9000 is great - I routinely have several Adobe design programs open and running ( e.g., Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, InDesign, Acrobat Pro,etc.) as well as browsers with multiple tabs open, with no performance slowdown or any other issues. If HP further brings the price down on the X9000 configuration even further, it'll make the HDX even more appealing.

 

It's not assembled in the US - It's made in, assembled in, and sent from China.

Speaking of ship times, mine only took 3 days - I live just west of Baltimore, so you'll probably have yours on Tuesday because of the holiday (shipping is by business days).

 

After playing Mass Effect on my 8800 in my HDX, temps never get above 60 degrees. Idle should be much lower. Are playing in a hot room or something. Sustained temps that high will kill your gpu.

 

CyberVisions
I follow your reasoning about the Eztreme CPU but don't you think the 8800 gts is due for a refresh...say a 9800 gtx or even an 8800 gtx? The EliteBook has a quadro! I wouldn't hesitate to keep the Dragon if I knew the GPU could be upgraded. From what I've read the MMX socket is fairly standardized. Thanks.

 

Nope, not exactly standardized. Plus you'd need a BIOS update.

See this website about MXM: http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/

In any event, since the HDX is not marketed as a gaming machine, do not expect HP to offer any type of upgrade path. Meaning, new parts or new BIOS updates that allow for mods, upgrades, etc.

They even went so far as to engineer the unit so that the CPU couldn't be overclocked. They used a locked PLL chip. It's one thing to disallow overclocking in the BIOS. Quite another to ensure it with hardware.

The HDX as a 20" is done. It's the last dragon. The only 20" left on the market. Next up... 18.4". When? Most likely end of the year/Early next. HP will be introducing an HDX line to compete against Dell's XPS. And I don't mean gaming as DELL is dropping XPS as a gaming line but using it as a premium brand. Alienware is their gaming line as Voodoo is HP's.

 

With the second monitor disconnected, idle temps are 52-55C in a 75 degree room with a ceiling fan running. The machine is sitting flat on a desk with plenty of airspace around it. I set the BIOS to run the GPU fan at maximum all the time and I am still seeing temps go as high as 73 C. Last time I left the game it was at 67 C.

I am guessing that either I have an out of spec GPU, bad fan, or the thermal compound wasn't applied correctly. Fixing the latter problem looks time consuming and might void the warranty if I do it myself. If the machine burns up it burns up, as long as it does so under warranty.

Since I recently installed a WD Scorpio drive, I am going do a full restore on the original system drive in case I need to send the machine in for repair.

 

If anyone has ordered the HDX in the last several days and has a unit still awaiting production, the Blu-ray drive is now a free upgrade. I just called and received a $250 credit.

 

CyberVisions

Do you know authoritatively that the 20.1 inch model is ended?

If so, is this the end of 20 inch screen laptops from any vendor?

What's your opinion of the 8800gts?

I ordered my Dragon on Wednesday the 27th. It's now Sunday night going into Monday, Labor Day. How would I contact HP about the $250.00 BluRay credit at this point?

Lastly, what's your opinion about HP's service and repair?

Thanks for everyone's sage advice.

 

20" (16:10) is dead. 18.4" is the new black because of the HD friendly 16:9 aspect ratio. That goes for all vendors. To get 16:9 for a larger screen it'll have to be 21.x"-22.x" or so. Not going to happen on a notebook.

 

Have anyone made a clean vista install on HDX?

 

It's too bad isn't it? well, tell that to the manufacturers. Even desktop displays will be moving towards 16:9.

I like 16:10. Good for what I do. But i guess in the future, I'll adapt. I used to like 4:3.

 

They're not MXM, though. Some sort of proprietary set up. I upgraded an Inspiron 8100 and 8200's graphic cards without issue.

All the recent MXM notebooks required at least a BIOS update in order to work properly. The most famous to date was the SAGER NP5790 series. Required not only a BIOS update, but a new mobo. And they advertised it as "user" upgradeable. Lots of angry customers.

Since then, no other notebook manufacturer AFAIK has offered a meaningful upgrade path as far as MXM is concerned.

 

Yes. Since I couldn't get my hands on Vista Install media for free, I bought an OEM version of Vista off NEWEGG for $99. Like the majority of folks who do it, saw many improvements for having done a clean install.

Whatever you do, make sure you save the SWSETUP folder before you proceed. If you might also want to save the HP backgrounds, they are found in windows\web folder.

 

Woohoo! Now, that is one good deal! Mine has just shipped, but just in case HP didn't want to give me a credit, I ordered another last night to take advantage of the 30% coupon plus the free Blu-ray drive, and with Fatwallet cash back, I'm lookin at about $1300 for an awesone HDX, or even better, if I keep the non-bluray unit, that's less than $1100 for a T9300/8800M GTS - based HDX!!

I'll call them this morning and see if I can get my $250 credit.

Thanks for the tip, Starborn!

 

Regarding the free blu-ray offer...if I didn't order and pay for the blu-ray in my order, what do you think are my chances of getting the $250 credit when I call? What logic can I use on them?

BTW, still no tracking info for my newly-shipped HDX...you'd think by now that it would have entered FEDEX's system, since China doesn't have a Labor day holiday and it is now Tuesday there....

 

Can you tell me how to do that? I am not too tech savvy. Thanks

 

Well does anybody have an answer. Just to confirm my idle temps are not the reason for the fan to run all the time:

cpu idle: 30°C
Gpu ilde: 42°C
HD: 32°C

How can I check that the fans are off?

 

Hi,

I managed to switch off a least one hard disk and the noise remains. I dont know if energy saving options of hard disk also affect the system disk. At least the cpu fan or the system disk runs all the time and never stops although its only a T8100. Sometimes I hear the GPU run. In lowest setting I dont hear the GPU fan. Any idea how to switch of system disk and cpu fan??

 

UPDATE: Got off the phone with HP, and was politely offered a $200 credit, even though I did not originally order the blu-ray option!

At first, they weren't going to do anything since I didn't order the blu-ray originally, but then I mentioned returning it when I got it and reordering it today with the free blu-ray. That's when she said that would be "inconvenient" (for who?), and offered me $200 credit back on my credit card. Not bad!

Now were looking at around $1100 for my HDX w/ T9300 and 8800M GTS! Nice...

 

Last week, I was wrapping up my power adapter when the cable snap off and it smashed my toe. I suffered from a fractured toe and internal bleeding underneath the nail. At one point, it look like there was a golf ball underneath my nail. I was able to get most of the blood drain from the doctor but now, I'm extra cautious how I put the adapter away.

 

Oh geez!! Take care of that toe, brutha.

 

Lick your finger and place it by the vents on each side in the back. If you feel your finger is cooling, and it will for the slightest breeze, the fan is on. There is no program AFAIK, that'll tell you if the fans are engaged.

What's more, it may be your HD spin noise that you might be mistaking as fan noise. Some HD's put out a dull hum. Especially 7200 RPM drives. A large capacity 5400 rpm can also.

Anyway, just as a reference to see what the "lick test" should feel like, try the lick test at boot. Fans start on high at boot. Or you can just lick your finger and very slowly blow on it to simulate a fan at low speed.

I know, I know. Crude test, but it works. Sailing trick to determine wind direction.

 

It's not so much about temp levels as it is about change in temps (delta). Yes, you're idle is higher by 6-10 Deg C than average set ups. But your top end is only about 2 to 5 deg C higher than average.

What's causing the Nvidia chips to fail is not a high temp but the range from low to high. These chips can take 100 Deg C for extended periods of time. But they can't take cycling from 50C to 100c. It causes thermal expansion of metallic parts inside. More specifically, the material used to bond the GPU's die to the PCB it sits on.

Think of it like this. If you gently heat a piece of metal it'll expand slightly. Let it cool back to it's norm temp and it contracts slightly. Now, imagine heating it to a temp that's 25%+ higher than when you heated it gently. It'll expand and contract to a greater degree. What happens to the metal then? It'll become weak and brittle and may separate over time. Well, that's what's happening with the 8400/8600 series GPUs. The difference between their top end temp(>90C) and low end temp(55C avg) is too great for the Die to PCB substrate bonding material (called a bump). That's why HP and DELL issued BIOS updates that make the fans run all the time on 14-17" systems. To reduce the top end temps and moderate the low end temps. Yet the new temps don't even come close to bringing it down to the HDX's top GPU temps. It only brought them down to the mid to high 80's. But that's good enough to delay the thermal expansion failure of these chips for a good while for that series.

So I wouldn't worry all that much about it. You could go in and do an Arctic Silver 5 or Arctic Ceramique application. It's not hard to do. Just takes about 4 hours or so with all the disassembly/reassembly. It does void the warranty, but the odds of a tech figuring out that you went in and did it is very low. Since the thermal goop they use is the same color as AS5, they'd be none the wiser. Plus they wouldn't have a need to disassemble the heatsink/Fan part from the MXM card if something else other than the GPU failed.

 

Yikes! 4 hours? I'm used to working on Dell's, where you can have the thing apart enough to swap out the CPU or GPU module in 30 minutes, TOPS!

Looking at the service manual just now, it looks like to change out the CPU, you have to remove the system board...they just don't make it easy, do they?

 

Can anyone confirm if the HP BIOS is locked to only use HP WLAN modules? I remember trying in the past to use a different WLAN module (Atheros-based, in particular), and at power-on, the BIOS would lock saying the module is not "compatible" (not from HP, they mean).

 

I know, no kidding, Dell's were a piece of cake. Mostly because the system board was face up. On the HDX it's face down. Well a lot of computers nowadays have their system boards face down because the air intakes are on the bottom and the fan/heatsink is one piece. (Kind of silly considering that people use laptops in a not so surprising place - on their laps. Nice way to block the air inlet.)

When I first got the HDX, I knew it would take some extra time to disassemble. Not because it would be so many parts but because I wanted to do a clean-no left over screws-no scratches-no broken tabs job. Turned out that my extra diligence only added a half hour. There's just so many frikkin' screws and connectors. And it's not intuitive like dissassembling car parts.

You need the manual.

 

Thought I p[osted this already, but it did not come through....

No luck getting the $$ back for the blueray player. The coupon must have expired, so HP thinks they are safe on the return ploy as without the coupon, it will be more expensive.

Scott

 

Is the HDX able to use 4GB sticks of RAM for a total of 4x2= 8GB?

 

^ max memory on an hdx is 4gb says crucial.com

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Pavilion HDX

 

T^2 says is correct in that that's the most available @ 667 (at a reasonable price). However, the ICH8M chipset is capable of using 8GB (4GB x 2). First notebook to do it was a Dell Latitude.

I'll look up the links later.

 

****. Did the sailors trick and the fan on the remot control side runs. Slow but it runs. For sure I will return this one if cant fix it. Any idea?

Temps: 30°C Core 1 and 32°C Core 2 (acc. CoreTemp) Tj. Max 105°C?
Energy saving mode: balanced
CPU-Clock: 1200MHz (1V - 1,0625V)

???

 

crucial is a good site, however, it's not always accurate (usually conservatively correct.) I was able to push 2 laptops back in the P3 days well above crucial's recommendation. Same with my current machine Pentium M Dothan, it says 2GB max, but the machine can handle 3GB.

2.0, thanks for the info. When you mentioned about the 18.4 screens, what resoultion would that be?

 

Here's a thread which discusses 6Gb and 8GB on a latitude D830 (Santa Rosa) chipset:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=267038

Link to Kingston 4GB DD2 667: (not a bad price. Came down a lot since last I looked)

http://shop.kingston.com/partsinfo.asp?ktcpartno=KTL-TP667/4G

Here's Dell's Precision M6300 (Santa Rosa) that can take 8GB:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/precn_m6300?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

So it is possible. Pretty sure it can take 6GB in asynchronous (4GB slot 1, 2GB slot 2) without the need of a BIOS upgrade. But async tends to reduce system performance.

 

That's why it's called dual channel ASYNCHRONOUS mode.

 

1920 x 1080 (true HD) or 1680 x 945 (720P+).

 

Yeah, Asymmetric RAM array(Intel's label) and Asynchronous Dual channel are part and parcel of the concept. Asymmetric refers to having RAM of two different sizes. Asynchronous refers to the mode in which dual channel RAM that is of differrent sizes operates.

So one would say, 4GB + 2GB is asymmetric. 2Gb + 2GB is symmetric.

If one wanted to know how the chipset would handle each, one would say that with Intel chipsets, an asymmetric installation of RAM will run asynchronously while a symmetric installation of RAM will run synchronously.

 

Might be for some. But the dot pitch on an 18.4" @ 1900 x 1080 will be easier on the eyes than a 1920 x 1200 of a 17".

In any event, Digitimes reports that this fall/early winter, 1900 x 1080 on 18.4" screens will be available from several notebook computer manufacturers as orders for such screens were reported earlier this summer from several major LCD manufactures. I can't link to the news article because it requires a paid subscription. Wish they'd abandon this policy for archive news. I could understand full articles of current news being truncated w/o a subscript.

 

redperson,

I can just imagine how that felt, and I wish you all the best. To have to go through that ordeal must have been very painful. Good thing you have good spirits, because I think everything in my wake would have been severely broken, including the HDX at that point. So congratulations on having a good attitude, and hope you have a fast recovery!

 

Interestingly, if you go above 4GB, hibernation is disabled on Vista!

 

Hi,

Just got a HDX9430EA today and although the advert where i got it from (plus others) states the screen is 1680x1050 when i check on the system information and Nvidia program it says the screen is currently at 1920x1200....even the box it came in says it should be WSXGA!
The monitor is being reported as a generic P&P monitor on the 8800GTS.

Is there an independant program to verify my screen res?

 

That's strange, mine is disbaled Vista 64bit with 8GB, when I googled the problem, it says MS disables it above 4GB. I can't experiment with the command lines as I've packed up my desktop for a move, but thanks for the heads up.

 

Check your Vista display properties and see where the slider is at.

 

Personalize -> display settings is reporting 1920x1200.

 

Now that tracking info has appeared for mine, I'm not sure what is going on...

Shanghai to Anchorage, AK. Then to Indianapolis, IN. Now, back to Anchorage, AK where it shows "Int'l shipment release". AK to IN to AK??? Did they forget to clear customs? Why to Indiana? It's no wonder FEDEX uses so much fuel!

Since I'm in San Diego, I hope it comes straight SOUTH!

Keeping fingers crosses it's here tomorrow!