*HP HDX DRAGON Owners Lounge, Part 1*

Not really needed. You'd fair better without it. Even with Superfetch active.

I don't think you would load up enough programs and data to approach 6 GB let alone 8.

Taskbar is only so long...

 

Slap me some REP!!!

 

You know it! You deserve it big time!

(Only I have to wait, gave out too much rep.)

Be sure though, that your name shall be legend in the annuls of HDX history.

If anyone else claims to be first, I'll rigorously defend your crown, Sire.

 

I already did.

 

oooohhhh...I feel special today! Even more so than on my birthday!

 

For what??

Just kidding!

You got it.

 

That's for the desktop versions (older ones too considering the 4mb L2. current is 6mb). Note on second page the 1066 FSB it refers to. Plus DTS controls fan speed. You said once that your fans didn't run. On a desktop, fans always run - at various speeds.

desktop extreme processors and mobile counterparts are not one in the same. Some things are stripped from the mobile versions for power requirement reasons.

 

That's awesome! Just added to my planned upgrades after the warranty expires...

1. Quad-core Penryn
2. SSD drive for my OS and maybe the same for my apps and files if capacity is high enough
3. 8 GB RAM

That config should carry me another couple of years before my next machine.

 

Sigh. You sure about that? Look up x6800 which is the CPU that brochure you posted is referring to. Note also how the brochure doesn't say processors (plural) but processor(singular).

Also note that FSB for mobile extreme processors that use 965 chipset are 667 & 800mhz. The brochure lists 1066 with 965 chipset which for desktop at the time was 1066mhz.

 

No for the Quad core. It'll downclock considerably. And may not work without a BIOS update to recognize it.

 

Hi-

All of a sudden all of my quick buttons (eject, volume control, dvd etc) have totally stopped working. I remember reading something about an update from HP causing this, but I have never installed that. I *think* windows/vista did an auto update right before this happened, or at least it happened on the same day. Could that have caused it? Any tips on getting them working again? I know they were working for at least a few hours after the update because I kept having my speakers get muted accidently and I assume I was hitting the blue mute speaker key unknowingly...but maybe something else is going on altogether.

Many thanks for any help!

 

Rumba, you've got some more study to do. 1066mhz & 965 chipset are desktop only. Fact.

Montevina Penryns including X9100, QX9300, run 1066mhz FSB because their chipset (cantiga, not Santa Rosa PM965 like the HDX) runs 1066mhz. X9000 runs 800mhz max.

 

I've tried the 59.34 on top of the 55.11 (which is the only Sigmatel or IDT driver i can get to use the sub) and no sub....well i play a certain track and compared to the 55.11 it sounds weak so i'm assuming no sub.
I also tried Rumba's idea of half going back on the driver with the restore option and that only culminated in me having the Microsoft driver installed when i checked, this gives bass but is muffled compared to the excellent sounding 55.11. I'll try 59.29 on top of 55.11 at some point.

My sticker and BIOS (F.39) is reporting HDX9300.
Would the system board ID give any indications of different setups with the same supposed HDX series? Mine is 30E2.

 

LOL. Ya, well you implied it as if to backup that first brochure post.

On the other note, all that's asked is if the x9000 runs inherently cooler by design. Nothing so far says it does over the other 45nm Penryns in the series. Plus by your account, it seems to run cooler in the HDX than any other notebook with it and what's more, than other HDX's with the lesser Penryns.

I'd like to know why and what accounts for it. Or is it a fluke? Like how one poster has idle temps of the CPU > 50 DegC. That's a fluke by various standards. Would any who installed the x9000 experience the same thermal characteristics? or is it limited to 9200 mobos considering that they were sold with the 65nm Merom xtreme processor, x7900?

That's it man. That's all there is to it.

It's sort of like how I figured that the 8GB might work in the HDX considering the the chipset is capable of addressing it, then taking several anecdotal accounts of a Dell notebook with same chipset was able to use it. And thanks to our brave Lancorp, we know know for a fact it's possible. At least for a 9300 mobo. It's about getting to the bottom of things for the benefit of everyone.

 

You'd probably only see a difference with CPU-Z between the ATI only mobo and ATI/Nvidia mobo. Perhaps not even with that though as that's HP's proprietary vendor code for HDX made by the ODM, Inventec is 30E2. 30f1 is one used for Quanta, etc. The KBC doesn't refer to motherboard itself either. It's the Keyboard Control Bios or some such. I'll look it up later to confirm.

I don't know of any programs that read the motherboard version or if the HDX reports that. You would have to open it up. It's on the board itself with rev number. Could also be a sticker in some as HP started to do that at some point.

 

It'll downclock even with a BIOS update? I haven't received my HDX yet. It's supposed to be shipping today, but I digress. With the HDX discontinued, does that mean that they'll stop developing firmware updates also? And if I were to plug in a quad core penryn, what will it downclock to? This is new to me.

Thanks.

 

It's all dependent on the front side bus x CPU multiplier.

HDX's chipset has a true bus speed of 200mhz nominal (4 cycles gives you 800mhz). A 2.50 GHZ Penryn like the T9300 has a max multiplier of 12.5. (12.5 x 200mhz = 2500mhz). That's the bus/core ratio.

The 2.53 QX9300 Quad core has a multiplier of 9.4 (nominal). So it would run at 200mhz x ~9.4 = 1880mhz or 1.88ghz.

On the Montevina platform for which the 1066mhz Penryn CPUs were designed for, the bus runs at ~266mhz.

I'm leery about whether the BIOS would support any of the Montevina Penryns because not so long ago when HP added new CPUs to the line, a BIOS update was issued to support them. One was the X9000 and the other was T5250 I believe.

 

This will make for an interesting decision down the line. 1.88Ghz quad core or an x9000 extreme. I ordered my HDX with the T8300, so I'd imagine either would be a decent upgrade in a year or so.

Thanks.

 

True that.

 

uninstall what?

 

To anyone like me that likes to see every detail about their system this is a great and free program:

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/SiSoftware-Sandra-Download-5280.html

I had a few other utilities but most of them only gave partial or no info. Our Mobo is harder to interface with than others. As is with most notebooks. It is a good way to see all your baseline info and then compare it after any updates. It even has some benchmarking tools.

 

You might want to try Blackknight's fix on page 100 and see if that works for ya.

 

hey what is your windows experience index for your ram please. i would like to know. also, what are your other specs for your hdx, and can you run some benchmarks, 3dmark2006 for example.

 

Dux,
Use the HP Part/Product # on your sticker and plug it into the HP Support site page field when it asks for your Product #. Remember, the Part/Product #, NOT the model #. It'll open up with the correct model and configuration for your system. Your Part/Product # should have an ABA after it. If it's like mine, it's probably a 9301tx.

 

WEI for RAM is 5.0/5.1. It was the same with the 2x2GB modules.

My specs are in my signature.

Not much into 3dmark2006 tests. Never got into them much...

 

what is your wei for your processor? just wondering if worth the upgrade for a diy job. also, for your ram, is there some other adjustment to do (for example, if you dont want or need your video card to allocate like a huge percentage of your available ram to the vid card?? i dont understand how that works, when you look at vid card specs, it seems it steals ram that you dont necessarily want, as 512 is enough.

 

Rumba,
Using HDM, here are my X9000's temps, with current uptime and processes noted on the right.



Current room temp is 82F (about 28C). My system fan (right rear) does not run continuously.

Aside from the design, I suspect one reason things run cooler in the 20" HDX is the actual size - the more room you have for airflow, the cooler your unit is going to run. That's just thermal engineering basics.

 

While your physics are correct, that may not be the reason the HDX runs so cool. I have (ok, had) an XPS M2010, T7400, 20.1" notebook, and it was always pumping out hot air through the exhaust vents. The cooling system consisted of two separate heat pipes...one for the CPU and one for the GPU. The GPU (ATI X1800) was always BURNING HOT! The CPU was equally as hot. It, too, had a large interior with lots of air flow, but is NOTHING like the HDX. I can barely ever feel any hot air come out of mine!

 

5.4 I believe. Video is 5.8/5.9. Ran WEI twice...

 

I had seagate 7200rpm 320gb wouldn't worried about heat. I used to own toshiba let it heat for few years S.M.A.R.T say my harddrive dead unable to use as OS just for ext. I got seagate 7200.3 from zipzoomfly check it good price most of them say out of stock. But it came with oem bag if you don't mind. My index go from 5.0 to 5.9. ( just for HDD, ram same as CPU =5.0 for T8100 HDX 9494nr )

 

wow great. the 8100 proc. gets 5.0.

 

hey my hard drive which is the stock 5400rpm drive in the 9494nr, gets 5.4 wei score. wonder if its worth upgrading or adding a 7200rpm. how much less battery life do you think it would get running a 7200rpm instead. also how about running 1 hdd's? any link to a hdd cage for the 9494nr, even one with slight modding?

 

graphics and gaming graphics are 5.9/5.8 same as yours.

 

Thanks for posting CybV. That's more in line with what I've seen on the web concerning x9000 temps in other systems. Hot house though. Some like it hot, yeah?

 

Well, my x9000 came in today but I won't be able to put it in until this weekend.

 

That's true - but if you start installing OEM drivers and firmware upgrades simply because they're a higher revision and HP hasn't posted them, you run the risk of having problems, or in the case of a firmware update that not generic, having it never work on your system again. 3rd party vendors customize drivers and firmware to run with specific engineering configurations, and most of the time drivers are generic, but not always. In the case of firmware, Intel clearly marks their updates as being generic, but not all OEM's do that. Sony usually puts a component checker in their firmware installation to see if the firmware it's updating has been modified by a 3rd party vendor. If it has, it halts the install.

I'm not saying that all drivers and updates on the support pages for a given system shouldn't be obtained elsewhere if there's a newer version; What I'm saying is that if you do go outside to get updated drivers, you'd better be sure they haven't been modified for a specific HP system configuration. This is one thing we see all the time on the HP Support Forums - users installing non-HP or OEM drivers/firmware over/on HP modified software and components and then wondering why it doesn't work right afterward. With a driver you can usually just wipe it and reinstall the original, but like I said with firmware if you flash it with the wrong update you're usually screwed.

The other big mistake users make is by going to the update pages and just installing what's there just because it's on the update page without bothering to read and determine whether or not it' s either an older revision, or if it's even for their system. HP has had a security update on the support pages for quite some time now, and it's on all system pages. I responded to an HP Forum user that had installed that update and was having problems afterward. After checking, I determined her model wasn't even in the series that needed to have the update installed.

Usually I'll check the other global HP English-speaking sites for updated revisions first - HP doesn't update their support pages globally, so sometimes you'll find newer drivers for the same configuration unit on say, the Hong Kong or UK pages. I keep a bookmark link for each site so I can check between them quickly.

Many of us here know what we're doing when it comes to updates, but it's a sad fact that there's a much higher percentage that have no clue, and unfortunately they'll just do what's posted without having that extra knowledge that we use to determine what's okay to use and what isn't.

 

I just installed a Hitachi 320GB 7200RPM as my C: drive. I get 5.7 for WEI. OWC had them for $129 with rebate.

 

Yeah man.

There's a reason I tend to favor warmer environments. I've had 3 spinal operations over the past 12 years, and the first 2 were screwed up, literally - 2 lumbar pedicle screws in my 2nd operation were screwed into the bone too far and into leg nerves, one on each side. The first op left one screw actually in one of my cervical disks (I have a butterfly plate that spans 3 vertebrae in my neck). When I went in for pics in '06 after another disk collapsed, they found the problems from the first 2, and corrected the lumbar problem, but the nerve damage is done. I still have to get the other one taken out of my neck, maybe later this year or early next.

That's one reason. The other is my PS3 raises the temperature by at least 5 degrees in a non-cooled room. Great during the winter though.

Anyway, the pain I have is chronic and continuous, 24/7. I've been on opiate therapy for almost 10 years now, although you don't really notice it after this long - it's like taking aspirin. I've been using Duragesic 100 patches for about 8 years for primary pain, they last 2-3 days, and I've got Percocet 10/325's for breakthrough pain. When it's really bad I can add Demerol (100mg tabs) to that, but I haven't had to use them for quite a while. What really sucks is that all my meds are Schedule II opiates, meaning you can't get refills for them, so I have to go every month and get new 'scripts from my doctor. Gets me out of the house though.

If you've got any healed injuries or had any surgeries you know what cold feels like on those areas. Being in a warmer area also keeps the nerve pain down, which is what really hurts the most.

Since you're wondering, in answer to your question it's not from an accident, it's a hereditary problem that many people are born with also, but go through life never knowing they have it. Essentially it's a problem that makes you more susceptible to disk herniations. What I didn't know is that certain activities when you're younger can make it worse and cause a herniation to progress, in turn making the condition worse, and it just keeps going. 2 of those activities are Football and Weightlifting, 2 things I was heavily involved with in school. And of course heavy lifting when I was in the Navy also. Eventually the disk collapses and the vertebrae slip forward until they're touching bone to bone. I can honestly say it hurts like nothing you ever want to imagine.

There are people out there a lot worse off than I am, so I take it in stride. It can always be worse. Life goes on.

Now, where's my Percocet??

 

hey fellas, new HDX owner here...just got the computer 2 days ago after drooling over it when I saw it a week ago for the first time at Best Buy. Got a great deal on the HDX9494nr model for $1399.99 CDN (about $1300USD) plus a free copy of Spore and a free HP inkjet printer. Part of the promotion at Best Buy. The original cost was $1599.99 but Best Buy had a save $200 off any notebook over $1500 for 3hrs on the 8th, so I went for it! Just an amazing piece of hardware so far...

I did however have that constant T8100 buzz going on which was annoying, but got rid of it by using RightMark CPU Clock Utility and unchecking that WONDERFUL "unable pop up mode" box...saved my life, otherwse I would have returned it b/c of the annoying buzz. Also ended up undervolting all speeds to 0.9500V. Ran Orthos for 5 hours, perfect!

I'm sure to have many questions in the coming days. I would love to read the whole forum but 250+ pages!!!!

 

Congrats on the new HDX Tommy! I just joined this forum myself a couple days ago. Its a great informative and friendly place. Thanks to those who responded to my original posts and the member who sent me a PM.

OK, let me bounce my predicament off you guys. I wasn't planning to buy an HDX just yet, but my hand is somewhat forced by its discontinuance. I have a Dell XPS desktop with a 4 year full warranty that expires Apr, 2009. It was about that time that I planned to get a laptop. The XPS is still fine, but once in a great while it would be nice to take it with me.

What I hated to give up is the 24" monitor I have. That is why I was looking at the HDX (and I also looked at the recently departed Dell M2010). The other day I was asking a guy who helps me occasionally with software problems what he thought. He recommended that I just get a 15" laptop and get a docking station, that way I could continue to use my 24" screen.

That solution seemed reasonable to me, especially since I wasn't planning on laying out that money until another 6 months. Just curious to get any thoughts from you guys.

 

I was thinking along the same lines as well, and may very well do that in the future, but what has really made me replace my workstation completely though is the cable clutter. I don't think it's really as bad as others I've seen, but I live in a small apt in NYC, and one less workstation, one less monitor and a lot less cabling makes sense to me. And it's (with the right bag) portable! I would go with the HDX while it's still available in some retail operations.

 

Wow, I'm on here everyday almost and I missed this!

Well congrats! This is very good news, now I'm just waiting for 4-4-4-12 modules to come out and I'm in.

 

Ya, it'll run at the bottom voltage no sweat, which is awesome because it helps keep the gpu down some too.

As for reading, just use the search thread option. Pretty much everything is covered in this thing atleast once.

 

Let me put it more specifically - it's a combination of the X9000, the HDX size, fans, and overall design, not just any one thing.

2.0, you might know since I've not worked in thermal for a few years (hell, 9 years!) - I've seen desktop cases with liquid cooling systems, but I've not seen any with ammonia heatpipes for cooling. Do you (or anyone else) know of any in the market, or have they just not got around to using them for PC's?

For those that don't know, thermal heatpipes use anhydrous ammonia to draw heat away from its source to a cooling point. It starts as a liquid in the pipe, turns to gas when it's heated, then as it draws the heat away and cools it returns to liquid. They're extremely common in satellites, the Space Shuttle, Space Station, etc. I was responsible for several key NASA projects that used them, and I always wondered if they'd ever get around to using them commercially.

** USELESS FACTS FROM PERSONAL HISTORY ALERT **

There's at least one item that all of you are using that came out of a program I oversaw for NASA, and that's the Lithium Ion batteries in your notebooks and anything else you use them in. Although they've been around a while, NASA gave them a big jumpstart in the mid-'90's as a power source for a tool designed by Goddard Space Center to replace one used by the Astronauts for servicing the Hubble, another of my big headache programs (I didn't design it, I just made sure what they used to service it replace stuff with worked). The tool is called the Pistol Grip Tool (PGT) and was developed to replace the Power Ratchet Tool (PRT). At the same time, Johnson Space Center had a competing design for the Astronauts to use in building the ISS. NASA made the 2 centers compete, and Goddard's PGT won out, and is now used for both Hubble and the ISS. If you look at it, it looks like a cordless drill, which is the basic design they used, but instead of a drillbit holder it has a 3/8" socket adapter on it, with electronic torque limiters as well. It also cost $250,000 apiece to build in the end. This is what it looks like:



The base under the handgrip has a power-pack that slides in and out, and the pack has 12 D-cell size Lithium Ion batteries inside. Toward the end of development, the manufacturer was doing final testing on 32 Lithium batteries that were scheduled for delivery to Goddard after I inspected and bought them off for NASA. The test technician read the procedure wrong and entered an incorrect test voltage value, increasing it by one decimal point (in effect from 2 digits to 3). He wound up frying the entire batch and put schedule back by 6 weeks. Idiot.

If I remember right Goddard sunk about half a million into Lithium-Ion development. And the result is they still don't work all the time and they still overheat just like they did then.

Anyway, that's my USELESS FACTS FROM PERSONAL HISTORY story for today.

 

Lancorp,
KR835AV is an HDX 9301TX - it's the same unit I have. As I have said MANY times here, you cannot go by HDX9300 - that is the HP Model NAME, not the HP Product NUMBER, as there area many different configurations - HP doesn't even have a 9300 model # on their support site - it starts at 9301. All your BIOS, System Info and everything else will show you is the HP model name. HP uses their Product #(on yours and mine, KR835AV) to distinguish between the different model configurations.

HDX9000CTO is the Notebook Series Identification number. HDX9301tx is the Notebook Model Name/Number. KR835AV#ABA is the HP Product Number.

If you want, you can also use HP's product detection ActiveX - make sure you're using IE when you go to this link:

http://tinyurl.com/5jfhqf

Install and run it and it'll tell you the same thing I just did, but from HP so it'll be "Official".

According to HP, updating your BIOS will fix the problem where it shows the incorrect Product #, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

Are you living down under or in SA?

 

Wouldn't he have to be living in the northern hemisphere for it to be "autumn here"? South America or "down under" would make it Springtime for him...

 

I'm also running the RightMark Clock software (64 bit version with the signed sys file), and find that when I have that program in my startup, my HDX is at a constant 2.5Ghz (no SpeedStep). I didn't set it to do that, but it does. Is yours acting similarly? (I don't mind it, I prefer it, actually, while I'm running on AC).

Can you elaborate on how you set your speeds to undervolt? Where is that done and do you have to save it as a profile somehow?

Thanks!

 

Thanks CV, but i did already d/l the latest audio driver listed on that page (6.10.5511.0A) and i'm currently using it, its the only one that seems to enable the sub.
I was told that this driver could become unusable once Vista SP2 was released (exactly why i dont know).

Not sure where i find the corresponding "9301tx" number if mine is different? I know my HDX is a HDX9430EA.

 

Can't be...not until September 22, 2008!