*HP Mini 311 Owners Lounge*

Cool is it possible to overclock at the moment or are we looking at waiting for a newer bios to be released?

 

This should do it http://www.amd.com/us-en/0,,3715_15337_15354_15359,00.html

 

Has anyone actually overclocked their Mini 311 CPU/GPU yet? Have any benchmarks to show the potential for improvement?

 

Rule of thumb for cpus is that you get a 3-6% improvement per 10% clock speed increase. Sometimes it might be more or less.

 

Is there any truth to that? I have the 280 but my wife has the 270

 

I doubt it, these processors are not that different.

 

its false. both will run windows 7

 

ugh my mini just came and I don't want to cancel it , its sooo small. I'm going to with it and then go see the dm3z in person later (hopefully a bestbuy around here has it) to compare the sizes. This si so tough

 

Been playing around with the mini 311 . I had ordered it but called to late to cancel it so I have to send it back later. I have the n260 1.66ghz cpu with 3 gigs of ram.


The cpu is dog slow. There is no reason to have the ion hooked up to this cpu its cpu limited in almost every game keeping many games in the sub 10fps average.

 

How does the mini handle Hulu and HD video via HDMI? anyone give it a go?
I am assuming it could handle a USB HDTV Tuner, right?

I was also wondering how it would handle streaming video as part of our W7 Homegroup... if anyone has tried it out, please post results/opinions.
thanks

 

Is this going t be faster or slower than the new Dell 13z?

 

I just got it this morning! I have the n280 atom with W7 and Ion full (i think).

I like this much more than the dm3. The feel of the dm3 is just much more solid than this but it's too much for my taste. As in, the keys are softer and the touchpad is WAY more usable than the dm3's.

Hulu is watchable only in Standard Def and not fulscreen. It stutters just as bad as the dm3 oddly. The video is watchable without fullscreen but it doesn't seem smooth. I'll check the hdmi capabilities later and compare it with the dm3.

I still like it. I'm trying to keep myself from doing to much on laptop and transferring what I'd normal do to my desktop. Before this, I'd use my laptop for everything and drag 6 pounds to campus became too much after 4 years.

I'll be checking the laptop's battery life after my school day's use. (So far I'm estimating 5 hours as I'm seeing 81% after 1 hour of browsing, installing programs and whatnot)

 

I have the opposite impression. I think for doing things that netbooks do, the CPU is more than powerful enough. If someone buys this specifically for mobile gaming then I think you're looking in the wrong place--at least until the next generation. A separation should probably be made between games in terms of which are GPU intensive vs CPU intensive vs both when considering this netbook.

The 311 turned out to be perfect for my needs which were: small form factor w/ great battery + everyday task capable + 720/1080p mkv player + WOW on the go (probably in that order).

 

So far I'm glad with it. For use and comfort it's been perfect. Typing isn't as stiff to me as the dm3 so I'll probably able to do a long typing session for an essay.

But one thing that's still bugging me is the trackpad. The pad tends to register my palm and moves the cursor as I'm typing. Too bad they didn't have a hw button for toggling it. Could a keyboard shortcut to be set up to do such a thing?

 

hey can you post a screenshot using gpu-z latest version? to see what it says about gpu?

 

I'm sure this should be the latest.

 

I wonder how well can this can run Street Fighter 4?

Also does anybody know how soon will a company come out a netbook with specs like this board ZOTAC IONITX-D-E

http://www.zotacusa.com/zotac-ionitx-d-e-atom-n330-1-6ghz-dual-core-mini-itx-intel-motherboard.html

 

mabye , but i feel the whole thing with windows 7 is very slugish. I dunno everyone has their prefrence. This netbook is great , its small and thin and should be fine for surfing the web and wow and mabye lotro on low settings. buti f you want something a littlem ore to do other work then word and web surfing then this isn't for you.

 

Seriously? Windows 7 is definitely not sluggish at all on my machine. I hate people that qualify but here I go.. I have 7 or 8 PCs in my house, 2 of them are 3+ Ghz dual core servers outfitted with the best. One is a HP dv9000 dual core 2.6 17" laptop. I'm a programmer by profession so I use tons of PCs at work as well, and this PC does not seem slow at all to me running Win7.

Maybe you've got a process running that is slowing your system down?

-TK

 

no , its just slugish compared to what i'm used too . Thats all. The atom just isn't enough juice for what i want

 

1280x720 default settings get you a score of 6489 or average fps of 17.50

Putting model on low , backround low and particles low gets you a score of 9519 ot 27fps

800x600 gets you 11158 and 40.47 fps

 

Hmmm. I dumped Win7Pro on my 311, but my graphics are acting a bit funky. I downloaded the NVIDIA drivers, but my graphic score is still 1.0 on the Windows Experience thing. Also, the brightness adjust keys don't work on the keyboard. The sound and everything else works, so I'm assuming this is a graphics issue. I'm running the basic theme as it won't let me run Aero until I fix this.

:|

Any help?

Thanks.

EDIT: I updated the drivers through the control panel (the old fashioned way), and I think that did the trick. Strange.

 

and did you upgrade to the RAM to 3GB? just curious as I am holding off on putting W7 on the 311 until my RAM arrives

 

I haven't upgraded the ram yet. I'm planning on doing it soon. The system is bottle-necked by the CPU, so I'm not sure how much the ram will truly help. 7 runs pretty smooth with 1GB of ram.

I'm primarily concerned about the battery life. Anyone with 7 on their netbook know how much battery life they get? HP says it will run the same amount (up to 6.25 hrs; what does this even mean?), but I've heard 7 drops the battery life a bit. :| I'm happy as long as my battery life stays above 5 hours though.

I really need to get ram. Any suggestions?

 

windows 7 is going to increase battery life dude http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3666&p=16

 

I've read quite a lot of articles stating the opposite, but they were tested on older netbooks, so that may not be the case for the 311. Anyway to optimize the battery life using any Windows 7 features?

 

I was on 100% at 1:30pm and dropped to 80% at 2:30pm. I checked it around 5:00pm again and saw it around 35%.

That would be roughly 5% about every 30 minutes while I was using primarily for the web and occasionally testing out hulu's playback. That would give it 5 hours if goes that way, but I definitely doubt it. I've been on it constantly with the screen dimmed to half and wifi and bluetooth on of course.

Overall I'm estimating that I could manage 4 hours doing some heavier stuff.

So far my time hasn't been spent using the gpu so it's sad to say that it could be far less in battery life.

 

that's upsetting

 

Found the 2GB RAM (on sale) for 42.99 and you can get 5% CB from Bing!

http://www.jr.com/crucial/pe/CRT_2G25664BC10/

 

yeah, I haven't gone that last 20% under usage but I'd figure it around 5 hours, not the 6+ they are claiming.

 

Those articles said it was because drivers optimized for 7 were not yet released.

 

My HP Mini + BT + Wireless is around 6 hours consistently. I can get 3 hours of 3D gaming in. Since my boot time is less than 15 seconds, switching out a battery is no problem at all for another 3-6 hours, depending on what I am doing. This netbook is great.

I used it on my plane right to Newark, NJ. Played KOTOR on the plane actually and it was great. This netbook can handle everything except games that have just recently been released. I would say anything in 2008 and older will work fine on the lowest settings. There may be a title out there that doesn't run great that is older, but i have not ran into it.

HL2, F.E.A.R, LOTRO, etc... They all work fine. LOTRO is 30+ at almost all times in non-moria. Moria in 20-30

 

You were in Newark ? I would have taken you to lunch !

 

Hopefully these aren't considered too "noobish" questions

In order to maximize the usage of the ION on the Mini 311, is there a preferred method of encoding the video and a preferred method of decoding it through the ION processor?

In other words, let's say I'm using Handbrake to copy a DVD. What file format and settings would I use for the best quality video?

Then, what software would I use for playing the video file back on the built-in screen? And would I use the same software to play the video back through the HDMI port?

Again, my apologies for what are probably pretty basic questions. Thanks in advance!

KC

 

The program needs to suport cuda or open cl for the ion to do anything (not sure if the ion is even supported but thats another story) you would need power director 7 or 8 by cyberlink or one of their media cafe converting programs. To see the benfit

http://www.cyberlink.com/products/mediashow/video-conversion_en_US.html

I don't know of any free programs that use the gpu.


For video playback media player on windows should use your gpu.

 

MediaCoder is free and can encode videos using Nvidia's GPUs (through built-in CUDA plugin) though I've never personally tried it.

 

I'm convinced that I have bad luck.

I'm suffering from horrible audio stuttering on the 311 after having updated the OS to W7. Any ideas? I'm going to start the gambit of uninstalling/installing audio drivers. I get this when streaming audio (podcast and/or Pandora).
-------------------------

My official owners hello considering I've been posting about my issues

I ordered on 9/24 and received shipment confirmation on 10/5 and received my cute little netbook on 10/9 which was earlier than my expected delivery date. This is my first "netbook" purchase although I have a 700m that I barely use. I intend to use this to surf the net, stream music, and play a few light games. I recently updated the OS to W7 professional and the RAM as well.

I've spent some of the evening playing Torchlight, which is a pretty fun dungeon crawler type of game. The one thing that I have been most impressed with is the quality of the screen/display. Even my fiance has made several comments about how nice the display is. I must say as well that going from XP to W7 has made this netbook stand out even more as far as user experience despite the few small issues I've been having.

 

Thanks for the kind offer Pasta. I am sitting in a Hotel in East Stroudsberg, PA right now. Been playing LOTRO for about 2 hours on battery. I fly out of Newark Friday again to go home.

 

Very cool , I'm in north jersey like 15 mins from the city. Soffry all you got to see of jersey was Newark. Its the greatest state in the country.

 

for the audio issues in windows 7 try just using the drivers windows 7 installs for your audio instead of the hp idt drivers. when you use the manufacturers drivers for audio cards in win 7 on different systems, usually it causes the audiodg process/service to do weird stuff like using alot of the cpu when system is idle or playing any type of sound...

 

you sure did get the newer true ion version of the gpu it even has a different hardware id number compared to the ION LE.. interesting.. how does it perform? try any benchmarks yet?

 

I read someone saying they were playing KOTOR on this netbook, how well does it run and what sort of graphics settings can you use?

 

Just wanted to say, I called Microsoft store and the guy couldn't give me the student price over the phone... only the retail price of $199...which I declined.

I'll buy it through win741 and hopefully I get something that I can use on my XP machine. As far as I know, even "upgrade" discs can do a custom, full install.

 

Just wanted to say something else... double post because this is unrelated to my last post.

I understand some of you guys trying to not be underwhelmed by the 311, but this is truly a remarkable netbook and I'd like to clear up a few things here:

- I bought the "older" XP version, installed Windows 7 and although I haven't been measusing my battery life down to the minute, my battery life hasn't gotten any worse... I get around 5 to 5 and a half hours doing web surfing.

- I added a 1GB 1333mhz stick (OCZ brand, with rebate), and it definitely helped. I noticed much more responsiveness and when running games (Portal, HL2, etc) I never use the full 2GB anyway.

- THE ION LE CHIP CAN SUPPORT DX10, this was discovered in another forum, you need to modify an ION driver package to include the ION LE device ID, and once installed, DX10 is now active on the LE.

-YOU CAN OVERCLOCK THE GPU... using nVidia Systems Tools (formerly nTune), available from their site. You can increase any of the clocks on the ION/LE

- For portability, you can't do wrong with this netbook... yes the CPU is a bottleneck for everything, but the ION/LE really makes this thing shine.

 

KOTOR only has built-in res for 800x600 and 1024x768 for this netbook. It won't work (even with widescreen hack) to run in 1366x768 or basically any other resolution. I guess the WS hack only works on 1440x900+

But with 1024x768, I have anti-aliasing set at 4x, 16x anistropic filtering, and everything set to high with the exception of 'soft shadows'... It runs smooth. Only had one slow down and that was a scene with smoke all around. Otherwise, it looked smooth.

Kotor 2 = Same exact as above. I never realized it, but it looks like Kotor 1 and 2 were basically the same engine and options. They look the same too...

 

ArchAngel777,

Have you experienced any hitching while paying games? I've found that at certain points in games it takes the 311 a little longer than say.. ..my desktop to load information.

Would this be considered normal for a netbook?

 

Hitching is normally the result of hard drive access. It can also happen when texture loading exceeds the speed of the GPUs ability to process it. Generally speaking though, hitching is not a result of the CPU. Mainly is a hard drive issue, which can be somewhat remedied with more memory since it causes less disk access.

For your specific instance, I am not sure. If you have the default 1GB module, then hitching will be normal. If you are running 2-3GB, then I would say it should not be normal on a regular basis.

 

I have 3GB installed.

I've been reading a little about SSDs. I'm wondering if getting one could cut down time on loading screens, etc.

 

System config: N280, 2gb, Ion

@default settings:
3dmark03: 4544
3dmark05: 2732

 

It will , but they are insanely expensive. I have a 60 gig ocz vertex in my desktop. With win 7 and my most used apps on it. I also have a 30 gig with my most played games. All the games load faster , doesn't really do much for framerates or anything