HP Pavilion dv6z-7000 (AMD A10-4600M) Trinity Review

confirmed that this corsair vengence memory kit works (timings r a little off though)

cpuz timings are 800 9-9-10-24-39 ........wonder why the 10

i guess there suppose to work at 9-9-9-24

Newegg.com - CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Laptop Memory Model CMSX8GX3M2A1600C9

 

also been playing around with the crappy 1366x768 display

this definitely seems to make it look better, better colors....try it out go into the CCC and under my built in displays....click..."display color built in display" and check the box for "use extended display ID data" (EDID)

 

The stock 1600 RAM in the dv6z is cas11 this also shows the last value as 12.

11-11-12

Will check what the full values are later when it's on again.

 

Hey guys,

I'm having another problem with my dv6-7000 its only using the APU now while playing test drive, and its lagging a little, it used to use the 7670m gpu before im monitoring with amd system monitor. Any ideas?

 

reset it with catalyst control panel.

 

Thanks lol, It was set to force gpu power save in the power settings.... I'm slowly getting the hang of it, The A10 has been great so far feels like an I5 or better no lag in loading applications with multiple things open, also is very cool never pasted 70C..

Sent from my Tapatalk 2 Mobile App.

 

Got mine coming this friday

HP Pavilion dv6z-7000 Entertainment Notebook PC

• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• AMD Quad-Core A10-4600M Accelerated Processor (3.2GHz/2.3GHz, 4MB L2 Cache)
• 2GB AMD Radeon(TM) HD 7730M Graphics
• 16GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• Microsoft(R) Office Starter: reduced-functionality Word/Excel(R) only, No PowerPoint(R)/Outlook(R)
• 750GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
• No additional security software
• One 6 Cell and One 9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• 15.6-inch diagonal Full HD Anti-glare LED-backlit Display (1920 x 1080)
• SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
• HP TrueVision Webcam with Integrated Digital Microphone + HP SimplePass Fingerprint Reader
• 802.11b/g/n WLAN and Bluetooth(R)
• Backlit Keyboard
• HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

Just ordered a CT30L (Blue-Ray 3D /DVDR Lightscribe) to replace the stock burner - also wondering why they did not offer the Seagate XT 750GB Hybrid as an option in this model like they did in the DV6t - Going to pick one up at New Egg - also just ordered a Booq Taipan Shadow XL bag which is perfect for this size - So that should wrap it up, can't wait to load this puppy up.

 

My Windows Experience Index scores:


12.7 beta amd drivers
7200rpm hardrive
2x4gb 1600mhz 9-9-10-24

processor: 6.9
memory: 7.3
graphics: 6.1
gaming graphics: 6.1
hardrive: 5.9

these look ok/right to you guys?

 

Just double checked the timings, mine are 11-11-12-28 39, seems that HP or more likely the Trinity memory controller is pushing up the third value.

I have been playing around with the north-bridge performance states, appears that small improvement can be gained here. It is very minimal at best so far.

Will check my WEI score, not that that test does much.

Interesting is that the A10 alone scores higher that the dGPU enabled. I switched graphics between the winsat.exe which is the WEI executable.
The A10 is better than the 7730M in the graphics WEI tests

A10 with 7730M:




A10 APU only:



BTW. my hard drive is a big slow 1TB 5400rpm 8MB cache model

 

I appologize as this is somewhat off topic. I have a friend who is looking to buy a cheapish gaming/college laptop... The two main options right now are the dv6z-7000 with a10 and 7730m or the dv6t-7000 with i3-3110 and 630m which would be about $50 cheaper (could upgrade to an i5-2450m or an i5-3210m also making them very similar in price). I know that the 7730m is better than a 630m, however, I can't get a straight answer anywhere on how good the A10-4600m is as a processor. Some seem to say it totally sucks, while others put it above a lot of i5s... Can anyone tell me how the a10-4600m and i3-3110m compare and if the a10 can even compete with an i5-3210m... What about the a8-4500m and i3-3110m? He want's to play games, but not anything super serious. I figure either GPU should play his games well enough for his purposes. If he wants the best ALL AROUND laptop that also games well, which combination is better? I doubt it's even possible to do this but it would be really useful if someone could accurately say the A10-4600m = iX-XXXXm... Can anyone help me understand where this lies as a CPU since he will get a graphics card?

 

The A10 is on par with the i3. Tell your friend to spend a little more and get an i5/650m because it's a better value than both. How much is his budget?

 

yah I get the same score with a 750g 7200rpm hardrive (5.9)

hmm weird ill have to disable the 7670m and run it again.


by the way anybody having usb issues??? when I restart sometimes the usb ports on the left side don't recognize when something is plugged in and I have to disconnect them and restart and then plug them back in and they will work...weird issue

I was thinking maybe casue im running 12.7 beta??

 

I'd go with the dv6z-7000... better overall for cheap gaming (lol im biased cause look what thread yur in hehe no but really then he can save the extra money to get a good mouse, case, laptop cooler. etc.... nah mean?

 

on a super tight budget, i'd even get i3/650m

ivy bridge i3 is fast enough, and still beats the A10 in everything.

However, the prices I'm seeing are no good without huge coupon.

i3/650m is $784, and that's a ripoff. A base i3 starts at $400. and the 650m is definitely not worth $384 price premium.
The most I'd pay for i3/650m is $550-600.

 

Even though I don't have an Ivy Bridge model, all I can compare is my older Sandy Bridge quad. Each are to their own really, there are reasons why I have both, and reasons why I use both at different times.
With what I got, the Intel quad runs hot most of the time, it just can't do anything running super cool, but can game hard. The A10 can run super cool, and game at cool temps for long period on battery depending on the game.
It been said the A10 supplies long running times for nothing. For me that is a win, as I will spend long times RDP to my desktop machine that will has the power to do set tasks I want done.

Moving on to tbone comment about the USB. I have trouble with the USB closest to the optical drive not detecting most things I plug into it, but will recognize one of my external hard drives.

I have also been doing some tweak again looking of other settings that may be not be locked. Most importantly attempting to make the fastest turbo setting of 3200MHz work. This is appearing to be impossible, I am almost at this stage absolutely certain this is locked down and never actually turbo's to this speed ever. This is not good as the marketed turbo speed of 3200MHz, even though this is for a single core is not obtainable.
I have found that the north bridge speed can be tweaked to a maximum of 1600MHz, this is already available, but can be forced on both states and voltage lowered. Check out the WEI with the NB set to 1600MHz, it went up from 7.2 to 7.3

A10 APU only with NB @ 1600MHz:

 

you can probably achieve max turbo in ice cold setting.

put the pc in the refrigerator for 15 minutes, then run some tests.

 

Cannot force, or ever see any turbo on a single core, just does not happen, therefore I believe that the A10-4600M (at least on the dv6z will never at this stage run at 3200MHz

Using super PI which is fully single threaded, I set the processor affinity to core 0, therefore can only run on a single core (I have tried several settings to do this) forced to max out. All I can see is all four cores going to 2700MHz and not a single core to 3200MHz. While running super PI checking core 0 is actually maxing out.

Not sure what can be done here. Even using PSCheck, I cannot force turbo on the 3200MHz level. If I do then the laptop slows down to a crawl.

 

refrigerator method, setting affinity to one core, and still doesn't hit 3200 on that core?

I thought that would rule out heat issue.

It would be interesting to see what AMD has to say about this. Max turbo never holds for more than 1/10 of a second.

perhaps one of the big shot journalists like Anandtech can ask their AMD contacts why turboboost never sustains max.

your i7 can sustain max turbo, right?

 

Yeah the i7's can turbo.

AMD should have to answer to this, we need someone to ask the question and for AMD to provide the fix.

From the link below can be found a super PI 1M is running at 35.1, in comparision I can pull a score of 35.8 at 2700MHz This is about even. Also take in to account, the notebook check result came directly from AMD's custom laptop that was sent out to all the big reviewers. Their AMD must be gimped too.
AMD A-Series A10-4600M Notebook Processor - Notebookcheck.net Tech

If you look at the A6-4400M (which I don't have), this appears the base is 2700 and turbo of both cores I would believe is 3200MHz. I am looking for the source (might of been from another forum or the German review sites) but from what I can remember pulls a score of around 28-30 seconds.

The A10 it meant to be 2300 base 2700 turbo (4 cores) and 3200 (1 core), if the single core turbo was true, then it should match the A6-4400M super PI 1M score.

Some thing is not right if the flag ship processor I paid good money for cannot do 3200MHz, even if it is only for a single core. I am wondering if this has purposely been locked out on the quads?
I brought mine with the processor speed listed as up to 3.2GHz, this better work otherwise the processor is being sold under false advertising.

Link to my replacement, click on the features tab:
Computers :: Laptops :: HP DV6-7103AX Laptop - Harvey Norman New Zealand

AMD official spec, click on the product spec tab:
Notebooks With AMD Accelerated Processors

And just to remind everyone here, HP are selling us laptops with a maximum processor speed of 3.2GHz on the A10-4600M, this is a speed it will never reach!
This also applies to the maximum speed of an A8, that too I believe with never top out at its max speed.

This chart is showing 3.2GHz. Please post if you processor can reach 3.2GHz???

 

Condensation is going to be a worry if you're going to put your computer in the fridge. Personally I wouldn't try it just to see if the turbo works. I think the reasonable assumption is that it should turbo to 3.2ghz under normal operating conditions, which it doesn't. Are you running in high performance mode with the max cpu % as 100%?

 

it is a cpu flaw, so you can't blame HP. Those are the specs provided by AMD.

When I had my A8-4500m, it also would not turbo to the max, even with affinity set to one core, and leaving everything else idle.

there was 0-2% cpu load, and still the A8 would only turbo to 2.3ghz when doing single threaded crap like mp3 encoding.

Does the A6 dual core even turbo to the max? I haven't seen any user data to support that yet

 

Acutally I can blame both HP and AMD for this.

HP should be advising there customers that 3.2GHz maximum turbo is not obtainable, if they are going to list AMD's techincal specification.

There is actually no excuse for AMD to be pumping out flawed CPU's to the end user.

AMD should provide answers why these processors are not reaching their specification.

But that is something out of my control, and what will be will be as it is, nobody else will be none the wiser.

 

I still maintain that you can't blame HP, because the chip does hit max turbo for a split second when you're doing some weak task when you least expect it. HWinfo64 will show it if you leave the sensor running in the background.

It's going to be hard to get a response from AMD. Usually, the lower level support people give you useless canned answers.

AMD does not make it easy to contact higher ups.

You might be able to get someone to help you if you post the issue on Anandtech, hardocp, or tom's hardware. The guys running those sites normally have a line directly with AMD.

 

The 2.3 GHz A10-4600M with Turbo Core 3 automatically overclocks up to 3.2GHz according to temperature, 35W TDP limit and loading situations. It is nothing wrong if you not gonna see this high clock, the chip still does it's best all the time.

 

there's the issue.

at idle, you're not hitting 35w tdp, and you certainly have no load. Yet, turbo max is never achieved or noticeable.

so that leaves temperature.

and that is why I told T2050 to try to put it in the refrigerator for 15 minutes and run some singlethread tests, while logging how long the cpu stays at max turbo.


a good refrigerator is designed to suck out moisture, so there should be no condensation issues. There's more moisture in Miami or Puerto Rico than in a refrigerator.

 

Yeah, I see your point, 3.2 GHz probably only marketing at the case of A10-4600M. 2.3GHz +Turbo would be the correct or whatever...

 

Using Open Hardware Monitor, I've seen my A10 max at 3.194 GHz when playing games. When set to high performance, it won't drop below 2.695 GHz.

 

Dual graphics work or not?

 

Well, the i5-3210m/650m (2GB) comes to $717.49... the 2GB version of the 650m seems like a waste of money in most cases, but adds to the price. Too bad HP doesn't give you 1GB option. I have a 30% off retail coupon which only works with retail prices of $1000 or above. Can you tell me where you would find an i3 and 650m for under $600????? I've seen such things with 630m, but the 650m is a great card especially on a sub-$600 laptop. Thank everyone for the help!!

 

that's just like the sensor in hwinfo64.

it will show max turbo in the stats, but you have no idea how long it sustains max turbo.

when playing games, it will not sustain max turbo; it was not designed to.

 

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. I was just stating that it does reach that. Though from what I've seen, it's usually for a fraction of a second during loading screens.

 

yeah. That's what I saw too. So that's why AMD can get away with it as long as it hits the speed for a millisecond.

When intel advertises turbo, it actually sustains turbo for more than a few seconds.

 

I've thought Intel could hold turbo for quite long, but few seconds also just for marketing.

The important is, the GPU part can hold max turbo for very long .

 

So Trinity turbo is pretty much Llano turbo? That's pretty weird because Bulldozer (what Trinity is based off of) actually had a good turbo that sustained for more than a split second. If there were more desktop Trinity chips out we could test if AMD crippled it for all Trinity chips or just for mobile.

The humidity of the fridge has nothing to do with condensation.

 

Bottom line is it is absurd that the maximum speed rating can be published and used for marketing if the time held is only a split second.

Maybe AMD shoud let their customer know like this:

3.2GHz turbo (single core only, for max 0.1 second) Don't blink you might miss it

For some odd reason (don't ask me why, likely just hope) that this will be fixed by some driver or BIOS update, but I can't see that being possible.

 

They never "fixed" it for Llano, so the chances are slim. But at least with Llano you could just OC to the turbo speeds.

 

meh im not to bothered by the whole 3.2ghz thing... at least playing games and heavy multitasking its goes up to 2.7ghz most of the time and at least hits 3.2ghz every once in a while....not much we can do about it, i guess i was hoping to be able to OC it a little and u cant even do anything. ah well


on another note...

was curious if someone could tell me about the video memory and whats allocated to what and if u can change it or tweak it...

i have an a10-4600m and a 7670m dgpu...

 

The a10 reserves ~.5gb of system RAM for itself (you can check with AMD system monitor) and the 7670m has it's own dedicated gddr3 vram (1gb, iirc).

 

Have you guys noticed that when you enable turbo the overall system performance feels more snappier, not trying to say I wouldn't want turbo to last more and hit 3.2 but I think it does its job. I usually set CPU to 99% while gaming because it keeps temps at about 66 degrees which is amazing!

Sent from my Tapatalk 2 Mobile App.

 

Use PSCheck and force turbo at 2700MHz, it will be better than you could imaging.
Also bring both your North Bridge (NB) states to the 1600MHz max, this has will give to a slight boost. You can lose some voltage here to if you wish, but I cannot see how much difference it will make yet.
Make sure you only leave one p-state, that one being Pb1 and just to save on power and improve thermals you should be able to drop the voltage down 0.05v

Stock Turbo & Voltage = 2700MHz @ 1.125v

Stock Turbo & Under-Voltage = 2700MHz @ 1.075v

Your voltage stock and under-voltage will be different between processors.
This is my second A10-4600M, both of them don't respond to large decreases in voltage.

I have been trying every power combo, messing with different apps, even bring in PSCheck to try get 3.2GHz on a single core. It is seemly impossible. Although if someone creates an app pacifically for the K15.1 or Trinity, they may be able to get a it working, or at let a few things that don't work in PSCheck with Trinity.

For now PSCheck can be used to force turbo (or a desired speed), and most importantly stop throttling

 

cool thanks for the tips for pscheck and voltages ill have to try em out. hopefully someone will get it tweaked and figured out so we can set custom P states, seeing how it runs stable at lower volts.

have u tried just going in the CCC control panel and under cpu power just move the bar all the way to the right for high performance when plugged in...

it seems to hover around 2.6-2.7ghz

 

Yeah high performance keeps the clocks on turbo.

If you use some like prime95 or AIDA and do a stress test on all 4 cores, you will see that it will not hold turbo at 2700MHz, it will be all over the place dropping down.

If you do the same using PSCheck but make sure you only leave one p-state Pb1 at 2700MHz, then the processor has no choice but to maintain a full 2700MHz without no throttling

No problem doing this, max temp I found was 67c. I even then went on to add a directx windows graphical demo windowed in the background. The graphics would change between ~500MHz or the 686MHz max.
I didn't check to see it unforcing turbo on the processors core would allow the 686MHz to stay at max, but my guess is it probably would.

 

Can someone please tell me why the amd overdrive is not showing the 7730m GPU, while amd system monitor shows it running.

Does this happen to anyone else, or my gpu is somehow not working properly?

 

how did you get the 675Mhz on the 7730??

 

I think he used msi afterburner, though I don't think msi afterburner has official support for 7730m or 7670m (hence the multiple gpus 1,2,3)

wonder if any of the other utility's would work like asus tweak and sapphire trixx, cause there's nothing in CCC to change for clocks

would be nice to overclock my 7670m

curious someone was asking in another thread if the 7660g+7730m does hybrid crossfire....I thought the consensus was no right?

 

Hey guys I was thinking about getting dv6z-7000 with 7730m graphics card but I have yet to see benchmarks on notebook check of the 7730m running on AMD CPU. Can anyone actually take the time and make FPS chart of the games they play like Diablo 3? Also does the labtop make noise when it's gaming? I really want a labtop that stays as quiet has possible while gaming,
Thanks.

Blake

 

Use MSI afterburner, you will need to edit the ini file to allow overclocking.
Once done, then find application that you can assign the dGPU to that will run in a small window. Adjust clock sliders in MSI. You can leave MSI open after the adjustments for the game you want to play.

I can play at 666MHz core and 1080MHz memory with my 7730M, and is very fast playing Deus X at 1080p.

Personally I have not used the 7670M in crossfire, and would not know. I brought the 7730M as I did not want crossfire and like to use the A10 on power saving, and the 7730M when plugged in. Also I went for the 7730M because it is AMD's new GCN tech with has some sweet improvements going on, and has low power consumption.

 

Great review (above) thanks...sounds like a solid laptop....How would anyone here rate Hp's reliability? I treat all my posessions like gold.....I am very careful with everything I own...so maybe this is why I have such good like with my current toshiba. Who assembls Hp ad hat type of Hd's ad components do they use? Are they of good quality?

 

HP is respectable

but then again its a $500-$650 laptop

this isn't a macbook pro were talking about

you shouldn't be worried about that.... for the money you pay its fine.

and if your worried buy the extended warranty

 

Thanks....I have two Toshiba's, never had a problem....bought the extended warranty on the first one, that was a waste, the unit is
12 yrs old, (it is now just a jukebox in my workout room)...
Swaying from Toshiba will be tough, but this dv6z-7000 has alot going for it, esp for the money...I really want a good sound system and it has beats audio...I like to play dvd's, music....ect...and I like the battery life of the Trinity....not to mention it is a good processor...
I appreciate your response....if anyone else can chime in about this model, (HD's used, quality of build, anything at all, it'll make my purchase more valid! I also like the backlit keyboard....
THANKS HP FANS....