HP Spectre 13T-3000

How soon did your guys' laptops ship? My scheduled shipping date is the 17th and the order status has been "Awaiting Shipment" for almost a week now. Someone please give me some kind of answer, I've asked this several times and been ignored every time. Thanks!!

 

I ordered mine (customized) on Dec. 5 and the expected ship date is Dec. 18. It has been in "Order in Production" for a while now.

I also have a HP Envy 15t-j100 Quad Touchscreen on order since Dec.3 and the expected ship date for it is today (Dec. 12) but so far it has not shipped. Still in the "Order in Production" stage.

 

I believe I responded before, but I ordered on Nov 14 with estimated shipping on Dec 9, but it shipped on Nov 27. I don't recall exactly how long it was in production for, but it wasn't more than 2 weeks =P

 

Ordered on 12/01, shipped on 12/12, initial shipping date 12/17, delivery 12/19

 

Okay, I can just about put this issue to rest. I changed the power management setting to "performance" and got much better numbers:

Single Core: 2839
Dual Core: 5236

Here are my previous numbers:

Single Core: 1686
Dual Core: 3293

Now I'll run the SiSoft Sandra and see what number I get.

 

Finally received my Spectre and I'm liking many things about it. Two problems I'm having and I'm wondering if anyone else is experiencing the same...

1.) Finding the perfect screen resolution compromise: I currently have it at the highest 2560x1440 setting, and of course not every screen or menu will have been updated to take advantage of that. My biggest gripe is Google Chrome which comes out looking like a joke. I've tried all the possible tricks including chrome//:flags et al. but the icons on my bookmarks bar as big as a pinhead. I know Google hates Microsoft and like the French would bend over backwards to the Germany that is Apple, but does anyone have any advice on how to fix this before the year 2029?

2.) After only a few hours of usage, the touchpad seems to be wearing out -- I mean the actual coating. I seem to have worn through the topcoat so that it's shinier in spots where I double-tap or would press the left and right buttons. At first I thought this might be the oils in my finger, but I really can't clean it up or wipe it away. Am I alone in this?

 

Well, 50 million CPU cycles divided by 23.1 milliseconds comes out to 2.2 GHz. But, I will look at CPU-Z.

Regards, Jim

 

but its not only programs..the itunes icon in the taskbar looks distorted itself. its pixely.

so are all windows 8.1 FHD users experiencing the same issue i describe with chrome? its just really disappointing. is there like an announcement that google has made to fix this? im just really confused if everyone is dealing with these issues or if its my specific laptop or a quick fix i need to adjust in a setting somewhere. is this a widespread problem, i personally just wasn't aware if so because im not very techy. im disappointed that i cant enjoy the crispness of the beautiful screen.

 

Awesome! Thanks for the quick responses

I ordered on the 1st, still hasn't shipped - estimated the 17th. Hopefully it ships within the next few days!

 

Okay, the SiSoft Sandra CPU score is looking pretty good: 39.16GOPS (overall score is 3.68kPT whatever that means).

So I think the digital trends review is inaccurate (25.29GOPS for the i5) though it seems odd that they didn't get a better number fiddling with the power management settings as they said they did.

On my QHD screen Chrome seems great. Are you in metro? I'm using it outside of metro no and I have no complaints.

I haven't noticed anything about the touchpad wearing out. That seems very odd...

 

Did the charge for the laptop fall off your account and it was re applied when it shipped? Because I used Bill Me Later and the charge is gone..

 

At this time of year I wouldn't expect it to ship BEFORE the 17th. They probably got a lot of orders for this laptop when the 20% off coupon was in effect.

 

True, but others that ordered the same day I did have so I won't lose hope!

 

CC charged on 12/02

 

That's really great to hear. This is was my main concern about buying this laptop.

Yep, just wanted to double check with CPU-Z since other people weren't able to achieve turbo frequencies. FredSRichardson was able to enable turbo by changing the power management setting, so I'm not so concerned about this anymore. It seems you were getting the expected ~2.2ghz turbo frequency as well.
It's strange you were getting lower than expected benchmark scores though. Are you maybe using some older instruction sets in your benchmark? It seems unusual that the Haswell i5 would need to use more cycles to complete the same calculations.

 

Mine did the same, but it's back now. Not sure exactly when the charge reappeared. Maybe when it got into the states. It's supposed to arrive tomorrow.

 

I want to know，what is the screen type of it？I choose the 1920x1080 screen。I mean the "TN“ or ”IPS“ or something esle

 

Chrome does take some tweaking to get to look good. If you use Firefox, it works without any issues, but seems slower to boot up. Has to do with how Chrome handles the HiDPI display and scaling settings for 8.1.

 

I don't have a QHD monitor to test with, but when I was demoing a laptop. with that pixel density I believe I used some scaling add-ons from Chrome's huge library and they helped a good deal. The downside: it slows down the rendering and once that happens you lose the only thing I consider a differentiating feature of Chrome - its speed. If you have to put up with lower speeds you're way better off by Firefox, IMO. It would be interesting to hear from owners what gets the best results for browsing; I, for one, haven't pulled the trigger on an order and the only thing stopping me - now that the apparent throttling issue is put to rest - is the screen resolution pick.

On that note, my thanks to Fred and others, who took the time to fiddle with power settings to unravel the performance "mystery." To clarify, was the review unit an i5 or i7?. Also, did you specifically set the maximum processor speed to 100%? My understanding is that the cpu won't overlock, ever, at 99% or under.

 

hey, if you dont mind could you tell me exactly what to tweak or how to change so chrome looks better/good?

also, has google stated they are working on a chrome fix for this resolution problem, or is this something windows 8.1 would need to change? im just very confused and am trying to figure this out and make my screen look better

also, itunes is pixelated/bad resolution as well...any way to improve this or i just have to wait for itunes to scale correctly?

 

Well, the only thing I am sure about now is my stopwatch times. I used Task Manager while my benchmark was running. CPU speed increased from 1.47 GHz and 1% to 1.49 GHz and 17%. CPU-Z stayed at 1,496 MHz during a benchmark run. One interesting conclusion, at 1.49 GHz and 23 seconds, the CPU cycles would be about 34 million, which is about what I get on the i3 Ivy Bridge.

I am going to take a look at the code in my benchmark that measures CPU cycles. And also look at the power profile. I am currently using what ever came from the factory.

Regards, Jim

 

Hi Jim,

Do you mind trying GeekBench Geekbench 3 - Next-Generation Processor Benchmark

It will upload your result, but from what I can tell no personal information goes with it - just the model name of your laptop and the basic configuration.

It would be interesting to know if you get a significantly different score than I do.

-Fred

 

my geekbench:
Hewlett-Packard HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook - Geekbench Browser

I have an i7 and the multithreaded performance should be much better. Also does anyone know why it lists the memory @ 1mhz?? 8126 MB -1MHz

 

I'll post the settings that I used for Chrome later today. It is most likely a Chrome fix for the problem, since Firefox and IE work fine. Not an issue with Windows 8.1 or the screen if everything else looks good.

I haven't tried itunes but I'm guessing its a matter of the developer (Apple) making the program scale correctly.

 

I will probably be returning the laptop due to a buzzing sound from underneath the keyboard. It's erratic and annoying and sounds like the same issue that others have reported.

*edited*
In addition the performance is not great. I'm going to compare to my macbook air later, but I expected the i7 performance to be better, especially at multthreaded which is important to me as a programmer.
desktop geekbench:
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. Z68XP-UD3P - Geekbench Browser

Also I'm not a fan of the 16/9 aspect ratio on 13.3 laptops. I miss the taller aspect ratio of my macbook air 13 inch, and my older dell xps 13. I might move up to a 14" widescreen form factor.

Keyboard illumination doesn't bother me, and overall it's quite nice.

 

I set my power plan to Performance, but I get the same result, 1.49 GHz. Is there anything else I need to do to get into turbo mode?

I will take a look at Geekbench.

Thanks, Jim

 

See my post on this. These numbers are quite low (and what I first got). Try setting power management to "performance" and run while plugged in.

 

Some of the geekbench i7 scores for the spectre are much faster, and mine seem to be on the lower end. Did you guys tweak anything??

(mines at the top)
Uploaded Model Processor Frequency Cores Platform User Single-Core Score Multi-Core Score
Dec 13, 2013 Hewlett-Packard HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook Intel Core i7-4500U 2394 2 Windows 32-bit 1794 3717
Dec 13, 2013 Hewlett-Packard HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook Intel Core i7-4500U 2394 2 Windows 32-bit 2839 5236
Dec 13, 2013 Hewlett-Packard HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook Intel Core i7-4500U 2394 2 Windows 32-bit 2777 4962
Dec 13, 2013 Hewlett-Packard HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook Intel Core i7-4500U 2394 2 Windows 32-bit 1686 3293
Dec 12, 2013 Hewlett-Packard HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook Intel Core i7-4500U 2394 2 Windows 32-bit 1788 3657
Nov 18, 2013 Hewlett-Packard HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook Intel Core i7-4500U 2394 2 Windows 32-bit 2692 5517
Nov 17, 2013 Hewlett-Packard HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook Intel Core i7-4500U 2394 2 Windows 32-bit 2868 5551

 

ah ok will try that now thanks

 

Why would you possibly expect otherwise? Your desktop is running a 95 watt processor. That's over six times the power consumption of the processor in this laptop. If you wanted desktop level performance I'm not sure why you bought a thin and light ultrabook. You would need to go with a workstation with a high power consumption processor to get that. Something like the i7 4700MQ should come close to the performance of your desktop CPU and use half the power.

 

Heh I knew I should have edited that. I did not expect otherwise. The observed performance is below what I would expect from this thin and light laptop (while plugged in). I'm testing the power profile changes now to see if that helps.

 

Hmm.. other than select "performance" there are two other possible changes that might have made a difference:
Updated BIOS: I have the F.07 BIOS, I doubt this makes a difference and obviously you should update with extreme care
Intel Extreme Tuning Utility: I ran this utility *without changing anything*, but I suppose it's possible that the utility changes something without asking. I just used it to monitor the same things cpu-z does.

 

Hm, I'm on the performance power plan and my numbers are the same. I ran the test 3 times now to verify, the last after a restart. I'm on the F09 BIOS, so there is a difference there between our setups.

Did you run "autotuning" with the intel tool? I doubt it would change anything unless you did. You can check the logs in that utility to see if it changed anything.

 

OK, I just ran the Geekbench test. Max performance and plugged in. Two results, Single Core 1576. Multi Core 3243. A lot more numbers. I don't know if results were uploaded.

Jim

 

^ Hawkeye Yes your results were uploaded: Hewlett-Packard HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook - Geekbench Browser

I restarted again and ran the test with the intel extreme tuning tool open and now my numbers are significantly higher. No idea why as I've been on the performance plan for a while - maybe the settings didn't get changed for some reason...
Dec 13, 2013 Hewlett-Packard HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook Intel Core i7-4500U 2394 2 Windows 32-bit 2833 5377

 

Which version of the Intel Extreme Tuning tool did you install? I tried version 3.2 which is supposed to be for Win 7 and 8, but it won't install. It says trying to install on an unsupported system.

Jim

 

I installed the latest version 4.​2.​0.​8 which was released 9/28. Try that one out from here: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?keyword=""extreme+tuning+utility""

I have to admit though this is all very strange alchemy. I also have a suspicion that you need to reboot after setting the power management to "performance" and perhaps that is all that matters.

I'm not sure the Intel ETU had any effect.

It could also be some weird thing where the ETU tool query's the value of something which also ends up updating it. Wouldn't that be disturbing! =P

 

As was mentioned, a desktop CPU will be much faster. Also, you should be aware the i7-4500U, in the HP, is a dual core, while the latest Macbook Airs use i7-4650U which is a true quad core. Also, the 4500U gets Intel's HD4400 graphics while the 4650U gets Intel's faster HD5000 graphics. The i7-4650U is more expensive and rarer...especially in ultrabooks.

 

I know performance is the hot topic here but I have a question about the displays... Has anyone seen both? Apart from the resolution is the 1080p display any worse than the QHD display (viewing angles, brightness, color reproduction, etc...)?

 

The i7-4650U is not a quad core processor. The only quad core laptop Haswell processors are 37W (i7 4702MQ) or 47W (I7 4700/48xx49xx). The only differences between the i7-4500U and 4650U are...

- 4650u has support for vPro
- 4650u has a lower base clock speed but a higher max turbo speed
- 4650u has HD 5000 while the 4500u has HD 4400

While the HD 5000 should be much faster, in practical use it has been shown to perform no better than the 4400. Since it still has a TDP of 15W (and notebook manufacturers design the cooling accordingly) the 40 execution units of the HD 5000 cannot run at as consistently high a clock as the 20 of the 4400.

 

I don't know what happened to my earlier post, so here I go again. I found version 4.2 of the Intel Utility, which installed with no problems. I ran it, lookd at some of the info and shut it down. Then I ran Geekbench again. (Power setting and plugged in.) Results are significantly better! Single Core 2660 vs 1653. Multi Core 5040 vs 3457. (64 bit) Then I ran my benchmark again. Results are significantly better! CPU cycles 29,433,301 vs 50 million. Stopwatch time 14.0 seconds vs 23.1 seconds. So now my 1.6 GHz i5 Haswell with turbo is about 45% faster (14.0 sec vs 20.3 sec) than my 1.8 GHz i3 Ivy Bridge without turbo.

I also changed my power plan back to the HP default, but still plugged in, and achieved the same fast results. Then I unplugged and got the same slow results.

I don't know what the Intel utility does or did, but anyone who needs more power should definitely install it.

Regards, Jim

 

Not to make you keep testing... but without running the Intel utility again could you plug the laptop back in and see what results you get?

 

I tried rebooting after changing the power plan. It had no effect. I believe the Intel Utility does something.

Regards, Jim

 

Wow, that is a little frightening that just running the intel utility changes the system. Maybe it's somewhere in the fine print...

This is a really good question: do you need to re-run the intel utility after unplugging the system each time you want better performance? I really suspect there's another piece of software somewhere that's effecting the same setting as this utility.

 

Yeah, I did that. Plugged in = fast, unplugged = slow. With default HP Power Plan and not running the Intel Utility again.

I think the Utility finds something it needs turned off and turns it on.

Regards, Jim

 

Yeah... it sounds like the laptop is configured (improperly) out of the box to always throttle the CPU to the "On battery" settings. Running the Intel utility must make it realize that some bit is flipped incorrectly and fix that. It's not uncommon for laptops to throttle on battery, so I wouldn't be concerned about that part.

 

It's very odd with the utility experiences here. Here's a summary of mine so far:

Before running the utlility, I had my power plan set to high performance and ran the test 3 times, while fiddling with the high performance plan setting while between runs just to make sure the setting were applied and they were all slow benchmarks. The plans seemed to make no difference and the performance results were consistently bad. I rebooted and ran geekbench twice and the results were were still bad.

After running the utility I ran the tests twice with it open, and now once again with nothing else open after a reboot, and all 3 tests had good results.

I ran the test just now again after changing the power plan back to the default HP Recommended plan, and still I'm getting good results.

Probably a couple other people should try this to confirm the findings.
1) plug in laptop
2) run geekbench benchmark (regardless of power plan setting, leave at default hp)
3) run intel tuner utility (just open the app, don't change any settings)
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/De...4&keyword=""extreme+tuning+utility""&lang=eng
4) run geekbench benchmark
Expected results: Nearly 2x performance while plugged in

 

I'd like to get an idea of how common the noise from underneath the right side of the keyboard is for people. Anyone else having the issue? You can put your ear near the "enter" key to listen for it.

- It's like a electronic buzzing / working sound.
- Sometimes pressing certain keys ***while viewing the desktop*** can cause the sound to change or go away while the button is held. It's not entirely repeatable but I've observed the changes with the "tab", "\", and "enter" buttons.
- The sound is not present all the time but most of the time. I can't really hear it from normal seating position unless the room is quiet.

 

Thanks, yeah now with the Geekbench numbers sorted the performance is closer to what I expected. Before while plugged in it wasn't all that much faster than an iphone 5s.

 

I have the 1080p display. I haven't seen QHD but the 1080p screen is nice. Viewing angle is good and colors are rich, the screen is bright enough as well.