HP and nVidia

Why is HP so insistent on using nVidia cards in their machines? A top of the line zd7000 with a Go 5200? They are still using ATI 9200s on Dothan PMs! Why are they not using the ATI 9600s in midrange systems and their Athlon 64 systems and offering the 9700 to go along with the Go 5700 in the top of the line systems? Why is HP still using the Go 440 and 420 with blazing-fast Athlon 64 processors? Is it a contract thing or what?

My personal feeling is that, no matter how good the rest of the equipment is, if they continue to use substandard graphics cards on the majority of their notebook lines, and top of the line equipment only on the top of the line system as a CTO option only, then HP will continue to lose market share.

Any information would be appreciated as to when this will change, as my many e-mails have gone unanswered.

 

Personally, I think it's just cheaper overall to use other chipsets or lower graphics chips. It could also be an arrangement they have with the chip manufacturers, whoever give's them the better deal wins the cake. Again, it comes down to money.
If you think that's bad, how about Toshiba. Most of their entire line is utilizing utilizing smaller brand video chips. They've recently started to use ATI in their notebooks, mostly integrated video, except for 1 model (P10) that have the ATI 9700 and a P10 & P20 that use the NVidiaFX 5x00 chips. Otherwise, it's either smaller brands, low video memory or integrated video. This is what I've noticed for the current line available in Canada.

-Vb-

 

It could also be there are a lot of people like me that might pay extra for the larger video, but in the end it may not mean a whole lot if we don't get it. The games I like will play fine without the biggest/baddest video card on the market ... And games will be a VERY small part of what I do. Most of my stuff will be 2D and the extra video memory and faster 3D stuff won't make a difference to me ...

With that said, it'd be nice if it were at least an option ... Along with 5400/7200RPM drives on the AMD64 laptops

JJ

 

In reality, there are only a few 3D games that don't look good. And those are very recent releases. The ones I like look and play just fine.

However, I don't disagree I'd have liked to seen an option for a better graphics card. heck in the GO series would have been NICER, but I'd have preferred an ATI solution.

I'd have preferred a better HD even more.

JJ

 

It might be cheaper, but it is not effective as a selling tool for the mid and top end consumer. While the Go 440 will play 2d games, most, if not all, modern 3d games will be choppy, and overall graphics performance will suffer. This is at least two generations behind the ATI 9600, which eMachines, Voodoo, and others offer on their AMD 64 machines.

Having as many options for the CTO systems can only help, and the cost would be minimal. Wait times may increase, but many people would not mind if they got what they wanted.

I agree with you, Venombite. Toshiba needs to get its act together in the mid-range machines. Almost every other manufacturer outperforms their machines.

The bottom line, especially with the surge of AMD 64 notebook sales, is that HP needs a more quality offering in this category, and their vcards in other machines needs to be improved (an ATI 9200 in a Dothan machine?!).

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by JeffreyDJ

 

yes, but also offering too many options will hurt them, as they will have to keep even more stock, and thus increase the overall price for everything.

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 22,856

 

You're right, they shouldn't have every option under the sun for every model. They have to balance what options are available, but to match an obsolete component with an overall feature-packed unit is just plain silly. Current purchasers of their Consumer Lines mainly want power. Not just the CPU, but in every aspect of the unit, so skimping on components will make people go elsewhere IMO.

-Vb-

 

They don't even have to keep it in stock for obscure items. HP has advised online that going with a specific option will delay shipping times. A consumer can understand a delay much more than not even offering the item.

You also don't offer certain things in certain lines. For example, I don't think someone will be upset with not having an ATI Mob Radeon 9700 w/ 256 MB VRAM in their Celeron machine, but many are upset with not having it in a P4EE or AMD 64 machine. How about hard drives? They already stock faster ones for the zd7000 series, why not make them available in the mid-range and AMD 64 machines? I mean, they're both 2.5", right?

 

I guess to reduce the cost of their units to make it a bit more competative, they had to drop the video card to a lower one. Maybe they didn't get that great of a deal for the AMD chips since they normally deal with only Intel. If that was the case, they'd have to lower something to get it cheaper. They decided to use an older/slower video card and not have the high-end card.
Making it an option to upgrade the video card requires another systemboard (if the chip's soldered onto the board). If the obscure part's not kept in stock at the plant, the part will most likely have to be manufactured before it can be used. And you know manufacturing one-off's is WAY more expensive than mass production.
I do agree with the fact that they should have just said, "we're going to design these mid to high-end units with the ATI 9600/9700 GPU, that's what I'd want and that's what the customer will want", but they didn't. I think it would have increased their market share with a complete power system, rather than a Ferrari with a Hyundai engine IMO.

-Vb-

 

I'm still scratching my head over the reason why they didn't offer up the 9700 in the 7000 series. HP's one of ATI's strongest partners. It really doesn't make sense that they restrict options in their most popular laptop. I would have leaped on the zd7000 right away if it had the 9700 instead of the 5700, but without it, I'm continuing to look elsewhere for options.

There is hope though. HP unveiled a whole new desktop line for "Back to School." Hopefully, the laptop line will at least partially get revamped too soon.

Compaq Presario 2800T
Pentium 4-M 1.6 GHz - 15" UXGA
512 MB RAM - 40 GB
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 64 MB
Bought in 2002.

 

I think the ZD7000 series was originally released before the ATI Mobility 9700 GPU's were available. I think they came out sometime early this year or last last year.

-Vb-

 

Yes, the HP zd7000 was released a long time before the 9700 was available, and I think they released it in conjunction with the nVidia 5200, which is why they had that option to start, and the change from a 5200 to a 5700 is much easier to support and maintain than changing manufacturers.

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 22,856

 

I recall the 7000 coming out October or September last year. In that case the MR 9600 was clearly the better card at that time and already had time to proliferate in the market (came out Late Winter/Early Spring). I wonder why they chose the nVidia family to power their flagship laptop...

Compaq Presario 2800T
Pentium 4-M 1.6 GHz - 15" UXGA
512 MB RAM - 40 GB
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 64 MB
Bought in 2002.

 

I tend to agree with Eliwood on some of his points, and Venombite and Quickster are correct on their statements-that the original zd7000 was designed with nVidia in mind. They used an inferior chip in a top-notch system, and this holds back their sales for the high-end consumer.

Utilizing the 5700 is not a bad trade-off as good things and good numbers have come out of this chip. Most people still think that the ATI is better, though, and the cost of changing the motherboard to suit this options would be offset quickly by the increased sales.

There is no excuse for the usage of the ATI MR 9200 in the Dothan systems. These use the same architecture as the 9600/9700, and are much more powerful. If you are purchasing Intel's top notebook chip, then you should get the tops in everything.

 

But you also have to take into account what GPU was in that particular system before the Dothan update/upgrade. Since the PM CPU's are compatible in the same system (a BIOS update to support Dothan) they just update the CPU without changing their board design. This would be the least expensive route for them to take. It may not be the best, but it is the cheapest.

It would be nice if they would designed a new model from the ground up to utilize all the latest hardware. This would surely give them a leg up on the road to having the best notebook, but that doesn't seem to be HP's way. They recycle their designs throughout most of their product lines.

Recycled models:

ZT3000 = X1000 = NX7000
ZX/ZV5000 = R3000 = NX9110
ZD7000 = NX9500
NC6000 = NX5000
NC8000 = NW8000

They may have some changes to the exterior, CPU types & video types (CTO) but they're generally the same units based on the exact same platforms (for each line).

HP & Toshiba, including other manufacturers, don't seem to be going that extra mile to come out with units that contain the latest components. They just seem to be content with what currently works and staying with that. They sometimes stick with it too long and sooner or later, they're gonna run out of gas and their gonna be known as a mediocre company that comes out with stuff. They used to be companies that released leading edge products. What happened?

-Vb-

 

Right now, they have some of the best prices around. I guess they are feeling the pressure of having others push them besides Dell, whos quality is questionable at best (sorry, Dell-as, but its the truth). Now they have others pushing really hard, and they are less expensive to boot. eMachines and Toshiba are starting to cut into retail sales, and their once-proud CTO program is starting to get cut into by folks that didn't even exist or no one had heard of, like ibuypower.com and Sager. I guess HP's reaction was to cut prices to compete, instead of offering different levels for different needs.

 

im defintly going to buy the zv5000z series because of teh amd64. its funny that i just found this fourm and the main thing i have holding me back from buying is the gpu. AMD64 has so much power and on a wsxga screen 15.4 it is absurd to only offer a weak 64mb gpu! maybe if this was a couple years ago i woulda liked it, but come on hp, 64mb geforce4. that nforce3 150 chipset supports the go5700! why not put that in?

i really dont care about the memory and hard drive, because either way i plan to swap both of them out and replace the hard drive with a hitachi 60gb 7200rpm drive, and memory with corsair pc3200 2x512mb.

the absolutle latest i can wait before purchasing my laptop is mid-August. what are the chances that they will have a better gpu in the zv5000z by then?

 

A good chance for a GPU upgrade, but please don't quote me on it. It took HP several months to perform some crucial GPU upgrades to what we see now. If it does upgrade, it'll mostly likely be the 5600. Just my guess.

Why the sucky GPU on the zv5000z machines? Because HP considers it a mainstream machine rather than a high-end one ... pricewise.

--------------------
Compaq Presario 2800T
Pentium 4-M 1.6 GHz - 15" UXGA
512 MB RAM - 40 GB (5400 rpm)
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 64 MB
Pretty good for 2002 isn't it?

 

maybe if enough of us complain to hp about it we can get the upgrade moving faster. how do we go about making a complain?

 

I wish we could do that with all the major companies, but they won't listen. If that happened, then the whole industry would crack on all fronts.

I tried pushing Sony to upgrade the A Series to a 128 MB video card. They didn't say no, but they didn't say they would.

--------------------
Compaq Presario 2800T
Pentium 4-M 1.6 GHz - 15" UXGA
512 MB RAM - 40 GB (5400 rpm)
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 64 MB
Pretty good for 2002 isn't it?

 

It is not the 64 MB of VRAM that makes the zv5000v series weak. Many other systems use the ATI MR 9600 at 64 MB, and the graphics are excellent.

The problem is the actual hardware. The Go 440 is far behind anything else. It is antiquated in terms of computing and graphics power, and lacks the ability to play recent games with any options turned on. This is especially unacceptable when the system is the same price as an eMachines with more power and a better GPU (R3140 vs M6805 anyone?)

I will take 64 MB, but only in an ATI 9600 or higher.

 

I sent an email to HP, as well (even though I don't think it will do much). They certainly lost me when they did that with the zv5000z. Who would have thought that eMachines would be the winner when it came to performance, features, and value when compared to the mighty HP.

 

You could send an email to Carly:

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/email/fiorina/index.html

I did. I told her that whoever selected the 440 Go should be FIRED. Not that it'll make any difference. If Intel wanted to pay someone at HP to cripple their Athlon 64 notebooks, limiting them to that 3-year-old video chip and 4200RPM HDs would be a good way to do it. The HD is easily replaced though, and not everyone needs a gaming GPU. I still want to take a cluestick to the marketing weasle at HP that's responsible [ !].

 

the thing holding me back from the eMachines is that it is an amd 3200 (probably the mobile chip) and not the dtr 3400. The other thing that the screen is only WXGA, and what I am looking for is WSXGA on a 15.4 or 17. I could care less about the memory because I plan to put in 2x512 Corsair PC3200 2.5cl and Hitachi 7200rpm 60gb hdd. Emachines needs to get a configurator to customize. maybe that would help.

 

The new eMachines M6811 has the 3400+. Best guess is we'll see them in a couple of weeks? Other than the CPU it's the same as the M6809 though. I went for the zv5000z to get the screen and Bluetooth. I won't cut HP so much slack next time though, they either offer a proper configuration or I'll wait for someone who will (or at least one I can straighten out).

 

Remember, the mobile Athlons sometimes have double the amount of L2 cache as their desktop counterparts (512 KB vs 1 MB). What is so wrong about that?

 

the other problem that has been cropping up lately with the emachines 68xx series is that the hinges are starting to crack on many users machines.

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 22,856

 

In the eMachines forum, I am trying to get a count of how many of those issues have started recently, indicating a bad batch, rather than a line-wide issue.

I have owned my m6809 for 2 months, with no problems whatsoever.

And, if this issue is valid, for all of those Dell guys out there, sure beats having your computer start to spark and catch fire spontaneously.[ ]

 

in the zd7000 for $50 you can upgrade to the geforce fx 5700 go. in the zv5000z you can "upgrade" to the geforce4 440 go for $50. That is a ripoff. The 64mb geforce 4 should be free. I mean, you can't even play directx 9 games on it. I would be willing to spend an extra $150 for an upgrade to a geforce fx 5700 go in the zv5000z. Actually, I would be willing to spend quite a bit more for that!

Hopefully within the next 2 weeks they will refresh that line. The inquirer reports that because of back to school, older in store models of amd's are gone and that is only because they sold out and companies are preparing a new wave of back to school notebooks. Hopefully this is true for teh zv5000z which is in dire need of a real GPU.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by j4ever

 

then sign my petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/hpamd64/petition.html