*HP dm3 (1XXX series) Owners Lounge*

When you game you will loose battery life , however I've gotten over 5 hours of just browsing the web and I can get over 4 hours watching 3 eps of south park on south park studios and surfing the rest of the time.

 

What are you using to overclock the CPU?

 

I'll post when I figure it out. Right now I have about 8 programs going to get it to stay clocked. But even then its hard to keep it dialed in. Sometimes it just clocks it self back. So I dunno.

 

too much reading in this thread,so how does CoD4 play on the DM3Z w/ 4330 again?

actually,for anyone who has tested it,can they PM me? this thread fills up fast

 

Newby question:
I have the DM3 AMD L625 with 3200 Graphics & 320 GB, 7200 rpm HDD.
The fan is on ALL the time and at times (maybe 20% of the time) is really noisy. Are other folks seeing this? Any idesa what might be causing this? I have gone into BIOS and set it up so that Fab Always On is disabled - but the fab always stays on. (I'm wondering if it is "safe" to do this. Can the system overheat in this setting?).
Would appreciate any advice.

 

You sure its not the hardrive making noise ?

When my fan comes on i can't hear it unelss there is no other noise in the room. Its dead silent.

 

Yikes -- hard to stay on top of this thread. Alright, I am so close to buying a dm3 for writing, travel, and average gaming, but I can't seem to sort through all this information and make a final choice between these 3:

1) SU7300 with G105M -- seems great and good on battery life, but is the processor going to be too slow for many games?

2) SP9300 with G105M -- CPU looks good but worth the extra $100? and does it take a big hit on battery life?

3) L625 w/ HD4330 -- i like AMD and love the price, but the CPU and GPU rate a lot lower on benckmark sites than the Intel options. But the battery life is likely to be better (especially with switchable graphics).

Any advice? TIA

 

Anybody know how to get rid of those ugly icons shown next to the cursor when you use the two fingers scroll?

 

Can anyone who is skilled with computers figure out how to change the right control key to act like an 'fn' key? That would be much better for using 'page up' and 'down', 'home' and 'end'...besides, who needs a second control key?

 

I am fairly certain that the L625 w/ HD4330 is going to clean up on real work graphics use. Even before any overclock. Battery life will probably not be much better if at all. However, value is greater.


The SP9300 w/ G105M is probably more for people with a real need for cpu power, such as making huge spreadsheets, like 10MB excel files before making pretty graphs, and editing high resolution photos and video a lot. But when these type of programs begin taking advantage of GPU processing abilities it may not matter much. How much is saving 10 seconds here an there worth? A lot if you do it all day, not so much if its once a week.

 

http://www.modernwarfare2.com/games.php#/videos?id=8

 

Here is a post that someone listed for the Battery Life on their DM3 SP9300 w/ G105...

 

Also I would add that most people on this thread really like their DM3...the only two recurring complaints I've heard is a bit too much heat on the Palm Rests...and issues with the Trackpad, namely trouble moving your fingers over it, too much grab and issues with it not responding, the the later I ready that someone downloaded the newest mouse pad driver from HP for the DM3z, which seemed to help...Here are a couple examples of folks who had issues with heat problems...

 

cod4 is playable at native res. I put light sources to low and no fsaa and everything else is default or auto (textures) and i'm getting 18-78 fps in the demo

 

so let's get this straight ... for just light browsing / word processing / wifi on, say about 50% brightness:
l335 + hd3200/4500mhd: ~5 hours
l625 + hd4330/4500mhd: ~5 hours
su7300 + 4500mhd: ~8 hours
su7300 + g105m: ~5 hours
sp9300 + g105m: ~4 hours
is that correct?

 

I can get 5h 30 mins with the l625 + hd 4330.

You can get even more time if oyu use something like firefox that can stop stupid flash ads and other things from poping up and wasting cpu cycles.

The more oyu keep the l625 at 800mhz the more battery time you get.

 

The Intel CPU with DDR3 has no advantage over DDR2. The AMD acutally has greater memory speed/bandwidth and it runs it at full speed, so 400Mhz at 3200Mt/s. Intel is using a 200Mhz FSB at 800Mt/s, so DDR2-400 could do you just as fine with less latency for performance. Although the Intel IGP can likely take better advantage of the DDR3 than the CPU. Intel's cpus often score higher in some benchmarks, but if people built software to take advantage of the AMD's architecture it would be different, and I find my AMD systems snappier in Windows and browsing and can stand up to time longer, delivering new found performance from newer programs designed to use more memory bandwidth or multithreaded programs.

 

Dgoth was streaming videos with his SP9300 when he got 4 hours... I would venture to say that he could get at least 5-5.5 hours if it was just internet browsing, if not more.

 

SP9300 has a TDP of 25W, FSB 1300MHz running at 2.26GHz vs TDP of 10W for SU7300, running at FSB 800MHz and 1.3GHz. I am strongly skeptical that the battery life of SP9300/G105M would be on par with those of SU7300/G105M.

 

Well, he did get 4 hours streaming video most of the time. It's pretty easy to conclude that he would get at least 5 hours if he was just browsing the net.

If you put Win7 in Power Saver mode and dock the CPU at 50%, then TDP is going to dip down really low. Don't forget, the 25W TDP is the maximum...

The SP9300 at 50% is still just about as fast as the SU7300 at 100%... lol that's 10w vs 12.5w
Obviously, you can dock the SU7300 at 50%, but I'm not sure how responsive it's going to be at 650mhz.

I'm sure the SU7300 will still give better battery life, probably an hour or so if not a bit more.

IMO, if the extra money isn't a big problem, then you might as well opt for the SP9300/105m over the SU7300/105m... heat/battery life is going to be pretty much the same if you put the SP9300 in Power Saver mode...

 

Hmm.. Just a question for those with g105m, is there anyway for the graphics to switch to 4500mhd when in battery mode?

Thanks a lot. I tried searching but to no avail. Figure the fastest way is to ask someone with the machine.

 

No, all G105M versions are not swichable !

 

From what I've gathered reading this thread, the g105m is NOT a switchable graphics laptop. Only the AMD+ATI solution has that feature. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Does anyone notice strange noise from the speaker? I heard "da....da....da" time by time while playing music. Can that be related to the K-lite codec that I installed? Does anyone experience the same problem?

 

My SP9300/105M just arrived! Unboxing now...

 

Congrats!!!

Please fill us in with temps and battery life!!!

 

A couple of quick updates.

First, I tried enabling the Nvidia Powermizer feature on my 7300/g105m using the tool posted elsewhere in the forums. It seems to work so far, underclocking the GPU down to about 25% when idle and seamlessly bringing it back up to 100% when stressed. I haven't played with it too much though, so I'm not sure what sort of impact I'll see in battery life.

My problem now is that I just noticed that the gray trim around my keyboard is puckering up on the bottom. It feels like there's something under the tray between the control and home buttons that's making the lower side pull up. Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=152NLvRryWs

It's kind of minor, but now that I notice it, it bugs the hell out of me. Is it this way on anyone else's system?

 

To be honest, I haven't even tried overclocking this thing. For what I do on it, I don't really have much of a need. It already acts and reacts plenty fast, even considering the lower frequency. Plus, I love my current battery life. I don't have to worry about charging it at any point during the day. Use it off and on during classes and at work, then get home, plug it in overnight, and repeat. It's wonderful.

However, if I were to attempt to OC it, it'd probably be pretty easy. The highest I've ever seen this thing go in temps is 35C...

 

Setfsb doesn't have any settings for the amd platform.

Also it seems to run the ram at 333mhz and not higher. So thats very weird to me.

Anyone with 4 gigs of ram in the amd platform have it running at 400mhz ?

Anyway I really like this set up. I think going to dual channel ram will be a big boost. The 1gig stick they put in is no named. So I'm going to get an ocz 4 gig set for $50 . That will double the bandwidth avalible. If i can find a way to set the fsb at 400mhz it will again boost performance.

Samsung announced new nand chips at 30nm with densitys starting at 32GB capacitys. The current SSD are using 8 and 16Gb chips. So hopefully prices of 64GB ssd drives will drop down to the $100 mark where the 32GB prices are right now and 128 gig ones will be in the $200 range and that would be the last piece of the puzzle. They also cut the height of the chips in half for the 32Gb chips. So you can pack them more of them in the same space. It be great to see.

Even ocz is now taking two vertexs and making bigger drives for cheaper in 3.5inch enclosures instead of 2.5inch sizes. This over comes heat and costs associated with fitting more and more chips into 2.5inch sizes.

 

Yeah, im waiting on a SSD drive as well, i heard a kingston 40gb sdd is supposed to go on sale for 80 after reabate. 40gb is kinda small, though. wonder when drives with the samsung NAND chips are gonna show up.

Where did you find 4gb ocz for 50. I just received my 4gb corsair for 60 after rebate from frys.com.

Going from 3gb to 4gb did help though. seems a little more snappy now. I have not tried gaming though. I also noticed that the ram is running at 319 instead of 400. Might try AMD overdrive to see if i can change that.

my W.E.I went from 4.9 to 5.9 for the ram after the upgrade. for what thats worth

 

amazon has it http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000XBTIN6...e=asn&creative=380341&creativeASIN=B000XBTIN6 but it went back to $61 bucks so that sucks

We will prob see the 30nm ssd's next June. Intel has them in the second gen drives but still command a price premium so prices haven't dropped as production is still rampping up.

I have a 60 gig drive in my desktop and it wouldn't be enough on a laptop. I need a 128 gig one for the laptop as you only have 1 drive.

 

I have 4gb of the stock RAM and it's running at 333mhz.

 

hello everyone, i've been following the thread, and just joined the club. I picked up the Office Depot version, cuz 4gigs, wireless b/g/n + bluetooth, and 10% bing was too much to pass up. I also picked up a 64gig kingston SSD from a Fry's sale a bit back ($90 after rebate, a steal), so I ghosted the main partition over. I've uninstalled most of the bloatware, except HP center stuff, and am now running some battery tests. I'll probably reformat and do a clean install later.

I like it very much so far, but my only 2 complaints would be, default timings on ram are 333 Mhz, and can't change it in bios. I don't mind not being able to change things in essence, but at least let the default be the optimal choice, since they are the ones putting it together.

2nd, I too found the heat on the left side uncomfortable. For the most part, just with regular use, it's just the underside that gets uncomfortable; the palmrest is not really a bother. However, when the cpu is throttling (streaming), then it becomes worrisome. I don't like the chances of this rig lasting a long time, if that much heat keeps piling up. The heat dissipates pretty much instantly though, when you turn off the laptop. After inspection I notice that the ram/wlan cover is pretty much useless at heat conducting, so that's HP's fault again. Anyone got any simple mod ideas that would work there? I don't feel like ripping a new laptop apart and modding heatsinks and applying arctic silver just yet. In the end, even when plugged in,(leaving laptop power saver mode) i lowered the max cpu threshold (80% battery, 90% plugin), and that definitely lessens the heat woes.

Running at full load for the battery test, the fan kicks in a bit, but barely noticeably louder than it was already.

One odd thing though, when I updated the bios yesterday, the fan REALLY started to roar. At the same time though, all the built up heat dissipated quickly, which leads me to wonder what the settings for fan speed control are. Anybody tried any fanspeed programs on this yet?

 

Looks like for overclocking someone alot smarter than I am will have to dump the bios change default clock speeds and release the bios to update.

Your going to need to put out a bunch of bios's though. I'd assume 25mhz increase in both gpu and ram clocks would work.

Lots of work there but even bumping us up to 500/700 will give us radeon 4530 performance.

 

Howdy folks

For those still wondering about the switchable graphics on the DM3z, I've got a couple of interesting (and hilariously conflicting) things to mention.

Firstly, I called HP tech support in New Zealand (where I live) and they said no models in NZ had switchable graphics. I then e-mailed HP tech support in the US asking which models had both the HD 3200 and HD 4330, and the reply I got was:

"The HP Pavilion dm3z Configure-To-Order (CTO) Notebook PC is only available with either the ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics adapter or the 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4330 Graphics adapter. At this time, Hewlett-Packard does not have an option for this CTO notebook PC to ship with both at once. I apologize for the inconvenience."

They didn't mention stock models, this seems to relate to the Configure-To-Order notebooks only... though I've heard people on this forum have ordered customised notebooks WITH switchable graphics.

Secondly, I went into a store today and found a DM3 demo model running, so I checked it personally (and then bought one). It has the Neo X2 L335 and BOTH HD 3200 and HD 4330 (model DM3-1015ax).

SO... HP staff don't seem to have much of a clue about their own product, and some (if not all) DM3z models come with switchable graphics whether they know it or not.

When I got it yesterday I started it up and drained the battery, then charged it to full with the laptop off. I then wiped the thing and installed Windows 7 Ultimate RC and set all my software up, and drained the battery again. I charged the battery to full again, it took about 2 hours 10 minutes.

I'm checking battery life on mine now for how I'll typically use it, which is watching movies (HD 3200 enabled). I've got it looping a 43 minute xvid clip (640x352, ~1100kbps) with brightness at 100%, volume at 100%, Wifi off, bluetooth off (don't need them for watching movies) - CPU is dropping to 800Mhz and load is 25-35%. So far it's been running 68 minutes and battery is down to 60% - extrapolate this out and you get 170 minutes (2h 50m) of continuous video playback. After watching it for a little while, the high brightness level actually makes videos look a little bit washed out - 80% or 90% brightness look a bit better, and would extend battery life somewhat.

Once this battery test is finished, I'll charge it up again and do the same test with brightness at 80%. I'll post both final results when that's done. I would like to get 4 hours of continuous video playback but it seems unlikely unless brightness is quite low and you can do some underclocking, though the battery capacity might be better after a couple more charges.

Cheers

 

You could actually see better battery life with the 4330 while playing that file. Esp if it can knock the cpu usage down.

Its weird but my laptop runs longer while playing games with the 4330 equiped.

 

Anyone who got the dm3-1050eo model? Is this one with or without switchable graphics? It's with AMD l335 the only model with ATI hd 4330 avalible in sweden atm :/

 

That's an interesting idea if it works, a bigger decrease in CPU power usage compared to the increase in GPU power usage... the next test I try will be with brightness at 80% and the HD 3200 active, then I'll do the same with the HD 4330 active. I'm going to look for a good program to use to underclock/undervolt the CPU and/or GPU, I've used RMClock before so I might start with that.

I've got a 6.5 hour bus trip in a couple of days so if I can get this to entertain me for most of that then I'll be happy.

Cheers

 

My guess is that it does have switchable graphics, but I would suggest going into a store that has one running and right clicking the desktop, loading ATI PowerXpress and trying to switch from Powersaving Graphics to High Performance Graphics. If that works, then you're all good.

 

Any model with the 4330 will have switchable graphics.

The hd 3200 is part of the motherboard the 4330 is an add on card. So it will have switchable graphics.

 

Anybody know how to turn off the white HDD LED on the front right of the laptop?

Using this for the first time in a somewhat dark room, and damn, that thing is so annoying flashing every time I type something (like now). Nice bright white LED flashing like a strobe light.

Still liking the laptop, but really, did anybody at HP actually use this thing before releasing it? Such a minor detail, but so annoying. Hard to miss...

If I can't find a way to kill that thing, it's gonna be black epoxy time to cover it up.

 

The more memory you have, and the fewer times your computer has to access your drive (fewer programs running, etc), the less the light will blink. Win7 is pretty good about caching your programs your using at any given time into memory, and then it'll let your hard drive chill out.

 

Hi Sbell, I will be grateful if you can do a wifi browsing test with the GPU clocked down to about 25% and report on the battery life. I am currently leaning towards the amd side as g105m do cut a lot of battery life.

Btw, I am an intel fan.

 

I already ended up disabling Powermizer after playing around with it for a couple of hours last night. I didn't notice any improvement in battery life when doing light browsing / word processing and Dragon Age played noticeably slower when it was enabled (even though it looked like the GPU was set at 100%). I'm thinking now that the feature was disabled for a reason.

 

Just got one of these from HP UK and I'm pretty happy with it so far. I just had a few issues with it though and I wanted to check whether anybody else has experienced anything similar before I get in touch with Tech support.
I've reinstalled Windows from my own disc (but used the drivers from HP's site) and noticed that with the ALPS touchpad driver installed, it stops the Windows cursor animations working. Anybody notice the same thing?
The main thing that I'm wondering about is the battery life I'm getting. My battery seems to drain really quickly, I've got the AMD Neo X2 CPU, with the integrated ATI gfx and 4gb RAM - just browsing the net with WiFi on and lowest screen brightness setting and the battery seems to go down a lot more quickly that even my old Packard Bell Pentium T2390. Anybody with a similar model able to give some insight in to the battery life their getting?

Otherwise a pretty slick machine!

 

You didnt say what your battery life is? battery life numbers are reported all over this thread.

Did you go into control panel to enable the windows aero scheme for the cursor?

 

Sorry, I haven't got an exact figure, just running a test to get the true life, but it's approximately 2 Hours I've been getting. I did read a good 35 pages of the thread, but I must've missed the battery life stats, did see that plenty of people were testing, probably will just have to read further to find them I suppose

With regard to the cursor, I've got the Windows Aero Scheme enabled. I've googled it and found that there is an issue with ALPS on Dell (I think, can't remember manufacturer, wasn't HP though) so I wanted to check whether anyone else had similar issues.

 

2 hours might be about right if running a cpu accelerated video, but otherwise with just browsing and multitasking, should have at least 4 hours.

 

Howdy

I've run battery life tests on my DM3 (Neo X2 L335) while looping an Xvid video file to see how long it can continuously go for. The notebook was set with brightness at 100%, volume at 100%, wifi off, bluetooth off, with a USB wireless receiver for my mouse plugged in.

With HD 3200 graphics enabled: 2 hours 42 minutes
With HD 4330 graphics enabled: 2 hours 49 minutes

So pretty similar figures. I'll probably do more testing at some point.

I also attempted to undervolt the CPU using RMClock. I tried locking the CPU at 800Mhz and 1600Mhz and using various voltages (including the stock voltages) but within a few minutes of a CPU stress test it would shut off. I even tried a dynamic setting to mimic what Windows 7 does naturally and it still shut off. It looks like the machine doesn't like how RMClock manages the CPU, though perhaps someone with more time can fiddle with it to get it working.

I'm about to try a couple of GPU tools I've read about to see if they can underclock the GPU and save some power there, the tools are GPUTool Community Technology Preview 1 (long name I know) and GPU Clock Tool. I'll post what I find out.

Cheers