*HP dm3 (1XXX series) Owners Lounge*

I managed to read the ENTIRE thread! There is some useful information here. Thanks for this active community for sharing. I have ordered my HP DM3Z with the following configuration:

- AMD Turion Neo X2 L625
- 4GB RAM (free upgrade from 2 GB)
- 320 GB HD with 5400 rpm (free upgrade from 160 GB)
- ATI Radeon HD 4330 w/ 512 MB

I paid $ 680 for this configuration (not including tax and shipping). Is this a good price?

This configuration seems to be quite popular. I do wonder though. What is the ratio of people on this forum who bought the DM3Z vs the DM3T. Perhaps a poll on this would be useful?

Some shipping information:

Order date: 11/18
Original estimated build date: 12/1
Actual build date: 11/24
Projected shipping date: 12/1
Actual shipping date: 11/25
Projected arrival date: 12/1

Not bad.

 

Mine is going to be here on the 1st also

 

Somebody know a Online shop that delivers world wide and sell the hp dm3 with amd + ati 4330 ?

 

what cases are you guys using for your dm3?


Looking for something that looks as good as the machine itself, not easy to find a case that is on the same level for looks.

 

I'm using Zero Shock III

 

^i bought the zeroshock III that a few people had suggested as well. Stupid paypal was suppose to get me a credit for using billmelater, but it didn't show up. grrr.

Further RMclock testing: .7125 for 4x seems the best for me, wish .7 had been stable. Crashed once with 8x set at .825, although it had been solid yesterday. Using .85 all of today, prime, various browsing, streaming, and music/videos on mediaplayer have been solid. Might still try to see if .825 is feasible in most cases.

Unfortunately I have been unable to get a middle state to be stable. Tried 6x up to .825 and crashed in Prime every time after a few minutes. I'm not using AMD recommended p-states, and other processors seemed to accept direct input, but maybe we are out of luck.

Even with the middle state active though, and performance on demand, RMclock tends to skip over the midstates and go directly to Max state. While playing music on Media player, i would see 10% load at 8x, and would wonder why it didn't just use 40% load at 6x for example. Changing transistions didn't seem to help much either. I'll read some more and maybe tinker a bit more with the settings, but I'm fine with only using min/max states, if that's all that works.

 

Why doesn't the trackpad have two-finger tap for right click. I would much prefer this to using the trackpad button, and it's so easy to program!

 

It doesn't?

Lame..... I figured it would have it

 

bing mobility installer

That will let u modify thedesktop drivers and install it on the hd 3200. I can't get it on my 4330 though

 

2 Things:

Just wondering who else on the boards just had their dm3 lappy picked up on Nov 27, 2009 02:26 in Shanghai, China?

How do people get around copy protected material like the Securom for Bioshock...I bought it but then realized that my laptop doesn't have a DVD drive Now what? Just creating an installer image doesn't work....

 

you will need a external for a game that needs the DVD


or buy it off steam

 

That's the first time I've ever seen the verb bing instead of google!

Will 1080p stream perfectly through the 3200 then? If not, I'll just wait until they've got the 4330 drivers out. I presume they are going to release them right, I hope I haven't got redundant hardware already!

 

Just picked up the dm3z for under $475 after 10% Bing CB on eBay. New, sealed, and from a reputable seller. Looking forward to getting it! I've had my eye on the DM3 since returning my Dell 14z and reading about it on engadget. (About 3 months ago.)

 

At least you were not swayed by their WORSE TRACKPAD EVER rant trying to trash the machine.


I would prefer a better trackpad too, but that does not make the machine garbage, or warrant being your headline for an article.

 

I have an L625 with HD 4330 and can't get a 1080p mkv or blu-ray rip to play without (noticeable) dropped frames. Does any one else have this problem? I thought HD playback was pretty much guaranteed on this, do I need to wait for the driver update or something?!

 

You should be able to.

I can play 1080p clips encoded with the h.264 codec in an mp4 container just fine on the L335 with the 3200. Perfectly Smooth with absolutely no stutters... unless....



A strange thing happens. Sometimes, after I wake the laptop up from sleep, the playback seems degraded, with frame drops, and even freezes during video playback. This occurs with youtube playback and also with the playback in windows media player.


When I restart the machine and start from scratch, it plays flawlessly for standalone files on the hard drive, and smoothly on youtube HD up to 720p (1080p youtube for me is still not perfectly smooth, and hulu... lets not talk about hulu hd)


On the youtube side, when I had the normal version of flash 10 installed, it never has the youtube freeze glitch, with 10.1 installed, it does that AFTER my machine wakes from sleep mode sometimes. (no idea why, must be some bug in there somewhere)

Also, I can only play back standalone 1080p clips smoothly from media player so far, vlc player stutters for some reason. It usually works the other way around in terms of playback performance so I assume there is some driver issue going on.




Bottom line, try restarting your machine and testing the performance after that. Saving that, try using different players to play the videos.

If that fails, try downloading the ffdshow codecs.. though I think those may be software decoders, that will not speed things up. According to pasta the 9.11 catalyst drivers do NOT work for the 4330 yet, so you will have to sit tight for that to kick in. Presumably, you should have a better machine for playback of hd video, the 4000 series parts support the uvd2 decoder for hd video, not simply the uvd1 like the 3000 series parts have. What difference does that make in terms of raw performance? uvd2 vs uvd1? I have no idea, be nice if someone else did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder#Features

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder#Availability





Hopefully someone else can shed light on some of the issues I have come across though. Namely 1080p playback being fine, but at times after waking from sleep, it is as if something is not kicking in to playback the video files at full speed. I assume it is some kind of software issue as the machine CAN play the files with no stuttering, even on the most base level model like I have. Same on the different players yielding different playback smoothness. These things need to be worked out, and hopefully someone can isolate the cause of things better than I. My analysis is kind of messy.

 

On the software front, try one of the players listed here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIVO#Software_support


these are the ones listed as supporting the offloading of video playback onto the gpu, some other players may be focusing only on the software/cpu side.

 

Just read the whole thread in 2 days. All 122 pages/1218 posts!

Decided to go with the DM3t: 2.26ghz Intel Processor, 4GB of Ram, 320GB 7200RPM HD, Wireless N w/ BT, Ext Optical Drive non BD.

Came out to $1000 flat on HP Home. Used the Bing 20% off. Final price came out to be around $815.

Build date is December 7...will get it just in time for Christmas hopefully.

 

great. I just purchased a dm3t with SU7300 CPU, nvidia 105m and the intel 160gb SSD for $1000 also. I bought it with a $200 coupon and thne 8% Bing.

came out to the same as getting 20% off.... mine will be here on the 1st.

 

Have a look at the link below, there is a problem with the dm3 and Ati 3200 and others when resuming from sleep.

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/t/80396.aspx

 

I am tempted to return my HP Dm3t right when i get it and get the one on the microsoft store...

http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/HP-Pavilion-DM3-1044nr/product/C026CBA0

that back is sexy!


if it had the nvidia 105 I would definately do it! but intel IGP is lame

 

Thanks for the reply tybert, it wasn't that messy and I understood what you were saying. When it goes choppy from sleep resume, check if aero is still enabled (hover over an icon in the taskbar and see if it still previews the window.) I've noticed this turns off on me occasionally and think it could be related to sleep.

Thanks for that list, I use MPC with DXVA enabled so should be all good.

 

3 days in Shanghai already?! How much longer

The wait is agonizing

 

Here's a puzzle, if someone can explain it to me. Playing random .mp4 file on WindowsMediaPlayer => bout 4 - 15% cpu utilization. Playing in MPCinema (from ffdshow) => 18 - 30% cpu utilzation. Using CoreAVC. However, playing a true 720p file, WMCinema is about 5 - 10% more efficient. Kinda just wanted to stick to one player, but well, this indicates otherwise.

RMClock: seems I've gotten 5x and 7x stable. Why doesn't 6x work? Go fig.
4x: .7125
5x: .7375 (will try .725 today)
6x: unstable (tried .75 to .825, all crashed within minutes, crunching prime)
7x: .825 (running .8 right now)
8x: .85

will throw in half multipliers once I've got best voltages set for wholes.

currently testing, after 10minutes on prime. Active cooling, fan always on in bios


at .925V, hit max @7 minutes, then fan hit overdrive, and didn't stop. Think the max i saw another time for cpu was 61c.

 

What would be the benefit of the TurionX2 with HD3200 over the AthlonX2 HD3200? Would it have longer battery, if so, about how much? Would it run cooler? Thanks in advanced. BTW it would have the 4gb ram. ...Any help guys? Wanted to purchase by end of weekend.

 

Not really. Cache does not affect battery life much. Mhz does but because there is not a significant difference in Mhz the battery life will be approximately the same. The same applies to heat. Both processors run at thte same Mhz, and have the same thermal heat envelope. Again the only thing different is the cache. So heat will not be significantly different in each case.

 

I created a poll to see what configuration of the DM3 laptop the DM3 community has out of curiosity. The link is here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=438459

It's a new thread so it's not lost in this long superthread. Feel free to post you specs there too.

 

posted to it

 

Does anyone know if discrete graphics (nVidia or ATI) could be switched off (to save battery power/ heat) - either from within the OS or at the BIOS?
Thanks

 

ATI is automatically switchable. I don't own an Nvidia so rely on an Intel owning person for a confirmatory reply, but Nvidia's current drivers do not allow for automatic switching. I assume manual switching still works but I don't know for sure. Future driver versions should make this possible though.

 

Thanks - that is very helpful. I am looking at the DM3T CTO models. I will like to get the SP9300 model - but am hesitating given past problems with nVidia/HP. I do not plan to game much - so I will not need discrete GPU most of the time.

 

If you don't plan on gaming, and if you don't plan on performing tasks that labor the gpu much why not go with the integrated solution? Admittedly, when it comes to do anything beyond blue-ray watching, the card is useless, the gpu is good for all normal other uses.

 

Thanks, Thornhale. I am looking at the SP9300 mainly because of the higher clock speed. The C2D option (7300?) that comes with integrated graphics is 1.3GhZ and that is a little too low for my needs - this is going to be a primary computer for at least another two years.

 

this is why we need to comparision benchmarks between the SP9300 and SU7300

I have a thread at hardforum going if anyone wants to give data.

run PCmark05 and passmark with either the SU7300 or the SP9300 CPU and post here or there

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1471759

so far the only SP9300 i have data on is 3dmark05 data

 

Hi guys,

I'm trying to decide between the L625 + HD 4330 vs. the SU7300 + G105M. There was some talk about it way back on page 26 or so, but after sifting through another 50 pages I wasn't able to find anything ;_;

I do play games, but if the better gaming solution means annoying fan speed + significant temperature increases, I might change my mind. Battery life isn't really an issue.

Any suggestions?

 

Hey, Im thinking of getting a Hp SP9300 but im not sure if the fan is loud or how hot the the laptop could get. Also if someone could give me an estimate on how long the battery would last on that. Has anyone had any other issues with the laptop? And how hot does the Sp9300 Get in temperature wise when playing games? Thanks.

 

For real.... can people with the SP9300/105m please give us some temp/battery life readings?

 

Hi guys,

I just picked up a d3m 1035dx Aluminum ... super sexy ... however the wireless card in it blows donkey balls (Atheros AR5009). I want to pull it and put in a Broadcom alternative, needs to be wireless N, any suggestions for the card? I have seen a few on eBay for $16, is it just a Mini PCI-E slot?

Is it true that this machine also has an extra slot that I would use for a small SSD card?

 

Well, between the 4330 and 105m there is not a huge difference. But the 4330 is probably a little better. According to Notebookcheck.com the 4330 ranks 104 (out of the 209 mobile graphics cards they tested). The 105m ranks slightly lower at 107.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

The CPUs on the other hand are a little different. According to most benchmarks I have seen, the su7300 ranks higher than the L625. Passmark gives the L625 a 834, while the su7300 gets a 981 (higher is better).

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+Turion+Neo+X2+Dual+Core+L625
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+U7300+@+1.30GHz

Studentbuyingguide.com also did a pretty good review of both the dm3t and dm3z (but they used the L335 for the dm3z). They found that the AMD version was much hotter than the Intel version (and so the fan on the AMD version was on more of the time). They found that the AMD version would go up to 60 degrees Celsius under stress (compared to only 40 degrees Celsius for the Intel version).

http://www.studentbuyingguide.com/2009/11/hp-dm3t-review/
http://www.studentbuyingguide.com/2009/10/hp-dm3z-review/

 

Those were pretty thorough reviews. Thanks.

 

I can't seem to get the sound to play on the TV from the HDMI port. I have the Office Depot version. I went to check sound control but it says something like the ATi Audio Output (HDMI) is not plugged in.

 

Make sure that you have the Default Sound Device set to the appropriate selection:

Right click on Volume Controls, select Playback Devices, and then select Digital Audio (HDMI) as default.

You should be good to go.

 

Thanks, the thing was disabled and now I see it on the list.

 

Hi guys,

I just picked up a d3m 1035dx Aluminum ... super sexy ... however the wireless card in it blows donkey balls (Atheros AR5009). I want to pull it and put in a Broadcom alternative, needs to be wireless N, any suggestions for the card? I have seen a few on eBay for $16, is it just a Mini PCI-E slot?

Is it true that this machine also has an extra slot that I would use for a small SSD card?

 

If I were going to replace the nic i would only go with an intel.

Also I am not sure if the minipcie slot is going to work with a SSD. it is a half size slot also

 

both slots requires a halfcard. Here's the wifi slot. link for pic
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5545829&postcount=1108

the extra pcie slot is next to your hard drive. Suppose to be for cellular broadband option. Not sure if it's enabled or anything otherwise.
Also, there doesn't seem to be a bios option for booting from pcie, so can't use pcie ssd as boot drive, but maybe that would change if I actually had something installed there. (i doubt it though)

 

i think i am going to get a wwan w/ GPS and use it only for GPS

 

So there is no built-in WWAN then? I installed my AT&T SiM card into the compartment in the battery but still a no-go. Just wanted to see if it worked.

My Atheros wireless card is a half, but the slot that is by the hard drive does not look like a half at all. The screws don't match up for a half card at least. I took the entire thing apart this afternoon to check it out.

 

Here is a picture of my half card and then the open slot next to the hard drive. Pay close attention to the screw holes of the open slot, they are not designed for a half card.

 

yeah you are right. the open slot is longer