*HP dv2z Owners Lounge*

OMG check this out. Some seriously skilled overclockers managed to get the 3410 to 550/500(Go to 3dmark06) and Athlon MV-40 to 2.24 GHz. HWBot really has some spectacular stuff. I wonder if we could contact furiousdante to ask him at least what tools he used to OC his mv-40? I don't even know which tools to use and all those I've tried don't work or I can't find the PLL of the motherboard in the drop down list.

 

I can run my 3410 at 700/600. (that's 50MHz higher core than my dv2 could do, obviously these things vary).

Hey, has anyone checked the Windows 7 performance monitor (administrative tools in control panel) for a functioning C3 sleep state? All I'm seeing is C1 being used. Turion is definitely supposed to support much lower sleep states than C1!

I just swapped out my original Athlon Neo dv2 for this Turion X2 dv2z. The Athlon Neo was using C3.

 

Curious... Anyone know how hot is too hot on these things? I think we all know they have a tenancy to burn your lap when using them, but what about CPU temp?

Reason being I got mine up to 53 deg C (using RMclock to see temp, which i hear isn't super reliable). I've been doing a lot of 3d rendering with Imaris which seems to be eating it up. Thoughts?

 

You can run your 3410 at 700/600? I want a GPU-Z screenshot. None of us in this thread have been able to go past 351/333.

For me, too hot is where the GPU crashes. I don't really mind hot and fast as long as it's stable.

 

These do run pretty warm, probably because of the discrete GPU being in there too.

You can try undervolting your CPU with RMClock. That will help a bit, although the Turion X2 is already running fairly low voltage I see.

BTW, I found that the CPU sleep state is ok. It seems that the Turion has C1E support which is basically the same as C3 mode and shuts down the cores properly. http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/611/4

 

Here you are. You can use either GPUTool or AMD GPU Clock Tool to overclock. The default clock speeds are 450 MHz core & 500 MHz RAM.

Pic shows Everest Ultimate, Furmark and AMD GPU Clock Tool.

 

No no I meant GPU-Z, the overclocking programs tend to double the clockspeed:



As you can see, GPU-Z reports 351/297 whereas MSI Afterburner reports 708/602. If this is the case with yours as well, which I strongly suspect, you should be able to go a little higher, my highest game-stable clock is 708/602.

An interesting side note is that your 3410 seems to be reported as a 3450/3470, I wonder why that is?

In terms of the CPU, it doesn't run nearly as hot as the GPU, and I posted about a guy from hwbot.org who managed to overclock his athlon neo mv-40(which is what I have) to a blistering 2.24GHz with stock cooling. I wonder what software he used to do that, all the tools I've tried haven't worked for me.

 

Actually it's GPU-Z that's wrong. It's just showing you half of the actual clock rate. I've found GPU-Z to be unreliable for the mobile chips, probably because the author just doesn't keep up on them and they are a little different in their workings than the desktop GPUs. Your overclock program has it right. You can also try out AMD GPU Clock Tool or Techpowerup's own GPUTool (it's annoying IMO however).

The 3410 in these notebooks runs 3D clocks of 450/500. It downclocks when idling, like the rest of the modern ATI chips, and I see 110/400 in that case. There are a number of power states that these GPUs run at, including one for HD video playback. A Mobility 3450 is usually clocked at something like 500/700 for 3D ( link). Mobility 3470 does 680/800 ( link).

I think mine reports being a 3450/3470 because I'm running the ATI Mobility Catalyst 10.3 drivers and AMD just changed the name string in the drivers. The 34xx GPUs are all the same chip in reality and these names are just marketing for the different speed grades. Are you running the official HP ATI drivers? You can install the Mobility drivers from AMD as of 10.3 because they started supporting notebooks in that release.

Here's what ATI's Catalyst Control Center tells about 3D clocks

 

Thanks for the clarification on the 34xx series and GPU-Z. I've got the 10.6 alphas installed, I do like updating my graphics drivers but at the same time I realize that driver updates will only boost performance so far and you really need to buy more powerful hardware to suit your needs in the first place. Ever since 10.3 I've been able to play games in fullscreen just like the NVIDIA cards(FINALLY!). With stock HP drivers it is IMPOSSIBLE to play games at fullscreen(you get the game expanded to fit the screen(if less than native resolution of 1280x800) at fixed aspect ratio, resulting in black bars either on the sides or the top and bottom.

With my current game-stable clocks of 708/602 I've technically got something in between a 3410 and 3450 but I've noticed that you can get much higher performance increases by overclocking VRAM than the core speed. Defaults in all three of the aforementioned 34xx chips have the VRAM clocked higher than the core, however with my clocks my core is higher than the VRAM. With no core overclocking and VRAM at 602mhz I get 1.2GPixels/s, and overclocking the core from 450mhz to 708mhz(Lol these 3410s overclock SIGNIFICANTLY, a core clock going from 450mhz to 708mhz is an 57.3% increase and VRAM from 500mhz to 602mhz is a 20.4% increase) I only get 1.4GPixels/s. This is supported by my in-game experience: going from an average 39fps to average 48fps in Halo CE, that's a 22% increase in framerate. So I got a 22% increase in observable performance with a 20.4% increase in VRAM speed. In Halo: CE, at least, performance increases seem to be limited to VRAM speed increases.

EDIT: This is odd. MSI Afterburner shows 708/602, AMD GPU Clock tool shows 702/594, who's right?

EDIT2: I know you did some research and you found that supposedly the Athlon MV-40 cannot be overclocked, but a guy at HWBOT got his to 2.24GHz with stock cooling, so there must be a way. I know he has an MSI U210 but with the same CPU it should still be possible. For his MSI U210, the PLL he used was ICS951462AGLF, source. I tried this but I was unable to get it to read the clocks properly. Still, there must be a way, especially since the MSI U210 is the same laptop as the dv2 with the Athlon Neo MV-40 and x1250. Don't give up hope. It might be worth reading through their owner's lounge in the above link.

 

Yeah the 34xx chips are very memory bandwidth limited. They have similar bandwidth to cards all the way back to GeForce 3 and Radeon 8500. I'm sure the GPU is much more efficient at using the available bandwidth than those oldies were. I definitely wish we had a 128-bit memory bus or GDDR5, but these are budget GPUs after all.

I think you're seeing varying clocks because the GPU clocks change in something like 8 MHz increments. You can't control them down to the hundredths place like some of the programs show.

About CPU overclocking, yeah I haven't found anything either other than SetFSB's author telling me that the PLL isn't software programmable (outside of the BIOS anyway).... That was my previous dv2 single core though.

 

I was researching flash acceleration for the 34xx series and one commenter stated that if you were able to trick youtube into thinking you were on an iphone, you'd get hardware acceleration because the GPU would be handling the h.264 stream. So I installed the firefox addon useragentswitcher which allows me to exactly that, and I went to youtube. The problem is that once I tried to play a video, it would play in this very small 1 inch by 1 inch box near the upper left corner, and I didn't find any controls to go fullscreen. So that ended up not working.

Other than HD youtube playback, the dv2 satisfies my gaming requirements. I'm going to wait a few years for the Alienware M11x to get thinner(currently it's 1.3 inches thick and that's just too much IMO) and then I'll have essentially the same machine as the dv2, just more powerful overall.

 

First post, got fed up with no support for flash from adobe so added bcm970012 (broadcom crystal hd) from logicsupply updated broadcom drivers and software for adobe flash player 10.1 rc. On my dv2 1012ax single core - flash now works just fine. Streams 1080P over youtube way better, was a slideshow now smooth as. Interestingly enough looking at resource monitor cpu still pretty much maxed but viewing flash video is just fine. Thanks to previous posters for putting me onto this lead.

 

Hi. I just order my DV2. Seems like a great notebook.
My concern is that the MV-40 might not have enough CPU grunt.

After a bit of researching & reading I found this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=368400&page=33

" Originally Posted by swaaye View Post
I posted pages back abou SetFSB. I've already worked with the author, with the model number of the PLL. He said that it doesn't support software changes to the FSB. We also were unable to find a datasheet for the chip in these notebooks.

Chip is Realtek RTM880N-796."

Not wanting to give up, i google that and found that this little program:MSI Dual Core Center 2.0.6.1. IN the change log it states:

http://www.softpedia.com/progChangelog/MSI-Dual-Core-Center-Changelog-114348.html
"· support MS-7388 v1.1 (F71889, RTM880N-793)"

Just trying to put 2 and 2 together... I am just wondering if the old MSI Dual Core Centre O/C program work on the DV2? (its support the same ppl ...but i'm not sure if 796 is different from 793..i'm guessing just minor changes?)

my other post here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=368400&page=35

 

Thanks for finding more info. Unfortunately it seems that the Dual Core Center program freezes up when trying to load. In task manager it puts the CPU at full load and the app never becomes accessible.

 

This sounds interesting, I'm impressed. Not even my C2D T5450+GMA X3100 machine can do 1080p YT withoutout stuttering. Could you be so kind as to provide more information about this upgrade? Where exactly does this component fit in the dv2, the mini pci?

 

Hey Ajnauron - Bought mini pci-e card from Logic supply for $39 USD not incl postage - I think it is up to $49 now. Logic Supply - Leaders in Mini-ITX & Small Form Factor Solutions (some drivers on this page as well) fits straight into wwan mini pci-e slot (mine didin't have one so was free) used a screw off the wifi card to hold the bcm970012 down ( there are two threaded holes you can choose from). Close the back plates. plug battery back in and boot. Get drivers from adobe Adobe Labs - Adobe Flash Player 10.1 for rc 2 download off the broadcom site Broadcom.com - Crystal HD Video Decoder Drivers try YouTube - Nvidia PureVideo HD 1080p Test I have high performance set (works ok on recommended too), battery and wireless (only g router) once loaded runs sweet as. Definitely could not do this before so am chuffed. I was starting to run out of paitience with no adequate flash video support and was going to get a mini 210 hd with the bcm970012 but figured I'll give this DIY a shot first. Still a little pissed at Adobe for lack of support for our 34xx series but feeling a lot better now.

 

You could also just download a flash stream with a browser plugin like Video Download Helper and then play the file in Media Player Classic Homecinema. That can use the DXVA hardware in the Radeon 34xx. The flash stream needs to be H.264, which Youtube does use.

 

Thanks for thew info Fang11, I might consider doing that.

@Swaaye wouldn't VLC Player do the same?

 

There are a few ways to get DXVA H.264 and VC1 decoding.

-Media Player Classic Homecinema
-Windows 7 includes DXVA 2.0 filters
-Divx 7 has the option for DXVA H.264 but it seems buggy
-PowerDVD or WinDVD

VLC doesn't do it reliably yet AFAIK. Frankly I'm not much of a VLC fan and always go with Klite Codec Pack Standard which includes MPC HC.

 

Good to know. The thing is, though, if I'm not streaming, I'm probably just going to use VLC due to its compatibility with nearly all video formats. My dv2 can handle 720p video played offline through VLC just fine, and I don't usually watch 1080p video at all, so it's good enough for my uses.

EDIT: I tried Media Player Classic Homecinema and it's nothing short of incredible, I can play 1080p mkv files smooth as butter, in VLC it would be more like a single image than a slideshow. This one's a keeper for sure, and free at that! Nice find!

I've never been able to use shift+prtscrn for taking a screenshot, is it working for you?

 

Yup when you offload the video onto the Radeon, 1080p should be completely fluid. The CPU probably won't be able to handle that on its own. Another advantage of using the Radeon for video is that it will use much less power. That's the advantage of specialized vs. general purpose hardware.

VLC isn't bad by any means, but it is a bit of an oddball because it's cross platform and doesn't always use each platforms strengths very well. It's nice how integrated it is, being able to play just about anything, but it just isn't very efficient sometimes. MPCHC has a lot of great features that make me prefer it.

To use print screen on these you have to hit the Function key too. So it's Shift + Fn + Print Screen.

 

I'm also noticing improved 720p YT performance on the latest Flash 10.1 RC4, if you let the stream buffer the whole way through before you watch it, on the single core athlon neo mv-40 the 720p stream is VERY much watchable, much more so than with the previous RC. This is extremely promising. Previously, I would constantly see the gray dots circling in the middle of the video indicating your computer is too slow to view the stream, even when fully buffered, but now, even if it freezes up a little, I never see the gray dots anymore.

Thanks for the printscrn tip, I was puzzled why it didn't work. The fn key has gray text but the prtscrn key has white text, so I didn't see the connection. How did you figure it out?

 

VLC is too much of a "Jack of all trades Master of none" the program will play many formats, however quality & performance are not the strengths. MPC-HC is by far the best solution for the DV2, The KMPlayer is another option although it won’t natively decode under DXVA for those with the dualcore DV2`s wanting the best quality playback, its an option. I generally pair my DV2 and LED projector and the results are superb for such a portable setup, 100 inch screen with amazingly rich colours and all you need is a suitable surface to project on.

Q-6

 

I have a white dv2z. On here the Fn key is a light blue/grey and so is Print Screen.

 

On my black 1115ea "prt sc" is also highlighted in grey

 

I've found a way to decrease the glossy, fingerprint prone surfaces. Take a sheet of very fine sandpaper and sand over the palmrests(this also easily removes the silver imprint pattern), the silver sides(the silver paint scratches off eventually on its own through wear and tear especially at the front two corners, and makes it look ugly) and the back of the lid(if desired, this one can be skipped). Now all your surfaces will be smooth and matte and personally I think it makes the laptop look cooler, more like an alienware machine.

 

I have a white dv2z now but had a black dv2 before. The black notebooks smudge up dramatically more than the white does. I've become a fan of white notebooks due to this. I also have a 2 year old white EeePC 900 and have had various other black notebooks.

Of course a matte finish is definitely easier to keep clean too, regardless of color.

 

Hello fellow dv2 owners.

I've been fairly satisfied with this laptop, though I am desperate to finally pin down a decent frame rate for team fortress 2. I'll make some changes or reinstall win7 and have my fps at 50 for one glorious session, only to have it inexplicably return to its ordinary 10-20.

I've become paranoid that the drivers for ethernet/wireless/audio could be to blame. Is this possible?

Also, should I download catalyst control center? I've always thought it must be unnecessary, but I don't know much.

 

@Swaaye when I'm finished with the chiclet keyboard mod I'll post pictures of my dv2, wait till you see this, you'll love it. I have a black DV2 with the following hardware mods applied, after appropriate use of sandpaper:

-Matte black touchpad(This removes the "streaking" problem and gives the touchpad a little more grip, it doesn't feel slippery anymore and feels more like any other laptop touchpad. This was a HUGE improvement to usability. I recommend this one over all of them.)
-Matte black sides
-Matte black palmrest area
-Chiclet keyboard, to improve typing experience and reduce typing errors(finishing this up)
-Metal lid. After sanding the back I discovered it was painted metal. I originally only kept one corner of the metal exposed to see if it would rust, and after I determined it would not, I proceeded to sand off the rest of the paint and reveal the metal lid. I stopped sanding at 220 grit to leave a "brushed metal" appearance very similar to the DM3, but I could continue further and create a completely reflective, pollished metal appearance, if I wanted to. I'm not sure what metal this is, but it looks very much like stainless steel.

I'll post more pics when I'm done with the chiclet keyboard, but here's a few teaser pics of the lid:









If you want to do this, start with 150 grit sandpaper to get all the black paint off, then use 220 to smooth it out a bit. You can go even farther with 320 grit, 400 grit, and 600 grit if you want it to look like polished metal.

@benjal you can install catalyst 10.6 to see if it helps, since now ATI's drivers work with notebooks. You can also overclock the dv2 to 708mhz core/602mhz ram using MSI afterburner, after you install it go into the program folder, open MSIAfterburner.cfg in notepad, and change "allow unofficial overclocking" from 0 to 1.

 

That is extremely cool. Definitely looking forward to more pics.... might even do it myself.

 

I'm still working on the chiclet keyboard, when I'm done I'll post pics of the keyboard and screen. But for now...

I just beat HWBot.org's overclocking record for the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410:



Check it out!

1897 3Dmarks.

Please note that this overclock is game stable. At this clock of 708mhz core/602 mhz VRAM, the card exceeds the performance of an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3430(1678-1825 3Dmark06) and performs in the range of an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450.(1790-2112 3Dmark06)

Here was my stock 3Dmark06 score with no overclock, at 450mhz/500mhz:



1385 3Dmarks.

This still beats the previous record holder's submission of 1343 3Dmarks.

 

Nice mod with the brushed finish, paint on my DV is holding up fine, however it`s just matter of time before it wears off on places, then I might just get creative with some colours.

DV2 is still one of my favorite notebooks, not tool big & not too small, and the build quality still impresses, battery life could be better, then again I should look more at undervolting the dualcore, although I suspect the GPU is the heavy hitter. I spend a lot of time working on documents so the little additional screen height really comes into it`s own on the road, widescreen is great for movies and works well in the office on a big screen. The DV2 is still one of the most under rated ultraportables to date, thanks to it`s GPU & display aspect ratio, as for the mediocre battery life a slim line external battery takes care of that pushing the DV2 past six hours.

I have other more powerful (CPU) notebooks that baulk at tasks the DV2 ace`s, and with a 640Gb drive I plenty of space for work & play

Q-6

 

What slimline battery are you using Queen6?

 

I am using a Promate Universal Laptop battery, it is rated at 6600mAh and is a Lithium Polymer battery

I have used the battery with a multitude of Notebooks and it has always made a tremendous difference to runtime, even my old corporate Dell with an abused battery would top four hours .

dimensionally the battery is no issue, however it does add heft to the bag, then again it is rated for 10K charges and even after two years of use & neglect I dont see any significant drop off in capacity. the system is very simple, you charge the external battery with the Notebook`s own charger (comes with a myriad of adapters) You then connect the external battery to the Notebook and enjoy almost limitless use. The best way to use the battery is in tandem with the computers built in battery, to get the max runtime. It will run Notebooks with totally drained batteries, however you wont get the best runtimes for obvious reasons.

The external battery does take a long time to recharge then again it`s capacity is not inconsiderable. What I like is that it`s a very flexible solution, no overhangs no additional weight to the DV2, no additional power supplies, no significant bulk, if I need the additional power the Promate will supply, if I dont i just leave it on the desk, or in the hotel, at the cost of hauling a couple of pounds more in weight, the battery is one of the best additions you can buy, and it will work with any Notebook as long as you can couple the power supply

Same hardware, different brand;


Q-6

 

Since I have moved back to the DV2 (smaller and cooler) more pratical actually usable as a notebook. I thought I would try my luck at breaking 2000 points, took 3 runs and some fine tuning to peak out my 3410, but I have done it
3DMark06 = 2001

Final speed 717/666
Or real/actual speed is 357/333 according to GPU-Z, as I do not believe any DV2's ATI 3410 DDR2 will not go as higher than 1200, in my case 1332)

 

Wow nice achievement! What exactly did you have to do to achieve this, and was this a game stable clock?

The interesting thing is that when you play overclocked in a colder environment, you can sustain higher game-stable clocks, which showed me that the problem lies primarily in cooling and not simply "instability".

 

Yeah it is game stable without any artifacts. I have found that my particular 3410, there is a fine line between stable and not stable (like the old X800 cards), both the core and memory are at there max before they start acting up.

I didn't disable nothing within Windows 7 Ulimate x64, full tray of crap loaded, AVG, Daemon Tools, RMClock, etc.
ATI Driver version 10.7, tweaking was of the video clocks only:

1st run: 351/333 = 1981

2nd run: 351/333 = 1986

3rd run: 357/333 = 2001

The lid of your DV2 looks great! I tapped mine with my finger (sounds like plastic) but I am not so sure what is underneth it. Do you have any more photos of the mods you are working on?

 

I've read that notebooks sometimes use a magnesium alloy chassis. It's light and yet stronger than plastic. That could be what that is.

It does look like stainless steel in the pics.

 

Has anyone done any internal airflow mods or fan upgrades on their DV2? I've already undervolted the CPU and replaced my battery with the fatter extended life model. I even replaced a shattered LCD screen on my DV2 already. It was quite easy too, and much cheaper than sending it in to HP to replace.

I'd like to OC the GPU, but I'm concerned about airflow.

 

I haven't had any heat problems with the GPU overclocked to the max mine can deal with (650 or so).

 

What do you use to overclock it? Everything I've tried won't allow me to change anything...

[edit]

I'm using win7 64 and I've tried msi afterburner and browsed all the catalyst settings... In afterburner the option to change the clock speeds was greyed out.

 

Edit MSI afterburner.cfg:
(located in folder where afterburner is installed)

[ATIADLHAL]
EnableUnofficialOverclocking = 1 (this entry changed to 1)

Another option (which I use) is the program Techpowerup GPU tool.

 

I've used GPU Tool and AMD GPU Clock Tool. I prefer the latter.

 

Do you have a spare part numer for this battery? How much extra battery life are you getting out of it?

 

Can anyone provide a link to instructions or can give hints on installing the WWAN antenna in a DV2 (mine is the 1132ax)? I have the service guide with instruction on dis-assembly. Presumably you need to do a complete strip down to get to the back of the screen? Is routing the wiring intuitive or is there a preferred path?

Cheers

 

I've done it twice once on a dv2-1132ax and also on a dv2-1133ax. remove the bezel, remove the hinges and remove the lcd panel. there are tracks for routing the cables. the right side route is the red antenna, it follows the channel for the wifi antenna. on the left side the blue antenna follws the channel for the wifi as well but has a couple spots on the bottom of the back plate with a channel for installation on it's own.