*HP dv5z (1XXX series) Owners Lounge* **PUMA Goodness**

Is the dv5z able to be upgraded to the 3450 if you only have the 3200? there should be an empty spot on the motherboard...

 

I'm sure they're probably is, but unless you know how to solder some SERIOUSLY small parts, and care about your warranty, I wouldn't advise it.

That's assuming something else isn't needed...


T

 

Looking for an update on Crossfire.

 

Yah, where did isharesecrets go with his walkthrough???

 

I'm very confused here. To make the CrossfireX work, do we need both the HD3200 and HD3450 or just the HD3450 with the AMD new cpu? I am planning to get a dv5z so I called the HP TECH and what they told me is: (we do not offer the both gpu in the same system, it's pretty much either or. HD3200 comes standard but if some one wants to upgrade to the HD3450, we will then integrate the HD3450 into the chip set and not include the the HD3200). And surprisingly the HP TECH never heard of the CrossfireX technology from AMD so it was no help. If we need both the gpu's to enable the CrossfireX and if what the HP TECH said (only one gpu in the system) is true, than I guess no CrossfireX for dv5z users.
I guess we wait for "isharesecrets" to show us the path. Come on "isharesecrets" enough with this mate, just give us the blueprint if you actually have successfully enabled the CrossfireX and if it was a failure just say so but don't leave us hanging like this... lol. And also, (from the TECH) you wouldn't be able to upgrade the gpu in latter. So, is it worth money to get the HD3450? or just go with cheaper HD3200. I gotta make my the purchase by this weekend. If "isharesecrets" can provide the walkthrough by the time than I'll update the gpu if not I'll go with the HD3200.

 

I would be safe and order the 3450 and if the crossfire does indeed work than thats just a nice bonus.

 

Agreed. If you can afford it, one step up is still a step up.

Hey Jacobman, how do you like your QL-60? I have it's older relative, the TL-58, and was wondering about the heat & performance differences (if any).

 

If Crossfire never ends up being available, I will regret the purchase of the 3450. If the 3200 is anything like the desktop version, then the gpu core has some extreme ability for overclocking. If so, it will easily achieve a 3DMark 06 score of 2000. HP crippled the 3450's gpu core speed which really sucks. HP lowered it to 500 and locked it. Due to this, the 3450 gets a score of 1800. I've used an AMD utility to increase it back to 700 and it ends up scoring 2000. So (if Crossfire never gets enabled) the 3450 may be a $100 waste.

I wish that ifoundsecrets would check back in and provide the walkthrough. I'm starting to get discouraged that there is any way to enable crossfirex.

Btw, the QL-60 seems to have a TDP of 35 watts. The TL-60 has a TDP of 31 Watts, so I assume that the TL (Tyler core) has a TDP of 31 watts. So the QL may run hotter. I think it has the Phenom power saving features though so it may still beat out the TL-58 in power savings.

 

I do not know what ifoundsecrets did, and I haven't received my laptop yet, but can the current owners of 3450 try some methods that we may brainstorm here?

I'm guessing that in order to activate 3200, we should dedicate some memory to it in the BIOS. If the BIOS let us do such a thing, ati catalyst may show up crossfire tab. Or did anyone tried some other ways to achieve crossfire?

 

Hybrid Crossfire requires the Radeon 3450 (or some other dedicated Radeon GPU) and you get the Radeon 3200 regardless with HP AMD Puma platform notebooks.

HP told me:

I wish they'd at least post the service guide so we could find out whether the 3450 is on a replaceable card or not. Until they do I have to assume not. HP hasn't been this late posting a service guide before AFAIK.

 

do you guys know how to change the video card settings in the BIOS. The Dv5z bios doesn't have a video card option...

also, does overclocking a card wear it out faster than leaving it be?

 

The chip should run smoothly for long enough provided that it doesn't heat above the specs, so you may have to take additional action to cool the board/case.

For the HP BIOS settings, I do not have an idea, but I've just submitted a question to HP, since we have to push them for action:
http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/contact/email_2.html

 

HP crippled the BIOS to the point where all you can really do is change the boot order. If you have to change video card settings, you would have to use 3rd party tools, like this: http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/
Overclocking will reduce your video card life (higher clock speed=more heat), but not significantly if you only overclock a little bit. If you have no experience with it, I would advise you not to do it as you could potentially destroy your card. Overclocking in notebooks is not a good idea anyway due to the increased heat.

 

does anyone have the notebook dock that goes along with this? I've noticed that my laptop makes a little bit more noise... that high pitched whine type of noise... when it's hooked up. is it me or is it the dock?

Also, it could be in my head but the 2ndary monitor I have attached seems to be a little "blurry" in some areas and I also noticed my RF mouse stopped working (so I had to unplug the usb adapter and move it to another port).

 

Unfortunately, ATITool and RivaTuner for that matter won't work with these cards right now. They seem to be locked at 500 MHz. Besides, they're not very overclockable anyway. As I said in my previous post, the only utility that worked was from AMD and you have to set the clock every time you boot up. Not to mention these chips don't make it past their reference speeds as I only get up to 700 MHz for the core speed. The memory has no overclocking ability whatsoever though. Even a few megahertz over their rated speed and I start experiencing artifacts.

 

I guess it's only the PC version of the chip that's crazy overclockable?

It's not something I'd risk doing but it was just a matter of curiosity. I don't like the BIOS on the laptop though.

 

Probably. I've found that most of my mobile video cards haven't been that overclockable. The frustrating thing about the 3450 Mobility is that there's no way to save a copy of the video bios to view in RBE. If there was, we'd be able to see at what points voltages are increased on the card to avoid any overheating. It's a little frustrating that there isn't a thermal reading either for the 3450.

I can say just from touch though, when I raised the core clock to 700 MHz, it didn't feel like the laptop was getting much hotter though. It disables PowerPlay though so when it's on battery power, the clock speed doesn't get lowered to save power. It knocks off about a half hour of battery life.

 

I've found a similar product here (Asus M51tAa-x2)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220349

Same questions on crossfire will probably apply to this, too?

 

Hybrid Crossfire is supposed to only work with the 3450 and 3470. So since the Asus has a 3650, there's no chance of crossfire.

 

my notebook lists the hd 3200's toal graphics memory as 894 mb. i thought it was supposed to be 1408 mb or something. does it go up if i get more ram? and also, did this come with 667 mhz ram? thanks

 

Mine came with DDR2 800. I don't know if this is the case for the DV5Z, but I know on my other laptops, there was an auto option for shared memory where it chooses graphics memory by how much system memory there is. HP may have done something similar but I can't be sure since that option isn't provided in my BIOS.

 

I would venture to guess that if any of the two are over-clockable, I'd say the 3450. The 3200 is integrated into the chipset, so I probably wouldn't mess around too much with THAT one. If anything, try messing with the 3450.

How much dedicated RAM, and of what type, is installed for the 3450?

T

 

The 3450 comes with 256 MB DDR2 dedicated video memory running at 500 MHz (1000 MHz DDR).

 

sounds like I should have gotten the 2.1ghz processor instead of the 3450radeon

 

OK guys how much performance boost would I get out of the ZM-80 compared to the QL-60??? And how much performance boost would I get from 3 GB instead of 2 GB

 

I can't be for sure if yiou would notice a huge performance difference between the QL-60 and the ZM-80. No doubt there is a difference in performance, but unless your benchmarking, a couple hundred megahertz can't be visibly noticed in my opinion. Both cores are still based on the K8 architecture so if you need a comparison, it wouldn't be too different in performance from the TL-60 and TL-62.

The real benefit is in power consumption and heat. The QL-60 runs a bit hotter at a TDP of 35 watts whereas the ZM-80 has a TDP of 32 watts.

As for RAM, I started with 2 GB and found that it was still a bit sluggish. So I upgraded on of the modules for a total of 3 GB and the system seems to respond a lot quicker. If you plan on using Vista 64 though, 4 GB should show some better performance especially since you'll have 128 bit dual channel settings enabled.

 

Quick question. I have tried reformatting my HDD with 3 different versions of Vista. Vista Home Basic, Premium and Ultimate. All are original DVD's. Why is it, that when I get to almost the last step in the installation, it just stops! It says "completing installation" then just stalls there for an hour. Any ideas? I really don't want to keep the factory image installed because of all the useless garbage it comes with

 

That's odd. When you say "reformatting" do you mean the OS itself or you're wiping out the entire drive? I've read about this issue with desktops and laptops, and it never seems to fixed the same way twice. Some people boot directly from the disc and do a reformat. Others simply combined all of the partitions into one drive and it fixed their issue. One thing seems for certain, each time this issue occurs, the hard drive always seems to be the issue.

 

I reboot to DVD and then I erased both partitions and start from scratch.

 

When I reinstalled Vista on my computer it hung up on the installer where it wanted to restart vista. I just manually turned it off and restarted it. The installer started normal after that and finished the install. Hopefully you can figure it out. It's gotten a lot harder to try and do a clean install. THe only thing that hasn't worked the same for me is the mute button. It works, it just doesn't change colour. That and i found that the ATI Graphic drivers took a while to get running.

 

I tried that, but it wouldn't reload Vista. It just kept sitting at the little icon with the bar moving across the bottom like it was loading.

Can anyone give me tips on my problem?

 

I've got a reply to my question about crossfire from hp support. Here is what they say:

Thank you for writing back to us.

At this point, I would like to inform you that the ccossfire feature is available in dv5z latest Notebooks. By default the BIOS options are enabled and hidden in Notebooks and there are no options available for change the BIOS settings manually.

Hope the above provided information will helpful to you.

I've just asked if it'll be possible to enable it through ati catalyst center, since nobody says it's working

Note: I'm editing the last reply here:

HP may have started enabling crossfire recently since the previous e-mail says "dv5z latest Notebooks", but this is a wild-guess. The link they gave above does not seem much related, though. I'll see if my cancellation request can be cancelled and try this.

 

I haven't worked with vista yet, but I'd suspect the default drivers installed. Is there a way to install hp drivers while installing vista?

 

Do you have any other 2.5" SATA hard drives laying around? I know it may seem silly, but we need to figure out if this has to do with the hard drive you're using. I went through a hard drive upgrade binge recently and had to reinstall Vista each time. All three times it installed successfully. I don't know if the hard drive is your issue or not, but it can't hurt to swap one out if you have it available and see if you still have this issue.

Also, do you have SP1 slipstreamed onto your disc? I used a copy that had it slipstreamed onto the disc, but I don't know if that would have any effect on the installation process.

I'm sorry, I wish I had a clue as to why it keeps hanging on you.

EDIT: I just saw your post amp about what HP said to you. If I'm understanding it correctly, then HP is claiming that Crossfire is already enabled in the BIOS. If that is the case, then Windows Vista should already see the HD3200. Crossfire can't be enabled unless both adapters are found. In my case, only the 3450 is found, and it is made clear that Crossfire is disabled in GPU-Z as well as the fact that the performance isn't there. I question if anyone at HP knows what is going on. It seems like each customer rep has their own story. I asked the tech department some questions a month ago, I have yet to get a response.

 

I have different discs. One has SP1 preinstalled, the other is an original Vista disc with no SP. The HP drivers are on my flash drive currently. The laptop is brand new, so I don't know why the HDD would be an issue. I guess it could be.

I did manage to install a hacked version of Vista "Black" I got off a torrent site, but I reformatted back to my original HP Image because the hack version had alot of garbage installed too

 

Hi, I have a dv5-1004ax 2 weeks old. Just using it reading internet and the screen went all corrupted . nothing would work. So I restarted and get the error message no operating system installed please install. Had no signs anything was wrong. So I have now boxed it back up and send it back for repair tomorrow. Not a good start. Thinking I should have stuck with toshiba.

 

i guess there is a reason why you shouldnt buy laptops from retail stores, and i'm guessing best buy? the shipping and those lousy workers may have dinged up the HD, sucks, but it happens..

 

Update. I started the computer after leaving it for an hour and it loaded okay. I saved some files I wanted. Then I logged off and started it in diagnostic mode. The diagnostic failed quarter way in hard drive test saying hard drive faulty and needs replacing. Hopefully it will be quick turn around for repair

 

How big is your drive? HP is using Western Digital drives in their DV5Zs and I've noticed a lot of complaints at Newegg about the WD 250 GB drives having a pretty big failure rate.

 

Hi, my dv5z is not detecting AC power anymore. It doesn't even boot up. Any idea why? I have only been using this for two weeks.

 

It is a western digital 320gb drive. Didnt know when I bought it. Had bad experiences in past with desktop western digital drives.

 

I see.... so you would recommend that a 4 GB upgrade would show a much bigger performance boost over the ZM-80? In this case, what is your customized DV5Z like? Are you using the QL-60 with 3gb ram?

 

RAM is definitely where you will find the biggest performance boost. Whether you decide on 3 GB or 4 GB is dependent on whether you plan on using a 64 or 32 bit OS though. The 3 GB price on HP's site isn't too bad. The 4 GB upgrade is a joke if you do it through their site. If you choose 4 GB of RAM you will find it considerably cheaper at Newegg or TigerDirect.

I'm using the ZM-80 in mine. I did research on heat and power consumption before purchasing this model, and it just seemed to have some nice power saving features that I couldn't be sure came on the RM or QL CPUs.

 

Just ordered mine on the 7th, total shipped was $626, here are the specs:
HP Pavilion dv5z Entertainment Notebook
- Upgrade to Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
- AMD Turion(TM) X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile Processor ZM-80 (2.1 GHz)
- 15.4" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
- FREE Upgrade to 2GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm) from 1GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)!!
- ATI Radeon(TM) HD 3200 Graphics
- FREE Upgrade to 160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive from 120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
- HP Imprint Finish (Mesh) + Microphone + Webcam
- HP Color Matching Keyboard
- 802.11b/g WLAN
- No High speed 56K modem port
- SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
- No TV Tuner w/remote control
- 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
- Microsoft(R) Works 9.0
- HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

I don't game, but the performance for the price in my opinion is unbeatable. The Intel version, dv5t started out $200+ more...

I should get it sometime this week or the beginning of next. Looking to wipe it clean and install vista ultimate 32, at least until I upgrade to 4gb RAM for ultimate 64. I also don't like the idea of 64 having compatibility issues with any drivers or software...so I may just upgrade to a 7200rpm drive and worry about ram later.

 

I'm a little disappointed in this whole Crossfire situation. I was really hoping that ifoundsecrets really did figure out how to enable Crossfire. It seems that he's practically disappeared though which leaves me to ask what the point was for him to make such claims that he can't seem to back up.

 

it's called trolling. it happens on forums all the time.

 

He didn't disappear - homiss has a point...


T

 

Yeah, that's true. It's just the first time I've actually experienced it at a tech forum. I've seen that kind of nonsense at gaming forums, but I guess I had assumed that people would be a little more grown up here. As you said though, it would seem you can't escape it anywhere you go. *shrugs*

Oh well, the laptop is still fairly new so who knows if we'll get what we paid for. It's a shame there isn't away to display the hidden BIOS options.

 

Yeah, a shame this was just the tech equivalent of getting rick-rolled. Well, there's always the chance HP releases a BIOS update or somebody else finds a way to hack the BIOS...

 

Hey, I got my dv5z. It's,

- Upgrade to Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
- AMD Turion(TM) X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile Processor ZM-80 (2.1 GHz)
- 15.4" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
- FREE Upgrade to 2GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm) from 1GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)!!
- ATI Radeon(TM) HD 3200 Graphics
- FREE Upgrade to 160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive from 120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
- HP Imprint Finish (Mesh) + Microphone + Webcam
- HP Color Matching Keyboard
- 802.11b/g WLAN
- No High speed 56K modem port
- SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
- No TV Tuner w/remote control
- 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
- Microsoft(R) Works 9.0
- HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

Well, to start off with it was a very nice looking notebook. Looks really nice with white lights and it does have a good build quality. The laptop seems to be attracting a lot of dust! - but the small piece of clothe you get with the hp does the job ... Well, the only problem i faced until yesterday was the mouse - it can get VERY sticky, especially if you sweat from your palms... Overall, this is a great notebook for the price.........

I faced a major problem though! After two weeks of using the notebook, my charger burnt off!!! I am currently residing outside of US, and i don't wanna go ALL THE WAY BACK to US to return my charger!!! I met the local hp dealers, they informed me that the charger is not covered for HP warranty...

If not for the charger problem, i would have been greatly satisfied with hp.