*HP dv6t & dv7t Select Edition / Quad Edition (6XXX series) Owners Lounge*

If the new Envy comes with the same or better GPU than the DV6T, I'll probably get a refund and get it.

 

I think the CPU of the Envy 14 right now is actually weaker than the DV6T.

 

The envy better have the 1080p 95% gamut screen. That's the only legitimate reason for them not including it for the dv6...they can't have a pavilion outdo their top of the line product...that's the way I see it at least.

 

The Sandy Bridge Envy 14 will have a weaker GC than the dv6t.

 

Anyway, here are some final thoughts...I am annoyed by the crummy screen on the FHD dv6t's. The only reason I went with the HP over the Sager np5165 is because those rigs are serious serious heat problems. Why does every rig have to have SOME thing that makes it just out of reach of our expectations?

 

I just received my Dv7t QE in silver. I had the umber color one before I returned it. In my opinion the silver looks much better. If I had the option to choose colors at the time of order I would have picked the silver but would have had to pay $25 more for it. I got the silver for free so its a win win situation for me! Do I need to download updated BIOS and drivers from the HP website? I have read that if nothing is wrong with the laptop and it is working correctly there is no need...I just want to confirm. Thanks!

 

Oh yeah one more question. The reason why I returned the umber Dv7t QE is because I had two small bumps of the trackpad that I could feel when my finger when over them. It was really irritating. Also I saw a 1080p screen was available. The new Dv7t QE I received has two little bumps as well, but the good thing is I can't feel them at all. I'm just wondering if anyone else notice that on their laptop. I think it is a coating issue. The good thing is that I can't feel them on this laptop!

 

I had the same thing on the one I returned, just one bump though. It kept tricking me - I thought my finger had a bump in it.

I couldn't see the one before but I did feel it. What is the reason you think you can't feel but can see them?

 

Man what a good day. The 11.5b drivers fixed all my clipping issues in games and video files/bluray and then the new bios finally comes out so I can enable VT in Virtualbox. Feeling a lot better about this lappy now <3

 

More info on this new bios? I do see a new bios in the HP support software page, but the description is entirely Chinese.

 

Can any of the dv6t FHD owners post their Serial Number or Product Number in order for us to know the cable part number used in this version

 

I am really surprised by complaints against the new 1080p screens.

I was thoroughly impressed by the brightness/contrast and rich colors.
At work I use the highly rated Asus VH236H and to me this FULL HD screen is just as good.

I guess my mind would be completly blown if I ever saw a 95% color gamut screen. The new FULL HD screen is a NIGHT AND DAY improvement over the "HD+" screens.

 

Hey, I didn't mean to make you doubt your purchase. I'm sure the display is quite nice, I'm just a spec junky. I like my max brightness to be BLINDING, my colors as saturated as an AMOLED and I freaking hate matte. These are all matters of opinion, and a quasi OCD opinion at that when it comes to specs. Enjoy the screen, because I'm sure its great. I just need that glossy stuff to make it POP.

 

I installed the new F.14 BIOS update (available in HP's Website Software and Driver Downloads). After installing it, I got the option of enabling Virtualization Technology. Previously, I was having F.06 (it came pre-installed) and there was no option in BIOS to enable Hardware Assisted Virtualization.

Check ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp53001-53500/sp53216.html or see this post for more details ......

 

brnkcv, I think you are putting too much emphasis on the difference between matte and glossy, especially if you are at the point where you are about to void your fresh warranty by replacing the screen. While it is true that glossy LCD/LED screens can have slightly better contrast than matte screens of similar quality, this is not some sort of rule. Better quality matte screens can easily have equal or greater contrast than a cheaper glossy unit. Given the upgrade cost of this screen, I'm thinking it's probably a pretty good one.

And to everyone who is disappointed in the "% gamut" of these screens, I have been told by a few friends in graphic design that it's largely a marketing fluff term with little substance, much in the same way that HDTV makers like to throw out "dynamic range" stats. I wouldn't read too much into it, personally, as some of the examples in this thread alone show that screens with the same gamut stats can vary widely.

 

Got mine up and running. Did a fresh install, Windows Ultimate.

Has anyone else tried playing games in windowed mode? It seems to have only 1366x768 and 1920x1080, nothing in between. Too small, and too big.

I'm also a little disappointed in the 6770m. Seems like it's only slightly better than the 9600gso I had in my desktop ... Was hoping for more.

 

Mobile cards are always weaker than their desktop counterparts. Its the nature of the beast.

That said, the 6770m holds its own pretty well, and fortunately it is a current gen card which means improvements will still be done to the drivers to likely increase performance. Maybe not drastically, but every little bit is welcome.

 

When I did a clean install I left the small Fat 32 HP Tools partition on the hdd. This contains various folders and files relating to the bios. Does anyone know what the function /practical use of this partition or files/folders is?

 

Hey fellas !
I just got my hands on this new lappy ! Unfortunately,my younger bro messed up with it and now what i have got is a perfectly normal resolution and even in personlize,"small" is selected as display which is the default one ! Yet,the icons in the screen are way way large :/ There seems to be a problem only with the icons,everything else is normal size ! And also,on the left hand side of the screen,i think he has added fences which allow me to scroll through the various ginormous icons :/ How do i go back to normal stuff? I mean i want to get rid of the fences or whatever causes that scroll bar to the left side and i want to restore the icons to their proper size !
Any good advise and help would be greatly appreciated ! Help needed ASAP please

 

Right click the desktop, go to view and change the icon size to however you like it

 

Thanks a lot ! That worked..and well,the scroll thingy too disappears..but well,on the left hand side,i have got various partitions like Help and Support,My Internet and stuff like that under which some icons are placed ! How do i turn that off and just make it a normal desktop like how it once it used to be?

 

Today, I got the updated version of HP Simplepass 2011 (Version 5.1.0.516). After I installed it, I saw that there is support for Firefox 4. So, now I can login to websites with fingerprint in Firefox 4.

It can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp52501-53000/sp52620.exe.

Details are at ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp52501-53000/sp52620.html.

 

Thanks for the reply It's weird that I can see them but can't feel them. When I roll my finger over the bump I can't feel them. I even closed my eyes and can't feel the bumps!

 

Hi All!

Kind of a newb here, so please be patient with me. I just received my dv6t Quad Ed yesterday (with 8GB ram and Radeon 6770M 2GB), and I decided to test the puppy out by installing Witcher 2 to see how it worked. Well…results were not what I expected. It was extremely choppy even on low-med settings. As someone coming from console gaming, I am not up to date with all the software modifications necessary to update this laptop.

I did do the Windows Update and got everything updated, and when I tried going to the Radeon website to update the drivers, it says my configuration was not compatible.

Can anyone here assist w/ what I need to do to get my new toy up and running in optimal condition, including driver upgrades and settings?
Thanks a lot in advance all!

 

Do you know what your FPS (frames per second) is? I had read as well that the game runs "fine" on low-medium, but that's all a matter of subjectivity. I'm sure there are a lot of people who would sacrifice smoothness for graphics.

I think all of those people had their computers before the 1080p screen became an option, so if you have that, try to turn down the resolution. And if you haven't already, disable "ubersampling" in the game options.

Edit: If you don't know how to monitor your FPS, the easiest way is by running the popular video-capturing software FRAPS. It's only 2MB and won't affect your performance unless it is recording. When you run FRAPS while running a game, it will display your FPS in the corner.

 

+1... Stated gamut is meaningless without knowing accuracy (measured deltaE)! Just because a display claims 95% of the stated color gamut, does not mean it's a better screen! The question is how they got that rating... Most manufacturers achieve it by oversaturating to expand the gamut, which sacrifices color accuracy. It's actually a relatively large problem on current LED LCD's, because the LED backlighting allows for an extremely expanded color gamut. Shame on the manufacturers for only giving one piece of the equation!

For the spec junkies, just realize that the specs can and are manipulated by manufacturers. Calibrated brightness is hard to achieve, because calibration will always dim the display some. For that reason, manufacturers only state the absoulte brightest spec for the display, even though it may have horrible accuracy at those settings. Personally, I give very little worth to manufacturer's specs, unless they also include calibration charts and graphs.

I can't speak for the DV6T display, but the DV7T LG display is certainly among the best I've ever seen on a laptop. The Anandtech review of the Envy basically concluded the same thing. If you're not happy with the display, go ahead and return it, but I can pretty much guarantee you that any improvement you can find would be marginal at best. Actually, I'd love to test both my current DV7T screen against another manufacturer's screen that is claiming 95%. I'd be willing to bet that post calibration, they'd be pretty much equal.

 

I upgraded my Radeon 6770m drivers and CCC to the 11.5b hotfix package last night, and it went off flawlessly. GPU switching still works fine afterwards. I didn't get a chance to do any benchmarking afterwards, but I also installed the MSI afterburner to allow overclocking. One funny thing with afterburner and these drivers is that I had to not only do the config file mod to allow overclocking, but also modify the saved profile to include higher numbers. Otherwise, it defaults to a lower value, even after saving it at a higher value. I stayed conservative for now, until I can do more testing, but with 850 core and 950 memory settings, I saw no artifacting on the 2GB card.

 

I wonder... Does your dynamic SG still works or it reverted back to the previous switching method?

Also, I surprised this thread, not a single person have yet attempted to use the Intel WiDi feature.

 

I get what you're saying...and I haven't had a chance to even see my new laptop. (its still waiting for me at the FedEx office...stupid move)

However, yours is a 72% NTSC gamut vs. the 60% gamut of the DV6 screen. I think the major differences between the V.3 and V.4 screens for that model is that the V.3 (the FHD installed) lacks the other color LEDs that helps the XPS 15, for example, achieve a fuller gamut. No doubt manufacturers hype their products (and resellers and retailers), but I suppose I'll have to reserve judgment until I see it. Either way its a good deal for the whole package...

 

I have a PTV2000 and was messing around with WiDi last night. It works OK but the software needs some work. A couple of times when changing resolution it disconnected but once you have it setup it's reasonable. There is about a 1/4 second lag.

I had issues which I think was my particular TV. In the "Just Scan" mode it had a black border all the way around even in 1920x1080 mode, but when in 16:9 mode it looked OK. I didn't have time to troubleshoot because I was tired.

One thing I ran across was you have to use the Intel graphics for WiDi and PowerDVD 10 wouldn't play a Blu-Ray without the Radeon graphics...so no streaming Blu-Ray directly. I used AnyDVD and just played the .m2ts file and that worked. I have the 2630qm i7, I know there was some discussion earlier because Intel's ARK site didn't show that processor was WiDi capable. Their site has been corrected, and yes, it does work.

 

Why it requires the AMD graphic to play bluray? The Intel HD 3000 can run bluray flawlessly.

I'm able to play Bluray directly on my XPS with PowerDVD 11 and WiDi, with no noticeable delay.

Anyways, I been corrected .

Edit - Oh, now I see why. You need to your graphic beyond 15.22, yours is 15.10 (I think). and update WiDi to 2.1.
I'm sure your wireless is beyond 14.0.

 

Thanks, I'll give that a try a later. I have WiDi 2.1.39.0, must be the graphics drivers. I stayed away from any driver updates until I had all of my software installed.

 

Has anyone else noticed bumps on the trackpad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Yes. The best way I can think of to describe it is a piece of medium grit sandpaper that has been worn smooth, except there are one or two coarse pieces of grit on there. At least that's how mine was.

My first trackpad had a couple of spots like that, I returned that laptop to get the 1080p screen. The new one is smooth so I think it's a manufacturing process flaw/QA problem. They seem to wear down after a bit of use though.

 

My latest vantage bench with the 11.5b hotfix drivers:

Result

Clocked at 900/1150.

Can any of you guys get close?

 

dv7tqe-6000 i7-2820qm/6770M 1GB (Catalyst 11.5b @ 900/975) /6GB DDR3-1333 /1TB 5400

 

Really thouhg i am concerned with brightness. 220 nits is pretty low. But if it looks good as peeps are saying, who cares, i guess

 

It also works like a champ with Google Chrome. Score!

 

Khan, thank you for your reply. I did not monitor my FPS yet, but I could give you an estimate. When I booted the game, and the game engine cut scene began, it honestly looked like a slide show - this was on medium settings, using the autodetect option from the game.

I tried turning down the resolution, but it made it run in windowed mode, which I am not a fan of. I am going to try installing the 11.5b hotfix that I have read on the forums - hopefully that will help.

 

Sweet, Sandy bridge is such a monster. Will have to come back with something better it seems.

 

I just wanted to know if anyone has had any problems with any of the new drivers(specifically the graphics card and BIOS drivers).

I'm just a little hesitant to install out of fear that something might go wrong...

 

The bios just came out. I downloaded it for reference...but the tech sheet isn't even in english yet. I might wait until initial impressions come out before I flash that new version. Especially if F.06 (or whatever the current one is) works well enough.

 

For those streaming video to TV - what equipment are you using?

 

For real streaming of movie media to a TV with or without Seperate Sound system, use the WD TV Live hub. Works better than anything including the PS3, which I used to use.

 

I found out that in the WiDi app there is a properties button, then you go to the Adapter tab. There is a Resize screen option where you can adjust for the proper size so there is no underscan/overscan.

 

Thanks! I will research it.

Anyone have additional recommendations?

 

Tahoe1

Since you have your fancy laptop with HDMI you can connect that directly to a TV or use WiDi. There are apps for iOS and Android devices that allow you to use them as a remote control for Windows Media Center.

 

Coastal: Any word on the silver vs umber for the dv7t? Mine is to be delivered next week and I'm interested in what they have to say.

 

Sure!, be sure to use the WD TV Live Hub. Not the WD TV Live Plus. The Live plus has only a 100 mb nic and cannot stream from a laptop hard drive without catching. the WD TV Live Hub is beautiful. and Cinavia free!!

 

I just messed around with the graphics drivers and got things sorted but there are issues. I'll go through each step I did for anyone concerned with updating their graphics drivers in general and not specifically about WiDi.

I started from the factory drivers with everything working except PowerDVD would give an error, "integrated graphics not supported", when trying to play Blu-Ray over WiDi....it played fine locally.

Installed the April 2011 Radeon HD 6770M driver update from Windows Update and this actually bumped the version of the Intel driver up. It was 15.10.xxxx and went to 15.10.yyyy y > x. Switchable graphics still worked but PowerDVD still couldn't play Blu-Ray over WiDi. It was a different error message though, "can't play protected content (Code=0122)." One other odd thing was when right-clicking the Desktop and selecting "Graphics Options" or "Configure Switchable Graphics" there was a 10-12 second delay before the CCC would come up. Put the laptop to sleep and then resume and the delay was gone. Strange.

Installed Catalyst 11.5 drivers from AMD's website. Switchable graphics working fine, odd delay gone, same error from PowerDVD with BR and WiDi. Installed Catalyst 11.5b hotfix, same deal.

Downloaded 15.22 version of Intel HD graphics drivers from Intel and received an error message when trying to run Setup, "your system doesn't meet the minimum hardware requirements". I had to go to Device Manager and Uninstall the "Intel HD Graphics" adapter and check the box to delete the drivers, this removed the 15.10.yyyy version. I scanned for hardware changes and it automatically installed the Intel graphics driver version 15.10.xxxx. I once again removed the adapter and told it to delete the drivers. Rebooted and and ran the Intel setup again and the install worked.

One more reboot and I was greeted with an error message from CCC:
"The Catalyst Control Center is not supported by the driver version of your enabled graphics adapter. yada yada". Switchable graphics hosed. The Radeon card had a yellow exclamation point on it and if I disabled the Intel card the screen just went black. So it appeared that the Intel graphics was the only card active.

On the bright side, streaming Blu-Ray over Widi now works but you have to hit WinKey+P and select "Projector Only", it won't work when both displays are active(Duplicate). So it looks like we need to wait for HP to come out with their customized 15.22 version of the Intel drivers before everything just works.