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

Well, I'm OK with giving it a shot for a while to see how it does. If FPS become unacceptable, then maybe that won't be the solution for me.

Coolsense seems to only offer 3 presets. Is there a way to go in and manually adjust some of these options so, for example, I can max out use of the fan but raise the threshold for cutting out Turbo boost?

Also, does anyone else have any input on the severity at running at the temps I posted? Sounds like mid 80's might be OK, but getting into the 90's should be avoided. What are the risks with running in the 90's? Long term damage or performance drop?

 

malibu43 -- the assumption behind "coolest" recommendation is that the GPU is doing most of work and that the game can tolerate less than 100% processor power. interested in your results!

there is no way to configure coolsense -- those presets are what they are. But your goal can be achieved, in large part anyway, by the following:

1. run coolsense and set to "coolest". this dials in the right fan profile but the wrong CPU profile

2. run throtlestop (works for Intel only). this is a very lightweight program that trumps the throttling behavior of coolsense without touching the fan profile.

keep in mind that if temps approach the mid 80s under "coolest" mode, with throttlestop in use, the system mimics "performance optimized" -- because the fan is already at maximum speed

its a long term durability thing. Intel specifies 100c as the maximum operating temp for the processor and it will shut itself down to avoid higher temps than this. So its a fuzzy/personal kind of thing. me, I get nervous above the mid 90s, but nothing catestrophic will happen. many a laptop has survived a high temp shutdown and lived to tell the story.

here again, this is the reason I like "coolest" -- its target temp appears to be in the mid 70s and will run the fan at maximum speed to achieve this, even while throttlestop does it's thing. while "performance optimized" appears to wait until the 80s to crank up the fan.

one more note -- the behavior of throttlestop, in my experiments, is still trumped by the BIOS's own temp control, which tries to keep things below the mid 90s anyway.

 

Thanks. I downloaded throttlestop, but there isn't much of a readme. Any good tutorials for how use it? In particular, I saw the creator mention something about dropping the voltage to the CPU and getting the same performance at a lower temp...

I won't mess with throttlestop too much until I know I'm not going to blow anything up. For now, I'll see what kind of performance I get with "coolest" setting alone.

FWIW - you guys are incredibly helpful here at this forum. I'm sure I've asked questions that have been covered a million times, but not one person has yet told me to "use the f***ing search button, noob!".

 

You got throttlestop to work with Sandy Bridge processors ? It appears to read values correctly (or the last BIOS values anyway), but I never got it to actually do anything, but it has been a while since I tried. It DOES work on the old 720qm's

 

I just read through the throttlestop thread at tech inferno (i think that's where I was) and the creator still claims it can't adjust anything with Sandy Bridge processors, just monitor... So I guess I have the same question as you.

 

well first of all it is well documented that throttlestop has been functionally effective with the early relaase of Sandy Bridge Envy 17. But I should point out that this was to correct an aweful as-shipped throttling problem in the BIOS. Exactly HOW throttlestop worked in this case is still unclear -- there are theories but none of them can argue with the success of those who bought the first group of Sandy Bridge Envy 17s last spring that had a very bad throttling problem, and fixed it with throttlestop.

now then, the success I am reporting here with my Dv7 is more about using throttlestop to trump the throttling behavior of coolsense. in fact, I can confirm that throttlestop can do nothing to prevent the "natural" throttling that occurs when temps rise to the 90s not matter what coolsense is doing (that is, coolsense "performance optimized" or actually uninstalled).

so -- all Im' saying is that whatever throttling coolsense does, throttlestop can undo. I use coolsense "coolest" mode to pick the right fan profile and then use throttlestop to fix the throttling side-effects of "coolesense"

 

The latest version of ThrottleStop in my sig works correctly on Sandy Bridge processors. The problem is that many laptop manufacturers have set a variety of lock bits in the bios so some of the tricks that ThrottleStop could do with the original Core i processors might not be possible if your Sandy Bridge laptop bios has locked these CPU features.

ThrottleStop does let you Disable Turbo Boost and run a reduced multiplier if necessary. Some overheating Sandy Bridge laptops are able to game at a higher frame rate when you slow the CPU down because it prevents overheating and more power can go to the GPU. Many games depend on a fast GPU so a slightly slower CPU will barely be noticed.

dlleno is doing the opposite and is using ThrottleStop to keep Turbo Boost on. It's a multi-purpose tool so whatever works. It's very simple to use so you need to play around with it and do some hands on testing to find out what works best for your setup. Do some trial and error testing. I guarantee that your CPU will not blow up.

BTW, Intel sets the thermal shutdown temperature of most of their processors to 130C. I agree that 100C is a big number but it isn't going to hurt anything. Intel CPUs will throttle to prevent them from ever getting anywhere near a dangerous temperature so no worries. As long as your CPU is running reliably and it is below the thermal throttling point, it will be fine.

 

My results using Cinebench R11.5 to fully load the processor showed some interesting turbo boost activity while using Coolsense.

Under normal settings Turbo Boost would kick in instantly.
Using coolsense however, Turbo Boost would activate incrementally, slowly increasing the CPU multiplier about once per second.

I've heard many people say Coolsense has completely disabled Turbo Boost for them. For me that simply is not what I've observed.

Keep in mind this is using synthetic benchmarking tools, however.
Actual gaming, for instance rarely runs anywhere near 100% load.
In which case a heightened clock speed may not be necessary.

That's the theory, but I don't have consistent gaming results.

Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3 both use Turbo Boost and heat up the processor significantly, more than should be necessary.
Disabling Turbo Boost had no noticeable impact on frame rates.

Rift, however, seemed strongly affected by clock speed. My theory is that the game engine will shift from single to multi-threaded; which confuses the processor when deciding what its clock speed should be.
With Turbo Boost disabled my clock speeds would sometimes bounce between idle, max (2.2 GHz) or somewhere in between. While doing this my frames were cut completely in half from 28 to an abysmal 14.
After awhile though it would become less frequent.

Because my tests have shown activity from Turbo Boost even when using a non-default coolsense setting(however slowed or infrequent it may be); I usually set my max processor utilization to 99% in Control Panel power options when I don't want/need Turbo Boost to run cooler.

I've set it where "HP recommended" is with TB enabled and the 2nd visible profile has it disabled. To each his own.

 

My "HP Support Assistance" says my "Product Number" is "XW397AV"
I've never seen this number before, so I checked the serial the box it was shipped in.. not a very sturdy box, mind you. I would have paid extra not to have had my notebook shipped in such a pathetic-looking vessel.

Anyway, sure enough, the box says XW899AV.

Compared to my old HP dv3510nr (google it),
this XW---AV just seemed like gibberish to me.
I do know earlier versions, such as mine, had switchable graphics but did not switch dynamically.

I prefer the simplicity of manual switching, but I'd still like to have my facts straight, so I'd like to learn more about the issues with the later models.

 

Well, here's one for ya.

After all the time I spent in this thread yesterday, I was all ready to try and download throttlestop and tweaking as suggested to maximize my fan usage without throttling back the coress yada yada yada, blah blah blah...

But in one of the threads I read that using your laptop with the charger plugged in can cause a lot of heat (that was one of my original questions in my first post, if you look back), so I gave that a try when I got home. Unplugged my laptop, fired up FSX... 69C max. Wow. After all that. Same thing with SF2 - temps never got above 70C.

So, I just need to unplug my charger when I want to fire up a flight sim. This may be inconvenient as my batter will probably last < 1hr with my GPU running, but at least I'm not killing my laptop. I also read that removing the battery when the power chord is plugged in can reduce heat as well, so I may try that (which would give me unlimited time).

Thanks everyone for your help! Even though I'm considering my issue resolved for now, the reading I did while researching my problem has definitely got my interest spiked in "tweaking" my machine to get more out of, which is something I'd never really been interested in before. I will probably give throttlestop a try to see what it can do, as well as learn some more about OC my CPU and GPU...

 

unplugging your laptop from the ac adapter will tone down the efficiency of just about every component of the laptop in order for the battery to last longer

this drop in temperatures you're seeing is because of this, not because the power adapter is creating this heat

so it might run games cooler, but it will also run them poorer

 

Yep. I realized that when playing FSX last night. I was getting lots of stuttering. Plugged the power back in and the issue when away.

I also ran a mini "study" varying one thing at a time (coolsense setting, laptop lifted/not lifted, battery only/AC only/battery and AC connected) and got results that contradicted what I previously posted.

Previously, I set coolsense to "coolest" and still saw high temps. Then I unplugged the computer, the temps went down, and so I thought unplugging the computer made the difference.

However, what I found last night is that the only thing that made a significant difference in temp was the coolsense setting. I then confirmed this by flying FSX for about an hour with the laptop plugged in and charging and coolsense set to coolest. Temps never got above 80C.

Not sure what happened before to make me think having the laptop plugged in made the difference, but, for now, it looks like coolsense did the trick.

 

My guess is that you would get the same results using ThrottleStop to disable 'turbo mode' ...

 

coolest mode limits the cpu to 2.0ghz so it does the same thing

 

Jerohm and dwalk1989 you are are both partialy right, but there are some important details to keep in mind:

1. yes you can use throttlestop to mimic the coolsense "coolest" mode throttling behavior. but the piece that throttlestop can NOT do is mimic the coolsense fan profile dialed up with "coolest"

2. "coolest" mode does limit the cpu to 2GHz but this is only part of the picture. its initial throttling behavior will disable turbo mode yes, but in addition to this, "coolest" has a lower temperature set-point or target for the fan, which will try to achvied mid 70s. "coolest" will also throttle back the CPU more aggressively to help acheive that lower target temp.

so -- to get the best of both worlds, my suggestion is:

1. set coolsense to "coolest" now you have a mid-70s target temp and the fan stays on 100% until this is satisfied.

2. run throttlestop to trump the "coolest" throttling behavior. now can dial up whatever throttling behavior you want.

 

this is the only fix i could find right now.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...-hp-dv6-i7-sandy-bridge-throttling-issue.html

what is happening on our system here?
why is it throttling guys!?>
hp needs to update the bios system asap !

 

Hey everyone

Just got the dv6 quad. Coming from another HP laptop, but the touchpad is just terrible on this one. It moves around fine, but the 2 finger scrolling is not responsive at all or jumps a ton. My last one was so smooth, and was also Synaptics.

I also turned on chiral scrolling since I use 2-finger for normal scrolling, chiral for lots of scrolling. And that's only a temporary fix, but there must be a way to fix the 2-finger with other drivers or software?

People posted something about Reil's touchpad app whenever someone says something about the touchpad. But I can't find any concrete info or description about what it is.. What does the app do? And would it fix this?

 

Hello all!

I'm new to this forum and from Finland so sorry my bad english if I make some mistakes in grammar.

I have just bought HP dv7-6142so and I have couple of questions. First of all, I bought Crucial M4 128gb ssd along with my new laptop, made recovery discs and with help of those discs installed the ssd in the primary hard drive slot and moved the traditional hard drive that came with the laptop to the secondary hard drive slot. No problem here. But now I'm wondering do I have ahci mode on because I can't see that in bios because bios is crippled. So any help here? How can I see is the laptop in sata or ahci mode?

The second question concerns the version of bios that I'm running. My bios version is f.13. My finnish hp support site says that sure, you can upgrade your bios to F.20 if you have AMD processor but I have intel i7-2630qm and the site doesn't say anything about newer bios version if you have intel processor. However this forum says that DV7-6XXX laptop with intel processor can upgrade bios to version F.1A, language is global, release date july 22 2011 etc. So is this newer version compared to my F.13? And can I upgrade my bios to this F.1A without worries although my finnish hp site doesn't say anything about it?

 

yes it will fix the problem
Free File Hosting Made Simple - MediaFire

 

Both the laptop and drive(s) use SATA interface; you need to supply YOUR OWN cable for the secondary drive, but otherwise should be ready to go.... 'ahci mode' is NOT used. If you were trying to load XP (which I was never completely successful at), you would need to emulate an ' ahci drive', ONLY if you can't slipstream the correct SATA driver.

You need to use the recovery disks you created, to reinstall Win7 on the SSD drive... The recovery partition that was shipped on the original HD (that USE to be accessible via the BIOS), NOW sitting in the 2nd bay, will not be of any help. (You may need to set the BOOT device to the CD/DVD drive)

'F1.A' should install just fine on Intel based machines.

make sense??

 

Hey guys I just got my laptop today and noticed something odd. My idle temps are 50's for all core and one core runs at 40. It's not a stuck temp and usually gets equal to other temps when i game. Anyone else have this issue? Most likely uneven thermal paste issue?

 

Just got a new dv6t QE. Having some graphics issues in Windows 7. When I have more than one window open, and I click and drag one of them around, a graphical tail follows the window (as though it was on an older computer that was running extremely laggy). It does not move in a laggy manner, just has the strange edge rendering that you see on a laggy machine.

I've also noticed that when I come out of a screensaver that the screen doesn't render fully until I mouse over something, or click show desktop.

Running the BIOS that allows for fixed graphics cards, and the drivers from HP.com (4/12/2011). AMD Radeon HD6770M, 6 Gigs Ram, core i7-2630QM

Thanks in advance! Loving this machine, but I'm nitpicky and don't want anything to be wrong with it.

 

I have a similar but opposite issue lol. My Core #1 is anywhere from 5 - 12 degrees C higher than the other 3 under load...it's probably due to an uneven paste job as you said. Kind of annoying..my cpu goes up to 95 degrees under load...so it looks like imma have to try repaste eventually...for now i'm forced to use coolesst mode in coolsense.

 

its hard for me to imagine that with all four cores on the same substrate, that it would be possible, even with effort, to make cores run at dissiilar temps by un-evenly applying the heat sink compound.

 

Well your issue makes sense since if the computer is going into turbo Core #0 or core 1 will be a few degrees hotter since it's running at higher clock speeds and producing more heat. If you put it on coolest under coolsense it will have even temps and the temps won't go past 80 degrees. I'm just lost to as why my core is running way too cold.

 

anyone have problem with wireless adapter?
Mine keeps disappearing, wireless adapter doesn't even show up in HP connection manager. I have to either restart, or reinstall the drive itself.

I'm returning once samsung series 7 is released but this is very annoying.

 

I don't perceive a flaw in the BIOS I see the BIOS trying to keep core temps below 100c. I wouldn't want my cores running close to 100 anyway, and in my experiements I dont' see an innappropriate throttling that isnt already indicated by a high temperature.

I wonder what would happen with the use of a cooling pad or other way to beef up the cooling system. even my suggestion (earlier) won't help when temps are already above 95.

 

I use a coolermaster sf-19 with the two stock 140mm fans replaced with Late Yoon 140mm's that give 140CFM. I have yet to get my dv7tqe (I get it Wednesday! ) but I can say that it made a HUGE difference with my previous laptop. (Talking about 20-25C) Yes its huge, yes it sounds like your standing next to a freight train, but it does an awesome job. At home with headphones in, its the best cooling solution i've found for those long gaming sessions. Solved the throttling problems I had on my previous i7 laptop that I got under heavy load.

With laptops like these (Pretty powerful internals, but not dedicated gaming machines) you have to be a little creative when you use them as they wern't intended. A heavily oc'd GPU and 6 hours gaming is fine on a m17, they are built to handle the heat. But with these guys you have to give them a little help.

 

this is so true.
This pretty laptop couldn't handle performance for gaming.
I am planning to drill some holes above the fan and CPU area to prevent overheating, so it won't throttles during gaming.
and yea a good big fan of cooling pad lol
Do you guys know how to set the fan to 100% at all time?
I was trying to use saphire trixx, but I don't think the fan changes to the percentage settings that i wanted. =/
I am now reading to bios settings which could ignoring the cpu temp lol..

 

Call me crazy, but I think maybe HP didn't design this notebook to run with the GPU OCed and the CPU clocks pegged at the top end.

Just a guess.

It's a Pavilion, not a X7200. Relax.

 

In my case the 3rd core runs 5C cooler. Its probably just a case of an inaccurate temp sensor.

 

bingo. it will perform at full turbo capability and even all four cores at 2.2GHz until the cooling system tops out. but really folks that is the design objective. for example I run adobe lightroom on this puppy and it chews up photo rendering and exporting in high volumes like nothing. the processors spike up to 2GHz or even 2.2GHz for 5 min or however long the job takes, and then calm back down. thats what Pavilions are designed to do.

 

Wait, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this. I have a 2720qm 2.2 - 3.3 and I have never been able to get my speeds passed 2.2 Literally never seen a glimpse. I have the newest bios version, is that whats throttling the CPU? I'm sure you all know there are NO options for the CPU in the BIOS.

 

well, first off I should point out that when I say "I belieive the BIOS is responsible" I am not saying there is configurable BIOS setup option that can be used to influence this behavior. I mean literally that the Basic Input-Output System code that is resident on the motherboard is doing someting that cannot be oversome by Windows or any other software running under Windows.

That said, your results present an interesting quandary, so just to make sure of the obvious:

- what software are you running that claims it should put all four processors into turbo mode? prime95 perhaps or something else?

- what is your graphics configuration during this test. are you running "fixed" graphics mode and forcing the use of the IGP. And there is no graphics test software, such as furmark, running at the same time? These details will rule out GPU influence, and concentrate on the processor only.

- any chance you are running coolsense in "coolest" mode? When you set coolsense to "performance optimized" you can still only get 2.2GHz when running the processor stress test?

- finally, after all the above is validated, have you tried throttlestop? There are some really odd implications if the answer is "yes"

 

If you run cool sense at coolest, does it automatically go to the igp when you restart even if you fixed it to the amd graphics? Btw,
Y mass effect 2 runs like crap with high performance selected, like 9 frames a sec!

 

Coolsense was running in coolest mode. Duh... Thank you for your help.

 

ME2 ran great for me.

 

Yeah, I can't figure this one out. My dv6z ran mass effect 2 around 55 fps, I can barely get over 10 with my dv6t. All the drivers are updated, bios fixed mode, high performance selected. What's going on?

 

Im having some trouble with my display driver,first off when I install a driver version >than 11.5b,it just doesn't show its installed,it always seems to be at 11.5b.Secondly,sometimes i get these weird low quality fonts when I run certain programs and games,and in games lower fps too .What could be causing this and how do I resolve it?
My driver btw is the HD Radeon 6770m.

 

Can anyone tell me if there is a way to calibrate the monitor color? I find that its a bit on the blue side. Most of the time I'll have it plugged into another larger monitor, but seeing them side by side today I could tell that this screen had a bit of "cool" temperature.

 

My laptop's been running rather hot lately, even when the cpu load is very low (it's currently at 25% with a few chrome tabs open, word, and foxit) and on power saver mode. Any idea why? Perhaps a dusty fan? I was able to run on the recommended power settings without a heat problem at all in the past.

Anyone know how difficult it is to clean the fan on these laptops?

 

I do remember reading a thread here that explained how to do that a while back. Unfortunately I did a little search and could not find it again, so hopefully someone else can link you to it.

 

Is The Dv6 Quad edition due for a refresh anytime late this year or early next year .??

I plan to buy one by December so was worried that maybe earlier next year it would be refreshed .

Any idea .?

 

You have to go to the Intel graphics setting and fiddle around with the colors there, iirc.

It's definitely not going to be refreshed this year. I'd guess that the refresh will be Q2ish when IB and new AMD SI gpus are out.

 

I just got my new dv6-6190us. Before I got the laptop I heard a lot about the switchable graphics and BIOS updates. I was wondering what should I do and in what order to avoid problems because the 200 pages of the dedicated thread are a little intimidating. Should I do a clean install or a minimum system recovery or perhaps just use revo uninstaller to remove HP's bloatware?
Another thing I remember seeing was some software to improve the dv6's touchpad with macbook like scrolling and gestures but now I can't find it anywhere. Anyone knows what I'm talking about? lol

 

Recommended to do minimum system recovery.

For the software for the touchpad it is the Reils touchpad that was talked about:

Here's the Download info for Reil's Touchpad: It's called the envytouchpad.exe but it works with the dv6/dv7 computers too.

 

Does anyone have any good pictures of the DV6t's 1080p screen? I'm bascially deciding between the Series 7 and Vaio SE but the former has a bad screen (same problem that turned me from the Vaio SA) and i'm not 100% on the SE until some users reviews come out. I've seen it in person and it looks a bit flimsy and I don't entirely trust sony.

 

I have had it for a month or so and I have noticed several differences between it and the 1366x768 version. First of all, the low res one had some bad viewing angles i.e. at any time, there was a 1 inch strip that was not discolored. The rest of the screen suffered from black turning to blue/gray. The 1080p screen however is not without faults. The backlight uniformity is actually rather disappointing. there are patches of brighter and patches of darker colors. It is literally unnoticeable unless the whole screen is one color, however.

 

So currently I have my keyboard set to the default settings where hitting an F key does the action like brightness, play/pause etc... and not the F#.
As in, you have to press fn to get the F#.
F5 though has no 'picture' or primary function. Has anyone figured a workaround to get F5 to still behave as F5 without having to press the fn key?

I don't want to change all the other buttons (brightness, volume, etc) to be secondary though!

 

Right clock on the Intel HD Graphics Icon in your system tray and select "Graphics Properties" (regardless of which GPU is running).

Go into the tab for "Color Enhancement"

If you have a meter (colorimeter or photospectrometer), it will be much more accurate, but you can make general adjustments by eye.

I recommend leaving the sliders set for all primaries (RGB) to get the color temp you prefer, then if you need to adjust hue or saturation, do so for the specific color you want. You can do secondaries by making tweaks to two of the colors, but not the third. (eg. Red and Blue will tweak Magenta, Green and Blue tweak Cyan, and Red and Green tweak Yellow).