*HP dv6t Quad Edition (2XXX series) Owners Lounge*

Yawn.. first they treat me as a total tech-noob. Hoping that I'll just go away.
Now this;

Yeeah, totally Total Care.

 

The docking station is pretty awesome. It keeps my computer desk tidy, gets me connected fast, allows me to take my computer with me in an instant.

I almost went with an asus with similar specs and a slightly better gpu but decided to stick with the hp for the docking station. I have two of the quickdocks, the old version and the new. The old version has component and s-video output but doesn't support the new power supply larger tips, which the dv6 uses.

Both have vga out but no dvi. I suppose you could use a dvi to vga adapter or usb video but i've no personal experience with either.

if your interested check out ebay, dont pay more than $60USD for one

 

Guys/Girls isn't any one bothered about the heat generated by the dv6t quad . I am slightly disppointed by the 80c + temperature it touches even with small loads of 20% (i.e while gaming) . I am amused that hp hasn't provided any design OR BIOS changes to counter this .

 

Thanks a lot s14tam! Im checking eBay right now.

vinodkk1 I havent had any over heating issues yet. While gaming I have been able to stay under 78C. Those that have the 12cell battery have said that it elevates there quad enough to not see any real issues. I only have the 6 cell but dont leave it in while Im plugged up. Have you tried using a laptop cooler?

 

hey guys simple noob question, how do i takea screen shot with print screen. its combined with the home button?

 

Well since I have the 12 cell battery, mine doesn't really get that hot. If I were you, I would grab one of those cheap coolers that raises the back of the notebook a little bit, they help alot, or you can just stick a dictionary under the back Same thing

Hit the FN button along with the home button and it works

Yea, and I used to hear that HP support was great, what happened to that.

 

yeah great support, i called them to return something i didn't like a couple of months ago. I called them and they kept saying whats wrong with it. I ask them basic computer questions they say some bullcrap and then i say i just want to return it. After five minutes of bs and trying to convince me to keep it, i finally get the confirmation and return number. Then the nerve of them to ask "were having a survey, were we helpful and did you find our service efficient" (or something similar)

 

I have a cooling pad with a large fan under it and this doesn't seem to help.The only thing that seems to help is ejecting the battery and placing the laptop on the cooling pad while gaming.I am bothered about the way the vents are designed as there seems to be only one or two intake vents underneath which are placed oddly . The least HP can do is to provide some BIOS work around to reduce the temperature ..like for instance an option to disable Hyper-threading .

 

I mean the heat is a problem, but its not a big problem. Plus you have to sort of expect the heat, you have a quad core thats been derived off of the beastly Nehalem desktop architecture. Also you must note that the 45 watt TDP is based off of when the processor is running at the stock speed of 1.6ghz. (I believe this is true but correct me if I'm wrong) And when turbo boost is enabled, the TDP probably jumps by a decent amount. The part about an option that disables hyper-threading I understand though.
Oh something you could do is disable a couple a cores in msconfig. Go into msconfig, enter the Boot menu, choose advanced options, check number of processors, and choose 2 maybe. This will decrease performance but it should drop the heat output by a decent amount.
P.S. I don't know if the above method will work, anyone wanna test it and show their results?

EDIT: If you need to reverse the tweak above, all you need to do is untick the Number of Processors box and restart. Don't worry if before you untick it the max number of processors isn't 8. 8 will come back after you untick the box and restart.

EDIT 2: Make the the lowest you choose is 2. When you choose two, what will happen is that one core will actually be active but it will be hyperthreaded. For some reason when I tried 1, windows wouldn't boot. I just went into safe mode and reset it though.

 

NO


..

 

Anyway, well I just wanted to share a way to increase battery life to people. To some people this might be obvious but to others not so much. First of all, you can set your battery settings to powersaving. To take that a couple steps further, all you need to do is click the battery icon and then click the change plan settings beside the power saving option. There click the Advanced power settings option. There scroll down to the processor power management option, and in the maximum state tab, set it to like 30-40 percent. This is a great way to get a very increased battery life. Doing that (I set it to 45 percent) and setting the brightness down to the minimum, gives me a battery life of freakin 4.75 hours!(According to batterymon) Great for longer plain rides and such. Something else you can do is to use the idea of disabling cores that I posted above. By the way, I edited the above post and added the information needed to reverse the tweak also. Good luck!

 

Hey sweet, those are some very nice power saving tips!
Will remember those when Ill take it with me on the road. Thanks

 

Thanks for the information.
I had tried disabling cores, but didn't result in a significant improvement.
I also noticed that after resuming from the power save or hypernation, one of the sensors TZ01 report 0C, resulting in the fan not working properly and an increase in heat accordingly in light use, a restart fixes this.

 

Disabling processors ..well thats a nice trick.I'll probably try that out for a try (though I am slightly hesitant to do so ) .My question though is if I disable 2 processors will a core be completely switched off or is there a chance of 2 cores running with only one logical CPU switched off in each core . If its the first thing it seems quite power saving and heat reducing ,but the second one doesnt seem to give enough benefits

 

Could someone with 320m and 230m contribute a 3DMark 2005 & 2006 result (standard setting), so people like me know exactly the direct comparison of performance between the 2 graphic cards on the same system.

So far, I only get rought estimate about the 320m, but no proof has ever been given. Some sites says 320m is just a rebanding of 210m, some others say it is just a little below 230m. Problem is, there is quite a big gap of performance between 210m & 230m, and people like me do not know what to expect from the real performance of 320m compared to 230m. It will be nice to see some contribution from 320m & 230m owners here.

 

I might be able to get a 230m 3dmark score up later on.

 

hey what's the ram speed of this notebook?
because it doesn't say on the box and neither the official website

 

I believe its at 1333mhz and heres a 3dmark06 screenshot with everything at stock

 

hello all,

i bought this laptop a month ago, it gets too hot on the top left when i play games like fifa, pes, nfs .
Does anybody has the same problem?
Is it Normal ?

My friends have DEll studio and it doent get too hot like this even if we play games.

FAN always on option is enabled in BIOS.

can anyone suggest a solution to this problem?

thanks

 

thank you Dreadlord369 for the 3DMark 2006 score.
Now, if only someone with 320m come forward with his score for a direct comparison, it will enlighten everyone about the mysterious 320m. No more rough estimate. The info will help LOTS of users who are considering a new laptop with 320m inside (not only potential DV6t buyers). I know they are there reading this, but might be a little embarasshed to come forward.
Please help bring us some light to this issue.

 

It depends? We need to know your exact readings.
If you base your thoughts of the temperature purely by measuring it with your hand 60°C will feel very hot... its not.
I suggest you measure your tempratures with CPUID Monitor.

Play 15 minutes with HW monitor running in the background and post your max. temps here.

 

i guess ill bite the bullet.. i ran 3dmark06 and got a 4443. I was kinda dissapointed, i really expected more, i mean if the 230m can pull a 6k+ i dont see what the big diff is. All in all i expected more out of such a powerful machine.

So i ran the test again while overclocking the graphics card to 700/948/1540, and this time i got a 5848. Which is a big improvement, but still less than a stock clocked 230m.. kinda sucks

 

Also, how do i find out what graphics drivers i am running? What is the latest one? I hear not to use Nvidias and stick with the ones HP puts out? Can someone fill me in

 

o, wow, thanks for biting the bullet and being honest.. to answer your question:

right click desktop > NVIDIA control panel > help > System Information..

has lots of info. Driver version: 195.62.

I didnt even know I was running DX11, too bad my hardware doesnt support it.

 

im running 188.17, is this an old driver?

 

I believe so, just find out at the Nvidia site?

I ran this benchmark for the new STALKER game.. pretty weak FPS

 

Thank you for biting the bullet Slowhatch !

Now it is the first time for everyone to see a direct comparison between the 2 cards. Frankly, I was surprised myself. When I saw Dreadlord could come up with 6789 , I expected 320m to perform worse,......but not that worse. I expected around 5500. That's a huge performance gap. 320m only performs 65% than the original 230m on the same system. That's a big dissapointment. Shame HP for replacing 230m to a much inferior card. I think they make the wrong move.

Even more disappointment from HP. My order declined twice even after calling the bank to authorize. HP always promised to call in 24 hours, which they never did.
I called the bank, they blamed HP. I called HP, they blamed the bank. It's been a drag for 12 days now. Yesterday, I canceled the order. HP gave me a major headache.
Eyeing on Asus N61JQ now for the same price.

 

Ramzii, were you doing the test on battery?
Which power plan were you using?

 

i get weird temperatures using CPUID MONITOR

 

Did you resume from a hypernation or sleep, this is the problem i was refering to, Sensor TZ01 is reporting 0C and this affects the proper operation of the fan.

 

Whoa, even with I didn't know 16 shaders less would cause that much of a drop. Did you make sure the power setting was on high performance? I'll try to try an overclocked run.

 

nope did not at all. i do have fans all active mode all the time on my custom power options

 

Yea i made sure everything was on high performance. I was very disappointed, but at the same time when i use this computer it flies. I'm not one of those people that really gets into this whos is bigger contest on benchmark numbers, all i really want is to have a machine that doesn't lag and plays the software i need it; and this it does with no problem.

Ill be honest i have actually played no games, because i dont have any lol. I want to go out and pick something up.. made modern warfare 2 or the like and play it and see how the laptop does there.

I don't need to see 10032121 fps @ maxed out resolution with settings at high, if it runs it at native resolution on med. settings @ 25-30fps that would be perfect for me.

 

also one other thing, i got a bluetooth laser mouse from HP.. the hdx i think, and the mouse is awful. Does anyone have one of these? Its laggy and choppy as it goes across the the screen... i tried installing the driver from the disc re-installing it etc. Does anyone know what the issue is? This isnt something i would expect form a 50 dollar mouse haha

 

No battery was removed.. I guess thats why it didnt get superhot ey?
I only insert the battery when Im not at home, and my powerplan frankly always is on High Performance.

O, damn thats dangerous isnt it? Whats the solution?
hmm, never saw that.. & I have the original BIOS.

 

With the 230m in my DV6T-2000 OC'd to 240m speeds I get 7192 3D Marks.

GPU Core Clock: 550.00 MHz
GPU Memory Clock: 800 MHz
GPU Shader Clock: 1210.0 MHz

 

Hi , I just bought my dv6 quad laptop

mostly it an amazing one comparing with the other laptops. However, I noticed some of its disadvantages like what many ones have previosly mentioned about its temp. and resolution.

anyway I want to ask if we can change the screen with a better one with a higher resolution like 1600*900 since the nvidia 230m card supports that.

 

Congratulations with the purchase and welcome.. good question.
I believe its possible, dont know for sure? Will void the warranty thats for sure.

If anyone has some experience with display replacement please comment, ty.

 

hi,

my friend had bought this laptop for me in US in December and i got this laptop today. i am facing a issues with this laptop, i am not able to use a USB lazer mouse with this. has anyone faced/resolved this issue?? Please let me if any specific drivers are needed to be installed in this machine.

thanks

 

So the question remains... did we (the people who got the "new & improved" GT320M) get owned?

I mean.. someone explain this whole shader thing to me? Is there something physically lacking with this card, or are we a software update away from bringing it back up to a at least a *230m*. Whats the deal with the shaders?

It amazes me that in this world of advancing technology HP decided to take a step backwards and throw in a card that is markedly worse than its predecessor.

when i bought this laptop i felt like big kid on the block with the latest and greatest... now i feel like an idiot.

 

^i actually tried to send my laptop with a 230 video card back when i heard a newer version came out. i was so close to spilling a gallon of water on my laptop and use the accidental damage warranty i had. But i'm glad i didn't trade in my mediocre video card for a little brother type video card

 

how does the remote work?? i unpacked it and inserted the battery. when i press the buttons, nothing happens.... is there any special app that i need to install in order to do this??

sorry if it sounds amateurish but this is my first laptop...

 

Shaders are pretty much what do the rendering in the card. The more there are, the higher the card performs (you cannot compare ati shaders with nvidia shaders as they are completely different). But you can't "unlock" them as this is a whole nother video card so the only thing you can do is to overclock it to increase performance, otherwise, nothing. But its not too bad of a card. I would not say that they got "owned" but they did lose some video performance.

Do the volume buttons work? If you can't get them to work, try to bring it within an inch of the IR sensor on the laptop (its a little to the left of the headphone ports) and try to see if it works. Or if you formatted recently, make sure you install the infrared driver from HP's site. But the control works pretty well with VLC media player and the GPU accelerated version of Media Player Classic.

EDIT: And why did Ramzii get banned?

 

how far can we safely push the card?

whenever i run gta iv, i have everything set at high (this is how the game setup on autoconfigure), and on the benchmark mode i get around 24fps average. Its playable and it doesnt feel sluggish... however it doesnt feel "silky" smooth.. this is with the card overclocked @ 700/948/1540.

can i push the card more?

 

as dumb as it sounds, make sure you put the battery in correctly and not upside down. flip the battery and see if it works

 

I don't think our laptops can handle gta iv. Its very very cpu dependent and since the cpu clock is kinda low, we are pretty limited. I'm pretty sure that those are the best results you're gonna get.

 

Well... actually, if it's very CPU dependent, our notebooks should have no issue. GTA IV has support for multithread processors and thus, we have the upper hand having the ability to run 8 threads simultaneously. Although we do have low clock speeds, we have 8 threads so that makes up for it. Not to mention that it can overclock to 1.73 Ghz. Our Core i7 720qms are pretty much made for gaming (but not for hard core gaming). The processor we have has plentiful amounts of energy. And even if it wasn't multithreaded, the 720qm would still turbo boost to I believe 2.4 Ghz for double threaded and 2.8 Ghz for single threaded applications.

The bottleneck I suspect would definitely be the graphics card. The GT230m wasn't that powerful to start with so if the 320m is inferior it will definitely mean that the GPU is the bottleneck.

However, I agree that those results are the best you can get though.

 

Im back! Thanks for asking..
I let myself go wild @ the offtopic forum, they got the best of me. lol
That moderator Padmé really has no sense of humor.... I JOKE!

Anyway.. great to see computerstriker still peeking at this thread, the man has great knowledge about the DV series.

Ive got a question, directed at people who have had another/several laptops.
Since I praise its performance everyday, lets for once see it through the eyes of a critic lol:

What do you think of the overall build-quality of our pretty little monster?

Since this is my first I cant really judge, I know the eliteBook HP's are built very solid and will last a long time.. so will most of the ASUS notebooks ive come across. Their casing feels just really solid and robust. Thjs one really isnt. Im blaming cheap casing-materials. which HP seems to use on a lot of their models.

With my DV6 there are some "unfinished edges", its common knowlegde that they "havent dottes the i's" and just made it for large scale production..
I have some 'minor' things that could cause trouble? I dont know.. as ive said before its my first notebook.

- When I press the 2 bottom edges of the screen (not the edge) really gently, once, it makes this 'tick/click' sound.

- Overall some flexing/giving:
« the screen edges, i think its normal
« AC cable will move horizontally when inserted
« same goes for the 2 USB ports next to that AC entry..
« also the case above and especially underneath the DVDdrive has some flexing; kinda worrying.

- a little hump on the volume slider.. its kinda funny really.

Thats it for now, ok lets go back to praising it now hehe:

http://hothardware.com/Articles/Intel-Core-i7-Mobile-Processor-Launch-Review/?page=1

And to make you feel better slowhatch, I dont know how much you game..
But on the brightside the new mainstream notebooks all carry the i3 i5 CPU's.
Compared to ours.. theyre rubbish.



Even the i7-6xx series are inferior. Great way to get you orientated on the CPU models..
Although I must admit, that internal GPU-on-CPU thing really is a cool thing to have! lol

 

Quick question
Planing to buy a dv6t, have 2 processors in mind- i5 520 and i7 720 which is better in following
1- speed, multitasking
2- battery consumption
3- over all
I am not looking into gaming, the laptop will be used for basic utilities and hsould have longevity. i7 720 is 1.6 GHz while i5 is 2.4 Ghz so isnt i5 faster?

 

It is a poorly ported game from consoles, even on consoles, it runs on a far less resolution and FPS than other games. Many people have found ways to optimize the game, try google for different solutions to improve the FPS, i am sure it can be run smooth on GT230M.