*HP dv6z AMD Llano (6XXX series) Owners Lounge*

Primarily Bad Company 2 which pushes this machine to its limits. I guess I can live with 89C if it is really a thermal paste issue. That I can rectify. But if it's something else, then I'm SOL if I go to repaste and it doesn't work.

I know abaddon has been playing Bad Company 2 as well but he seems to get no more than 80C at 2.4GHz. I'm getting 85-89C

Just for giggles, I put my laptop on top of a short wire kitchen rack turned upside down to see if extra air would help. I'm not an advocate for notebook coolers because imho, they should be able to cool themselves adequately and kinda defeats the purpose of a notebook. But in this case, I may have to invest in a small cheap cooler.

 

the more and more im messing around with crossfire and what not... wow this sucks this setup micro stutters like no other. its driving me insane.. 40fps looks like 15fps.. maybe something is wrong with my set up idk

 

Most of the microstutters were fixed for me when I fixed the CPU clock in K10Stat (@ 2.4GHz), set power option to "high performance", and set coolsense to performance mode. Also drivers 11.7 seemed to help, but that could just be placebo.

Check your CPU clock when you get microstutters and make sure it's running at your expected clocks. I know what you're talking about because I would use Fraps to record min/max/avg frames and it would say 40-45 fps but it felt like 12-15.

I've been able to overclock with 11.7 catalyst, and best results from turning off crossfire (again placebo?), but now 1080p Bad Company 2 @ 40-45fps avg with medium detail, shadows low, bloom and hbao off. Only tradeoff is 88-89C temps. I think I'll repaste first chance I get. Hate to send it back for a replacement and have something else wrong with it, like dead pixels, poor build, etc. For the most part my machine looks in pretty good order. Very little flex of the keyboard, only minor up by the 9, I, O keys.

In some respects I'm very tempted to exchange it to see if the next one is any better. But it could be lots worse. Whatever.

 

yeah, im running on 11.7 with the cpu @2.4ghz on all 4 cores as well as high performance mode and coolsense set on performance mode and the frame rate just looks hideous even if its like 40-60fps it looks more like 10-15fps... i guess im just gonna have to go with a dv6t the next time around i just cant deal with this lol

 

Is DV6t any better, as in any indication of microstutters?

I mainly went with DV6z to get as cheap as possible. So far it's costing me only about $750. If I could get a DV6t with 1080p for < $900 I'd probably go that route, but doesn't seem possible atm.

 

That is with BC2 for a while in a 75-78F room.

As for the micro-stuttering, I am not getting it. The biggest problem I have had is random drops in frame rates with the stock drivers. With 11.7 and 11.8, Crossfire on, everything medium and 1366x768 on BC2 I get a pretty constant 50-60 FPS average

 

Wing, I thought you were going to choose between this and the 560m Sager you just got? That machine obviously kicks A** on this one so what's the issue? Tho I suspect AMD is going to get off the dime on these driver problems,( after all, they pretty much have gone 'all in' on the fusion thing so its a swim or sink imperative) even when fixxed there are still going to be some games that are going to tax this box pretty hard. I don't think anyone ever expected this to replace a full bore gaming machine, just 'sub in' for a much smaller price..

Seer

 

Abbad, you guys have to remember that you're playing at 1368x768 and he's running at 1080p. He's NEVER going to get your frame rates as that jump requires a big jump in graphics bandwidth which this box just doesn't have.
In fact, to the degree that we're making gains, its in the allocation of resources between the cpu, igp so as to free up as much of that bandwidth as possible. I don't think AMD has its algorithms exactly where they want them just yet. Also, try locking just 2 cores at a healthy level and let the others float. I've got my k10stat icon set up to flash red whenever it turbo's and lately, it turbo's ALOT. I'm not seeing as big of drops in frame rates as the turbo'ing is kicking in when I hit a high graphics load area..

seer

One other thing they have to fix is the default settings where everything tries to utilize the igp first then ADD the discrete as required. I've spent a chit load of time trying to figure out how to reverse that, and finally making some headway. Once the discrete takes over as the primary and the igp is free to 'top off' so to speak, my performance began climbing, in some cases, pretty dramatically. I hate to say it, but to me, at least, it looks like BECAUSE of the limited bandwidth to be shared between the cpu/igp (which is why increasing mem speed is soooo effective) the *sweet spot* for gaming on this box appears to be at the 1368x768 rez. Fortunately I'm more than happy with my std screen. Running side by side with the hp 1080p on my envy and it holds up to the comparison pretty well. There are a BUNCH of screen settings hidden all over in the software, some for professional photogs and graphics peeps that really make the stock screen perform. Sometime today, i'll move it into the other room and hook up hdmi to the 65" 1080p big screen and see how it works.

 

You can get a DV6t with an i5, 1080p, 6770m and blu ray for like $815, and do the ebates thing to bring it to $770ish.

I had a DV6t with the same specs (minus blu ray) and there was no stuttering, but the CPU ran really (90c+) hot, so I returned it.

I'm still waiting for my dv6z and 1600mhz RAM so I'll tell you guys if that fixes the stuttering.

 

I'm not getting ANY stuttering at all in anything I do. Might be because I'm not using Cool Sense at all. Seems to be an awful lot of different programming trying to control the performance stepping of the cores. Gotta be getting some conflicts in there somewhere.

Seer

 

@seeratlas - I got the Sager with 560m and the DV6z and am going to choose between the two, not keeping both. The Sager is barely managing 2.5 hours on battery, and that's with using all the battery saving features short of shutting off cores. I want like 4+, more the better for me. Also cost is obviously a big difference. Some users were reporting up to 4 hours with the Sager, but now I'm seeing from my machine and others that 3 hours is a stretch.

Also, since I've turned off crossfire, coolsense performance mode, running at 1080p, medium detail, shadows low, I'm getting average 45fps now with only an occasional skip or "stutter". Even at 1280x720 which I've been playing primarily I still get the occasional skip or stutter. I think a lot of it has to do with temperature.

I think abaddon got lucky by getting a cool running laptop, in other words one that was built as it should have been. I have a feeling a good repasting will help. But then again, the heat coming out the vents is quite hot, so it's definitely transferring heat, but maybe not as efficiently as it should.

Also, how do I confirm what Catalyst has been installed? I see no indication of it anywhere. I installed the stock Video drivers from HP first, then installed 11.7 on top of that.

 

Not sure I understand what you mean on the catalyst. As to exactly what driver you're using, that's the old device mgr, scroll down to the video adapters and check both to see what number driver.
These drivers are real head scratchers. btw, are you running the 9cell or the six? I seem to be getting better stability on the 9 for some reason.
Maybe I need to go sacrifice a digital chicken to the god of *W*T*F*, cause there sure seems to be a lot of Voodoo involved in finding the right driver settings

Seer
Oh, and speaking about batteries, you could always go get another sager battery assuming you're going to drag it around in a backpack etc...

 

Ok, breakthrough of sorts, I managed to peg both the discrete and igp at 100 percent (first time) in xfire, doing the gl4 version of kombustor That's 800 plus shaders babeeeee Now if i could get it to do that with something like a game .... LOL.

Seer

 

I'm using 9-cell battery.

For the Sager, it's a lovely machine, but $500 more. A new battery would cost another $125. I just have to be realistic, I used to have a 17" Sager with GTX 485m and i7-2720QM, but that's only because I was using my laptop exclusively for everything. Then I salvaged parts from a desktop I had, bought cheap parts from friends, and upgraded to a Sandy Bridge desktop, and use that primarily now. My laptop will be used 90% of the time for basic computing tasks with occasional gaming. If I were gaming a lot more on it I'd just suck it up with the battery life and cost, but since gaming is 10% of what I'll do on the laptop, I just need it to work reasonably well. And so far I think I've gotten it to reasonably well.

Temperatures definitely play a role though. I fired up Bad Company 2 again this morning with Xfire enabled and it ran smooth as butter. Last night I had been running it hard for several hours and temps were 89-91C. If I uninstall Coolsense, temps almost always reach 95C but I don't seem to have any hiccups during gaming, so I think coolsense is throttling some stuff back even in performance mode to keep things less than 90C.

 

Boy that seems hot to me. I gotta believe that with the butt end up off the table with the 9 cell, you MUST have a bad paste job in there. What does your fan profile look like? I've got my curve steepened considerably.

seer

seer.

 

Please correct me if I am wrong, but in order to overclock the discrete GPU, we need to disable Crossfire, run MSI Kombuster, and run GPU-z to prime the gpu? Thanks a lot for the help.

 

Where do you get your fan profile from? Is it part of coolsense? Because all I see are the three options: coolest, performance, quiet

You don't need to disable crossfire. But just have an application running (like GPU-Z) set to high performance, start up MSI Afterburner and you should be good to go.

 

I'm still struggling with K10stat. I select the profile, say to enable clock control, and then lock the P-state I want. Well if I start something like Prime95 it still jumps to 2.6GHz. I have to make a change (usually just select and deselect Boost), and click apply before it will take effect. Basically not until AFTER the CPU is loaded and you apply the P-state will it take effect.

Anyone else notice this?

 

see attachment, you don´t need to use the clock control function of K10Stat, you just need to configure the P-states

 

7words, thanks. I will try to do that again, but it seemed unless I locked my CPU at a fixed speed I would get some microstutters. What temps does your system get at 2.6GHz? I also see you have your Voltage at 1.0875. I have to run 1.1250 and run about 90C.

 

with 3DMark11 CPU-Test 82°C max...
Perhaps there is really something wrong with the thermal components of your notebook (cooler a little loose, thermal paste,...), are the gpu temps also that high?

 

Well GPU and CPU temps are identical. I think it's only reading the 6620G on the die and nothing on the 6750m.

3DMark11 won't stress it much. My system runs about that.

Just did a run through without fixing the CPU speed and micro stutters are back, albeit few and far between. If I fix the CPU to a set speed, the go away almost altogether.

 

MSI Afterburner can show the temps of all GPUs, do you have the newest BIOS?

 

F.20 BIOS, as far as I know it's the latest.

Will check with MSI Afterburner. Although I'd assume they'd be about the same over time since they share the same heatsink.

 

Sweet thanks seeratlas and 7words, my GPU only went to 77C but CPU at about 90C. I'll try adjusting the fan profile. I never used MSI afterburner much.

 

heheh the fan control is the best part of the program
you're going to like this

seer

 

Ok, assuming duke nuke forever is a dx9 game, I just managed to get both the very slightly overclocked 9750 and the igp to play nice at around 95% for the dedicated and 60 percent for the igp soooo apparently xfire CAN work on dx9 in some applications. Here's what I've done. I downloaded and installed the entire 11.8 preview package then went back into device manager and 'upgraded' the driver back to the hp one. Seems to be working better all around but may be just my imagination. However, the Duke Nuke xfire is for real.

seer

 

Hmm... I had no interest before in Afterburner since I only have the IGP, but now I'm intrigued . I tried running it, but there's no fan tab in the settings. It's not detecting the fan speed in the main window either. I know it's been discussed before, but I don't feel like reading through the thread again. Is there anything else I need to do in order to make Afterburner work? I know it can't overclock the IGP; I just want to mess with the fan speeds. Speed Fan Control has never worked on any laptop I've ever gotten my hands on.

 

I've been running Bad Company 2 with DirectX 9 primarily, it runs great. Also, the microstuttering, this is what helped me. I created a new power profile called "Gaming Max CPU" and set CPU min and max to 100%. I just choose that before running the game, and the CPU never goes below whatever max value you pick with K10Stat (2.4GHz in my case).

This seems to fix the microstuttering, by fixing the clock speed. Although running HWinfo64, the CPU shows rock solid 2.4GHz when idle, but when playing a game, it can fluctuate DOWN, without fixing the clock speed though, it tends to fluctuate a lot more and run at a slower speed. I think the CPU is fluctuating causing some issues. Not sure if it's internal thermal management or what. I completely got rid of HP Assistant with CoolSense since I didn't see a way to disable it. Things seem to run much better now.

I think it has to be a dedicated GPU. It must not detect that the fan can be controlled through the 6520G.

 

Making headway we'll keep you from getting that 't' model yet LOL

seer

 

I just installed 11.8 beta and wow, what a difference. Smooth as silk. You can't overclock but who cares. Getting 50-60 fps smooth with medium detail at 1280x720, even with 2xMSAA it doesn't seem to affect fps much. 4x will drop it a bit though. And boy, thanks so much for tip on fan with MSI Afterburner. If I select "Apply overclocking at system startup" will this load the fan profile too?

 

Isn't it loud though? I would imagine that running the fan at full blast would get pretty annoying.

 

Yeppers it will and you might still be able to overclock, tho at the moment, its a bit more trouble than necessary since your cpu o'clocks are kickin. I can still overclock the gpu but it's pretty sketchy. Will run fine for a bit then just freeze. I'm going to wait for the 1600 ram before I go there again I think. I also am getting good performance, so glad you like it They may have everything sorted out by 18 final.

seer

 

Although either the action just got really furious in the game, or it almost seems like the performance degrades over time. Again wondering if it's a temperature issue. But I dunno. I don't know why I'm spending so much time on this, as I said, I don't expect to game much on it, but on occasion, maybe only a couple hours a week.

I was getting really good DX9 performance with 11.7, but with 11.8 beta now DX9 sucks again, but DX10 runs pretty well.

 

Wing, try leaving all of 11.8 in place then rolling back just the vid driver in Device Manager to your 11.7. Choose the option that lets you pick the exact driver you want to install, then go to your 11.7 directory and find the driver.
I got good results with both that driver and the hp one which is essentially 11.6 a (the hotfix). I'm using the hp one now cause its entirely possible that someone *tweaked* something in there to make sure it worked on these dv6's as they were essentially the first commercial LLano laptops to hit the market and I suspect AMD went a bit out of their way to make sure they would at least boot up on the HP platform

seer

I know the original drivers for the prototype Compal oem box were dogch*t. lol.

 

R3d, no the fan isn't loud until its "ALL IN" trying to keep the chips from hitting the thermal limit. what you do is match a curve of fan speed to temp and try to head off a thermal surge. I like to dial up the fan to come in sooner so its got more time to try and avoid a temporary boilover if you will. Better to stop the stampede before they get out of the corral

(i know, too many metaphors

lol

Seer

 

Did everyone install the optional "ATI Technologies - Display AMD Radeon HD 6750M" windows update? it looks like it came out on 7/29/2011

 

@seeratlas - there's a hotfix a and b, which one? what's the difference? Although I would think that whatever is in there would be in 11.7.

 

I saw that and passed until someone else tried it first and reported their results LOL.
And Wing, I know the "a" was specifically for the llano boxes. Dunno bout the b.

Seer

 

Thanks seeratlas, that seems to help. I just installed the driver from the stock "swsetup" folder. The 11.6a or 11.6b didn't show an available driver. It seems so hit or miss. The thing is that I have to lock my CPU clock speed still. Only way it will run smooth. If I were a regular customer and just ran a game out of the box, I'd be very disappointed. Hopefully this is all fixed with BIOS updates and drivers over the coming months. I can even overclock now, a bit. 720GPU / 900Mem Anything more and it crashes. Still runs a little hot but hey, I guess it is what it is. Spent so much time fussing with this though haven't spend any time doing anything else with it. Still need to play a blu-ray to make sure it works right.

 

Wing,

Out if interest, why did you buy both the Dv6 and the 8130? I thought the two models were similar size wise?

Eagerly awaiting your comparo regardless!

 

I'm only keeping one of them, returning the one that doesn't meet my needs and/or best bang for buck.

Right now the DV6z has stellar battery life and is about $500 less than the NP8130 I bought. The NP8130 is by far a better performer but battery life is what I'm looking for. I used to have an NP8170 with GTX 485m, i7-2720QM, 16GB RAM, but that's only because it was pretty much my desktop replacement system. But I've switched to a desktop primarily so just need something portable, and also selling my M11x. With the battery life and gaming capabilities of the DV6z, makes my M11x a moot point.

 

LOL, my m11x is meeting the same fate AND my Envy 15 ...
Seer

 

im especially interested in your comparisons on the build qualities of the two laptops

i know sagers are supposed to have good build quality but they still look rather bland, so it's hard to tell by the pictures alone compared to say, asus

 

Let me just say that I am quite impressed with the build quality of the DV6z in general. A couple things bother me though on the DV6z. For one, the touchpad buttons rattle if you just tap the armrest. The keyboard is actually a pleasant surprise, but not nearly as good as the Sager. If I were to just type on the HP, I wouldn't have an issue, but type on the Sager and it's clear it's superior. So I guess it's all relative. Let me just say it's come down to battery life. Cost aside, I'd take the NP8130 in a heartbeat if I didn't need at least 4-5 hours battery life, even at $500 more. The CPU and GPU are far superior too.

The upgraded matte screen on the NP8130 is awesome, but the DV6z is actually very nice too. Other than clearly a higher color gamut, the NP8130 screen is a lot brighter, but the DV6z is plenty bright at 40% brightness or higher.

If battery life isn't important to you, choose the Sager, plain and simple. If battery life IS important to you, then the DV6 is a great laptop. I'd pick the DV6t over the DV6z perhaps, but I figured if I'm going to go cheaper, go as cheap as I could!

 

Hmm, it seems the fan profile in MSI Afterburner doesn't work. I have it set up pretty agressive. Even tried to do it manually, and cranked it to 100% but it's not at 100%. Haven profile to go to 100% basically at 50C and still not maxed.

 

well I wanted a 17" and the sager 17" are very very expensive so I opted for the dv7t quad edition, so it's similar to your dv6z in build quality. I have to say, my keyboard has 0 flex and feels very sturdy and my touchpad buttons are sturdy as well, no rattling. Maybe that's just because its the 17 inch version?

so CPU wise, mine is just as good as the sager with the only difference being of course the build quality and GPU. but with the recent BIOS update, I've already gotten it clocked to a rating thats right behind the 460m so it's not too shabby.

considering how much money i saved and the smaller size/battery life, i think i did pretty good

 

Yes, overall I'm pretty impressed. Tempted to go with DV6t though. The whole thing with asymmetrical Crossfire sounds great in theory but struggling a bit. I guess with matured drivers things will improve. I can get a DV6t with i7-2630QM, 1080p, and 6770m for < $1000 shipped. But so far this DV6z is costing me $725, so it'd be hard to part with another $250-$300. Although if I invest in 1600MHz RAM for the DV6z which supposedly improves iGPU performance, that's another $100. I'm still curious why they didn't use the 6770m in the DV6z.

 

It's a real shame that Sager's offerings don't include switchable graphics tech. I'm looking for an upgrade to my HP Envy 15. The NP8150 (P150HM over here) is currently topping the list, just a shame about it's woeful battery life. I look forward to your comparo.