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

System performance under linux is terrible. Runs ultra hot and powers down so quickly. I tried searching for anyone who's got the dv6z working well under linux. No success. Do you have a link?

 

How did you get afterburner to go above 780?

 

You need to broaden your horizons..start here:
[Phoronix] AMD A8-3500M Llano Linux Benchmarks Review

That search should help you formulate your ideas for further searching...and you would come up with:

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthre...-in-America-that-are-known-to-work-with-Linux

which if you read the responses....

send the guy an email and ask for particulars.

gluck

seer

 

I'd seen the first link, there wasn't any talk of battery issues there.

Second link seems interesting. Thanks! Will ask around.

 

The trick seeratlas showed us was to set the slider to 780. Go into settings, select the 6520m from the pull down menu, click ok, then go to settings again, and reselect the 6750m, click ok. Now the slider should go above 780.

 

Totally agree with your point Wing, while its fun to push these things to the wall in search of a magic benchmark number, as a practical matter the diminishing returns at the bleeding edge aren't relevant to real life. Fortunately, because of the undervolting available, those settings don't have to come back too far to get to that happy medium of good reliable power, and nice low temps. For those who have been following this thread from the get go, I want to remind everyone that we're really not squeezing out every last drop of performance there is in this laptop...its more like we're unleashing abundant power inherent in the system, that HP for some as yet unexplained reason, chose to choke down and attempt to hide. My own guess is marketing. They didn't want the less expensive 'z' showing up their more expensive 't'..course that horse has long left the barn at this point

seer

 

Yes, but it still takes some patience and perseverance to get the improved performance. The Asus is the same way, it's just the way AMD set it up, very very conservative. Although not sure why. I just really hope there is a solid driver update sometime in the near future so we don't have to do the mishmash of drivers to get optimal performance.

But finally this is the machine that I've been wanting. Will cost me about $750 with all said and done, and that's the perfect price point for me, and best combination of features: long battery life, 1080p matte screen, blu-ray, and can game if desired. Otherwise the other options out there are like >$900, most >$1000.

I also did check power consumption with ULPS enabled and disabled. There is at least a 2W additional power draw with ULPS disabled. But I think I can live with "priming" MSI Afterburner with a "high performance" app before I go to overclock, since I won't be gaming on it on a daily basis. Small price to pay.

It will be nice to finally just turn on the laptop, K10stat is loaded as a service, and just use the damn laptop. No more fiddling with voltages and temperatures. It was fun, but got beyond frustrating. Now I can actually be productive!

All that said, I still think the Asus K53TA is a spectacular bargain if you're fine with a substandard 1366x768 screen, DVDRW, and a plastic housing, but all for $450+tax. I was impressed with its performance overall, and if it wasn't for the screen, I probably would have kept it. The performance was a bit behind the DV6z, but not by much. I just thought for the $250 additional in the DV6z will buy me a nice 1080p matte screen, blu-ray, 6+ hours battery, better build (can't believe I said that), and 10% better performance. I really don't expect any amount of support from Asus or HP with these laptops, so that is a non-factor.

 

hey, that reminds me wing, how DID the build quality look once you got inside there? Sure looked like one hell of a lot of screws tying things down LOL.

Seer

 

It was built well actually, although the plastic bottom shell is a bit problematic when trying to disassemble the thing. I warped part of the left side of bottom plastic shell with all the the ports going through trying to get the motherboard out, so it shows a small gap to the metal top cover now. Otherwise very tidy and well put together. I didn't like the fact that there were so many different kinds of screws though. But I just put them on a piece of paper and labeled them as I went.

Some things you really have to pry on them to get them apart, namely the top cover and keyboard, and think you're going to break it. I was impressed that they actually used a mylar mask sticker to protect the PCB part of the CPU and GPU, wires were routed cleanly, ribbon cable connectors were easy to reach, and the other hard connectors actually all had pull tabs on them to easily remove instead of having to pry them up with a screwdriver. If I do another disassembly, I'll be sure to video it and point out areas to be careful.

 

Yeah HT I'm just gonna wait for better drivers as well. Just gonna game. To that guy who said TF2 was running poorly, it runs great on my system. I was playing on a server with 24 people this morning, all settings high, and getting 110+ fps

I can't get GTA4 to load it just shows a black screen....

 

Mac, have you got that drivers patch from amd with the latest application configurations? I *think* it was 7(3).

seer

 

I am not sure what patch you are referring to... I am using 11.6a and gta4 is patched to 1.0.7

 

You mean the crossfire profiles?

 

try this

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx

seer

and yeah wing, i always forget what they're called. they're up to number 8 now

 

I cannot get any video with crossfire enabled or disabled. I think I am missing some kind of software.... but I installed direct X, microsoft c++ destrib, .net framework 3.5 ect... I am just wondering if anyone else has got the game going.

It should work perfectly! This is frustrating! If anyone else with a DV6Z could install GTA4 and let me know if it works for them, many +reps for you.

 

Try adding pcie_aspm=force to grub
you can add it in /etc/default/grub in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and then call update grub
[Phoronix] The Leading Cause Of The Recent Linux Kernel Power Problems

edit - from http://www.techytalk.info/linux-kernel-2-6-38-2-6-39-power-regression-workaround/
you can also do it temporarily using
echo powersave > /sys/module/pcie_aspm/parameters/policy


With Open source drivers , try below. Dont know how it behaves with dual cards.Maybe you get card0 and card1

#profile or dynpm
echo "profile" > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method
#low , med , high for profile
echo "low" > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile

from
[Phoronix] Radeon Driver Power Management Has Room For Improvement

What problem did u get while installing catalyst ? i did it on fedora and it worked.
In ubuntu , you can easily install using additional drivers ( i think its command is jockey-gtk ) but not sure if LinuxMint version supports llano yet.

For installing catalyst from amd -
try installing from runlevel3/1 (without X ) .when grub runs , enter e and add 1 or 3 to the end in kernel line and then
cntrlX. I think recovery option also goes to level 1 -never tried.

after running the run file you also need to compile and add the kernel module
(i think we have the instructions in /usr/share/ati/fglrx-install.log after running the run file)
you would need to install kernel headers for yr kernel and gcc.
i also had to make a link in fedora as the installer gave error for below
/usr/src/ linux/include/linux/version.h

Once installed add nomodeset to the kernel line in grub

questions -
does fan control work for you ? Does fan speed increase /decrease based on temp
Can you suspend/hibernate and resume?
Any other problems you get on linux?

 

I am interested aswell if this laptop can run GTA4, 25fps up.

EDIT: Meh, can't even be customized in my country, comes with an A6 instead of A8. Would want 1080p matte / A8-3530MX if anything.

 

Thanks for jumping in Macho. I've been toying with the idea of a dual boot myself. Haven't really spent enough time with linux over the years. just have to figure out some reason to use it heheh I guess sidestepping all the spy/tracking crap going on in windows should be justification enough



seer

 

Hey seer, have you checked real world gaming to see what increases you have got i am curious, i got 11.6 drivers to work finally, so far i am getting 2078 on 3dmark 11. I still have room to go higher too.

 

Give it a try once natty/fedora 16 releases . hopefully llano support is there. Its very nice now ... i dont need windows for most things except gaming ofcourse. Still use Vista and curse it a lot.

What spy crap ?

 

Well, I don't have Every game but I do have a fair number. so far all run fine, and at high settings. I run Rift quite a bit on Ultra minus shadows and something else i'm always forgetting. Generally 39 to 50fps, and it looks pretty sweet. Oh, that's at my native which is 1366x768. I don't run at my p2197 settings, but not much below it either. I find my best graphics vs. temp at about 742/822 on the 6750. On the cpu side, I apparently got a very good apu, as I could easily run 3100 if I wanted, and watched my temps. At present, for day to day gaming, my B0 (turbo) is set to 2866 and my P0 to 2400. I play on 'hprecommended' power setting, with k10stat unganged. At times I see my cpu fall to 640mghz or so when a core is resting, at a rather ridiculously low voltage. If I run cinebench 11.5 which stresses the chit out of my cpu, it will wind up to around 77C on those settings and score 3.15 on the cpu test. Also, using those same settings, on the cpu benchmarks in hwinfo32, my cpu kicks azz She'll dust an i820 and even an core2extremeQX6700! and she's within spitting distance of TWO Xenon5150's which is saying something.
here:


Seer

 

Well they don't talk about it alot, but ms keeps track of everything you do from the moment you install. I believe its a deal with the Nsa or some such.
They deny it, but with the right harddrive utilities, and a good packet sniffer, you can just start up a fresh install and watch the resources churn away and your available hd space get smaller The amount of outgoing traffic from your box to the web is well, sickening...anyone that thinks they have any privacy on win7 is sadly delusional. There is a reason for all this id'ing, activation, etc. and it has nothing whatsoever to do with warez win 7 thieves. PLUS...if you really care about this subject, I hope you caught the piece in the news last week about some labs bright idea to deploy a new supercomp system for testing our top secret navy and air force research equipment...AND, this system is built with chips from the PRC....er DUH!!!
There are a ton of component chips coming out of chinese foundries with hidden microcode built in. Accordingly, we have special foundries in this country to provide equivalent chips to our own computing equipment for our 'sensitive' organizations, for just that reason. How do you think China has made all of its massive leapfrogs in high tech weaponry? They are really good at this LOL, hell they have what amounts to a whole 'hacking ' university, run and funded by a special division of the Peoples Liberation Army, and our own 'secret' agencies can't seem to get their collective heads out of their collective azzes and secure their own equipment and networks.. It's sickening really. We'll spend tens of billions on research and the chinese get the fruits of it for pennies over the net..I could tell you stories, and lest you doubt me, let me tell you one:

At the start of the Lebanese civil war in I believe 75, I flew into Beirut where my plane had the starboard landing gear blown off just as we touched down. Several hours later (in a NEW airplane I arrived in Amman Jordan where all the diplo's and power peeps were fleeing to.
I was a 'guest' of the DCM (deputy chief of mission) there and stayed at the official residence as the ambassador was out of town (that happened a lot LOL). Well the evening I arrived, we all got together to have a meeting in what amounted to the living room of the residence, whereupon I happened to look out the window to see a microwave generator on the top of the building across the street, pointed directly at the glass...when I inquired as to who owned the building ..i was informed that it was part of the Soviet Union's 'diplomatic' presence in Amman (there still was a 'soviet union' in those days). You should have seen the looks on everyone's faces, including the local cia station chief's, when I pointed out that with that mwave genset pointing at the window, it operated much like a microphone and that whomever was pointing it at the residence could most likely clearly hear everything said in that room as if he was sitting there with us...er DUH!!
seer

 

Seer, what temps does your system run with Bad Company 2 @ 2.4GHz?

 

BC2 is one I don't have. But like I said, I don't have anything that will get above 77/78 at the moment.

seer

edit: I suppose I should qualify that, I would imagine that if I ran cenebench11.5 and something like 3dmark11 at the same time, the total stress on the system might well overcome the fan and push the temps to built in throttling, but that scenario is not one I'm likely run into For single gaming apps, so far so good.

 

Mine at 2.2 GHz at 1.025v I get to 77 degrees at full load. What are your temps on yours. I am kind of afraid to go over 80C. I don't want to blow up my new laptop heh. Right now I have my 6750m set to 725/900. I dont get above 73c on it. What voltage are you running at? Screenie of your k10stat? . Does unganged just mean that the cores can change independently of one another?

 

That is pretty much my CPU max at the same clock/voltage but my 6750m is slightly lower (70-71C) because I have it at stock clocks. Over 80C is usually fine, if you really need the performance, as long as you don't reach 90C, though.

 

I think you're fine where you are. I and a lot of others including abbadon have posted their screenies in this thread and in abbadon's llano review thread, also in this forum.. If you can stay under 80 and are happy with your in game performance then that's as good as it gets. Like I said, only reason to push higher is either for a voyage of discovery (as we've been doing here) and occasionally a little E.peen'ing' which some including me have been guilty of For 'real life' what you're describing is "peachy Keen".

Voltages run all over the place. Some peeps have found amazingly low voltages, I will tell you in general tho, pretty much every llano i've heard of can run with rather dramatic undervolting on every p-state. I hear about people wanting to up the voltage on the dedicated 6750, however I would caution against it. HP seems to have been overly generous with the voltages and in fact, I wish I could undervolt the dgpu as I think I could then squeeze a bit more out of it.
"Unganged" means exactly what you described.

seer

 

I finally got over 2200 on my graphics

 

Hey Seer,
Do you still have problems with Afterburner showing gpu at 100% when you first start up? Mine always spikes up and hold there until I run Kombustor and close it again then it drops down.

 

grats and yes, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't but i use gpuz to jog it back down, either opening it or closing it seems to do the trick

 

I wish I could purchase a DV6z. Unfortunately they don't sell them in Canada and we can't buy direct from HP like you can in the states. I checked HIDEvolution as well, but they don't carry those models, what a bummer. Really jealous of the 1080P Matte screen.

 

What are your temps at those cpu clocks?

 

According to HWinfo64 I hit a peak of 77.4 C.
If I lock in P2 state I max at 72 C

I don't have a laptop cooler yet, it's sitting on my desk in a hot bedroom.

 

Man I am quite a bit lower than you for my CPU clocks and I to at 75c. Crazy

 

Umm , mate, they do sell them in Canada, I am a Canadian (Ontarian ). Future shop and bestbuy carry them. The future shop DV6-6124ca is a great deal.

 

You guys have crazy gpu temps. So much so that I am beginning to think mine are mis-reporting. @ 800/1000 I idle at 37, and have never even came close to 70 under full load. Highest I have seen is after gruelling benchmarks (10+ in a row) I think I hit 68.

That is why I want to overvolt, I am sure I could get way more out of it.

However, my iGPU is the same temp as my CPU, so I gotta watch that one. (oops double post)

 

I think I could definitely go higher mine doesn't get very hot but I can't get through the combined test at the end of 3dmark 11. It hangs at the very end of the test. I don't see any artifacting and it seems to run cool. I don't get why it just hangs like that.

 

Specs here:
HP Pavilion dv6-6124ca Entertainment Notebook PC (LY091UA) specifications - HP Home & Home Office Products

Futureshop:
HP Pavilion 15.6" AMD A8 3530MX Laptop (DV6-6124CA) - Black : 15" Laptops - Future Shop

I couldn't find it on the bestbuy website. They had a 3500m version though.
HP Pavilion 15.6" Laptop featuring AMD A8-3500M Processor (DV6-6188CA) - Dark Umber : 15" Laptops - Best Buy Canada

Futureshop version is the best deal only $699 with A8-3530MX, 6GB RAM, 750GB 5400RPM. The Best Buy version has the A8-3500M CPU but 8GB RAM. Big deal as 6GB is enough and buying 4GB will set you back only $25. Both have the 1366x768 screen though.

 

Try raising your voltages in k10Stat a notch or two. I had the same issue and that solved it.

 

Mine hangs in that part about 4/5 into the loading bar lol. If I wait long enough it gets through though.

If it hangs, without a BSOD, it may indicate that your memory clock (maybe core as well) is too high. Try dropping them a little bit and see if it passes.

3D mark 11 is very tricky. Mine will not even start half the time (program files .dll missing ) and the physics test is the true test of a stable cpu.

 

My bad guys, I thought the DV6z was a slightly different/more equipped model than the ones we have here, I've actually been coveting the DV6-6128CA for about a month now. Just not liking the screen. Maybe I could get the matte 1080p from HP Parts later on.

 

Yeah I am considering the screen upgrade but I have always had 1366X768 screens so it isn't a big deal.

BTW nice phone I've had the SGS2 since Canadian release date

Also: http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/hewlett-packard-hp-pavilion-15-6-laptop-featuring-amd-a8-3500m-processor-dv6-6188ca-dark-umber-dv6-6188ca/10171293.aspx?path=f9c87ba018399cfe9c15ed1cb4306ee2en02

I did not even realize that my model is the DDR3 video card Do you guys think I am taking a big performance hit? Lol but I have hit 800/1000 clocks and have verrry low temps

 

Mine stops partially through the bar, but if i let it sit it gets through.

 

I was looking at that model too, but it's out of my price range. 699.00 is about as far as I'm willing to go. I'll lose 80 stream processors from the APU in the A6 but It's an unlocked chip, and the dedicated 6750 in this model uses GDDR5, so it's worth it to me.

 

Mine hangs there when really pushing the machine as well. But just let it go. I can't seem to get past 2.8GHz though. Oh well, not that I'd play games at that speed anyhow. I can run at 2.4GHz with temps <85C and if I drop down to 2.2GHz I can run < 80C, usually 77-80C.

 

I wasn't aware there WAS a ddr3 dgpu model. far as i know all the 6750's are ddr5. The ddr3 is for the cpu and apu. Where did you see that yours has ddr3?

seer

 

I did a repaste

 

I own the latin american version of your DV6z, DV6-6177LA, this are the results of my benchmarks:
Crossfire off:
AMD Radeon HD 6620G video card benchmark result - AMD A8-3500M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics,Hewlett-Packard 358D score: P1245 3DMarks
Crossfire on:
AMD Radeon HD 6620G video card benchmark result - AMD A8-3500M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics,Hewlett-Packard 358D score: P1762 3DMarks

I'm using 11.8 drivers and CPU adjusted to this (taken from someone some pages ago):

Spoiler

I'm going to try the 11.6 drivers and overclock the GPU a bit.

 

HP Pavilion dv6-6124ca Entertainment Notebook PC (LY091UA) specifications - HP Home & Home Office Products

Says : AMD Radeon HD 6755G2 (1GB DDR3)

HP Pavilion dv6-6128ca Entertainment Notebook PC (LY089UA) specifications - HP Home & Home Office Products

Says : AMD Radeon HD 6755G2 Dual GPU (1 GB DDR5 dedicated)

According to AMD and Notebookcheck all 6750s have DDR5 tho...

Perhaps this is some kind of clever wording?

 

Hmm maybe it's a typo on HP's site and yours really does have GDDR5 also. We should look into this to find out for sure. They are both the same price, I'd rather have the model you have for the same price if it has GDDR5.