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

It's "Recertified" not "Refurbished". Chances are recertified by a third party just to make sure it works. It may look a little used even. But for $549 you can't beat that price. Excellent deal.

You can get the A53TA from TigerDirect for $529.99 new: ASUS A53TA-XE2 Laptop Computer - AMD Quad-Core A6-3400M 1.4GHz, 4GB DDR3, 500GB HDD, DVDRW, 15.6 Display, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, Brown, 1-Year Warranty / 1-Year Accidental Damage at TigerDirect.com

 

The HP store has the A8-3530MX and option for discrete 1GB graphics. I ordered a dv6zqe a week ago and nether option was there...

 

That is very strange, it looks like those two options just appeared there tonight.

I ended up ordering the dv6-6135DX recert. from Newegg since I agree that its a great deal. I could order new from HP, but I don't think going from a 3500M to a 3530MX is worth an extra $250 (with shipping and tax) over the recert from Newegg.

 

Wow this A4-3300M overclocks like crazy. Using the same voltage as boost 1.4125v, then pushing the mutliplier up I was able to get to 3330MHz. I am sure there is still more in it if I raise up the voltage, but don't want to kill it (only 1 day old so far). Even then super pi 1M was only 23 seconds. Anyone know what is the safe maximum voltage for the Llano?

If I can get ahold of a A8-3530MX and plant it in there (maybe get some DDR3-1600 go with it), will that enable crossfire with the 6750M, and will that be faster than a single 6770M?

This AMD model is different with the graphics switch option. How do I get it to switch graphics like the Intel version?

 

To be honest, the A6-3400m can overclock just as fast as the 3530MX almost. With the Asus K53TA (I owned it for a bit) I was able to achieve stable 2.4GHz. 3530MX can maybe exceed that by a notch, but not sure the cooling system of the HP can handle it well. But considering the cost isn't much more, go for it.

You don't need 3530MX to crossfire. ALL AMD Llano CPU's will Crossfire with the 6750m. 1600MHz really isn't worth it IMHO. It helps with IGP gaming, by adding another 2-4FPS. And Crossfire is a mixed bag. Most games end up with micro stuttering and requires some magic on the drivers part to make everything work fine. That being said, the one game that ran remarkably well with it was the Battlefield 3 beta, so hoping the final game will run just as well. Gave a definitely 5-8FPS boost over just the 6750m.

 

Thanks for the info, I didn't research the lower models as the lower shader counts were putting me off. The lack of DDR3-1600 support was putting me off the A8-3500M, but difference in cost between a A8-3530MX was $10-$30.
I ended up going for the A8-3530MX, and may of shouldn't have after I have just read you post. Although in the end, the shipping was expensive no matter what Llano I seleted, to have shipped out of the usa to me. I will be pulling the DV6 apart to install it, so may as well go for the best. Like you said likely not worth it, but to late now.

Saying all that, the A8-3530MX is on it way and I may was well make the most of it with some DDR3-1600 CL9. Does anyone know if the MX Llano's will take anything higher than DDR3-1600?
Or should I cut my loss and not pay anything more on RAM since I have over spent on the CPU. I can get some Patriot DDR3-1600 CL11 for cheap, however is CAS 11-11-11.
Patriot DDR3-1600 CL11 SoDimm

 

Ok, guys, some updated info on Trinity. Amd is doing some GOOD things here First off, release looks like april 2012. Next, it *appears* that they have added a minimum of 512k (could be more with top models) of gddr5 DEDICATED memory for the igpu , they are being mum on whether this replaces the current sharing mem OR whether it is an addition. AND, something else is new. They've modded the onboard mem controller to run at much higher speeds, we're talking way over 1866..with INTENDED overclocking Lastly, the piledriver core is really rocking. Current trinity laptop quad silicon at 2.5 mghz (will run over 3.3, WAAAY over) slightly beats the current top Llano 3850 (desktop version) at 3.0mghz. Temps are substantially lower with the piledriver core and off chip dedicated igpu mem. The new 7 series graphics core is proving VERY efficient, and powerful, and reports are that 'huge' progress in the mechanics and performance of 'dual graphics' have been implemented.
I guess the clearest indication of just how good trinity is going to be, is reflected in leaked internal comm inside Intel reflecting that they are 'scrambling'. I HOPE that asus/hp and even acer will tool up some killer lappies to take advantage of everything that Trinity is going to offer. They call Trinity, the "Devastator"
Going to be some kind of spring

seer

Oh, and for you linux guys, they have it up and running NOW on a proto lappie and it SCREAMS!!!

 

Not to be a jerk Seer, but where are you getting that from?

 

That sounds awesome, you got any links to this stuff? Bulldozer without its many issues and manufacture problems on top of that would have been a killer chip. Piledriver is supposed to have most of those issues solved, so this doesn't surprise me. Plus you are going from HD5000 (Llano uses HD5000 graphics in the APU but calls it HD6000) graphics to HD7000.

 

If that will happen will be great. And they should not forget OpenGL.

 

Honestly, I am more interested in OpenCL technology, but AMD seems to be pretty good at supporting it.

 

heheh, received some calls and emails. Info should be coming up on the usual 'scoop' sites in a few days.

seer

 

Good point!!!. I totally forgot to inquire about OCL....I'll c if I can get any info on that.

Seer

 

Where are you getting the info from? If it's from AMD I would take it with a huge grain of salt. They promised that Bulldozer would be a huge leap yet it can barely keep up with Phenom II.

Combine that with Bulldozer's horribly inefficient power usage, I don't really have high hopes for Trinity, which uses a Piledriver core which is based off of BD.

Also, any word on compatibility with current motherboards? And do you mean 512mb of memory? Because 512k would seem like very little.

 

512MB would be adequate anyhow. But yeah, based on BD results, I'm a bit skeptical as well.

 

B3 stepping on BD is faster, lots of tuning required. AMD is talking to TMSC as Global Foundry cannot seem to solve their process problems.
I could be mistaken, but it *appears* that the trinity apu is utilizing both 32 nm and 28nm processes.

I suppose I could tell you, but then I'd have to delete u Seriously tho, I cannot say, but NOT AMD published info. I am describing empirical data.

there are two new chipsets enroute. For the moment, it *looks* like the same socket to me, but until the signals on the pins are confirmed, i can't say. Yes, meant to say 512mb. There are several prototypes being tested. The mem configurations are closely guarded.

Pile driver is substantially more refined than BD. With the first BD engineering samples, the need to implement contemplated changes already under design were confirmed when the BO stepping was tested. Pile driver will NOT unseat the i7's in absolute speed except for a serious server variant. That thing has sixteen cores and two can be put on the same board. What PD WILL do is provide a far better apu 'partner' for the 7000 series on chip graphics unit. The changes that really interest me, however, have to do with the refinements in the apu mechanisms dealing with resource utilization and igpu power/ xfire-dual graphics integration. The overall performance of the combined 'package' looks very promising indeed. Power requirement is DOWN as are the temps.

One other thing, there is another mystery variant out there for testing that clearly exists, but for which no data from AMD has been made available. I CAN tell you that its internal graphics configuration is substantially different from the other circulating engineering samples, as evidenced by the fact that several current analytical software tools that properly reflect the properties of the other engineering samples, can't seem to decipher what the hell they are looking at on that one.

As I said, these are interesting times.

Seer

 

I do hope it pans out as you describe seer. I would love a laptop with that kind of CPU/GPU combo power. Heck a laptop with only the IGP may be adequate enough.

 

It doesn't surprise me that they are being aggressive with graphics. A year or two ago AMD said it was aiming to have 5800 series performance in APU in 2013.

As far as Trinity having 32nm and 28nm tech together, I read about that also a few weeks ago, so that might further validate what Seer is saying

 

Well at least when they purchased ATI they are making use of the technology. Unlike other businesses that acquire a company for their tech (HP, ahem, Palm, ahem) and then just let it go to waste.

 

So a Llano doesn't support OpenCL in the main GPU either?

 

It's been a while since I posted but I'm considering making my 6gb of DDR3 8gb. And replacing the 5400 RPM HDD later on. This Laptop was a gift that I was very grateful for but I want to improve on those two areas.

For the Ram i'm wondering whether I should buy a completely new set of 8gb or try a 4gb stick and hope it plays well with the other stick.

And for the Hard drive replacement do you guys have any suggestions? So far on Newegg i'm interested in the 500gb 7200rpm Western Digital Scorpio black. But of course I'm still searching around so any opinions on the matter are appreciated.

 

You should be perfectly fine with a single 4GB stick of RAM.

And I would recommend the Seagate Momentus XT for a better overall speed improvement over a traditional hard drive.

 

Just wondering guys, which drivers are you guys running? Is it bad to install the one that windows update recommends? Hp's driver website? 3d GURU?

 

Sounds good to me HT thanks for the advice.

Also as another question how do you think the DV6 will fare with The Elder Scrolls V? Fallout 3 and New Vegas (Bugs aside) seem to play well but it's a different new game engine of course.

 

Has anyone tried the latest bios? F.21iirc. Any improvements?

 

AMD Catalyst 11.10 Preview2 [BF3 & RAGE Driver] (8.901.2 October 6) - Guru3D.com Forums

That one is really good, but if paired with

AMD Catalyst Application Profiles 11.9 CAP3 (October 19) - Guru3D.com Forums

(Catalyst profiles) it gets even better

 

Sweet! Ill check it out. just my luck, my computer is not charging its battery (says charging but battery life stays the same). HP phone service is less than ideal but I finally had them ship me out a power adapter. Battery test came out good but I am crossing fingers its not the motherboard.

Cross your fingers guys!

 

Fallout 3 should do fine with lesser detail. Skyrim, I dunno. We'll have to see. I'm hoping it does well too!

 

Wing? c if you can get the moderator to sticky this thread so the newbs won't have to look for it.

seer

 

if the xbox 360 can run skyrim, this laptop should be capable of running skyrim to some capacity just fine

 

so, i've ordered this laptop off NewEgg, and really excited to get it. But, i'm a bit of a tech noob, and reading this forum a bit kinda makes me nervous in that I might screw it up somehow, and not be able to get the best out of it. Would one of you guys be kind enough to make a sort of list on the things I should do once I get my laptop? (things like recovery discs, how to install drivers, how to get crossfire to work relatively well, etc.) this would be super appreciated. THANK YOU!

 

I have Fallout 3 and New Vegas and they run fine on HIGH settings.. Of course I don't max AA or AF because to me they have no affect other than chopping ur fps in half.

 

That clears somethings up, but one thing is for sure, the reason it does not have any USB3 ports is because it has a different chipset, which is the A60M, it is only the A70M that has the USB3 ports (native). In that regard, the motherboard is actual a different part, both using the 6750M, therefore it still could be possible that it is DDR3 being used on the lower model motherboard, as per the service manual.
A70M model, part number is 650854-001
A60M model, part number is 650851-001

AMD Vision Engine only shows the first primary adaptor (6480G) under Information, then Hardware. I have updated the driver, but the secondary adaptor (6750M) never appears. Where is everyone else exactly finding this information?

I agree this thread is large, busy, very active, and hard to locate at times. It should be made a sticky

 

Man I'm in the same boat, Newegg got my money with their free Wireless N router and 2 day shipping. The machine should be here by Tuesday to replace both of my Athlon II x3 HTPC and Lenovo x120e. I spent a lot of time reading this thread and a lot of the OC work was done by HTWingNut who has a different CPU than ours (3530MX vs 3500M) so I'm not sure if his methods apply. From what I've read, besides creating the recovery discs, just install the latest AMD HD Graphics Driver package directly from HP (the Sept one) so you get all the USB3 driver, etc, then install the Catalyst 11.10 pre release version with mobile support from AMD to get the best graphics performance.

I have one question for the more experienced users, if I'm going to do a fresh install on a 96G SSD, how do I get Bluray capability back? Because my understanding is that Bluray requires a separate player, most times paid, and I can't seem to find any on HP's website. Also does it come preloaded with Office Starter 2010? (Not Office 2010 trial) Thanks in advance.

 

I believe when the 6750M was first introduced it was revealed as simply the GDDR5 version of 6650M, therefore criticized. Both chips have almost identical everything except memory type, so I doubt there is a GDDR3 version of 6750M, for one it probably will increase HP's cost for using two types of components.

 

One thing I can say for sure about the 6750M with the AMD processor. When running the 6750M it is really slow in games, even if I overclock the CPU all the way up to 2.5 GHz. It cannot be ruled out that the CPU clock speed does not account for good gaming performance in a mobile based platforms, as the processors are usually run low clock speed, and everything helps. But I would say, with the AMD's low clocks, and then overclocking it, really does not make much difference, due to the performance of the CPU being so poor to start with. I guess with a dual core it is possible to be held back in some games, but that would be only about half or less of whats out there.

Even saying the above, I can still run UT3 on max settings using 1366x768 with the A4 and 6750M. The AMD version DV6-61XX notebook cost a third of the price of the Intel i7-2630M quad core and 6770M that I also own. With that the AMD version is a gaming bargain.

 

Just returning to post a screenshot of Super PI @ 3330 MHz on this little A4 mobile, 23.712s is a good effort.
If I go any higher it will BSOD, the voltage is maximum and it is unable to be increased beyond 1.412v limit.
Gaming requires the clock speed to be dropped by 200 MHz to remain stable.

Appears that at this speed it can almost match a Intel Core i3-330M with Super PI 1MB, in the range of 20-24s
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i3-330M-Notebook-Processor.23753.0.html

btw. I have obtained overclock of 3130 MHz, when playing UT3 it runs excellent at this speed. I will take back what I has said, a 1 GHz overclock on the A4-3300M makes a very good difference

 

That's a great OC indeed, AMD specs sheets show the max voltage for all mobile A series is 1.4125V so it's no surprise you can't go higher. Is the increased voltage causing any noticeable increase in temperature and battery drain?

BTW, does anyone know why A6-3400M is about 10% faster than A8-3500M in passmark score?

 

Yeah I loaded both cores with Prime 95, core were at 77c maximum temp using 1.4125v doing 3130 MHz. Have not loaded it on battery, but there was a fair amount of hot air being removed by the fan.

I never trust passmark, as there just seems to be to many different platforms used and the numbers inconsistent. I know of a friend that automatically just says and thinks another processor is faster than another, just going on passmark alone, and I know that is just not the case. I have seen the same as you have pointed out with many other processors as well.

 

How do I use just the 6750m and not crossfire? HALP

 

Turn off crossfire in the vision engine control centre. Now games with high performance profile will run off the 6750m only and games in power saving will run off the 6620g.

Regarding the DDr3 vs DDR5 6750ms, I am settling this one and for all... they ARE ALL DDR5! I can benchmark my 6750m (which claims ddr3 from hp) against a "ddr5" one, and get the exact same if not higher benchmarks.

Also, question. How did you guys get the voltage over 1.3125V? If I try to move KSTAT10 over 1.3125V it defaults back to that as a max. I have the 3530mx .... right now I am running 3.0 ghz @ 1.25V

 

Go to the DV6-6135DX Driver page here: Software & Driver Downloads HP Pavilion dv6-6135dx Entertainment Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

Under the Software - Multimedia section you can redownload the Cyberlink PowerDVD version 10 that came with the laptop. On that page you can redownload all the drivers that came with the laptop.

One note, do NOT download the independent USB 3 drivers under the chipset section. They don't work for the 6135DX. You need to install the AMD High-Definition (HD) Graphics Driver package. That package included not only the graphics driver but the chipset/USB 3.0 drivers for this machine.

 

If v1.3125v is the maximum the processor displays for boost in K10stat, this will also be the maximum useable voltage.
Basically what you see in the boost P-State is your maximum voltage.

I am guessing with my dual core the boost voltage is higher, may be due to how it was binned, or dual the dual has a 35w TDP therefore AMD may have increased the boost voltage for a more stable 2.5GHz turbo. This is pure speculation.

 

For you new guys, if a game seems slow to you, b sure and run either MSI's Afterburner, or System Monitor in their respective 'logging' modes, then start up the game and run it for a bit. close the game then pull up whichever utility you set up to log and look to see the utilization of the two gpus'. If its all one or the other, and even perhaps the Wrong gpu, then you have your vision engine control center settings screwed up. Whichever driver set you are using, you should ALWAYS have the latest AMD crossfire setup files installed. Trust me, when you get everything working the way its supposed to, your llano box will put the hurt on a lot of supposedly more powerful machines. For eg, I noticed that the new Asus G53 is being raved about in the new review on the home page of this site..base price 1399 and you too can have the joy of pulling a 3dmark11 of around 1800 when any of the A8's and most of the A6 HP owners on this site can do substantially better than 2000...with several of us A8 guys doing right about 2200 and better...
Sure, it takes some time and tuning, but when you've got her set up, bout all you can say is :

"whoopee'" for the 8lb plus, 2.5 hour on battery, $1400.00 US G53.


seer

Oh, and on the ddr3 vs ddr5 controversy, I thought Wingnut laid that puppy to rest with the screen caps of his actual 6750 with the gddr5 mem chips all around.
As far as i can tell, Rmac is right. the 6750 and 6770 are identical except for bios timing differences which are easily duplicated or exceeded by us using Afterburner and the appropriate drivers and/or one of the custom bios's provided by Musho.

 

do you have AMD contacts?

can you ask why openGL won't run on the discrete graphics card in our laptops ?

Has anyone here bugged HP about the possibility of disabling the igp to run openGL ?

It sounds so simple, yet AMD offers no solution.


Lenovo has finally fixed the problem for their intel+amd laptops-
http://forum.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-Edge/E420s-switchable-graphics-with-opengl/td-p/522927/page/19

i don't see why AMD can't have a similar solution.

 

Thanks for the hint, gee they really need to change the name to PowerBD!

 

A friend of mine bought a G53 with a first gen i7-620M for $1000 and playing Starcraft 2 on it is amazing, but he kept raving about it and now I can finally punch him in the face with my $550 machine if my 6135DX's performance is anywhere near his.

 

The i7 will beat up any llano, even the A8-3530MX will not be close.

 

On a straight cpu intensive task thread for thread that is correct, however, depending on the app, it is possible to top i7620 machines depending on the gpu involved.

seer

 

It's not going to beat the g53, especially in SC2.

@seer
Did you manage to get rid of the micro stuttering? With the latest cf profiles and 11.10 it's better, but it still stutters in BF3 and pretty much every other game I've played.