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

Somebody knows a sidebar gadget or a program that can be left pinned on the desktop that monitors temps and frequencies of this processors?

 

I'd like to get on board with that, but I most likely will be getting a Trinity or Ivy Bridge / Kepler laptop sometime this summer.

 

Windows doesn't have anything to do with that, that's the drive. It should be handling all of that itself in the background. If it's not, it's...not a good drive, that's for sure!

Haven't had any issues with my two Intel drives so far (a G2 and a newer 320), nor the flash in my Macbook so far.

 

Well, as far as our tech rep, I'd have to give my proxy to HTWingnut, for showing the most organized effort and results, which shows reliability and follow-through...plus with product knowledge as well, since HT's probably torn this thing apart more times than the rest of us combined, and is still willing to experiment.

As far as the money/business aspect goes, I'd have to nominate myself, in thta I've carried a security clearance most of my life and have hired, employed, and negotiated with contractors during this time as a project manager.

As a matter of fact, I've already written a letter of inquiry regarding this project to "BIOSman" this evening and am awaiting reply.

 

12.3 preview apparently available as stated here. May give them a shot later. Supposed to improve BF3. http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...formance-acer-522-review-160.html#post8260146

 

Quick question: will dv6-6135dx able to run Modern Warfare 3?

 

Quick answer - yes.

 

2nd quick question: How well?

 

Quick Answer: My DV7t with a 6770M could max it at 1080p. Expect to max it at 768p, most likely, and almost max it at 1080p.

 

Low without any TLC, Medium or better with TLC. (tender loving care) Should be fine.

Clarkkent: MTBF is a collossal lie in SSDs. It matters for a spinning HDD, this is an estimate for the motor and bearings. Consumer versions were not tested to the standards of enterprise models. An SSD only matters on the basis of write-through endurance. A 60GB drive with 1PB endurance is much better than 320GB with 2PB endurance, this means the 60GB is using higher quality cells and/or more parity cells for error correction. Consumer PC usage is a problem in terms of wear leveling, because you fill 80% with static data and keep writing over a small part of the SSD.

I am given to understand the higher CPU/GPU clocks of the 3850 and 3870 are the only scenario to justify ddr3-1600 or faster RAM. Our 444 iGPU doesn't pull enough bits. Trinity laptops should benefit from 1600 speed, and IF there is a new desktop chip it could see benefits from 2000 speed. Hybrid Crossfire is disabled with single channel RAM because the bandwidth mismatch screws the iGPU and prevents useful Crossfire. If you only get one stick make it as fast as possible or the system will keep falling over.

My big fear is new Trinity ultrabooks running single channel, maybe they could do that trick with 4GB on the motherboard plus an expansion slot for dual channel...I have seen a few ultrabooks that pull this gimmick to save space. Either that or dedicated mem for graphics bypass channel.

 

kevmanw: If you can max MW3 then we can max MW3. And at 768p on the 6135dx it should be laser smooth then.

 

It will be. Don't worry.

 

To be honest, with SSD's I'm not even concerned about the write endurance or write amplification of SSD's. I'm most concerned about the lifespan of the controller since that seems to be the failure mode of pretty much every SSD I've seen or heard of that failed. Unless you are a really heavy data write user, you won't have issues, and if you do heavy data writing then you need to consider SLC NAND over MLC because SLC has ten times the endurance of MLC, albeit much more expensive as well.

 

In some models it turned out wear leveling broke the controller due to bugs in the table system. Just like Plan 9, you're only really ed if the controller can't keep all those lies in order. Though pure chip failure is bad too, yeah. If a whole block fails, or the controller. Even quite a few mechanical HDDs only fail due to the chip dying, especially consumer models. Although the old....Deskstar GXP75...?...had a problem with the magnetic film itself.

That big server failure recently, cascading burnouts in the Flash storage array. The uh, failure routines? They failed! Just like Amazon server cascade failures ran over the barrier into other server clusters last year. So while I think an SSD is great for video editing and Bethesda game mods, I can wait the extra few seconds for a mechanical disk to load my desktop.

Biggest reason I'd have to switch would be a mix of good price and the extra battery savings.

 

lol thats not even a high demanding cutting edge game, 6135dx will eat it alive.

 

I dv6z has always had problems entering sleep mode reliably. Before, it would occasionally freeze after the screen turns black, and I would end up having to turn off the laptop. I even did multiple factory (minimal) resets in the beginning trying to get rid of the problem. Since the issue only cropped up ~once a week, I simply chose to ignore it.

Now, however, the computer freezes almost every time it I close the lid (sleep). Performance tools are showing that the USB 3.0 driver is interfering from entering sleep. I've stayed with the "official" path as far as drivers are concerned. I did a minimal factory reset and have stuck with Windows update for drivers. Device manager shows my graphics driver is from September 15, 2011, and an image of CCC is attached. I realize there is a driver update available which I'm downloading right now. Is there anything else I can do?

 

AMD Reality Check at FX GamExperience - The AMD Reality Check Challenge - Legit Reviews

Pretty interesting...but not really that surprising...well, to us, anyway.

 

Newegg has the Corsair 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3-1066MHz PC3-8500 Notebook Memory for $9.99 Free Shipping after rebate. Tax in CA, NJ, TN.

$10 rebate Exp 1/31/12

 

My A8-3530MX has a 2G Samsung PC3-10600 DDR3 running at 667 MHz and a 4G Samsung PC3-12800 running at 800 MHz. I assume the above would not be a good upgrade for the 2G as it's slower than the 4G that's in there.

I'm not seeing anything about a rebate.

 

It's now listed as out of stock.

 

so my dv6z harddrive gave out over the weekend. I had a toshiba640gb hardrive at 7200rpm. Contacted hp support and they are replacing it. SHould be up and running tommorow. Im actauly impressed with the suport it was easy and painless.

 

For the love of Smaug do NOT put 1066-speed RAM in the laptop! That's a 20% decrease in speed. Best case you now have asynchronous RAM modules, worst case BOTH modules will be stuck at the slower speed. Due to the graphics memory model I expect both will run slower.

For the fellow whose laptop came with mismatched memory, what CPU do you have? M chips only use up to the 667MHz/1333 speed and MX can use 800MHz/1600 speed. Though I doubt even Vect overclocked enough to benefit from that extra bandwidth.

I kinda doubt it but currently have hope AMD may support Hi10 playback with Trinity's UVD module. There are PDFs on their site that discuss 4:2:2 playback, talking about draft media support. Though AMD generally needs to push this APP Acceleration thing, and iron out OPENGL/OpenCL drivers. (Because the best part of Dual Radeon would be fully utilizing both cards)

 

I dunno, there really isn't much effect of RAM speed on performance.

 

Went back and re-read and corrected what I wrote above.

I have an A8-3530MX with 4G PC3-12800(800MHz) and 2G PC3-10600(667MHz). If anything I should replace the current 2G with PC3-12800 4G for potentially better performance and increased memory. Right?

That's what I get trying to write details from memory.

 

Would anyone here be willing to swap their DDR3 1600 RAM with me? I have Samsung DDR3 1600 1.35V CAS11 @ 1600. I want to test DDR3 1600 @ CAS9 if possible. I would pay all shipping, basically send you my RAM with a return envelope for you to send me your RAM, and when I'm done benchmarking, do the same thing again to get your RAM back. I'd just ship snail mail to minimize costs. I just don't want to spend $50-$60 on RAM when I can spend less than $10 on shipping.

I live in USA so you would have to be as well. I can benchmark and have it shipped back to you within a few days of receiving it.

 

You may as well get a 4GB 800MHz module. Make sure it matches the timings shown in CPU-Z. The speed rarely makes a difference but matched SO-DIMMs perform better overall and 2GB extra RAM helps with multitasking and certain games.

I've probably charged my standard six-cell battery significantly at least sixty times over three-four months and my wear level estimate is 3% in HWInfo64. Could a few of you guys say something about your batteries? I'm thinking to get one more but would like to hear from someone who's had their laptop for 6-8 months and used it off the wall a lot. The gap in CPU performance is such that battery life online resembles my netbook (when it was new) even with bigger screen/mem/cpu and smaller battery. Of course for just typing it's more like 7+ vs ~12 or so. Battery while gaming on iGPU actually beats my netbook.

 

If we are pooling in on a custom bios for the future , I would totally be down to throwing some money around. Main features I would look for (And I'm sure you all feel the same)

1) Trinity Support
2) GPU voltage adjustment
3) Better Fan Control
4) Direct hard-switching between dGPU and iGPU (Like completely disable one or the other, and maybe a hotkey toggle)
5) Memory timings/frequency adjustment
6) Perhaps CPU overclocking (I am happy with Fusion Tweaker, but BIOS is a lot less risky and has a lot more options, usually)

Not really too much to ask considering I don't care about all that other BIOS crap. Just those 6 functions and a boot priority is good enough for me LOL

 

Add whitelist removal and that's pretty much what I want too. Though memory OCing probably isn't necessary as there will probably be little to no benefit from it.

 

Any widespread issues with the DV6z? And for that matter, any problems using the separate, somewhat better GPU as the GPU?

I wrecked the keyboard on my main notebook, and my old one is still a bit crashy, so because it's cheap-ish and seems pretty well configured, I figured maybe I'd give AMD a shot here!

EDIT: Oh, and no problems getting AMD's unmodified video drivers installed, right? I've had no problems on my 'c' series CPU, but have heard of issues with Intel + AMD GPU.

 

1) If there's a problem you will most often know by day 2 if you test hard enough. OpenGL and OpenCL is locked to iGPU for some reason, has not bothered me much. dGPU is more like 60-100% faster than iGPU, but uses twice as much battery when playing games. It looks prettier when you have unlimited power but Battlefield and Starcraft and Skyrim are possible using iGPU on battery, much more flexible than dv6t on that front. ("t" has awful graphics with mediocre battery or good graphics with awful battery, "z" has mediocre graphics with great battery or good graphics with mediocre battery)

2) If the CPU raw power is most important or super-fast youtube quality video coding is important, Intel i-7s are better. For gaming and flexibility AMD is a good deal. It is not hard to adjust speed and voltages for better performance and battery.

3) The "t" series had a severe Intel+AMD issue that's since been patched, but drivers come slowly from Intel. The "z" series is AMD+AMD so the OpenCL issue is embarrassing; but you can use any new Catalyst version or Performance driver. Some people have upgrade problems and some don't, but uninstalling Catalyst and running a system cleaner usually fixes any problem with installing the new version.

I am happy with my $500 6135dx, and would have also been happy with an $700-800 laptop that had 1080p and 9-cell battery etc. A solid buy either way.


ERG. I am feeling conflicted. Just realized I can build a $200 PC using A8-3800. That's cheap like Xbox. In fact I could probably do it with $150 or less...IF there is a budget board with IDE. I absolutely do not need one, but you can inspire endless rage in other people by fragging them with a Yugo-budget desktop.

 

0

ERG. I am feeling conflicted. Just realized I can build a $200 PC using A8-3800. That's cheap like Xbox. In fact I could probably do it with $150 or less...IF there is a budget board with IDE. I absolutely do not need one, but you can inspire endless rage in other people by fragging them with a Yugo-budget desktop. [/QUOTE]

There is in fact, a substantial increase in performance with an increase in ram speed, however, in the laptops, i have yet to find fast 1600 ram with cl7 or 8.
You will see squat increase with 1600 cl11.

In a desktop tho, IF you make sure to get a mboard that supports overclockiing, the increase in speeds available thru faster ram are borderline huge, as not only do the desktop mem controllers enable higher than 1600, you can also find reasonable mem modules with the faster CL's. Throw in a well matched dedicated gpu, and you will achieve astonishing gaming performance in a 250.00 or so desktop. Clearly the current 'bang for buck' champ out there.

seer

 

I had 1600mhz CL9 and that barely did anything. 1600mhz CL11 literally has 2% more latency than 1333mhz CL9 so they are on even ground when testing for the effects of extra bandwidth.

What's the point? You would get better performance out of your current laptop.

 

I didn't think the iGPU had enough ROPs or raw clock speed to benefit...whereas desktop barely does...

 

Thanks! Yeah, I'm coming from a Sandy Bridge, so I hope it doesn't feel TOO Much worse with a 2GHz A series quad. This thing well configured is like half the price, and I don't really feel like spending as much money again, which this SHOULD be fine for me for quite a while.

The Intel CPU + AMD GPU issue has me skipping those systems, since as I understand it you can't install AMD's normal drivers.

Sounds lame there are any issues at all with AMD + AMD with choosing which GPU to use...but at least at worst a 400 core 444MHz integrated GPU is far from a joke! Hmm...I'll probably be paranoid about whether it's really using the better GPU, but for only $75 it's a no brainer to buy it for me!

 

R3d: This, as I said...it is not a matter of need. It is a matter of pride and winning at Limbo. :/ A beige tin case with a 1/2lb Sunbeam PSU, battered IBM keyboard with PS/1 to PS/2 AND PS/2 to USB adapter. Their blood will be boiling before I even turn it on.

Wolfpup: Just be sure to have a valid coupon code. Since HP continually rains down 20-30% or $200-400 discounts, it would only make sense to take advantage of this. The AMD version still averages close to $200 cheaper from what I saw early in this thread, but maybe things have changed.

Does anyone know if there's a compatible caddy that will hold a slim 3.5" HDD?

 

By slim 3.5" HDD do you mean 9.5mm? Check my guide under hardware and someone suggested a caddy that worked for them.

 

I'm trying to set my P-states. Currently I have the states set from P6=800Mhz/0.7625V to P1=2100MHz/1.1V and I've able to run Prime95 successfully for hours on those states.

P6, however, is showing signs of what I believe is throttling. I started at 2300Mhz and now 2250/1.1625 and see one or more core's clock speeds drop. As I write this temps are 73-74C with HP Coolsense on Coolest. Changing Coolsense to Performance raises the temps to 77C.

This is on a dv6z-6b00 A8-3530MX

Where do I go from here?

 

I have seen desktop LLano guys get nearly 25 percent increase in benchmark performance by going to faster ram with low CL's. I seem to recall reading and remarking in this thread about numerous overclocking/test sites that achieved the same thing. I *will* tell you that the upcoming trin chips show even better reaction to fast ram and accordingly, amd has kicked the acceptable ram speeds up to over 2000, 2100 if I remember correctly. Of course, this presumes overclocking.

Lastly, the abilities of the whole llano/*fusion* type chips continues to surprise me. If you recall I had detailed the acquisition for "peanuts" (low 200.00 range) of a Lenovo B575 using the E-450 chip. I just got thru a multi hour session of Skyrim with all settings on medium and res at 1368x768 and I have to tell you...no problems at all, looked very good, and no discernible command lag. amazing..
coupled with its ability to play wow at the same rez with vis distance on ultra, while never falling below 27fps, and I am frankly, astonished. No problems raiding, nothing AND, the highest I've seen the temps is 59C on the apu, and 39C on the mboard sensor....jeez.

Here's the kicker, the new trin for ultrathins will run within the same power envelope as the 450..bout 18 to 20 watts...with multiples of its performance level.. laptop computing on the cheap is about to get really really satisfying UNFORTUNATELY...release of the trin lappies is being moved back for some as yet unexplained (to me anyway) reason. Being told now that we *might* see some appear in april. sigh....

seer

 

LOL! Not going to happen...if I understand correctly, you want to fit a slim but full length/width 3.5" hard drive into the optical drive slot?

 

I'm hoping he meant 2.5" and not 3.5". That's what I meant to say, but stated 3.5" in my post anyhow... oops.

If it's truly a 3.5" no way, it requires 12v. 2.5" runs off 5v.

 

Whaaaaaat?!? I mean honestly I'd be AMAZED with an A series CPU running Skyrim fine...I guess they do, but that's still amazing to me! But an e series?

I have a little Acer with a c50, which is the same as the e450, except 1ghz instead of 1650 on the CPU, and something like 270Mhz instead of 400-500ish on the GPU.

For the heck of it, I launched Duke Nukem Forever at a medium resolution, and...well, it was like 7fps. Not playable, BUT it rendered perfectly, which is more than you can say for Intel (guess they're better, but...)

If just boosting the clocks gets you to 3, 4 times that, that's amazing, and of course that's a stripped down Athlon 64 instead of a slightly beefed up Phenom 2, and 80 cores/4 rops I think versus 400 cores, 8? rops on the A-8 CPUs...if an e450 is really good enough for skyrim, then an A-8 should do anything...

 

Just so y'all know...

Even with no swap file, replacing my HDD with a SATA III SSD raised my Windows Experience Index both my drive AND memory scores considerably.

Those of you gaming off HDDs, maybe you could borrow someone's SSD and see what happens to your framerates?

Just sayin'...

 

I managed to get my E-350 to run Skyrim at 800x480 low detail at 20-22 fps indoors, 15-20 fps outdoors, lol. It was actually playable, not ideal or desirable, but amazing. I was able to overclock my CPU to 1800MHz from stock 1600MHz, but it would occasionally crash and at the sacrifice of battery life.

But in any case still pretty phenomenal.

 

CUSTOM BIOS UPDATE:

OK, kiddies...here's the latest and greatest, and it ain't good.

I've contacted three companies, and heard back from two. So far, the answer is "no," even for pay.

So, at this point, I would have to ask HT to inquire @ BIOSMODS (since HT has seemed to get the priority treatment) if they've got someone who will either tackle the job for money, or, at the very minimum, mod the existing modded bios to make it full operational.

I'll pay for it, and then we can sort it all out. (1/3 up front, 2/3 on delivery and approval by HT.)

What's in it for you, HT, besides the BIOS (to you, free for your efforts)? But...I'll buy that RAM you want too.

Honestly, I'm pretty ok with the way things are right now, but I'd like to see what this laptop is capable of, even if it only means living vicariously through you OC'ing gaming nuts. (At this point, it's doubtful that Trinity is going to be socket-compatible, but if, on the slightest chance it is, it would be nice if our laptops aren't OEM-crippled just because HP doesn't want people returning burned units during the warranty periods.)

<sigh> While most laptops aren't really meant for anything else but their intended use...this dv6-6135dx crowd is pretty much an enthusiast cult right now.

Pass the kool-aid, please.

 

I'll see what I can do at BIOSMODS. And no need for RAM or anything, I'll put in my fair share, thanks though.

 

Coolest will definitely throttle the CPU, it even says as much in the description. Performance runs hotter but at full speed. And that's why people are going on about fan control. They want fans to kick on earlier and harder so they can push the system farther. I have a folding plastic stand that drops my temperature a little and doesn't need any power, mostly it switches from lapdesk to typing stand though....temps approach 80 when gaming but then they stop and fall back a few degrees. No throttling, just fan had to catch up.

HT: AH, I see the shape is wrong and if the connecter only supplies 5v that dream is gone anyway. 2.5" platters have gotten bigger yet a fellow always hopes for the bigfest capacity achievable. Damn optical drives have gotten too small for such awesome replacements. Though I'd also appreciate if some company just manufactured an SSD card that happens to have an optical drive frame. But I guess that can be dealt with later. No caddy shack for me this week.

Wolfpup: It's pretty shocking how far you can go on the low end. With Celeron M and GMA915 I played Morrowind, Far Cry, Oblivion, Mafia, GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas and more. With Atom and GMA945 I even beat Thief 3. So yeah the new integrated graphics are REALLY scary when you consider how much faster they are.

 

Well you're better off running the SSD in your main bay and use the optical bay for a 2.5" HDD. You can get a 1TB 2.5" 9.5mm HDD now. Heck with the 12.7mm height optical you can even get a thicker 12.5mm hdd if you wanted and slide it in there. Maximum capacity so far for 2.5" though is 1TB at the moment.

 

did a clean install of the 12.2 preview drivers.. same score in 3dmark11, but now i think it solved my black screen problem with afterburner. cool!

 

At last... I was having trouble with 12.1a, let's then check this one... thanks for the tip

 

A series are far more than capable of this, above of 2.2 GHz the game runs pretty nice