HP dv7z- wish the upgrade GPU was the HD 3650 instead of the 3450!

I'm loving the new dv7 and the smaller dv5 and dv4. They look amazing and offer some new options (such as screen resolution choices on 15.4", Infinity display on all sizes) that make them even more appealing. The Pavilion notebooks are easily the most upscale-looking budget systems when lightly optioned and can compete well into the mid-range with systems costing up to $1,500 or so.

The 17" dv7z is most likely going to be my next purchase. I'm impressed with the AMD 'Puma' platform in general and especially surprised by the amazing performance of the integrated ATI Radeon Mobility HD 3200 graphics. For the first time in years, I will probably not upgrade the standard IGP because it really is that good! The performance gain from choosing the dedicated HD 3450 graphics card really doesn't seem worth the $100 price tag.

Several vendors are offering an HD 3470 instead of the 3450- a 3450 with higher clock speed that boosts performance. On Dell's new Studio line of notebooks, the Studio 15 has the HD 3450 as the only upgrade but the Studio 17 offers the much more substantial HD 3650. The increase over the 3450/3470 is quite substantial.

I'd love to see the dv7z offer the HD 3650, but I've learned the hard way that HP rarely modifies product specifications- standard or optional. I wonder if they didn't offer it because they thought it might steal some sales from the pricier dv7t?

 

Forget 3650, I wish it was 3670

 

This is nothing new, big name companies (Dell, HP, Sony. . .) have always viewed AMD as inferior, or have been paid, not to sell AMD products. HP did the same thing with the last series, except it was for the dv5z, the 15.4'' model.

For $100, you are getting about a 2x gain in performance, but that performance is still classified as "weak", because both cards are "entry-level cards".

You might see a change with the next series, when they just refresh the parts / models, and maybe add a video card. But, last time HP only increased the ram on the video cards.

 

All I know is, I got the dv5z with the 3450, and I'm lovin it.

this laptop is everything I could want, and good for midrange gaming.

I jus wish the battery life was longer

 

No sh*t, but is anyone offering the 3670 here yet? I only recognize it because it is listed on Notebookcheck.com's gpu list and kicks some serous butt to land where it does.

 

The Asus M51 ships with the Puma platform and the HD3650...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220348
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220349

 

Arima / Flextronics lists:

W840 DI 17", Penryn, "Dual ATI M88XY MXM Card (Crossfire)"
W353 DI 14.1", 1280x800, ATI HD3650+256/512MB DDR3
W653 DI15.4", 1280x800,Penryn+1066FSB, ATI HD3650+256/512MB DDR3

Hopefully some newer Arima/Flextronics stuff willmake it's way to Gateway.
I can tell you, an M-6864FX with an HD3650/70 or even 3850/70 (yeah, right!) would kick some butt!

Oh - and please DO something abotu that SCREEN! 15.4" with only 1280x800?
You kidding? Arima, you were doing 15.4" 1280x800 3 YEARS ago with the Athlon Mobiles! Come ON already! 1680x1050, or 1440x900, even!

Asus has:
The F8Va series, sample here at NewEgg, 14.1", Montevina, HD3650+1GB DDR3

The M51 AMD + HD3650 series, example here at NewEgg with a ZM-82

Toshiba has a model that can be configured at ToshibaDirect.com...
Hmm....can't seem to find it - NewEgg had two models: M305-S6844 and -S6845 I think.
Had an HD3650, as I recall...



T

 

The plot thickens....and even though the Asus models are only 15.4", they are the only 15.4" models that include a numeric keypad (a feaure I love in 17"). This may be love...and the 2 yr warranty plus one year accident coverage.....hello!

 

I am also totally loving my DV7z. I've bumped up the speed and size of my stock HDD, now using the old one as a backup image/external HDD storage. The only thing that would make this a true desktop replacement would be to have the ability to add on a graphics card. Far as I know though, there is no way to upgrade it aside from purchasing HP CTO or replacing the motherboard all together. No matter, the cost of that would far surpass upgrading my clunky desktop.

 

Have you heard or the ATI XGP (External Graphics Platform)- I don't know if it's available yet or what laptops it will be compatible with, but the dv7z is built on the PUMA platform, so it seems like a logical choice.....

I can't understand why HP isn't enabling and marketing ATI Hybrid CrossFireX for the dv5z and dv7z! It's one of the more interesting features of the PUMA platform, but there hasn't been any mention of it since the intro early this year. Toshiba is the first one to finally offer it on one model that they just introduced, the Satellite A304-S6886, if I'm not mistaken. Hybrid CrossFireX only functions with the ATI HD 3450 or 3470. It allows both the integrated ATI graphics processor (3100 in the Toshiba, HD 3200 in the HPs) to work in tandem with the 3400-series dedicated graphics card. The result is a performance gain of 50% over the 3400-series card alone. It's almost the same as the HD 3650.

 

I hadn't heard of it but decided to research external graphics again. I discovered that this ATI solution hasn't been released yet. In addition, other solutions have been debuted but not released to the public. One item I found on Tom's hardware showed the limitation of the bottleneck presented by the ExpressCard form factor. The examples were based upon a Dell laptop with an ATI chipset. They tried various cards on this product (called ViDock). At best, maybe lower mid-range graphics performance could be achieved. I'm interested in what ATI has to offer but haven't found any technical evaluations as of yet. I'd imagine that some of the other not-yet available to the public offerings will be low performance with higher costs. Time will tell I guess.

 

Yes, the current Expresscard 1.0 standard's bandwidth is too limited to support powerful external graphics. Maybe that is why the Asus XG Station (similar to ATI XGP but used Expresscard port instead of ATI's proprietary port) never really materialized.

I am hoping the upcoming Expresscard 2.0 standard can change that which promises 2 to 10x more bandwidth than the current standard. Plus unlike the ATI XGP which will only work with AMD Puma notebooks that have a proprietary port, an Expresscard 2.0 external graphics solution would work with all future notebooks that have the port.