Hp envy 14 Sandy Bridge prediction

Technological innovations happen at an exponential rate. It wasn't too long ago I was fretting about not having the recommended 64gb of RAM for running D2 at smooth speeds.

However...I have one worry that might slow down my predictions. Anyone notice that notebook innovation has been slow lately? I see GPS systems, near field chips, and all sorts of other neat features becoming standardized on smartphones.

But on notebooks? It's pretty much everything we've seen for many years. Switchable graphics isn't anything new. Screen technology and form factor have improved, yes. But anything else new? Nope. Intel's got a nasty chokehold in that field and they continue to gain ground on AMD. All this does is slow down the rate at which we see any awesome bells/whistles appear in notebooks. I mean come on. Thunderbolt? Really? Is that really so ground-breaking? We seriously need to see more competition in the CPU market. Any counterarguments against this concerning the benefits of uniformity of CPU lines are warranted, but the uniformity isn't worth it if it's costing consumers like you and me potential benefits.


All the while, I'm seeing mobile processors become more and more powerful every year. Just one year ago, 1ghz processor/GPU packages were already the rage. Now we're seeing dual-core mobile processors becoming standardized in 2011 and quad-core mobile processors being released by the likes of Qualcomm. As I mentioned, we may one day be getting rid of our credit cards and paying for our groceries using our smartphones instead. This is why I really hope/pray Intel doesn't gain a similar chokehold in the mobile processor market. If they do, I'm gonna to get really pissed. Here's to hoping Samsung/Nvidia/Texas Instruments/Qualcomm and Apple remain on top of things in terms of keeping Intel from getting too big in the mobile processor market.

Oh, and as a Samsung fan, go Eyxnos chip!

 

You mean something like this?

Intel shells out $1.25 billion to settle all AMD litigation -- Engadget

Intel have so many lawsuits for slowing down the market and eliminating the competition! (Somehow reminds me of AT&T)

I hope Nvidia, on the other hand, doesn't turn into Intel with their power in the mobile processors like Tegra, Tegra 2.

More competition = better for consumer

 

I hope so too. We like Nvidia because they're the underdog. But I don't trust a corporation to remain "good" in our eyes. I guess it does help somewhat that Apple and Samsung are making chips only for their own phones and maintaining control over their own hardware.

I'd like to see a little more CPU fragmentation in the notebook market. I'm glad that the tablet/phone market is democratizing the CPU market, but I'm still an "notebook fanboy."

 

Nvidia was and still is the second largest gpu maker in the world, only behind intel. I dont get why you think they are the underdog in any way.

 

Speaking of nVidia, if the graphics card technology has been advancing at a pace anywhere close to that of Intel's, we'd be seeing a midrange ATI 6550m flying through Crysis 2 with 60fps on high details. Instead we have AMD AND nVidia half assing their graphics card refreshes every year with just nominal speed bumps and name changes. The performance per watt ratio has remained pretty stagnant since the the days of G92 architecture. Instead of making breakthroughs at efficiency and power, top mobile chips of today (GTX 485, 100W) is only about twice as fast as the top chip of 2007 (8800GTX, 65W) while consuming 50% more power! Thats over 4 years of progress that resulted only in a 50% improvement in efficiency. Now that's a travesty.

Intel CPUs has advanced power gating that sips power at the rate of only a couple of watts at idle, while the nVidia chips consumes 10W minimum at idle...

I can go on and on about the graphics card performance discrepancies compared with CPU. The point is that CPU progress is probably the last thing we need to worry about these days.

 

Is it possible to fit an 6830m to an 14" Envy? That would be great.

And yes, the graphics card technology growth rate has been very disapointing. I was hoping we can get a whole new level - not just a renamed, slightly better - of graphics performance. But I guess that won't come soon huh.

Another thing needed is definitely the 'Radiance'esque display on the new envy as well as better trackpad with good 'multitouch' because it has been the main complaint with HP Envy.

A redesign - unibody possibly? - of the model would also be great great upgrade. Doubt that will happen though as HP doesn't really do that much. Maybe next year where MBP is rumored to be doing a redesign and Envy will do one as well to compete with it.

 

Given that the 17in Envy has problem handling heat from the underclocked and undervolted 5850, I doubt the Envy 14 can dissipate enough heat for the 6830. A 6770 might a more feasible choice and it would shut up apple fanbois with their $2200 MBP with a 6750 pretty fast.

The trackpad definitely has potential to be very usable. I'm using reil's tweaked driver right now. Two finger scroll is smooth as butter if you fiddle with the settings a bit. Also the new synaptics clickpad on the Samsung 9 series got a lot of praise, so HP might use those.

High quality display is a must. Normal consumers who cant tell between a Sandy Bridge and Arrandale might not care about contrast ratios or color gamut. But prosumers like us folks on the forum definitely will, who also make up a significant portion of prospective buyers of HP's "premium" line.

I'd be down for a redesign. 14.5in is kinda odd, which is prob why they can't find any suppliers for the radiance screen.
Make it a sexy and slim, 4.5lb, 14in screen, 0.8in thin chasis w/o optical bay would be my wet dream. I'd jump on that even if it cost $1500.
Unibody design is overrated, it makes dissembly and upgrades a pain in the butthole.

 

Yeah no O/D if it can reduce the weight and height of the laptop would be sweet. HP Envy 14 would be the sweetest portable, high performing, premium laptop on the market. Especially with Sony with its SA line which shows some potential in terms of specs (although the design is just blah!)

And probably most important, hopefully HP also update the beats edition together with the regular line. I'm kinda really into the whole black-red theme. And I wouldn't mind paying over $1500 as well for that kind of laptop as well.

 

They have always been sandwiched. They've always had to keep an eye out for AMD/ATI. And they over a year ago got kicked out by Intel from the integrated chipset market. Stupid Intel and their x86 licensing.

Now that Tegra is proving a hot seller, Nvidia has (time and again) proven they can and will survive.

 

I'm down too. Sign me up

 

The 14.5 was probably a compromise, actually the entire envy 14 was a compromise, the envy 15 was a wet dream.

The need for a ODD let it to have a lesser gpu.
The cooling wont handle well the TDP of 45w of the quads.
The W/h of the battery was not that great (not that envy 15 or 17 had great batteries)
the keyboard was very poor, with little travel, and the mushy feeling arrgghhh!


So the main selling point was the design, and the metal construction, basically the muse concept from hp

I wouldnt bet that the new envy is going to come without an ODD.
I would hope for the 6770m, but I dont think that this is going to be possible, and do please let me be very wrong on this one!

So errr.... how does that make them any kind of underdog? Just because you have competition that dont make you a lesser company, and again I have to remind you that they still are/were the 2nd largest gpu manufacturer for quite some time.

the mobility thing is just a fair recognition from the crazy korean, that the mobiles lack power, and we can provide the power with a good SoC and the license fees for the ARM arent heavy in any way.

Another recognition is the fermi arch, they have been developing that thing for sometime for supercomputing, and to carve the path for a gpu only pc, they now need to find someone that is actually crazy enough to make the low level coding that is necessary for that and release the sdk for the programs, which inevitably is easier to do when you have already all that thing, which leads us again to the ARM.

They are a freaking large company, just because they knew that they were going to be kicked out of the chipset (and their chipsets were terrible anyway)

 

Just the way I view it. You gotta admit they've always been in an adverse position. I recall in 2008 when their share prices were taking hits left and right. Quality issues on 8-series mobile cards on the left, and on the right you had questions about their ability to remain relevant. 2009 was when Nvidia put a huge bet in Tegra, which has paid off.

 

You are confusing launch dates, with the actual strategy. The fermi cards where developed for quite a while and that serves as well for the socs.

the last chipset that they developed was for the mb/p and that was easy since the santa rosa was out there for also quite a while.

they knew that they were going to get kicked out of the chipset business, which again wasnt even profitable for them, there were visible changes in the arch for their license to be revoked, and this was visible in the court settlement, everybody knew.

them I guess that AMD is just the captalist of the month.

anyway lets end this because we are into the of off topic

 

Agreed. Moving along!

 

Seriously does anybody know if the 6770 and an optical drive will both fit in the new envy 14? Because if this isn't possible I'll start looking at the dv6se more seriously. also: if i ordered the envy with an i7 instead of an i5, what effect would this have on battery life?

 

Well we're hoping that they don't fit an optical drive, we can really use the extra space for another cooling fan.
For the sandy bridge architecture, i5 and i7 will have similar idling power consumption, so battery life would be good either way. If you're talking about the current Envy with arrandale core i7/i5, the i7 consumes way more energy than the i5.
Don't compromise yourself with a DV6. Regular consumer line will always be just that: regular. The build quality of the Envy line will be well worth the couple hundred dollar of premium.

 

we dont know anything, we dont even know if they are going to release the envy 14 or introduce some new model

 

I'd like to know that myself. HP's gone awfully quiet lately.

 

You might want to PM HP Nate here on NBR and see if he knows when and if the Envy 14 will get a SB refresh.

KJ

 

There's a nice $300 coupon for the envy 14 right now, think I should just go ahead and buy a $1000 i7 envy, or do you guys think the update will be worth the wait?

 

That's up to you. Know one knows whether an sb envy will appear tomorrow, 4 months from now or be totally discontinued. The question is how long are you willing to wait for a better computer with a much higher price tag (considering the $300 coupon) and does price matter? I've got 2 envy's check out my sig

 

I'm a bit worried about the reliability of a HP laptop, I hear awful things about HP, which is concerning since I am in Canada (would I be able to transfer the Warranty?)

 

I've had 4 envys in all. (2 I sent back to get a different config) not one has had a single problem or defect. Remember, happy people have less of a reason to get on a forum and talk about their experience. I love the quality of my envys.
As for the warranty I would call hp and find out exactly what it is.

 

My verdict is I'm not going to upgrade. At least not for another 2 years. I bought my original Envy 14 for $500 after Bing cashbacks and leeching from HP for their delays. I can't justify the price premium I'll have to pay for what I consider to be a nominal upgrade and no chance of HP doing anything revolutionary in terms of introducing 3 and 4 finger touchpad swipes.

 

I honestly think it's not worth waiting for an SB upgrade. Unless you do a lot of encoding or editing you're really not going to see that much a difference with all but the i7 model SB's. The new i7's have IG so that saves on battery life a lot. For most daily stuff like typing/watching movies/internet the current generation cpu's are more then adequate. You're better off getting a nice deal on a current envy and putting the cash you saved into a nice SSD because that's where you'll see the most performance gains. This all depends on HP not significantly altering the basic envy design or offering a high res display.

 

Yep. Sandy Bridge was "meh" for me. Yeah, I saw the performance and power consumption improvements but for my uses, it didn't present anything mind-blowing.

Besides, I don't plan to have a whole lot of time to do any gaming. I'm going to be really farkin bored this summer as I won't have people to hang out with more than once a week. I guess I could take up light MMO'ing, but then again, it's pointless unless you're playing hours upon hours daily. I think I might find more enjoyment taking up a new hobby and maybe go back into doing some reading at my city's Borders while it's still open.

 

Yep true. The performance upgrade that of the SB is not that wow.

What I'm considering is the possibility of HP releasing a new design or improvement on current low-points like multitouch (or that can be solved from software?)

 

My only gripe with my envy is the low-clocked GPU.

 

Ya thats the main reason I'm holding out. The predicted 6770 would do be able to play games at high settings much better than the current 5660.

 

yeah but sb includes sata 6 and usually includes usb 3.0

 

is there an actual coupon code or are people just taking into account that it's at 899 now? and if there is a coupon code, may i know what it is?

 

Hey ggamannom,

If you're looking to get the envy 14 the $300 off coupon is NB6392

The envy is a great computer, but you might want to wait for the sandy bridge update, hopefully they'll update the trackpad as well.

onelove23

 

Have you guys tried out the alternate driver yet?

 

I am almost certain that will not happen. One of the things that bothered people and turned them off from the original envy was the fact that it had no optical drive. It is not rational, people rarely use discs, but they like the idea of having the option to use discs if needed.

At best, there may be a modular solution that allows you to configure the envy with or without a drive. Not likely as it is not a business class and is shooting for a more self contained consumer package.

 

A real shame it is. The average person doesn't even use optical drives all that much anymore.

 

I guess we just have to accept the sad truth that laptop makers will never cater to rational prosumers like us....

 

Am I the only one who is hoping the Envy 14 comes with a Llano APU?

I mean a 14' Gaming laptop with Crossfire 6770 gpu and Llano APU quad core running around 2.0 ghz would be sweet.

Also I completly agree that they should cut the disk drive. Add an option for a usb dvd drive or something for cheap just for the once in a blue moon use...

Other then those few things I would love to see a much better touchpad and radiance screen.

 

couldnt we just take out the optical drive and hook up a mini fan to the powersource and let air flow through the optical disc slot?


there you go 3 fans

 

I guess if you splice it into the fan that is constantly running you'll be able to make it work. Also it will match the native fan speed too unless there's some kind of proprietary IC on the fan that talks with the motherboard.

 

I don't think it will be the Envy 14 but I hope someone will do it.

 

I dont think that any of those changes would be made.

AMD is still seen as a second rate company, due to the k7 heat problems, and those were good chips, more powerful than the pentium III.

there wont be a crossfire middle range gpu.

they wont ditch the ODD, they have added again, even here the ODD is still valued.

 

Anyone have any more info or try contacting support again for the release date?

 

Nop, seems like HP don't give a f*** about informing customers, they just release whatever they want, whenever they want (reminds me of Apple except Apple actually release products before everyone got mad) ... Let's hope we see Sandy Bridge on HP envy before Ivy Bridge shows up ...

 

Yeah it's the only positive thing about Apple. Their tendency to ship newly announced products just days after announcement. Either they are very good at coordinating a launch, or they just wait much longer than others with making the announcements.

I actually wish HP would do the same, and in the case of Envy14, it's taking forever, so let's hope there won't be another forever once they announce something.

Oh, and just to add, I'd take an Envy over a MacBook any day. Even if they were in the same pricerange.

 

Apple also has no competition to market. They are the only manufacturer of their products; unlike HP who needs to worry about other pc manufacturers beating them to the public scene. If you are a Mac-fan, you were going to wait for Apple to release SB versions of their laptops whether Dell or HP (or whoever) shipped a SB laptop first. However, if you are a pc-fan, you will probably not wait (long) for HP to ship their SB laptops if other vendors have already started. Only a select few of us were waiting for the Envy line refreshes... I'm sure HP sells more Pavillions than Envy's.

 

Yes but why update every line of laptops (Pavillions,ProBook, EliteBook ...) except HP envys ?? it's like they don't care anymore about this line of product which is a shame since HP Envys are the only pcs on the market able to compete against MacBook Pro

 

Who knows why HP choose what it did. Since the Envy 17's did get refreshed, maybe the 14's make up so little sales volume to warrant an immediate refresh. The priority queue is probably held up by equipment shortages and business direction. Sure the Envy competes with Mac's on looks, but they are still very different animals.

Besides, you can still get very good performance and battery life out of an i5 Envy 14 with switchable graphics. You didn't have that option on the Envy 17 prior to the refresh.

 

I am pretty sure the Envy 14 makes up a larger sales volume than the Envy 17. The main reason I am waiting for the Envy 14 refresh is the new suspected 6750 GPU. I don't really mind the processor, the original i5-580 is more than capable of handling my needs. Also, the new Coolsense technology for the new dmt4 seems promising, which I am pretty sure they will be implementing into the Envy 14. My original Envy 14 heated up like a mofoe during hardcore gaming.

 

Considering the delays due to product constraint, maybe HP decided to wait on a refresh until they can catch up with the backorder. They probably don't want to put any additional strain on their limited supplies and deal with more irate customers for whom they are having to offer discounts.

 

But don't you think its funny how there are $300 discounts and £150 for you old laptop when buying a Envy 14... Its like they are trying to get rid of all the stock before they (hopefully) announce the refresh surely :S