NOW AVAILABLE: ENVY 15-32XX Intel Ivy Bridge (AMD 7750M)

I read that the Audio Driver ( IDT High-Definition (HD) Audio Driver HP ENVY 17-3277nr Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)) contains the beats audio software, so it should work.

 

Thanks for your response. This makes me very glad to hear because I've never performed a clean install on a laptop before. I always feel like I'm going to mess something up and brick my laptop.

 

Anyone's laptop ship yet? I did order until the 6th and I was wondering if anyone is getting their laptop shipped out early.

 

i ordered mine on monday? or was it sunday, the day it came out and its still in production estimated ship time is june 12

 

I think you got the earliest ship time. I ordered mine on Monday and my ship date is June 13th.

 

I believe you got it on Sunday (same as me). For Sunday people, our ship date was June 12. Hopefully with 2-day shipping it should be here before next weekend.

 

Or hp will be hp and we will get our shipments delayed twice lol

Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk 2

 

Man, don't even say that. It's going to be a long weekend next week if it gets delayed and/or the 2 day shipping doesn't get here by Friday.

 

For those of you looking to get a SSD and install it yourself, here is a pretty good deal on a 240gb drive

Sandisk Extreme III SSD & Memory Sale: 240GB SSD $180, 32GB 45MB/s SDHC Memory $45, 32GB 30MB/s microSDHC Memory $28, 64GB 30MB/s microSDXC Memory $60 & More + Free shipping - Amazon.com Deals, Coupons and Promos

Per Sorid on SD Forum:

While you may not notice it in everyday use, this drive is faster than the Crucial m4. The Sandisk is the so-called "Tier 1" with Toggle NAND:

http://www.tomshardware.com/revie...194-6.html

The Crucial's been around longer and has a strong track record (except for OS X usage). This drive, not as long but so far it's been great (some people have sworn off Sandforce controllers and this one has one, but Sandisk seems to have the solid firmware in it). Personally, I think this drive at $180 kills the m4 at $180 as far as value goes.

The Samsung has been around longer than the Sandisk, shorter than the m4, and experiences have it as very stable. Samsung makes its own NAND and controller. Its overall performance is similar to the Sandisk -- you probably wouldn't notice an advantage unless you transcode a lot of video on it (Samsung is slower at some tasks, but very fast with incompressible data). With yesterday's 830 benchmark at $200 minus $10 w/Visa or $12 with Mr. Rebates, I think it's a a matter or preference.

 

Wow, had never heard of minimal restore. It sounds like a great idea!

One questions, when you say drivers, does that means it install all the drivers for the extra goodies, like the proximity sensor, blutooth, hybrid hardrive etc.

 

Yes. Drivers for all the stock components are installed. So once it's done, you're ready to go.

 

Will this keep programs such as Photoshop or will it get wiped out as well? If so how would I keep Photoshop while doing the minimal install?

TIA

 

In for one sandisk, thanks! Haha hp wanted to charge me $390 for this.

 

Sweeet!!
This is probably the very first thing I'll do when I turn it on. I don't care for Norton, Photoshop or any other programs they pre-install.
Can't wait!!

 

I'll check my DV7T when I get home but I'm pretty sure you lose the Adobe programs. It's minimal, so you lose everything that's not standard with Windows.

 

Woohoo! I'm happy as long as I helped one person

 

Make it two people....

 

I think I'm going to jump on the SSD wagon as well. Thanks for the deal, but I was wondering, how much have these come down in the past 6 months? What's the general trend look like? I was hoping to hold out for at least a 512GB so that I don't feel the need to drop the optical drive. 240GB is right at the boundary of what I would need in a system so I would probably want to swap out the optical drive and keep the 750GB HDD. Is it reasonable to expect to find a 512GB for ~$300(or less) by the end of the year?

Thanks!

P.S. To those going for the deal you mentioned, if you're willing to go through a small hassle, you can follow the directions here: ( SanDisk Extreme SSD 120gb at $74.99 and 240gb at $149.99 on Staples AC PM to Amazon - Slickdeals.net) to get it for ~$149.99 from staples. You do have to buy a $25 off $100 staples coupon from a place like e-junkie though and get them to PM the Amazon deal. For me, tax spoils that deal so I'm not going to go through that hassel, but I'd thought I'd let you guys who have low sales tax rates and are willing to pursue a deal know.

 

How easy is it to do a clean install with these laptops? It was a nightmare with Sony.

Anyone got any tips/advice?

 

Anybody know if the HDD/SSD interface is Sata 1,2 or 3? I intend to upgrade to an SSD when I get my laptop but if the interface doesnt support the speeds, no real point in getting the fastest possible SSD drive.

 

All of the ENVYs should use a SATA III interface. But the motherboard will most likely also have SATA II connections built in. If you do decide to change your hard drive, make sure to put it on the SATA III connector. It will fit on the 2, but your rates won't be as good. Just a friendly tip.

Also, for anyone looking for an SSD recommendation, I don't think there's a better drive on the market for the money than this:
Newegg.com - Corsair Force Series GT CSSD-F240GBGT-BK 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

If you can get away with only a 240GB boot drive, that's an amazing SSD. Much higher performance than any other MLC SSD I've seen. Even those Samsung SSDs. I don't know the quality of the SandForce controllers, but the reviews are great.

Also, open question to the forum: I'm probably going to install that SSD in place of the optical drive. I don't really use CDs much anyway. Anyone know if the optical drive can be taken out and put in a USB caddy to be made external? If not, no problem. I can make ISOs of everything on my old VAIO.

Also, I ordered my ENVY 15 on the 6th, and its estimated ship date is the 15th. It's in production right now.

 

Do you happen to have a picture of the difference between the two? I would hate to swap my SSD and see Sata 2 speeds, only to have to do it again! Also, if you look at my post a page or two ago, Amazon/Staples currently has a 240GB SanDisk SSD for $179. From what I've read on Tom's Hardware, it outperforms the samsungs/crucial M4s, and shows similar read speeds to the corsair you shared with 550mb/s. $70 will go a long way for me, even if the Corsair is slightly faster.

 

ssds are dropping in price rapidly, just 4 months ago, they were abve 1$/gb, i think its down to .8$/gb? idk there was a good 512 ssd for $400 just the other week. I think ima wait till back to school times hopefully by then its like .6-.7$/gb . btw guys im thinking about the new dell xps, its a slimmer machine with not htat much performance lsot

 

Hello all, like Krugoh mentioned earlier I was wondering if the Ivy Bridge i5 3210 vs i7 3610 will run cooler? Also, will I take a hit on gaming because of going with the i5? Thanks all.

 

The i7 will be slightly warmer but not by much. And no your processor doesn't mean much for gaming, the i5 should be sufficient for more games. It's all about your GPU.

 

They actually are identical as far as the plugs and cables look. However, the cables and motherboard port should be clearly marked which type they are. It'll be obvious. The reason I said not to mix them up is because they are physically identical, so it's easy to mix up if you aren't being careful.

 

This may see like a stupid question but would it be better to match up the size of the memory sticks for dual channel if it even takes advantage of that? I ordered the 6gb version and was planning on upgrading the memory but not sure what would be a good amount of memory. I already ordered the sandisk ssd. So trying to find a sweetspot for memory size. I have 16gb on my desktop i7 but never come anywhere near using that much memory. Should i look for ddr3 sodimm 1600 in any particular brand or just go with corsair, kingston, etc.

 

Hi everyone,

I'm going to buy the Envy 15 and was wondering whether I really needed the i7-3610QM. I will be gaming (Skyrim, max payne etc.) and was thinking of going for the dual core i5 instead and using the saved money on the Hybrid Hard Drive. Will the i5 be sufficient for most games and not be a bottleneck? Also, will the Hybrid Hard Drive give a noticeable speed boost?

Thanks for any answers.

 

My Envy 15-32xx has shipped

 

Nice, it got shipped early. What was your estimated ship date?

 

The 13th June.

 

Mine's shipped as well! =D
My estimated ship date was June 12th!

I'm kind of disappointed the tracking number isn't working yet though...

 

Gah! Mine hasn't and I'm also June 12. Hopefully it will at some point over the weekend

 

Anyone have a clean install guide for these laptops?

 

Well, my tracking number is active now! Estimated delivery on June 14th!

 

Curse you!!

 

Delivery on the 14th here as well.

 

da hell?!?!?! what did u guys order (specwise) that its shipped already

 

Mine's scheduled for the 13th

 

Come on peoples.

 

You don't need a guide. It's impossible to screw up. You can use a Windows disc (recommended) or the recovery discs that came with your laptop. If you go with the former option, just pop in the disc and restart, then boot from the disc. To do a full clean install, select the drive and format it. That erases all of the crap that HP puts on it. Then redownload all of the drivers (trackpad, beats knob, proximity sensor, etc.) from HP's website. (Just google "drivers HP ENVY 15, you'll find it.) That will ensure that your hardware all works properly. And that's it. All you need to do. Don't worry, you can't mess it up.

 

If you ordered a machine with 6GB it will ship with a 4GB and a 2 GB stick as the machine only has two slots. You could try it like it is as may be 6GB is enough for you. You could buy a 4GB and replace the 2 GB stick for a total of 8GB, or buy a 8GB keep the 4GB for a total of 12GB. You get the idea here I'm sure. Also Corsair Vengeance at Amazon will work and is about the cheapest vendor presently.

 

The laptop should also come with a driver disk. You should be able to pick and choose which drivers to download.

 

Would a 4gb 1333MHz module work with an 8gb 1600Mhz module? I ordered the hp with 6gb 1333mhz ram, but want to get the corsair from amazon

 

Good point. It probably does come with a driver disk.

I didn't think the 15-32XX could come with a 1333Mhz option. I just looked it up, and they were all 1600. Do you have last year's envy or something? Anyway, I would certainly not recommend doing that. The motherboard's circuitry puts the same timing and voltage on both RAM slots. Basically, both of your RAM slots would have to run at the speed of your slowest RAM, because the motherboard doesn't handle two different speeds. So you could buy a second, faster module, but you wouldn't get a frequency increase. It would only run at 1333Mhz.

But more importantly, your motherboard assigns ONE voltage rating to ALL of your RAM. Which means, if the two modules are different voltages, the motherboard would put the rating of the lower speed RAM on both. This could mean under-rating the higher speed module (if it is, in fact, higher voltage) which could cause that RAM to underperform (or even malfunction). Even worse (if for some reason the slower RAM has a higher voltage), you could overrate your higher speed RAM and burn it out.

In short, I wouldn't recommend doing that. The above explanation is why.

In fact, I'm waiting to get my ENVY in before I buy another module, just so I can be 100% certain that I'm matching voltages properly. Modern RAM is probably all the same voltage, but I'm going to be safe. The RAM can probably vary .1V and not malfunction, but I'm playing it safe nonetheless.

 

For those curious, I'm shopping for RAM right now. I'm looking at this Corsair module:

Newegg.com - CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Laptop Memory Model CMSX8GX3M1A1600C10

It has two reviews--one good and one bad. The one bad came from a Mac user, so he probably didn't put it in correctly. I'll disregard his review. Otherwise, the other review had fantastic things to say about it.

That's an 8GB module, so I'll replace the 2GB one with this, granted they are the same timing and power rating. 10-10-10-27 is a fairly common timing for 1600 Mhz, as is a 1.5V rating. We'll see when the laptop comes in. If anyone gets it sooner and feels like cracking theirs open to see the RAM, feel free to post the link to the stock RAM HP uses here. I'd be interested for matching purposes.

EDIT: Actually, both reviews were from Mac users. I guess it's hit-or-miss with those guys. Or who knows, maybe that guy did actually get a flawed product.

 

anyone with this same config whose has already shipped??? (i ordered 6/3 btw)

 

Hmmm. It seems the only differences between ours was that I got the 3610QM, along with more RAM, and I didn't get WiDi support. Maybe the WiDi support is software based, and installing that is what is taking extra time?

 

Another person claiming 1333Mhz RAM. You guys must have ordered it before they took that down as an option. Right now, the only RAM option is 1600Mhz. I would recommend calling HP and telling them to upgrade you (assuming it's free). Who wouldn't want faster RAM?

 

i wouldnt mind but yeah idk haha im trying to chat with a person atm

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, idk why i try to attempt to communicate through sales reps... the moron just opened up my order listing and copy pasted
"You will be getting an • 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm) with your order"
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well i contacted tech support and they said i would be getting the 1333 mhz, i could "upgrade it to 1600" but that would have to go through sales and I would have to cancel the current order (cause mine is already in production) and place a new one... the price would also prolly go up. I decided not to do that because 8 gb should be fine for me right now, I plan on upgrading to 16/32 gb in the future so it would be pointless in me putting more in.

I did ask her about the screen. she said "its a new panel so it prolly wont have the same color issues" so then i asked for the model number and she like oh we dont got that we just got specs, so i asked for that and she read me "15.6-inch diagonal Radiance Full HD Infinity LED-backlit Display (1920 x 1080)" so again prolly more than likely the old panel, she said i could get the fix for it online from their website and they did have the 21 day return policy if i didnt like it.....

seriously hp, thats suppose to be tech support? LOL im wondering whether i should just return the warranty i got lol, i would prolly be better off troubleshooting my problems than handing it to the "techs"