Pavillion zv5340

Hello everyone, I'm considering this model from Best Buy. It has an AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3400, 512 MB system memory, with NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go graphics card, with 64 MB dedicated memory.

Question: Is anyone aware of any performance issue with games, or running applcations such as MS Access 2003? NVIDIA seems to have a good reputation as a graphics card, superior to ATI? Is 64 MB memory sufficient?

Is the 64 bit processor make any difference, despite the fact that the Windows XP Home Edition is a 32 bit OS?

Any other comments would be appreciated!
Thanks

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by David1009

 

Thank you for your comments! I will be getting this model sometime this week. I'll report on how it goes. This will be my first laptop. I wanted to "unchain" myself from the desktop, which I had put together with an AMD processor. So, I'm a little skittish buying a pre-built computer, but I feel BestBuy has a good service plan and reputation.

 

Well, I have been using this for two weeks now, and overall, I am very impressed. I did have a couple of minor hiccups. One, I had Best Buy do a "tech check" and they said everything was fine. But, when I got home and booted up the laptop, they had left some kind of "system prep tool" application running. Every time I reboot, it would pop up, which was annoying. Second, I attempted to install Norton System Works 2005 (after uninstalling the older version, of course). The application did the installation ok, but when I try to run it, it refuses to execute the program. The program window wouldn't even open.

Well, I took the laptop back that night and had them remove the sys prep tool. Back home, I tried uninstalling and re-installing the NSW 2005, but still had the same problem. So, finally, what I ended up doing was to reformat the whole thing using the Installation CD that was enclosed. Now, every thing is perfect and I was able to install and run Norton without any further problems. The added benefit from all this is that I have extra space from not having all those pre-loaded software I would have never used anyway.

 

First on behalf of our HP zv5000 owners out there, I would like to say congratulation on your purchase. I along with many in this forum find this model to be very solidly built and a great desktop replacement in term of quality vs price. While some features on the laptop may be outdated(mainly speaking the graphic card), the laptop should be more than enough to handle anything else you throw at it with ease. Once again good luck with the laptop and congrat on the purchase.

thietlong

 

Be sure that you go to HP support and download the latest updates. I also recently purchased a zv5340 with the attitude that I can return it if I don't like it or ... whatever. I am so HAPPY with this laptop, I just can't believe it. I have had no problems, updated everything --- including the BIOS ---and it works great.

Unfortunately, I let my husband use it for a day. What a mistake! I use this for serious work. He loaded on some games that he likes to play so that he could make the processor do some "work"Dungeon Seige Legends of Aranna" and "Call to Duty". I NEVER play games but now he is after me to use my laptop when I am not working on it. Hmmmm...........Lousy graphics card???? Beats me.

 

alekkh,

I have a zv5000z and was wondering what clock and memory settings you use for your graphics card.

Thanks in advance.

 

Here is a query for everyone: I have a newly purchased zv5340. I've been configuring it for my purposes and have developed a problem. I uninstalled the Norton Antivirus and installed the CA EZArmor Suite (anti-spam, firewall, antivirus). Now my machine crashes right after it boots up. Through Safe Mode I can restore to the last saved. Obviously a conflict here - anyone care to offer a suggestion? I figure I'll probably have to just use another AV program. Another thing: My 5340 came with stickers noting that the processor is an Athlon 64 3400+ Processor. In looking at system specs it notes that the processor is running as 2200 ..... is this a discrepancy? You may e-mail your comments to me, I may see them quicker that way. Thanks for your input.

 

My guess is that the version of CA EZArmor you have is incompatible with WinXP SP2. See if CA has a newer version. It's also possible that the program is tripping your Athlon 64's Enhanced Virus Protection feature with a buffer overflow bug, but most likely it fails on all SP2 systems. Most AV programs required updates for SP2.

AMD's rating system maps a given AMD processor to an equivalent Intel P4. Since the P4 is a grossly inefficient CPU, a 2.2GHz Athlon 64 is roughly equivalent to a 3.4GHz P4. Intel rigged the P4 for high clock speed at the expense of all else (it performs slower clock-to-clock than the P3) in order to fool newbies into thinking they had the "fastest" CPU, at which point I stopped buying Intel chips. Note that AMD's rating scheme refers to 32-bit code, on 64-bit code (that P4's can't run) you'll get a substantial boost.

 

Thanks for the response, Brian. I re-installed Norton AV and it's running fine. Guess I'll just have to acclimate to Norton. I could probably figure out how to get the EZ AV to run if I had the time to do it. It's a brand new download from the CA website ... I'm sure it's configured to run with SP2. I have SP2 on my desktop and the EZ AV runs fine there. I'm not going to worry about it. You answered my other question fine.