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    Tips on a newly used Envy 14?

    Discussion in 'HP' started by Hooblagatos, May 4, 2011.

  1. Hooblagatos

    Hooblagatos Newbie

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    It was a toss up between this and an reasonably priced 1080p Envy 15. I guess what won me over was a price of below $1k, some kind of warranty, its own dedicated Linux distro, the chance of experiencing Radiance, look/potential feel and a backlit keyboard won me over. :eek:

    So I bit the bullet and bought a certified refurbished Envy 14 at pretty basic specs, 6gb RAM plus 500gb hd, with the notable exception of a Radiance display. The only real concern I have is how well an i5 480m would perform as apposed to a 560m? I intend to use this laptop basically for some light multitasking with web browsing, video viewing, word processing, Photoshop/GIMP, syncing notes, music and of course separately gaming plugged or not.

    The games I intend to play on this are Mass Effect 1/2, Civ V, Empire: TW, SC2 and Dawn of Discovery among other strategies. I looked at the gaming lounge but have been unable to find any solid results with anyone lower then a 520m. I would like to know what problems or usual flaws to look for and how I should put this notebook through its paces once it arrives for the best results before the RMA is up?
     
    Hooblagatos, May 4, 2011
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  2. zeth006

    zeth006 Traveler

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    I'm looking at the 3DMark06 benchmarks and noticing about a 7.8% difference in performance. I'm no CPU buff, but for those tasks, you really didn't lose much in the way of performance.

    If you want to erase concerns and have about $200-250 to burn, consider investing in a current generation 120gb SSD. My only warning is that it'll speed up most tasks by a decent amount, but the chipset's bugs prevent it from going at max speed. There are some tweaks you can apply but they tend to raise temps from my experience.

    I'm sure others here will provide better feedback.
     
    zeth006, May 4, 2011
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  3. Hooblagatos

    Hooblagatos Newbie

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    Do you have a link on those benchmarks or is it for registered users only? As any information is much valued. I did read how much of a difference solid state memory can make in a notebook's performance. But in the meantime I'll see how much it improves with ReadyBoost. I'm also wondering how long does it usually take while gaming for the temperatures to get noticeably high?
     
    Hooblagatos, May 4, 2011
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  4. zeth006

    zeth006 Traveler

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    zeth006, May 5, 2011
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