dv6z-QE User Review (A8-3530mx/6755G2) with Undervolting and Overclocking Results

A lot of this is taken from my dv6-6135dx mini-review in the dv6 Llano thread. Just copying and pasting because I don't want to type everything again. This review will mostly be covering the performance and overclocking results for the A8-3530mx and 6755G2.

Specifications

• dark umber
• Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• AMD Quad-Core A8-3530MX Accelerated Processor (2.6GHz/1.9GHz, 4MB L2 Cache)
• 1GB GDDR5 Radeon(TM) HD Dual Graphics [HDMI, VGA]
• FREE Upgrade to 6GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• 640GB 5400RPM Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
• 6-Cell Lithium-Ion Battery (standard) - Up to 5.5 hours of battery life +++
• 15.6" diagonal High Definition LED HP Brightview Display (1366x768)
• FREE Upgrade to Blu-ray player & SuperMulti DVD burner
• HP TrueVision HD Webcam with Integrated Digital Microphone and HP SimplePass Fingerprint Reader
• 802.11b/g/n WLAN and Bluetooth(R)

Build Quality

I would rate it at least on-par with the best consumer notebooks available and in the range of business-class laptops and Macs. There is some flex on the keyboard near the top-middle but nothing too bad. The lid itself feels incredibly solid. Even heavy pressure on the lid causes no screen distortion. One of the only weaknesses, and it is one that many notebooks seem to share, is under the optical drive shows a little flex.

How good it looks is entirely an opinion but, in my opinion, it is one of the best looking notebooks around. I used to think I preferred silver/gray notebooks because of fingerprints but the materials used on it seem to be all but fingerprint resistant I can only see them showing up on the lid and palmrests if your hands are really greasy. The only qualm I do have about the design is that the bezel around the screen is again made using glossy plastic like last-gen. It has a little curvature to it, though, so even in direct and bright light it is hard to see smudges.

Screen and Speakers

I know many of the users here hate 1366x768 resolution, especially on a big screen, but, resolution aside, this has a well above average display. Colors are bright and vivid, brightness is higher than any notebook that I have used extensively and viewing angles, especially horizontally, are very good.

I am not much of an audiophile, if I can hear the words without straining it is good enough for me, so I can't comment much on the speakers. The speakers are definitely loud with what I would rate as good quality. I haven't played around with the Beats software.

Keyboard and Touchpad

As I said earlier, there is a little flex on the keyboard. When typing it really isn't noticeable but pushing down in the weak spots definitely produces a noticeable flex. UPDATE: Using the fix found here for the keyboard has reduced the flex to almost nothing. It still isn't as strong as the dv6-6135dx I owned but it is very firm now.

The experience of typing is top-notch as well. HP has been using the same keyboard design for a few generations now with good reason--if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The keys are firm but provide good feedback and the spacing feels perfect to me. One problem that myself, and many others, have is the lack of a backlit keyboard option.

Instead of giving us said backlit keyboard, HP has given us a backlight around the touchpad. I find it to be all but useless as, even in a dark room, it is not hard to tell where the touchpad is. It might be nice if it illuminated the keyboard a little but it doesn't. Use of touchpad isn't bad. The buttons provide a louder than average click but other than that I don't have any problems.

Heat and Noise

Under light to moderate use this is one of the coolest and quietest notebooks I have used, and that includes my dm1z. With HP Coolsense set to the quietest setting and the computer idling or when I am web surfing, the dv6 is actually cooler and quieter than the dm1z. Under heavy usage the back left vent gets a little warm, again on the quietest setting, but I just change HP Coolsense to the coolest setting and I can comfortably use it on my lap. Even on the coolest setting the noise isn't loud compared to the last-gen dv6. The left palmrest get a little warm as well but not too hot to touch.

Internal temperatures were impressive as well. In a 74F room the max temps were barely reaching 70C for the CPU and GPU when playing BC2 on medium settings. After playing it for an hour or so they did reach 80C, though, in a 77F room. Normally you can expect the temperatures to be right around 40C.

Battery

Battery tests are not complete right now, I have only had it for a couple of days, but 4-4.5 hours seems to be what we are looking at under normal use. That is about what I expected given the A8-3500m gets 4.5-5 hours and it is a 35W part, compared to 45W for the A8-3530mx.

Performance and Overclocking

Just consolidating my benchmarks from the dv6 Llano thread here.

3dMark and gaming - stock CPU and GPU clocks, Crossfire enabled

AMD Radeon HD 6620G video card benchmark result - AMD A8-3530MX APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics,Hewlett-Packard 358D score: 8494 3DMarks

AMD Radeon HD 6620G video card benchmark result - AMD A8-3530MX APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics,Hewlett-Packard 358D score: P6109 3DMarks

AMD Radeon HD 6620G video card benchmark result - AMD A8-3530MX APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics,Hewlett-Packard 358D score: P1786 3DMarks

In regards to actual games, BC2 is the only thing I have run so far and I got 60 FPS on average on medium settings and 1366x768 resolution. Using the same resolution but with all high settings, 4x AF/AA and HBAO on I get around 40-45FPS average.

CPU performance and overclocking

I didn't screencap the Cinebench results but at stock clocks, 1.9GHz with turbo to 2.6GHz every once in a while, the single core score was around 2500 and the multi was around 8300.

Using K10Stat, explained here, it is relatively simple to undervolt and overclock the CPU. I found that the CPU is stable at 2.6GHz with a voltage of 1.15V and doesn't reach dangerous temps in a 78F room.



Cinebench scores at said clock and voltage are around 3000 single and 10500 multi



I have since changed my clock and voltage settings to the ones in the following screenshot. I find that going from 2.6-->2.4GHz and 1.15-->1.075V lowers the temps by about 6-7C and I don't notice a difference in performance. Going any lower than 1.075V at 2.4GHz works for IntelBurn Test but causes BSOD's when gaming. 1.15V is also as low as 2.6GHz goes for me. At 2.4GHz it is right in the thick of SB i5's with 4+ threads and about 60% as fast as the i5-2410m with 1 thread, about on par Arrandale i3's.



3dMark and gaming - 2.4GHz CPU and stock GPU

3dMark06, Crossfire disabled

3dMark06, Crossfire enabled

3dMark Vantage, Crossfire disabled

3dMark Vantage, Crossfire enabled

3dMark11, Crossfire disabled

3dMark11, Crossfire enabled

As you can see, the difference in 3dMark06 is nothing. This is because 3dMark06 uses DirectX 9, which AMD says hybrid Crossfire doesn't work with. With DX9 AMD says that, even if you have Crossfire enabled, it should revert to the discrete card, which it does. The score for 3dMark06 is exactly what you would expect of the 6750m. The scores for 3dMark Vantage and 11 are also what they should be for the 6750m with Crossfire disabled.

The CPU overclock seems to have very little impact in games. In BC2 on medium with no HBAO and 1x AA/AF, the same settings I used earlier, I maybe get a handful of FPS more. Turning the settings to high nets me next to nothing. For Metro 2033 I get around 45 FPS average on normal settings with 4x AF and 1366x768 and DirectX 10.

Pictures and conclusion to be added later.

Pros:
+ Build quality
+ Beautiful design
+ Good all-around performance
+ Heat management and noise
+ Price
+ Ease of overclocking
+ 1080p screen option

Cons:
- AMD processor may not be enough for small minority of users
- No backlit keybaord option

 

Nice writeup!

If I'm reading this correctly, you aren't really overclocking your CPU, rather forcing it to turbo always on all four cores! As we know, one of the main problems with Llano was it's inability to turbo up consistently, but forcing it in turbo solves this setback and the CPU is able to perform similarly to an i5 in multithreaded apps.

Are you able to push it past the turbo limit, i.e. 2.6ghz +?

Also, what wireless card do you have (model # and manf.)?

 

It is possible to OC past the turbo clocks... Some people have gone to 2.8ghz and even 3.0ghz, but I'm not sure if it was stable.

 

I haven't tried to go past the 2.6GHz but I definitely could with an increase in voltage, and thus heat. I want to keep it under 80C, though, and 2.6GHz is about as far as I can go while doing so. I probably could get to 2.8GHz with all 4 cores while keeping it under 85-90C

 

As I said before, you should be able to tweak a bit more if you don't overclock all 4 cores on turbo. Try one or two. It will help you stay inside the tdp envelope. You can get an idea from looking at what they are getting with the desktop A-8's.

Seer

 

Can you test the OpenGL in Cinebench 11.5?

Link: MAXON: CINEBENCH 11.5

CPU and OpenGL cores comparison: Maxon Cinebench 11.5 Score Results

 

Is that even possible? Does k10 stat allow that?

 

I don't know how to overclock cores individually with K10Stat/

@Bullit - I will run 11.5 tomorrow.

 

Actually, Llano might already do that automatically.

The pictures that somebody just posted in the other Llano thread show different cores in different p-states... And k10 stat modifies the p states.

 

It does turbo sometimes but it isn't very often, as has already been discussed at length.

Here is the 11.5 score, bullit.

 

Thanks abaddon4180. Can you also run the OpenGL test?
Trying to compare w/ a dedicated low grade HD4530.

 

It gets about 23 FPS using the 6620g, because dynamic switching makes it do so for OpenGL

 

Good, HD4530 can do only 9 FPS. This more than confirms the death of low grade GPU's.

 

Um...besides the fact that low grade GPU is 2 generations old?

Compare it to a low grade GPU 6000 series

 

I'm still confused about the switchable graphics, is it automatic, or can you manually select dedicated or integrated, and is crossfire working?

 

Crossfire can be set to either off or on.

You can set dedicated or integrated by right clicking on the desktop and choosing "configure switchable graphics". Then it's just a matter of choosing the program that you're intending to use (or have used) and choose "high performance" for dedicated and "power saving" for integrated. Keep in mind that this is with crossfire disabled.

 

So, let me get this straight. Crossfire is working and you can use the IGPU and the dGPU at the same time?

 

If the catalyst drivers have a crossfire profile for the program / game you're using, then yes. Otherwise, enabling crossfire sometimes decreases performance if the drivers don't support what you're using.

 

so the only question left for me before buying this laptop is "does the latest catalyst drivers support the hybrid crossfire for the dv6z?" Anyways I have decided to buy this laptop. I just want to know if crossfire is fully supported or there are still some driver issues.

 

I have two questions. I'm not too tech savvy with hardware, so after some decent OC'ing, where would the AMD processor (a8-3510mx since the 30 is gone) fall in the intel series of processors in term of speed in single/dual/3+ core programs?

And I read a post somewhere stating that the graphics power could reach that of the 460m. Is that true? And how?

Trying to decide between this and the i5-2410 dual on the select edition. The AMD saves me 100 dollars, so I'd like to buy it, but I'm wary why such a laptop everyone is raving about is so cheap.

 

First of all AMD is always cheaper than Intel. The A6/A8 AMD CPU's are definitely slower than the Intel Sandy Bridge CPU's. But the combination of CPU and GPU can approach some of the better gaming laptops. If you compare benchmarks, so far they're close to 460m.

 

Ultimate it all came down to temperature and battery life when I made my decision to go with llano. Yes Llano has slower cpu performance to sandy bridge, but if you are honest with yourself, what do you do that needs anything more than a c2d? Is the first priority when you turn on your laptop to encode some video or to webbrowse? I know I mostly use my laptop for web browsing, and I'm honest enough to admit to myself there is no difference between intel and amd in this aspect. To anyone who intends to "futureproof", I think this is a foolish endeavor. In one year, windows 8 will come out with support for arm, intel and amd will have new cpu/gpu hybrid chips, and anything that's strictly CPU will be a relic. Just look at the trend of tablets and you would see the days of the CPU are waning.

My llano laptop is the coolest running laptop I've ever owned, and it's also the first laptop that I've used that can be overclocked. It was suppose to be 1.9ghz but I'm running at 3ghz. It has met my needs and I have no buyer's remorse. I doubt the same can be said about all those who bought sandy bridge and disappointed with temperature or wasted performance.

 

@there148 - This is why I'm weighing heavily on the DV6z now over the NP8130. I will use it primarily for web browsing, office work, basic photo manipulation, and some light web development, with some gaming. I'd rather spend $500 less and deal with a little less performance but have better battery life, than have great performance, but crappy battery life.

 

Hybrid crossfire is fully supported by the DV6Z. The only thing is whenever a new program / game comes onto the market, a new crossfire profile need to be made to support it. This is why there are usually monthly graphics driver upgrades available.

The only issue with the DV6Zs right now is the lack of support for certain Open GL programs. This will be a bios (hp) + driver (amd) fix and should be out fairly soon I would imagine.

 

Regarding *future proofing*, Impossible to do for the simple reason that the industry needs to *churn* the market to keep the public buying new things all the time. We've seen a succession of new sockets for the sake of having new sockets from Intel. To AMD's credit, they've done a much better job of trying to extend platform viability, while adopting new technology. I note that if you sit down with an old laptop from 5 years ago and type a letter on the MS Word of that time, its going to take about the same amount of time to do it as on the latest greatest i7 2600k Remember when *Everybody* just HAD to have esata? How many of you out there have even THOUGHT of using esata? much less done so?

You get the point. In the end I think this laptop will be serviceable for some time to come. For one thing, from preliminary experience, the *next big thing* , Ivy Bridge, with a new platform and *THUNDERBOLT* (whoopee) is no barn burner posting numbers only a few percentage points above Sandy Bridge in some applications and slightly below it in others...a big "duh". HP's cool and quiet dv6 LLan0, while not a out of the park home run, DOES appear to be a solid 'double' up the middle- something you can carry around, doesn't burn your privates in your lap, browse the web, watch a blueray, listen to tunes without headphones, with better than average batt life and with the option of substantial extension with the 9 cell, all on the one hand; then plugging into good ole 120 (or 220 depending , cranking up the o'clocks, topping a suitable cooler , kicking on the crossfire, and gaming away on pretty much anything out there at reasonable res and frame rates . And for what? 600 to 700 US?

All in all I think AMD and HP have connected with one that just might go the distance

Seer

 

To offset some of the bias in this thread - it will approach the 460m in certain GPU intensive DX10/11 games/applications. Benchmarks have shown the best case scenario of being close to a 460m - and until crossfire is fixed, DX9 is fixed, and OpenGL is fixed I don't think you can write this one off.

In DX9, for instance, you will see a dropoff from the i5-2410m + 6770m. In Starcraft 2, which puts a big load on the CPU, you will see a dropoff. And the drivers sometimes don't scale in crossfire as well as they should.

 

Thats good to know. At least there are less issues with the dv6z than the dv6tQE. Plus its much cheaper and I think it suffices my needs.

 

It's supported, but that doesn't mean it's supported well. The drivers need a lot more work before we see a big increase in performance.

Sidenote: Has anybody tried using AMD overdrive to OC the CPU? It mentions something about OCing the RAM, but I'm not sure if that's a desktop only feature.

 

Always a downside to adopting new technology early. Things almost never work out EXACTLY the way they are upon initial release.

 

Being able to play SC2 nicely is one of the factors into browsing for a laptop. How big is this dropoff?

 

I have:
the A-8 3500 APU with 6750m+6620g model dv6-6135dx (best buy version)
1366x768 resolution - tested with all games
11.6 drivers

Tested with 3 games:
WoW - high settings - between 20 - 80fps depending on situation average 36+

BC2 - medium settings - between 20 - 60 fps depending on situation average 40ffps

Team Fortress 2 - high settings - between 15 - 80 depending on situation average 30-40 ~ stutters a bit this game plays the worst out of all

Shouldnt the laptop have higher numbers? What can I do to maximize this?

Any help is appreciated!

 

Are you sure you are running 11.6? When I first tried to update using the 11.6 hotfix it went through the process and said it installed but it was still running 8.832. To update to 8.861 I had to update through Windows update.

 

I downloaded the mobility drivers from the ATI website using my other computer (dell xps studio 1647 - i5-540m/ 4670m - which is a beast btw) and then uninstalled all ATI/AMD drivers from the HP laptop. I had to do this because the ati website would not let me download due an error saying I did not have the model chip.

So yes it shows up as 8.861 in the software information section. I did not use the windows update or install on top of the older driver. I am just confused about performance.

 

I don't know, then. On all medium settings with 1x AA/AF on BC2 I get like 60FPS average, ranging from 45-70, with dips to 45FPS every once in a while

 

where in the settings can you change the AA/AF I dont remember seeing it last time. Im still at work so I cant play on it at the moment.

how do you recommend installing the drivers? What exactly did you do to upgrade? I am thinking of uninstalling again and trying a different set of drivers or reverting back to the stock ones.

 

Alright so, I too have the Dv6-6135dx from Best Buy, and the drivers have been giving me problems since day 1. I am still with the laptop, because I know once everything is sorted out, that this will be one of the most powerful if not the most powerful notebook for the price.

For some reason, none of my games will use the 6750m graphics card. They all use the 6620g, even if I have crossfire disabled and the setting in CCC set to High Performance. The 6620g obviously provides a much lower quality of gameplay than the 6750m. Has anybody else run into this issue?

Also, when do you all think the 11.7 drivers will come out? Hopefully that fixes those problems.

The games I have tried are Crysis 1, Crysis Warhead (which runs surprisingly well, I think this is the only game that uses the 6750m) Crysis Wars, Dirt 3, GTA 4, Fallout New Vegas, World of Warcraft, Team Fortress 2, and Dead Space 2. I will rerun all of the games and get an FPS average for all of them tomorrow.

 

How do you know it's running the 6620g instead of the 6750m?

 

The AMD System moniter said so, and I'm also getting horrible performance on most of my games...

 

Hmm, that's not good. No way to manually select the 6750m?

 

Run as many games as you can in DX10 or above. Obviously some of those games such as TF2 only have a DX9 mode which is known to have problems.

 

Other than selecting the "High performance" mode for each individual program (which I tried,) no. :/

Ah, I see. For some reason TF2 runs well also, it only drops frame rates when the entire enemy team is on my screen. However here are the fps for all of the games I own:

Crysis 1: 12-19 fps It was in the 30-40 fps range before HP automatically updated my drivers. I was using the mobility mod before.

Crysis Warhead: 15-20
Crysis Wars-20-25
GTA 4: 15-29
Dead Space 2: 35-40 When I used the mobility mod, I don't know what it is now, I lost the disc.
Dirt 3: 35-40
WoW: 15-25 (I have absolutely NO idea why the frame rates are low.)
Halo 1: I didn't test this one, but it was butter smooth as it came out in 1998 I believe...

I think that's it?
But yeah, I used the mobility mod 11.6 and everything was perfect, then one day HP automatically installed their drivers even though I unchecked the option to automatically update things, and now I can't downgrade to the mobility mod because my drivers are too new.

I also can't nuke the drivers out, because ever since the HP update, my computer gets stuck at classpnp.sys when I go to boot into safe mode.

 

AFAIK, "high performance" is what selects the dedicated GPU.

 

Once again "early adopters = issues with their units"

You'll notice on the AMD website that they have support for E-series and C-series APUs, but nothing for A-series as of yet. 11.6 doesn't support 6775g2 combo! The drivers that everyone has on their notebooks are beta drivers that HP and AMD hastily produced so they could get their products out the door faster.

Just suck it up and wait for AMD to post A-series compatable drivers on their website, otherwise you're just going to give youself headaches.

 

That sounds like the best option to me. I really like this laptop.

 

You mean 6775g2?

 

Yes... Congrats...

 

You mean "congratulations"?

 

you shouldn't have to go into safemode to unistall, just run the setup from the previous mobility drivers you where using and use the uninstall feature and then use a registry cleaner to make sure nothing is left over and then run the installer again and let it install 11.6.

 

ok this is what I did and I have had pretty good results so far (better or on par with my previous post) and this is for those who are having problems.

1. express uninstall ati/amd drivers.
2. reboot safe mode and run some sort of driver cleaner for ati/amd driver (google for the software).
3. install the stock drivers should be on the computer somewhere or download from HP. these are the 8.83xxx driver.
4. after this then let windows update find the new driver. Install this new driver.
5. reboot. then you should see the 8.86xx driver version.

So far WoW, BC2 run about the same or better. For Team Fortress 2 in the steam menu right+click and set the launch property to -directx 80 or -directx 81 so far from playing around this the game runs decently.

But like everyone else I too am awaiting more support from AMD.

cheers!

 

DirectX 8 will make TF2 look like crap. You shouldn't need to do this even if you are only on the integrated GPU.