Hel 80 Owners Lounge

reading through a asus A8jm thread, the 512 mb version got a couple points below 4,000 in 3dmark05. is the extra 256 mb that much of a difference, or is the 7600 just underclocked in the compal?

 

It's the exact same card. They're not really "512" Mb, they steal or borrow the extra 256 Mb from the system memory. The Card in the HEL80 seems to be grossly underclocked, and I'm wondering why.

 

maybe to meet heat and noise requirements?

 

Maybe. The MBP ha sthe exact same issue, though it is squeezed into a 1" case without a true fan for heat dissapation... the Compal has a much larger ventilation system judging from the pictures and in it's form factor should be clocked normally. Keep in mind the Asus W3J has a 256/512 Mb X1600 and is clocked at 410/410 I believe.

 

true...well we'll just have to wait and see how well paladin's oc'ing goes

 

The ASUS S96J with the X1600 gets 3,427 +/- 3DMark05 at the default 445/396 core/mem

 

That's interesting as well. The X1600 seems to get 3900-ish with just about every other notebook (Acer 8204, W3J).

 

I thought that the X1600 should have same 3dmarks as 7600?

 

3DMark05 scores will depend a great deal on what the core/mem speeds are, and what the rest of the configuration is. Therefore making general comments about scores in different models just isn't enough information to make sure you are comparing apples to apples.

 

Gotcha ya, I hear that in real-life application (i.e. Fps), that the 7600 go was better?

 

True, but the Compal's score we can all agree represents some significant underclocking. I should have a good 900 Marks over it's 128mb version and be on par with an X1600. Acer's Core/Mem speeds are 425/425 I believe.

 

I haven't seen any solid data, benchmarks are really just numbers, but in most cases the 7600 seems to be just a bit a quicker than the X1600. I'd really like to see user data from HEL 80 owners as to it's gaming performance caus ethe clockspeeds have me on skids at the moment.

 

that's incorrect. the a8jm actually has 512 dedicated memory. also, some zepto notebooks have 512 mb as well.

 

I would really like to see some reviews and some benchmarks for ne users that have HEL80s

 

I was informed that mine should ship today earlier which means that I guess it will be here friday... I will have a complete review for you by saturday

 

33percentlonger, you have that exact same that I would like in the Compal HEL80, how much was yours? I really want to stay under 1700 with shipping

 

mine was actually just over 1700$ at 1725$ which isnt too far over the top to include the shipping aswell

 

So what if it's underclocked? you can always overclock it with some of those utilities.
Personally, I haven't played any of the latest games and I don't even think I'm interested
I'm happy with more battery life, less heat, less noise, etc.
If I get my hands on a good game that really needs to squeeze the last FPS from my card, I'll overclock it to what "it should have been".
(I would have taken a GMA950 model if there were one with WSXGA+ screen)
Anyway, I think I'm going to be very happy with my machine, maybe even more than with my old Sager!

 

Paladin, is your warranty voided if I overclock my graphics card and totally f-ed it up? And would you replace it or just provide parts but labor will cost or vice-versa?
-Ham

 

If your overclocking causes any damage, your warranty will be void...period. However if you are careful with the way you do it there is no reason that it should cause any damage.

Don't over do it. Take your time to raise it slowly and test each time.

 

Kewl, Can some1 point me to a good GPU overclocking thread? Also, what are the prices and speeds for upcoming Memron cores?

 

Have you read page 6 of this thread?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=60006&page=6

 

O sry bout that hehehe, thanks Paladin for helping a stupid noob

 

No problem Ham...we love n00bs here...especially speed-addicts

 

Does anyone find the 9cell battery to really stick out or is it just a little poke out and not that much of a problem? Also, what is the estimated battery life just on IOMP with a DVD?
Whould it be easy to install the intergrated tv tuner after I buy the Compal? I plan on buying it without the tuner and then once I get another 100 dollars, I would buy the tuner.
Thanks
-Ham

 

My Compal HEL80 arrived from PowerNotebooks.com this morning. I have installed Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) release without a hitch. I'm currently testing all the bells and whistles. I will report back later; expect howtos, full review to follow soon.

Chris

 

you lucky guy!
please post some close up pics too
and tell us about hardware recognition in ubuntu, especially the wifi, touchpad and the nvidia drivers (I have no hopes about the webcam hehehe)

 

Any updates on the overclocking Paladin?
-Ham

 

Quick update: I've hit a show-stopper with regards to the builtin Intel 3945ABG Wireless aka WiFi aka Wi-Fi (sorry about the redundancies, but I strive to make my informative posts keyword-search friendly) device. The device is recognized by Ubuntu, it's loading the ipw3945 module, and the daemon is running, but the card keeps disconnecting and reconnecting. Also, eth1 is not present in the Network Monitor dropdown menu; though you can type it in, it doesn't seem to be working with full functionality. There are numerous threads in the Ubuntu forum and the Ubuntu wiki about the 3945 which makes for a lot of reading material. This has been a very actively developed-for piece of equipment over the past three months. There are a couple of things to try to get this to work and I will try all that I can find until I strike the right one. Suggestions are to download the Network Manager app, which is not installed by default. I doubt it's anything at the hardware level, but it could be anywhere from the OS up to network applications. This is the first time in a long time that I've had no clue what was going on in regards to Linux and hardware, but I will do my best to figure it out, and at the very least, get it working.

As far as the extra goodies, there's hints from the Ubuntu Device Manager as well as dmesg that both the camera and the fingerprint reader will work! At the very least, they are recognized. I will need to find some programs to test these. Xsane should probably work with the camera.

Those are much lower priority than getting wifi to work, however, so until that's a solved problem I won't be looking into those icing-on-the-cake pieces of hardware.

Thanks for the interest; I'll be posting again in a few hours or so. If wifi works sooner than that, though, I will be posting using that even sooner. If anybody else is trying this stuff, be sure to post here and we'll coordinate efforts.

Chris

 

We have been swamped today without much time, but here is the latest:

469/350 produced stable 3DMark05 results of 3,525
480/350 produced stable 3DMark05 results of 3,556

It also still runs cool and quiet

More to come...

 

An update: I brought the notebook over to a buddy's and wifi is working over here. I did switch to the newest kernel with 686 symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) support by installing the metapackage linux-686-smp; not sure if that affected it or not. I do get disconnects intermittently, but overall it seems to be working. I'll check back in the problematic wifi area tomorrow to see if it works there.

 

Paladin, is it hard to install the TV tuner? Im thinking about buying it as an after market upgrade.
-Ham

 

It is a piece of cake as long as you are licensed to use a screwdriver.

Take a look at the picture that is 2nd from the bottom. The TV Tuner and Bluetooth modules go in the center compartment next to the memory.

 

I just got mine from UPS today!!

I have one question though; when I use headphones, there's an ongoing high-pitched noise, which my computer-savvy friend tells me is interference from the GPU.

He says there's no way to fix this; is this true? If not, is there a software solution to this? because I have $20+ headphones that I really like and I don't want to pay any more than that for headphones anyway.

Thanks.

 

Double click on the speaker icon in your System Tray. Turn your CD volume all the way down in your mixer (You CD will send its volume directly to the IDE channel and is not actually controlled by this volume control). Close out of the mixer and see if the hiss is gone.

 

hmm.. it's still there.

 

Ok, now disable your InfraRed. Go into your Device Manger and disable it.

 

where in the device manager is infrared?

Edit: Wait, would this be any of the following? Because I didn't install these drivers because they seemed unnecessary:

TPM
Smart Watchdog
Wireless Select Switch
SideWalker

 

Oops! No Infrared on this model.

Ok, go back into your mixer and mute your CD. Then if that doesn't do it, turn the volume down for each device one at a time, starting with the microphone. Then if it is still there, mute each device one at a time.

Make sure you click on Options and go into Properties and check all of the boxes. Then click on Options again and click on Advanced. This way all of your devices will show up in your mixer.

Go into Advanced under the Microphone volume control and make sure the Boost is not checked.

 

TPM - You probably don't need this, but for more information about it go to:
http://www.infineon.com/cgi-bin/ifx...hannel/productCategories.jsp&pageTypeId=17099
Smart Watchdog - This is an awful utility that tries (poorly) to duplicate your Power Options...use Power Options instead
Wireless Select Switch - This you should install if you have either 802.11a/b/g or Bluetooth installed.
SideWalker - This lets you program the two "user programmable" buttons to the left of your power button. You will see 1 and 2 above the buttons

 

After I install the TV tuner module, where do I add the Coaxial input, or is it already there?

 

omg, the laptop is in my hometown I should be getting it through FedEx today, its like christmas day for me! hah

 

hehe mines been on delivery for 5 hours now lol and it hasnt arrived at my house... how much gas do these trucks hold lol

 

Are you talking about the HEL80?

In the picture here http://www.powernotebooks.com/specs/images/l8-15/
The one that is seen from the front side, it looks like an infrared sensor to the right and below of the LCD latch (to the right of 3 little LEDs)

Well.. you have seen it for real, I just have these pictures
And now that we are at it, tell me if I'm interpreting the picture right.
On the front side I see: memory card slot, then something that looks like the wifi button??
then 3 LEDs, then the alleged infrared sensor. Is that correct?

 

I would like to thank Paladin for keeping us all informed in here, but I do have a question since this is one of the laptops I am intreseted in, on the OCing of the video card, why hasn't the memory been oced yet? Is it specced only to run at 350? on the desktop model I beleive the default settings is 400MHz for memory and 400 on the core. In my experince the memory is almost as important to oc as the core itself and can net huge returns with both core and memory ocing.

 

Thanks, Paladin, for all your help.

The thing with the audio didn't fix it, but once I ran audio-intensive applications the hiss was very insignificant and I forgot about it a while ago.

So.. I have another question, for everybody: what driver has worked best for you for the 7600 Go?

Thanks guys, as always.

 

It does look like the IR is there physically, but it is not there internally. (It is not on the Specifications page either).

I was curious about this as well, so I double checked it on our machine today...NO infra red

[Edit] The port is for the TV Tuner only [Edit]

 

We are still in the middle of testing. By the time we are finished we will have OCd both, but we start with the Core and then bring the Memory up as far as it will go. We then start with the Memory and take it as far as it can go while leaving the Core back at 350...then after we take the Memory as far as it can go we start bringing the Core up.

Once we have done that we use that information and experiment further to bring them both as high as we can, but we never know which will be higher until we go through the whole process. We have found that to get the best results you almost never end up with Core and Memory at the same level...so I could be for example 458/392 or 392/458...we just never know until we take it through the whole process.

 

Ok, check out the new Sticky Compal HEL80 Geforce Go 7600 OC Results

 

hey people just to let you all know i have my hel 80 and i'm pretty impressed so far with the screen quality and basic build quality really i have 2 problems though... 1 is the fingerprint scanner it likes to be difficult but i'm sure i'll get used 2 it after a while and 2nd thing is my keyboard is very bouncy on the left side it kinda doesnt feel attached properly.... any ideas people?? thanks