i just got this Laptop for my brother , his birthday in a couple days , and from watching all these reveiws it looks like one of the best laptops out there!
Great review man, I get mine tommorow, I've got the t8400 @ 2ghz, 9600m gt, 2gb ram, and 250gb 5400 rpm drive. Can't wait to get it and play some cod4 as well :D
At the moment I'm using the latest video driver - 180.70 from laptopvideo2go. But I have to say the highest 3dmark06 scores came from the HP 175 series driver (their latest driver) being about 4460 points vs 4390ish from the laptopvideo2go drivers. However game performance seems to be good on the 180.70 drivers so I'm happy with them. Glad you liked the video man and in 3 days you'll have your dv5 :D
the audio control quick touch buttons have played up on my now and then. The optical drive button to eject does not protrude but is flush with the surrounding plastic making it more difficult to push. I really don't care about these issues but you wanted to know. I like this laptop.
Good review of wot this machine can do, I got one from DSE bout 6mnths ago with $500 off. So was an awesome buy at 1599NZD. Was pleased when it ran Crysis with high settings without probs. I think its a rather unknown gaming laptop! Cheers.
Yes it gets hot when under high load and initially it is annoying. Either the temps have gone down now or I'm more used to it because I havent noticed it for a while. But certainly if you've just bought the laptop you'll feel as if it's cooking your palm once it really heats up. You can always lay something there if it concerns you. It's something to know though.
I recommend the Antec cooling pad for your laptop. My first one stopped working after a little over a year but you can find them for less than 20 bucks sometimes. It props up your laptop so their is some ventilation, and draws power from your usb to push out the warm air from under the laptop.
Thanks for the advice. I just did a bit of reading on the antec cooler and some guy reconed his temps actually increased because his laptop fan was fighting the cooler's fans due to both drawing air in opposite directions. In my case they would also be sucking air 2 different ways. Anyway good idea on the cooler I'll be reading a bit more.
update bios by going to hp website, support and downloads, type in laptop model number, choose windows version, find bios in the list, download and install it. updating bios can fix many issues including overheating and fan speeds. Bios supplies basic information to the operating system (windows etc) about the hardware - cpu graphics and so on.
Make sure you put the battery in it, boot into the factory install of vista and try out the volume control. Sit back a bit from the laptop and try pointing the remote in the general direction of the headphone jacks.
Heat cycles were an issue with the 8000 series nvidia gpus due to the solder used. I doubt this would have been carried over to the 9000 series. I reckon I've put this laptop through about a years worth of normal use heat cycles in the near 4 months I've owned it, so if anything is going to happen to one of these laptops it will happen to mine first. The sheer amount of gaming stints and their duration that I've put this laptop through is a good stress test of the design.
I can understand about Vista, I did everything I could to install xp on this laptop but still had some audio issues which niggled. In the end I did a fresh vista install without all the hp bloat. Made vista much more palatable.
I just learned something, I thought everybody celebrated Christmas on the 25th but a bit of reading shows me some places such as those in Scandinavia celebrate Christmas on the 24th. I'm a New Zealander in NZ and we do it on the 25th. Merry Christmas! Yes I've been playing cod4 for a while now so I've learnt the ropes.
I can't remember my RA3 settings too well, I was playing the demo. I think the most important performance setting was putting the shaders on medium or low and anti aliasing off, set resolution to 1280x800 res. If you use the medium quality setting and everything works well then you can start increasing the individual video options. Having anti-aliasing off and shaders low/medium (can't remember) means you can crank up the other settings and things will look good.
Not sure. Our laptops definitely meet the system requirements for assassins creed but the requirements are still quite high compared with other games. I'd probably start off on medium settings with no anti-aliasing and see how it goes. Anti-Aliasing and shaders are always the biggies. If it ran fine I'd start turning up the detail and view distance settings and so on.
Hi I'm good thanks, glad you liked the review all the way from mexico. 1137la has 4gb ram - 1135la 3gb ram. 1137 has a much weaker video card - radeon 3200. The 1135's video card is approx 40% more powerful - radeon 3450. 1137 has mini firewire (IEEE 1394), 1135 does not have mini firewire. 1137 has vista home premium 64bit, 1135 has vista home basic.
This hp pavilion has been stress tested hugely with all the gaming I've done on it. I've given this laptop more of a workout in the 9 months I've owned it than most people would give in their entire time of ownership of the laptop and probably the ownership of a second laptop. Various manufacturers including dell and hp had issues with faulty solder on 8000 series nvidia cards which requires the mobo replacement but the 9000 nvidia cards are fine and I've heard no issues about them.
You need to use the gamma adjustment picture in the video description in part 1. Under my original driver I had red gamma of 19%, green - 14%, blue 6%. These settings were good until I updated my driver. Now I have gammas of red - 43%, green - 31%, blue - 17%. These setting will look terrible unless you have the same driver. It's best you follow the simple instructions on the gamma calibration page linked in part 1 or your screen will be messed up.
As far as I know the tv tuner accepts broadcast tv through standard aerial and clear qam. You don't need to add anything as far as I know but you can always get a longer aerial I guess (I don't have the tv tuner in my laptop)
In my opinion a vacuum is less likely to be bad for components than compressed air. Compressed air exerts far more pressure on the whatever youre pointing it at and depending on what psi the can is. Also I'd rather suck out dust than merely dislodge it internally. The only adverse potential from using a vacuum is sucking up your keyboard keys if you're vacuuming the keyboard. I just use the narrow fitting with the vacuum which stops this.
sorry didn't see your comment until now. Yes you can play it fine on an athlon x2 ql-64 because cod4 is not particularly cpu heavy. It's always the graphics card which is the key piece of hardware in gaming.
Yes if your laptop doesn't have the internal tv tuner the a usb one would be easier. Basically the easiest way is to play your xbox on your laptop screen though. Your tv tuner must be able to accommodate RCA or Composite or HDMI leads from your xbox. You could try connecting your laptop to your TV through hdmi or vga port and try cloning the desktop onto the TV so you can play on the TV while recording on the laptop. I have no idea if that would work though.
I thought you were saying it was Christmas tomorrow when at the time you posted there was still a day to go before Christmas :D? Yes, this laptop is a great package that's why I made the vid. All the best.
it's microsoft software that cod4 uses. You can google it if you're wondering what it is. Cod4 is bundled with it, you dont' need to download it separately.
So long as you've got the Vista on the laptop that came with it when you bought it you will be ok. The battery goes under a little panel on the bottom!
Really it depends on the gddr of the 8600. Cod4 doesn't anywhere near fully utilise my cpu so the main bottleneck is going to be the graphics card. If the 8600m uses gdd3 it should run cod4 very similar to the speeds I am getting in the video.
Well the 3650 gets about 3400 3dmark06 points while the ddr2 9600 gets about 4400 so the 3650 is approx 30% less power. Cod4 would run okay on it so long as graphics were turned down further.
haven't had overheat issues. Fan noise is fine until the laptop gets hot then it starts to crank up. Things I dont' like - audio control touch pad and the optical drive button flush rather than protruding. That's about it.
I don't notice my reflection when playing or using the computer at maximum brightness. The reflection is still there but it is insignificant. I have been using these reflective screens for a while though so I may have got somewhat used to it. If you are concerned about the reflection make sure that whatever you do, don't get the infinity screen.
The trouble is the gamma settings are different depending on what driver you are using. I'm using a 176 series driver. If I changed my driver the gamma needs to be re-calibrated. For example, If I updated my driver and tried to use my current gamma settings everything would look like garbage so it's best if you do it yourself.
the t9400 is certainly going to be faster with it's higher clock speed. I've played the crysis demo which was definitely playable so long as you didn't crank the settings up. The left palm can get quite hot but, if it gets a bit much, you can always lay something down there. I'm not bothered about it myself.
mine is a dv5-1005tx as shown in the vid and description. Being in NZ I don't know too much about what's available in Europe but the dv5-1156eg you mention is a good laptop. It has the 9600m gt, and a fairly decent t5800 cpu. But if it was up to me I would choose the dv5-1032eg. Same as 1156eg but It sacrifices the 320gb HDD for a 250gb one, but you get a significantly better cpu, the p7350 (faster FSB, lower power consumption). I regard CPU as more important than HDD.
even if you get August 2008 exchange rate the prices between the US and NZ are not comparable. Things are typically more expensive here. I'm sure you can find US prices somewhere on the web.
Mate, the trouble is under heavy action I don't want the frame rate to dip below 30fps. FPS are fluctuating constantly its not like they are locked at 30. By lowering the settings I ensure things dont stutter when things go crazy. Additionally, many people including me can see the flicker of 30 fps on different types of screens such as the old crt screens. The human eye and 30 fps limitation is a bit of a fable when viewed on non-lcd screens.
Every laptop's fan is always going. It just speeds up when the cpu and gpu get hot. Mine spins at a slow speed unless I'm gaming then it really speeds up. The fan should not be going full speed all the time. Updating the bios is a must as it impacts the fan behaviour. When I first got this laptop the fan fluctuated up and down every few seconds until I updated the bios.
cod4 is a dx9 only game. If you install it in vista it will install the dx9 files it needs also. So visually, an install under vista or xp is no different because it runs in dx9 regardless.
I made the video for people like you manaka20, glad you found it interesting :) The 8400m is still way way faster than the intel 950 I had on my previous laptop so I can still very much appreciate the power it has :D
Well.. I guess it's up to you.. I use a compressed air can for my DV5.. I've read from notebook forums that vacuums are generally bad for laptops though.
make sure the vents are free of dust and never block them or try and draw air away from them with fans. A can of compressed air is supposed to be good for dealing with dust in the cooling system. I use a vacuum cleaner to suck the port where the fan is (while the laptop is off) every now and then. Download HWmonitor to see what temperatures you are getting at idle and at load. What cpu and gpu do you have?
Yes, today is Christmas for Europe, and tommorow for America... Merry Christmas to you TOO! You are from England right? I see from your accent. You have a lot experience with Call of Duty Modern warfare... I have it on Xbox 360...
I wouldn't change the ram and I'm quite sure changing the video card is impossible - they aren't made to be removed. Some laptops do have modular video cards though. I'd leave the laptop as it is unless you find you are using up all your ram which is unlikely.
I much prefer having more dots vertically. The 1280x800 screen is already plenty wide enough but every dot you can get vertically is valuable because there aren't many to play with. I would probably rather get a higher res screen than have height diminished to 768 dots.
no, definitely Celsius and measured with HWMonitor With the bios update it peaks at 85 decrees C. At the extreme it might blip up to 86 or 87. I have heard of other people going over 100 degrees with their 9600's but with the bios update that shouldn't happen. Mobile graphics chips can get insanely hot.
I don't know why there would be a shadow there? Make sure you've cleaned the web camera area and that the lighting is good. What do you mean by halfload lights? Is that the lights in your house running at half power?
you can use it on your lap with no problem under standard use. But If you want to play hardware stressing games the laptop will get pretty hot on your lap.
1130ed is Intel based with t3200 2ghz dual core cpu, 3gb ram, nvidia 9200m gs graphics, 320gb hdd. 1120ed is AMD based and has 2.10Ghz Turion dual core cpu, 3gb ram, ati radeon hd 3450 graphics, 320gb hdd.
cheers. The dv5-1110ax isn't a bad laptop. Graphically, with the ati 3450, it would be about half as powerful as mine with the 9600 but there are still a heap of older games it could handle well. The cpu in the 1110ax is also weaker but for gaming it's the graphics card that's going to make the difference.
Hi man, the dv5 1135ee is exactly the same as my laptop except it has a 250gb hdd. It will play red alert 3 and cod4 because I've played both. RA3 required a bit of video option setting tweaking to to balance between good graphics and good framerate.
Hi, you can't upgrade the graphics because the graphics chips are directly soldered to the motherboard. You would have to replace the whole motherboard.
You can overclock your current cpu or pull the laptop to pieces and replace your cpu if you can find a faster cpu for the exact same model. I wouldn't recommend either option.
Yes the laptop is going to heat up even under fairly basic 3d gaming. Even zooming in on a high pixel photo and dragging your view around continuously causes the gpu to heat up. It doesn't get insanely hot or anything but it is interesting.
cheers. cod5 system requirements are well within the specs of our laptops so it should go okay with a bit of adjustment. I reckon I'd be able to handle cod5 for sure :D
So long as it has the 9600m gt video card it will be pretty good for games. Running at native res will be a little tougher but it'll still be good for most gaming.
Yeah, it gets pretty toasty but that's the sort of temp mobile gpus are built to take routinely. My gpu pretty much never breaks 85C under sustained load now. A lot depends on the room temp and at that time my room temp would have been somewhere around 25C. Bios version also makes a difference. I like this laptop and that's about all I can say.
well the 8600 has 256 less ram and is previous generation to the 512mb 9600 with the dv5. This dv5 has a 2.26ghz core 2 duo, 320gb hdd, hdmi, 4x usb, worse battery life probably. It's up to you. I wanted the most bang for my buck and the dell 1530 couldn't hold a match to this laptop in terms of price and performance.
sounds good, so it's a dv7? Unfortunately my ping delay to Canada would be really bad. The furthest country I have ok ping with is Australia. Basically a slow ping means when you shoot at a wall the bullet impact could be half a second delayed (500ms ping). So shooting at moving targets is pretty much impossible :(
Well if you really want to try and fix the fan I would download the service guide for this laptop and dismantle it. Every fan has a motherboard connection so if the fan itself hasn't broken (which it may have) its connector to the board could have worked loose perhaps. If the fan is connected and it still will not go I would try and order the cooling system through hp. You can get part numbers through the service manual.
I don't have it as I don't really get into the whole keeping track of friends thing. I usually visit the same servers and get to know people that way while playing. If your xbox and ps3 friends have xfire on their computers you can add them but you can only play against other computer players, not ps3 or 360 players. Same for ps3 & 360 players - they can only play other using that same console.
I'm typing from it right now. The amount of hardcore gaming stress I've subjected this laptop to is more work than 10 lifetimes in a normal users hands. It gets hot under stress, but it just keeps chugging. Note, I've got the intel/nvidia variant which seems more reliable than amd/ati variants judging from other comments.
the dv5-1139tx will run cod4 basically identically to my laptop. The graphics card is the key piece of hardware with cod4 and I'm using the same one as that laptop. Cod4 doesn't anywhere near fully load my cpu so there shouldn't be much performance difference. That laptop will be fine for cod4.
yeap you're not far off. As standard the Dell 8600m ddr3 card gets 3dmark06 4223 points at 1280x800 so it is only marginally slower to the 9600m gt ddr2. But in saying that both cards can be overclocked and if you google 'HP DV5t 9600m gt overclocking guide' you will see people getting in excess of 5300 points with their ddr2 9600s. Personally I'd never overclock a 15" notebook's video and only a select few would do it. I see it as more of a risk of burning the candle at both ends.
The dv5 actually got my attention on a 30% discount so I hadn't looked around much at the competition. Even though you aren't looking at a gaming comp I'd still try and get a low end dedicated video card. You never know when you might want to use it for some entertainment. As far as Dells and Toshibas, since I try and get the best specs for lowest price Id choose whichever was cheapest if both had similar specs.
Hi grannman. What settings in call of duty 4 do you use. Configuration wise i mean. Maybe you could make a quick video of them to show me. I have the dv7 and its very sweet but i would like to see your game settings. Thanks.
Well if it operates fine when the power is normal then don't worry about it. Although I don't know how good it is for the laptop to have the power bouncing around. Being a laptop and not drawing much current it should be able to handle that sort of thing better than a desktop anyway.
This laptop plays zero hour with settings up as high as possible, I have the game. For red alert 3 (demo) the setting have to be tweaked a bit for it to run smooth at medium high settings. I don't think I'll be making any new vids of playing these games any time soon though.
If you compare it with a Dell laptop (especially the XPS series), its rather acceptable. Some Dells that I have come across became so toasty that you even have to place a towel over the left palm rest during gaming. For the DV5, although it still gets hot (especially at the left palm area), it is definitely in the acceptable range, though I usually play in an airconditioned room. Games I play: World of Warcraft, Far Cry 2, Call of Duty 4.
from those system requirements this laptop should handle the game easily. A dual core 2.26 cpu will trounce a 3ghz single core and the 9600m gt is way ahead of the 6800 range.
No I'm not at peak settings. Check out the last minute of "HP Pavilion Dv5 review part 1/2" to see the settings I used. The HP 9600m gt 512mb is ddr2 not dd3 and amping up settings such as anti aliasing and soften smoke edges cuts down the framerate too far.
i just got this Laptop for my brother , his birthday in a couple days , and from watching all these reveiws it looks like one of the best laptops out there!
The aerial input on the laptop can also receive an adapter to coaxial cable for cable tv. An aerial and this adapter are said to come with the laptop.
It has lasted over a year now under the most incredible stress. Works admirably.
Great review man, I get mine tommorow, I've got the t8400 @ 2ghz, 9600m gt, 2gb ram, and 250gb 5400 rpm drive. Can't wait to get it and play some cod4 as well :D
Falling in love with this computer, it's really got the look! Outstanding! =)
At the moment I'm using the latest video driver - 180.70 from laptopvideo2go. But I have to say the highest 3dmark06 scores came from the HP 175 series driver (their latest driver) being about 4460 points vs 4390ish from the laptopvideo2go drivers. However game performance seems to be good on the 180.70 drivers so I'm happy with them. Glad you liked the video man and in 3 days you'll have your dv5 :D
@armanansala06 yes. You can always alter video settings to make pretty much any modern game playable.
That's the wireless on/off button. Before the driver loads it's orange. Once it's loaded it turns blue if it's turned on.
the audio control quick touch buttons have played up on my now and then. The optical drive button to eject does not protrude but is flush with the surrounding plastic making it more difficult to push. I really don't care about these issues but you wanted to know. I like this laptop.
Good review of wot this machine can do, I got one from DSE bout 6mnths ago with $500 off. So was an awesome buy at 1599NZD. Was pleased when it ran Crysis with high settings without probs.
I think its a rather unknown gaming laptop!
Cheers.
Yes it gets hot when under high load and initially it is annoying. Either the temps have gone down now or I'm more used to it because I havent noticed it for a while. But certainly if you've just bought the laptop you'll feel as if it's cooking your palm once it really heats up. You can always lay something there if it concerns you. It's something to know though.
I recommend the Antec cooling pad for your laptop. My first one stopped working after a little over a year but you can find them for less than 20 bucks sometimes. It props up your laptop so their is some ventilation, and draws power from your usb to push out the warm air from under the laptop.
You rock at COD 4!!! The screen on that notebook is too reflective... I am getting that notebook tomorrow! It´s Christmas!!
Nice Lappy bro!
Mine is a Sony Vaio and my trustworthy XPS M1730.
Awesome to see some Call of Duty!
10/10
Not only are they in the first vid, they are also in the this vid's description.
Thanks for the advice. I just did a bit of reading on the antec cooler and some guy reconed his temps actually increased because his laptop fan was fighting the cooler's fans due to both drawing air in opposite directions. In my case they would also be sucking air 2 different ways. Anyway good idea on the cooler I'll be reading a bit more.
it's in the upper right hand corner of the laptop screen. Depends on the map and how much action is going on. Typically 50 or greater.
update bios by going to hp website, support and downloads, type in laptop model number, choose windows version, find bios in the list, download and install it.
updating bios can fix many issues including overheating and fan speeds. Bios supplies basic information to the operating system (windows etc) about the hardware - cpu graphics and so on.
Make sure you put the battery in it, boot into the factory install of vista and try out the volume control. Sit back a bit from the laptop and try pointing the remote in the general direction of the headphone jacks.
Heat cycles were an issue with the 8000 series nvidia gpus due to the solder used. I doubt this would have been carried over to the 9000 series. I reckon I've put this laptop through about a years worth of normal use heat cycles in the near 4 months I've owned it, so if anything is going to happen to one of these laptops it will happen to mine first. The sheer amount of gaming stints and their duration that I've put this laptop through is a good stress test of the design.
I can understand about Vista, I did everything I could to install xp on this laptop but still had some audio issues which niggled. In the end I did a fresh vista install without all the hp bloat. Made vista much more palatable.
I just learned something, I thought everybody celebrated Christmas on the 25th but a bit of reading shows me some places such as those in Scandinavia celebrate Christmas on the 24th. I'm a New Zealander in NZ and we do it on the 25th. Merry Christmas! Yes I've been playing cod4 for a while now so I've learnt the ropes.
man thanks a tom for this review,im gonna try to get this laptop for christmas too
It's always hard waiting but then you can appreciate the laptop when you get it all the more.
mate I mentioned it not only in the video but i've got it in the video description too.
It's a 9600m gt so quite a bit faster than the 9200.
I can't remember my RA3 settings too well, I was playing the demo. I think the most important performance setting was putting the shaders on medium or low and anti aliasing off, set resolution to 1280x800 res. If you use the medium quality setting and everything works well then you can start increasing the individual video options. Having anti-aliasing off and shaders low/medium (can't remember) means you can crank up the other settings and things will look good.
Not sure. Our laptops definitely meet the system requirements for assassins creed but the requirements are still quite high compared with other games. I'd probably start off on medium settings with no anti-aliasing and see how it goes. Anti-Aliasing and shaders are always the biggies. If it ran fine I'd start turning up the detail and view distance settings and so on.
Hi I'm good thanks, glad you liked the review all the way from mexico.
1137la has 4gb ram - 1135la 3gb ram.
1137 has a much weaker video card - radeon 3200. The 1135's video card is approx 40% more powerful - radeon 3450.
1137 has mini firewire (IEEE 1394), 1135 does not have mini firewire.
1137 has vista home premium 64bit, 1135 has vista home basic.
This hp pavilion has been stress tested hugely with all the gaming I've done on it. I've given this laptop more of a workout in the 9 months I've owned it than most people would give in their entire time of ownership of the laptop and probably the ownership of a second laptop. Various manufacturers including dell and hp had issues with faulty solder on 8000 series nvidia cards which requires the mobo replacement but the 9000 nvidia cards are fine and I've heard no issues about them.
You need to use the gamma adjustment picture in the video description in part 1. Under my original driver I had red gamma of 19%, green - 14%, blue 6%.
These settings were good until I updated my driver. Now I have gammas of red - 43%, green - 31%, blue - 17%. These setting will look terrible unless you have the same driver. It's best you follow the simple instructions on the gamma calibration page linked in part 1 or your screen will be messed up.
@ibocus flash video like youtube video does tax the cpu somewhat but not excessively. It will probably make your fan speed up a little.
As far as I know the tv tuner accepts broadcast tv through standard aerial and clear qam. You don't need to add anything as far as I know but you can always get a longer aerial I guess (I don't have the tv tuner in my laptop)
Yes. The 3650 isn't quite as powerful as the 9600 but it will still play cod4. Might need to tweak a few additional settings perhaps. CPU is fine.
In my opinion a vacuum is less likely to be bad for components than compressed air. Compressed air exerts far more pressure on the whatever youre pointing it at and depending on what psi the can is. Also I'd rather suck out dust than merely dislodge it internally. The only adverse potential from using a vacuum is sucking up your keyboard keys if you're vacuuming the keyboard. I just use the narrow fitting with the vacuum which stops this.
sorry didn't see your comment until now. Yes you can play it fine on an athlon x2 ql-64 because cod4 is not particularly cpu heavy. It's always the graphics card which is the key piece of hardware in gaming.
Well done video! I enjoyed it.. getting mine in four days! =)
Getting this for christmas super excited
@jopatstube yes. This laptop model has been superseded now but probably still available if you google it. I'd look at hp.com to see what's current.
Yes if your laptop doesn't have the internal tv tuner the a usb one would be easier. Basically the easiest way is to play your xbox on your laptop screen though. Your tv tuner must be able to accommodate RCA or Composite or HDMI leads from your xbox. You could try connecting your laptop to your TV through hdmi or vga port and try cloning the desktop onto the TV so you can play on the TV while recording on the laptop. I have no idea if that would work though.
The radeon hd 3200 has about 33% of the power the 9600m gt has. It's an integrated video chip that shares system memory.
I thought you were saying it was Christmas tomorrow when at the time you posted there was still a day to go before Christmas :D? Yes, this laptop is a great package that's why I made the vid. All the best.
it's microsoft software that cod4 uses. You can google it if you're wondering what it is. Cod4 is bundled with it, you dont' need to download it separately.
So long as you've got the Vista on the laptop that came with it when you bought it you will be ok. The battery goes under a little panel on the bottom!
Really it depends on the gddr of the 8600. Cod4 doesn't anywhere near fully utilise my cpu so the main bottleneck is going to be the graphics card. If the 8600m uses gdd3 it should run cod4 very similar to the speeds I am getting in the video.
Well the 3650 gets about 3400 3dmark06 points while the ddr2 9600 gets about 4400 so the 3650 is approx 30% less power. Cod4 would run okay on it so long as graphics were turned down further.
haven't had overheat issues. Fan noise is fine until the laptop gets hot then it starts to crank up. Things I dont' like - audio control touch pad and the optical drive button flush rather than protruding. That's about it.
@zane551 no. All dv5 laptops have the graphics hardwired to the motherboard.
I don't notice my reflection when playing or using the computer at maximum brightness. The reflection is still there but it is insignificant. I have been using these reflective screens for a while though so I may have got somewhat used to it. If you are concerned about the reflection make sure that whatever you do, don't get the infinity screen.
If you've got vista home premium and a tv tuner you should be able to record your xbox 360 playing just as you would record tv.
The trouble is the gamma settings are different depending on what driver you are using. I'm using a 176 series driver. If I changed my driver the gamma needs to be re-calibrated. For example, If I updated my driver and tried to use my current gamma settings everything would look like garbage so it's best if you do it yourself.
the t9400 is certainly going to be faster with it's higher clock speed. I've played the crysis demo which was definitely playable so long as you didn't crank the settings up. The left palm can get quite hot but, if it gets a bit much, you can always lay something down there. I'm not bothered about it myself.
mine is a dv5-1005tx as shown in the vid and description. Being in NZ I don't know too much about what's available in Europe but the dv5-1156eg you mention is a good laptop. It has the 9600m gt, and a fairly decent t5800 cpu. But if it was up to me I would choose the dv5-1032eg. Same as 1156eg but It sacrifices the 320gb HDD for a 250gb one, but you get a significantly better cpu, the p7350 (faster FSB, lower power consumption). I regard CPU as more important than HDD.
even if you get August 2008 exchange rate the prices between the US and NZ are not comparable. Things are typically more expensive here. I'm sure you can find US prices somewhere on the web.
Mate, the trouble is under heavy action I don't want the frame rate to dip below 30fps. FPS are fluctuating constantly its not like they are locked at 30. By lowering the settings I ensure things dont stutter when things go crazy. Additionally, many people including me can see the flicker of 30 fps on different types of screens such as the old crt screens. The human eye and 30 fps limitation is a bit of a fable when viewed on non-lcd screens.
Every laptop's fan is always going. It just speeds up when the cpu and gpu get hot. Mine spins at a slow speed unless I'm gaming then it really speeds up. The fan should not be going full speed all the time.
Updating the bios is a must as it impacts the fan behaviour. When I first got this laptop the fan fluctuated up and down every few seconds until I updated the bios.
cod4 is a dx9 only game. If you install it in vista it will install the dx9 files it needs also. So visually, an install under vista or xp is no different because it runs in dx9 regardless.
I made the video for people like you manaka20, glad you found it interesting :)
The 8400m is still way way faster than the intel 950 I had on my previous laptop so I can still very much appreciate the power it has :D
Well.. I guess it's up to you.. I use a compressed air can for my DV5.. I've read from notebook forums that vacuums are generally bad for laptops though.
make sure the vents are free of dust and never block them or try and draw air away from them with fans. A can of compressed air is supposed to be good for dealing with dust in the cooling system. I use a vacuum cleaner to suck the port where the fan is (while the laptop is off) every now and then. Download HWmonitor to see what temperatures you are getting at idle and at load. What cpu and gpu do you have?
Yes, today is Christmas for Europe, and tommorow for America... Merry Christmas to you TOO! You are from England right? I see from your accent. You have a lot experience with Call of Duty Modern warfare... I have it on Xbox 360...
I wouldn't change the ram and I'm quite sure changing the video card is impossible - they aren't made to be removed. Some laptops do have modular video cards though. I'd leave the laptop as it is unless you find you are using up all your ram which is unlikely.
I much prefer having more dots vertically. The 1280x800 screen is already plenty wide enough but every dot you can get vertically is valuable because there aren't many to play with. I would probably rather get a higher res screen than have height diminished to 768 dots.
no, definitely Celsius and measured with HWMonitor
With the bios update it peaks at 85 decrees C. At the extreme it might blip up to 86 or 87.
I have heard of other people going over 100 degrees with their 9600's but with the bios update that shouldn't happen. Mobile graphics chips can get insanely hot.
Celsius. This sort of temperature is standard when gaming or graphically stressing this laptop.
Hi ukadmin, no problem. I remember now that you had the dv7 with 9200m gs video card. Hope everything is going okay.
I don't know why there would be a shadow there? Make sure you've cleaned the web camera area and that the lighting is good. What do you mean by halfload lights? Is that the lights in your house running at half power?
you can use it on your lap with no problem under standard use.
But If you want to play hardware stressing games the laptop will get pretty hot on your lap.
1130ed is Intel based with t3200 2ghz dual core cpu, 3gb ram, nvidia 9200m gs graphics, 320gb hdd.
1120ed is AMD based and has 2.10Ghz Turion dual core cpu, 3gb ram, ati radeon hd 3450 graphics, 320gb hdd.
cheers. The dv5-1110ax isn't a bad laptop. Graphically, with the ati 3450, it would be about half as powerful as mine with the 9600 but there are still a heap of older games it could handle well. The cpu in the 1110ax is also weaker but for gaming it's the graphics card that's going to make the difference.
Hi man, the dv5 1135ee is exactly the same as my laptop except it has a 250gb hdd. It will play red alert 3 and cod4 because I've played both. RA3 required a bit of video option setting tweaking to to balance between good graphics and good framerate.
Hi, you can't upgrade the graphics because the graphics chips are directly soldered to the motherboard. You would have to replace the whole motherboard.
it has a dedicated 9600m gt as is pointed out everywhere already...
The 9600m gt is not modular in this laptop.
You can overclock your current cpu or pull the laptop to pieces and replace your cpu if you can find a faster cpu for the exact same model. I wouldn't recommend either option.
Yes the laptop is going to heat up even under fairly basic 3d gaming. Even zooming in on a high pixel photo and dragging your view around continuously causes the gpu to heat up. It doesn't get insanely hot or anything but it is interesting.
cheers. cod5 system requirements are well within the specs of our laptops so it should go okay with a bit of adjustment. I reckon I'd be able to handle cod5 for sure :D
So long as it has the 9600m gt video card it will be pretty good for games. Running at native res will be a little tougher but it'll still be good for most gaming.
I don't think the price would mean much as I bought it here in NZ and the exchange rates have been all over the place since.
Yeah, it gets pretty toasty but that's the sort of temp mobile gpus are built to take routinely. My gpu pretty much never breaks 85C under sustained load now. A lot depends on the room temp and at that time my room temp would have been somewhere around 25C. Bios version also makes a difference.
I like this laptop and that's about all I can say.
Go to watch a video were the problem occurs and see what the cpu load is when watching. Ctrl+alt+del then go to task manager then performance.
well the 8600 has 256 less ram and is previous generation to the 512mb 9600 with the dv5. This dv5 has a 2.26ghz core 2 duo, 320gb hdd, hdmi, 4x usb, worse battery life probably. It's up to you. I wanted the most bang for my buck and the dell 1530 couldn't hold a match to this laptop in terms of price and performance.
sounds good, so it's a dv7? Unfortunately my ping delay to Canada would be really bad. The furthest country I have ok ping with is Australia. Basically a slow ping means when you shoot at a wall the bullet impact could be half a second delayed (500ms ping). So shooting at moving targets is pretty much impossible :(
Well if you really want to try and fix the fan I would download the service guide for this laptop and dismantle it. Every fan has a motherboard connection so if the fan itself hasn't broken (which it may have) its connector to the board could have worked loose perhaps. If the fan is connected and it still will not go I would try and order the cooling system through hp. You can get part numbers through the service manual.
I don't have it as I don't really get into the whole keeping track of friends thing. I usually visit the same servers and get to know people that way while playing. If your xbox and ps3 friends have xfire on their computers you can add them but you can only play against other computer players, not ps3 or 360 players. Same for ps3 & 360 players - they can only play other using that same console.
I'm typing from it right now. The amount of hardcore gaming stress I've subjected this laptop to is more work than 10 lifetimes in a normal users hands. It gets hot under stress, but it just keeps chugging. Note, I've got the intel/nvidia variant which seems more reliable than amd/ati variants judging from other comments.
depends what hardware the xps 1530 is optioned with.
the dv5-1139tx will run cod4 basically identically to my laptop. The graphics card is the key piece of hardware with cod4 and I'm using the same one as that laptop. Cod4 doesn't anywhere near fully load my cpu so there shouldn't be much performance difference. That laptop will be fine for cod4.
hey Grantman... can you post your Gamma video settings here, or at NBR please? I can't see them well enough in your video.
Thanks..
From what I've read if you could even get cod4 started on the x4500 it would be pretty much unplayable.
yeap you're not far off. As standard the Dell 8600m ddr3 card gets 3dmark06 4223 points at 1280x800 so it is only marginally slower to the 9600m gt ddr2. But in saying that both cards can be overclocked and if you google 'HP DV5t 9600m gt overclocking guide' you will see people getting in excess of 5300 points with their ddr2 9600s. Personally I'd never overclock a 15" notebook's video and only a select few would do it. I see it as more of a risk of burning the candle at both ends.
The dv5 actually got my attention on a 30% discount so I hadn't looked around much at the competition. Even though you aren't looking at a gaming comp I'd still try and get a low end dedicated video card. You never know when you might want to use it for some entertainment. As far as Dells and Toshibas, since I try and get the best specs for lowest price Id choose whichever was cheapest if both had similar specs.
Good review.
Thanks!
Hi grannman.
What settings in call of duty 4 do you use.
Configuration wise i mean.
Maybe you could make a quick video of them to show me.
I have the dv7 and its very sweet but i would like to see your game settings.
Thanks.
it doesn't get hot under any amount of internet use.
It only gets hot under sustained heavy load.
Well if it operates fine when the power is normal then don't worry about it. Although I don't know how good it is for the laptop to have the power bouncing around. Being a laptop and not drawing much current it should be able to handle that sort of thing better than a desktop anyway.
This laptop plays zero hour with settings up as high as possible, I have the game.
For red alert 3 (demo) the setting have to be tweaked a bit for it to run smooth at medium high settings. I don't think I'll be making any new vids of playing these games any time soon though.
@BDO917 if your lagging is due to low fps - turn down the games video settings.
They are shown at the end of "HP Pavilion Dv5 review part 1/2"
If you compare it with a Dell laptop (especially the XPS series), its rather acceptable. Some Dells that I have come across became so toasty that you even have to place a towel over the left palm rest during gaming. For the DV5, although it still gets hot (especially at the left palm area), it is definitely in the acceptable range, though I usually play in an airconditioned room. Games I play: World of Warcraft, Far Cry 2, Call of Duty 4.
from those system requirements this laptop should handle the game easily. A dual core 2.26 cpu will trounce a 3ghz single core and the 9600m gt is way ahead of the 6800 range.
No I'm not at peak settings. Check out the last minute of "HP Pavilion Dv5 review part 1/2" to see the settings I used.
The HP 9600m gt 512mb is ddr2 not dd3 and amping up settings such as anti aliasing and soften smoke edges cuts down the framerate too far.