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HP Compaq nw8240 Review (Pictures included) - Page 4

post #61 of 111
7/6/05 at 9:51pm
i have, it seems to work fine. i thought there was just a problem with nvidia based drivers.
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post #62 of 111
7/7/05 at 12:39pm
What video settings are you playing it in? and what drivers?
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post #63 of 111
7/7/05 at 1:29pm
I've been playing at 1280x1024 with everything set to medium, anti aliasing at 2x. I'm using the FireGL drivers from hp's website.
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post #64 of 111
7/8/05 at 4:45am
Thread Starter 
Short term reliability update:
I've now played World of Warcraft with max settings for 6 weeks, sometimes as long as 14 hours per session, and I have experienced absolutely no troubles in this kind of heavy use.
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post #65 of 111
7/9/05 at 4:48pm
Thread Starter 
Undervolting nw8240
I just undervolted Pentium M in my nw8240. It decreases heat emission with no loss in performance. See this tutorial for it: http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=70943

I used Centrino Hardware Control rather than RMClock, since I found it to be a little nicer program.

The default voltage at 15x multiplier (2.0 GHz) was set to 1.356 V and at 6X (800 MHz) to 0.988 V. The heat level normally was 85 degrees at 15x and 100% CPU load and 50 degrees at 6x idle.

I was able to undervolt 15x to 1.100 V being stable but I chose to run at 1.116 V just to be safe. The heat level decreased to 70 degrees! So the drop was 15 degrees. The casing (thermal zone 2) is a bit cooler now too - dropped from 85 to 75 or so. It still heats and is of course noticeable, but all this for free is a good deal.

I undervolted 6X to 0.700 V and it worked well, but I didn't notice any difference in idle temperature. Well, maybe 1 or 2 degrees.

Well, is undervolting worth the trouble? Maybe. The computer heats a bit less, but actually it doesn't heat so much normally either - at least mine doesn't. But since undervolting is a free upgrade, you can just do it if you have time. Of course, if you don't mind testing stability, you may just pick some numbers (like mine) and let it go and hope that it's stable for your CPU as well. But note that my stable voltage was a few steps higher than that of the original undervolting thread starter, even though we have the same CPUs, so the stability of an individual CPU cannot be guaranteed without testing.

EDIT: 1.116 V wasn't working perfectly, so I'm running at 1.132 V. So far so good.

EDIT 2: Undervolting increases battery life, I could run the DVD test again at some point and see how the laptops performs now.
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post #66 of 111
7/10/05 at 10:01am

NW8240 Memory

Is DDR2-533 the same as PC2-2400? On HP's website under accessories for NW8240 it has 400MHz/533MHz 1GB PC2-3200 DDR2 http://h30143.www3.hp.com/configure2.cfm?sid=18527 I'm confused I thought there was only PC-3200 @ 400MHz not PC2-3200 @ 533MHz. What does the NW8240 actually have? Thank you for your assistance.
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post #67 of 111
7/10/05 at 3:08pm
ddr2 533 is ddr2 4200. i also noticed something strange about the nw8240. the USB ports, or at least my usb port on the left side, is not constructed in such a way to prevent the usb plug from being inserted incorrectly. with my desktop and other laptops I usually just "feel" the right way that the plug should go in, but with the nw8240 on the left, the plug will go in the wrong way. when this happens, the system reboots (i would assume because of a power surge). so be careful when inserting usb devices
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post #68 of 111
7/10/05 at 4:08pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by j19
ddr2 533 is ddr2 4200. i also noticed something strange about the nw8240. the USB ports, or at least my usb port on the left side, is not constructed in such a way to prevent the usb plug from being inserted incorrectly. with my desktop and other laptops I usually just "feel" the right way that the plug should go in, but with the nw8240 on the left, the plug will go in the wrong way. when this happens, the system reboots (i would assume because of a power surge). so be careful when inserting usb devices
Huh! I can insert USB cables/devices only the correct way in my lappy. Just checked it out.
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post #69 of 111
7/14/05 at 11:40am
Hey tommi , ive got the same laptop man . but the pg818ea. I like what ur doign wiht this machine man. The hp performance and the undervolting etc... GOOD work keep it up ....

keep posting . maybe we can create one thread and keep all info about this machine there ... i keep haveing to scour 900 threads to find info ... THx
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post #70 of 111
7/14/05 at 1:52pm
so since undervolting was mentioned, any idea about any tools to do this in Linux?

thanks,
Adi
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post #71 of 111
7/17/05 at 5:06pm
i decided to try the undervolting, so far (still working on 15x) i'm working at 1.084Volts with no errors, running at 58 (from 67) degrees. I'm going slowly, running a few prime 95s for about an hour every 4 steps or so. I'll update this post when I'm done undervolting
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post #72 of 111
7/21/05 at 5:11pm

Undervolting in Linux

Quote:
Originally Posted by adi1334
so since undervolting was mentioned, any idea about any tools to do this in Linux?

thanks,
Adi
Undervolting in Linux is not supported by default. I have it working on a Dell D505 (Pentium M Banias), though, and when I have received my nw8240 next week and modified the patch for Pentium M Dothan, I can send you a kernel patch. If you want to try hacking the kernel yourself, try looking in /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/speedstep-centrino.c and section 3.1 of the Pentium M datasheet. Be really careful not to fry your CPU, though...
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post #73 of 111
7/22/05 at 6:43pm
Quote:
If you want to try hacking the kernel yourself, try looking in /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/speedstep-centrino.c and section 3.1 of the Pentium M datasheet.
Ok, thanks. Though probably I wont risk it. Or maybe ... well ... will look into it.

Are you running linux on a nw8240? If so, did you get X running with external monitors and/or data projectors. I only managed to do it using the "vesa" driver. Which, of course, is not the best solution. If yes, is it possible to have a look at your X configuration file .

Thanks.
Adi
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post #74 of 111
7/25/05 at 1:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by adi1334
Ok, thanks. Though probably I wont risk it. Or maybe ... well ... will look into it.

Are you running linux on a nw8240? If so, did you get X running with external monitors and/or data projectors. I only managed to do it using the "vesa" driver. Which, of course, is not the best solution. If yes, is it possible to have a look at your X configuration file .
No, I haven't got a nw8240 yet, though I will on Thursday... :-) And then I will run linux on it and would definitely like to have external monitors working with a non-vesa driver. I'll let you know if I have any luck. Are you using the free X.org driver or the fglrx one? What version? Have you tried getting the power management things (dynamicclocks or rovclock) for the GPU working?
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post #75 of 111
7/29/05 at 2:57pm

X config and all that on the 8240

Sorry to have taken so long to reply. Was busy, but it's great that I finally found someone interested (and who seems to know so much more about this) . This, as in running Linux on nw8240.

Quote:
Are you using the free X.org driver or the fglrx one?
Actually I am using Debian (Testing), which is still on XFree86 (and I decided to wait for the X.org to come into Testing, which should happen soon, rather than do it on my own - a bit on the lazy side I am). I am using the fglrx driver, version 8.14.13 (I think). While I got X running fairly easy, I was unable to get it run with an external monitor.

Also, weird enough, I only get 1920x1200@56 Hz, no matter what I do to those modelines (I must do somehting wrong anyway...).

Quote:
Have you tried getting the power management things (dynamicclocks or rovclock) for the GPU working?
Actually thats something I was wondering about but didnt get a chance to look into.

I know I am kindof not much good with this, and didnt have much time to really check all the docus, but please do share your knowledge.

, Adi ...
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post #76 of 111
8/1/05 at 11:02am
Nice review!
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post #77 of 111
8/1/05 at 11:05am

Kernel patch for undervolting centrinos

Quote:
Originally Posted by adi1334
Sorry to have taken so long to reply. Was busy, but it's great that I finally found someone interested (and who seems to know so much more about this) . This, as in running Linux on nw8240.
I got my brand-new nw8240 last Wednesday, and have had some time to play with it. I did put the promised patch for adjusting voltages at http://avkrok.net/nw8240/centrino-voltages.diff. It applies cleanly to linux 2.6.12, and probably to most other recent versions as well. Apply using
PHP Code:
cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.12 patch -p1 < centrino-voltages.diff
It updates the speedstep-centrino kernel module to allow changing voltages. After a recompile, reboot and modprobe, there should be a file /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_voltages that on my system contains
PHP Code:
# frequency voltage 2133000 1356 1867000 1292 1600000 1212 1333000 1148 1067000 1068 800000 988
Frequencies in kHz, voltages in mV. Adjusting the voltages is then done by e.g.
PHP Code:
sudo sh -c "echo 800000 700 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_voltages"
The next time the frequency is altered (by ondemand, powernowd, or echoing to scaling_setspeed), the new voltage will be used.

UPDATE: Modified the patch to make the new voltages effective immediately.

Using 700 mV @ 800 MHz lowers my cpu temperature by about 5 degrees Celsius, and seems stable so far. The patch works for me, and my system is still alive, but I give no guarantees as to whether it will work for you. It might fry your CPU, especially if you set a too-high voltage, but also if you uncover some new bug I haven't noticed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by adi1334
Actually I am using Debian (Testing), which is still on XFree86 (and I decided to wait for the X.org to come into Testing, which should happen soon, rather than do it on my own - a bit on the lazy side I am). I am using the fglrx driver, version 8.14.13 (I think). While I got X running fairly easy, I was unable to get it run with an external monitor.

Also, weird enough, I only get 1920x1200@56 Hz, no matter what I do to those modelines (I must do somehting wrong anyway...).
Sorry to say I haven't been around a monitor for a while and haven't tested that. I will as soon as I can. Btw, do you have WiFi working? I have tried using several different versions of the ipw2200bg driver, and it just says that the "RF kill switch" (blue led-button for turning WiFi/BlueTooth on/off) always is disabling WiFi, no matter what state it actually is in...

UPDATE: Nevermind. It started working, sorta magically, at about the same time that I recompiled my ACPI DSDT. The new DSDT might or might not be the reason it started working.

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post #78 of 111
9/13/05 at 2:55am
Thread Starter 
After several months of use now, I must say that the noise and heat management in this laptop are excellent, especially after undervolting the processor. I would increase the noise management grade to 9.5/10, and heat management grade to 8.5/10.

The computer is so silent that I can leave it on over night (e.g. for downloading) and it produces nearly no audible noise. It's much more silent than my external hard drive (WD Dual Option 250 GB), which is pretty silent, too.

The initial heat problem has disappeared with the undervolting procedure, and I don't notice the heat much any more, even over long gaming sessions.
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post #79 of 111
9/13/05 at 3:19am
Well laptops are always hotted in the first 72+ hours of use (though most company's say its the first 48)... The thermal pads need to melt down and cover the surfaces...
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post #80 of 111
9/18/05 at 9:49am
just got my nw8240 (PG817EA) and EVERYTHING is perfect accept the screen wich is way to dull. I've cheked the battery, installed latest drivers for g.card but no luck. Look at this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/arch...p?t-16770.html

Thats the same problem I'm having. Only thing that confuses me is that the display on vermintrex's http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=84360 and tommi's pics here, looks MUCH better/brighter. My "white" is kind of dirty yellow/gray.

I intend to use this lap for graphic/motion design so color is one of the most important things for me. any suggestions?

Here's a pic. ALOT of difference don't you agree?


does every 8240 model has that "HP Panel Protection System"?
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