HP DM1

[sandys]

The CPU performance of the AMD Fusion CPU is disappointing, there is no getting away from that. It performs barely faster than the Intel Atom range of CPUs.

An Atom based netbook can be bought for ~£150.

So you are saying that is worth £200 for the integrated HD 6320 graphics?!

While the HD 6320 graphics are vastly better than the Atoms offerings, in the scheme of it all the HD 6320 isn't going to be ripping games apart. Is it?

Again, my opinion is that the price tag on the DM1 is way too high. I really don't think it is such an outrageous statement as you are making out.

Not all Atoms are equal, A crap Atom netbook will set you back £150, a decent Atom netbook is in the region of £250-450 so the DM1 coming in at £320 isn't bad.

I admit the CPU is not its strong point but with graphics acceleration in browsers, applications and many media plugins etc. Its CPU is enough, plug into an external screen as I do and suddenly you'll find the Atom can't even handle full screen HD youtube, the AMD can, so yes for me, to get an acceptable user experience its worth it, I just browse the web on the thing, it can handle that and lasts a good 5-6 hours.

If you need a machine with a CPU to do heavy lifting then you don't buy anything in the ~£300 market.

 

[flash2bang]

regarding the value for money debate, a dual core atom netbook (that's atom N5xx series chips, others are single core) is around the £300 mark. They only come with 1GB RAM (vs 4GB), Win 7 starter (vs Home Premium) and much lower res screen. Surely the DM1-40xx laptops are worth the extra £50 (I'm sure it will come down in price more with time as well). If you want ultimate performance in a similarish size package then an Alienware Mx11 is the way to go (a friend of mine has one), but you'll pay nearer to £1000 for that once you've added some 'essential' goodies.

 

[sandys]

Finally got all the updates for COD MW2 downloaded and installed via Steam. It runs multi-player on 1024x768 with AA at x2 and other settings on auto or set to system recommended. The frame rate is not great though, so I guess dropping the resolution a little will fix this. Still impressive for a light cheap laptop.

Perhaps drop the AA?

 

[flash2bang]

Perhaps drop the AA?

Tried that, but made little difference. However, dropping to 800x600 res and it's running sweet

 

[artamangr]

Partly relevant question with respect to the DM1.

I have been reading some reviews of it and other laptops that come with the same APU, as well as comments from people in forums, and they claim that the graphics are better than the Intel HD3000 that come with the low voltage intel processors.

Why is that? E.g. the thinkpad x121 with the low voltage core i3 scores around 3000 in 3dmark06 whereas the AMD ones score around 2500. Stronger intel processors (e.g. the i5/i7 in macbooks and ultrabooks) can get up to almost 4000.

In what way are the AMD superior? Just because of the directx11 support (which if I am not mistaken not too many games support yet anyway)?

 

[sandys]

Read some of the reviews its just the performance of Intels GPU solution and the level of support in the graphics drivers, poor rendering and somethings unable to run, I'm sure Intel will get there eventually, even with an i5 and the HD3000 the Intel solution can fall behind the rubbish AMD CPU in its APU solution.

Plenty of supporting evidence for that, synthetic benchmarks are just that, synthetic, niether is perfect to be honest, I'd take an i3 with a dedicated card if I could have got one in size and budget. I went the AMD route primarily for Linux so some of its main benefits will not be used by me, that said currently running Linux in a Virtual machine and this seems to provide acceptable performance for my needs, not sure if Hardware Virtualization helps here or not?

Its a shame AMD haven't managed to get llano down to mobile power performance levels that would be the sweet spot good enough CPU and GPU, as it is this'll have to do for now, its a good start, hopefully the only way is up and they can execute well.

General performance seems pretty snappy on this little CPU, my work laptop is a Dell E6510 with core i7 Q720 (i think, 4C8T, 1.6ghz) doesn't feel faster in general use TBH, it does have to load Outlook though rather than thunderbird.

 

[Electroshadow]

if your not worried about bench mark results, then this little laptop is absolutely fine.

build quality is really good and with a fresh install of 64bit and 8gb of ram installed (this computer will support 8gb of pc1066 at 1333Mhz) it runs quite snappy and is fine for:

media streaming, photo editing, microsoft office and ive even been doing for serif webpage design oh and autocad runs quite well outputted to a larger screen.

Also multi tasks very well, as last night i managed to stream a film to the xbox and play wow & eve online at 29fps on custom med- high setting without sutter in either the film or the games.

but if you were to just rely on bench mark results things arent to rosey as 3dmark 06 will only next 2860 (although 3dmark 06 is direct x9 and this gpu focuses on direct x11) and super pi 1M will take 39sec......


Also noticed some settings in 11.11 catalyst under performance there are moveable cpu clock bars which are locked out. If you turn off the windows balance power setting in control panel you can turn off the power on demand setting of the cpu.

i have my laptop running on deman 800mhz to 1694mhz on battery and always running at 1694mhz when plugged in and it dose make quite a difference i think.

 

[capomeister]

I have this laptop and I'm happy with it. Whilst I paid less than £300 for it at PC World I think at £350 its still good value compared to an Atom netbook which would only have a lower resolution, 10" screen for starters (not to mention less RAM, smaller HDD, etc).

I am having problems installing windows 7 professional, 64 bit, using an external hard drive, however. I get 'cannot create bootsect.exe' on the USB drive I am using. Did anyone else get this message and if so is there a fix?

 

[Electroshadow]

Usb beds to be formatted to fat32 first I think before moving the iso to the usb with windows usb dvd tool

Best double check on the fat32 thing though it might need to be the other option

 

[capomeister]

Usb beds to be formatted to fat32 first I think before moving the iso to the usb with windows usb dvd tool

Best double check on the fat32 thing though it might need to be the other option

Thanks - I'll give that a go. I had formatted the USB to ntfs so this is worth a try.

 

[flash2bang]

If you still can't get the usb stick drive method to work, just borrow an external DVD RW drive from someone. I created a Win 7 64 bit DVD from the image downloaded from Digital River (see Electroshadow's post on page 3) and it worked fine for the 64 bit install in my usb external DVD drive (just remember to enable boot from CD/DVD ROM in the setup when you switch the machine on).

 

[sandys]

Ensure you have all the drivers before starting, I assumed I would at least have a LAN connection to do the downloads after re-install to x64 but no, there was no way to connect.

Not a problem just a speed bump, all done now though, my 8Gb is in and reported, I do like the way you can take the whole back off without screws, got to be the easiest install I've ever done.

Bit of a pain having to go through phoning up MS to use the automated activation, how many times did I punch a number wrong

 

[OhPascal]

So I finally got mine yesterday, quick format for x64 (used the windows usb tool,very simple!) Absolutely loving mine it can even play 1080p YT no problem. I was just wondering A.how much did your 8gb of ram cost and was it two simple 1333mhz chips? B. Once its installed does the machine automatically allocate more memory to the GPU and how much of a performance increase have you noticed ?

 

[Electroshadow]

8gb of pc 1066 1333Mhz 2x 4gb chips were £26 with free delivery on a woodland webpage

was'nt amazing increase in performance but worth every penny of £26 multi tasks a lot better ie wifi streaming downloading and gaming at the same time now problems.

 

[OhPascal]

Hmmm I cant even seem to get the bottom of mine ! Am I right in holding the battery release switch open whilst try to slide the lid towards me ?

 

[Electroshadow]

yes slide the bottom casing away from the battery , whilst holding the battery release button

 

[sandys]

For me not a lot of benefit from 8gb over 4Gb so wouldn't bother unless you need it for something, I only had it as I bought an x121 which came with 2Gb which isn't quite enough and the price of 8 was so cheap I did that rather than up it to 4, course the 121 broke so removed the RAM when I returned it, may as well use it in this

 

[NeonAngel]

I only ordered it with 2GB of RAM. Does that come with just 1 stick? If so should I just buy 4GB and have 6 overall? I am looking at getting it on the crucial website. I was going to go for 8GB and use 2 of there 4GB sticks but it if it makes little difference might as well just add 4GB and have a total of 6GB. Not sure why I have typed this in this thread I am getting the Lenovo x121e, blonde moment.

 

[jonifen]

Bought the 4027ea today after reading the comments on this thread. So far, I'm quite impressed although the keyboard feels a bit odd and I'm finding I often press a key and it doesn't seem to acknowledge it. The demo in a local shop had the same issue though, so it's not just mine. Although, it could just be me (I think I was just used to the keyboard on my 5yr old Vaio).

Have to admit, it's pretty nippy so far on 4Gb running the 32-bit Windows 7. Can't get over how cool it is compared to the Vaio after being on an hour or so and the battery seems impressive so far!

 

[Electroshadow]

seems to run the new SWTOR beta fine with bloom and conversation focus turned off everything else is on high