HP Envy 17: HP's MacBook Pro Killer?
by Dustin Sklavos on December 16, 2010 12:30 AM ESTHigh and Ultra Gaming Settings
We'll start taxing the Envy 17 at our "High" preset. The AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5850 shouldn't have too much of a problem with our gaming suite at these settings, even at the notebook's 1080p native resolution.
In every case but StarCraft II, the Mobility Radeon HD 5850 is able to produce smooth performance at the Envy 17's native resolution, and even in that case it's still fairly playable. As we're often keen to point out, though, again you can see the major difference in performance going from mainstream-class to enthusiast-class graphics in a notebook: there's no middle ground here. Unfortunately it seems like our "High" preset is near the peak of what the 5850 can do.
Once we start pushing the GPU at our "Ultra" settings, the weaknesses of AMD's mobile line-up are finally revealed. Lest NVIDIA get cocky, it should be noted that the Quadro 5000M doesn't fare that much better. We're near the top of the line in mobile graphics here, but the gulf in performance going from mobile to desktop graphics is absolutely tremendous. Only the Clevo X7200 is able to pull playable framerates across the board, but it also costs three times what the Envy 17 does.
Now's as good a time as any to reiterate what we said back when we initially reviewed the AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5870: AMD needs to get their act together. The state of modern high-end mobile graphics is pitiful, and "good enough" just isn't going to cut it anymore. AMD seems willing to barely compete at most, leaving NVIDIA to produce equally lazy parts like the GeForce GTX 480M. "Consolitis" has kept modern game requirements fairly reasonable, to the point where a desktop Radeon HD 5770 can for the most part get the job done at 1080p, but we're still having issues with mobile parts.
Without good competition and envelope pushing from either side, mobile graphics stagnate horribly and leave us with a mediocre top-end. The 5850 in the Envy 17 is adequate and should play most games at native, but we've been sitting at "adequate" for entirely too long. Here's hoping that the mobile variants of AMD's 6800/6900 series can leverage features such as PowerTune to give mobile gaming a shot in the arm.
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JediJeb - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
I haven't owned a laptop for several years and have been shopping for one lately, but frankly I hate the glossy screens it seems every one of them has now days. I don't like being distracted by the reflections on the screen. Back when CRTs were what you used on a desktop the ones with glossy screens soon feel out of favor once we had ones with matte finishes on them. Why is it now that even desktop LCDs are returning to the glossy finishes? I can't even imagine trying to use one of the glossy ones outside in the sunlight! With all the bright florescent lights at work it would still be bad for eye strain with the reflections. Does anyone still make a laptop without the gloss?TheAdAgency - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
Vaio Z has a matte screenpollyanna - Sunday, December 19, 2010 - link
Apple does. You can choose between high gloss and matte.Beenthere - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
I'd be in the market for this type of notebook but I wouldn't even consider it with an Intel CPU. Due to Intel's unscrupulous Biz practices for which they have been convicted, I wouldn't buy any product containing an Intel CPU. If HP decided to offer an AMD based version with an upgraded graphics card I may consider it.Roland00Address - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
HP was planning on offering AMD quad core cpus in their envys 14s and 17s but this was eventually dropped. If I were to guess why it was dropped it was because the AMD quad cores cpus compete against the i3s and i5s and this is supposed to be an enthusiast laptop.smacz - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
Hey Dustin,How do the speakers in this compare to the Logitech Z305 you tested earlier? If you could let us know how these compare to the speakers in the Dell XPS laptops that would be great. Thx.
Etern205 - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
While 99% of the notebooks will only have 2 ram slots. I've remember the HP envy's as having 4 ram slots.Is there a way for you guys to verify it on this new model?
Etern205 - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
Found out the HP Envy 15 has 4 ram slotsHP Envy 15 service manual
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01911053.pdf
One at the bottom
One below the keyboard
2 below the left palm rest
Mr_Armageddon - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
Why would you name the title of this review "HP Envy 17: HP's MacBook Pro Killer?" but then neglect to have any numbers from the MBP in your comparison charts?Granted the Envy 17 is geared towards a different user, looking for more powerful multimedia features, but regardless you should have thrown some MBP numbers in your charts running bootcamp, especially with the article title as it is.
sjprg2 - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
Why won't HP give us the specs on the hard drives. I have called them and asked and gotten the runaround but no answers. Are they SATA 1, 2, or 3? It important as with the advent of SSDs, (Which by the way HP will not tell you which brand or speed of the SSD option). You did not include them either. Did you just copy their spec sheet? We look to you for answers, not company hype. I'm looking for a field laptop to run Adobe Photoshop CS5 at a more reasonable level than the Clevo 7200. For example the Canon 1DSIII produces an image of about 25MB RAW and CS5 processing produces a TIF file of approx 275 MB each. The Leica S2 RAW files are on the order of 37MB. We need horsepower, and SSDs. All of my current computers are already converted to SSD.