HP EliteBook 2170p Ultraportable Review: Business Class, But Business Savvy?
by Dustin Sklavos on November 30, 2012 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- HP
- EliteBook
- Ivy Bridge
- Laptops
Application and Futuremark Performance
While the HP EliteBook 2170p review unit we have does feature Intel's fastest ULV processor in the Core i7-3667U and at least a 7200-RPM mechanical hard disk, you'll see that the single channel memory operation takes a bit of a toll on performance. PCMark 7, in particular, seems very unhappy with the lack of solid state memory anywhere in the chassis.
If QuickSync either doesn't kick in or doesn't efficiently kick in, scores in some cases can come out dismally low. I actually updated the drivers for the 2170p's HD 4000 to Intel's most recent as HP's stock drivers didn't give PCMark 7 its QuickSync boost.
Switch over to CPU-centric workloads, though, and the EliteBook lines up where it's supposed to. The generational jump to Ivy Bridge allows a 17W processor to offer roughly the same performance as last generation's top end 35W. If you need the power it's there, but note that an i5-3317U seems to be able to get the job done very nearly as well. Ivy Bridge in general is a big win for ultraportables, but also pay attention to how the ASUS ZenBooks seem to have a harder time keeping their turbo up while the thicker chassis of the 2170p (and the Acer V5-171) seems to let the i7 run faster for longer.
3DMark performance isn't terrible, but there does seem to be at least a minor hit owing to the single-channel operation. HP's Folio 13 ran in single-channel as well and sits at the bottom of each chart. The HD 4000 does remain a remarkably powerful integrated graphics option, though; I've been playing a few games on it and am continually impressed by its performance.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
46 Comments
View All Comments
Dustin Sklavos - Sunday, December 2, 2012 - link
Brazos netbooks go for a minimum of $400-$450. Brazos should be hitting the same market Atom did, but it's not, and it's encroaching on space occupied by systems with faster Intel chips.Penti - Monday, December 3, 2012 - link
I agree that they can't compete against the price point of Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge based Intel chips. Remember those are sub 100 USD chips already. Or barely above 100 USD for low-end Ivy.Hondo, Jaguar core based Kabini or Samara will probably find it's way into some tablets and hybrid tablets, as it's not hard to compete against the price point of those devices though.
AMD's problem is largely that there just isn't any good AMD builds from the OEM's too. For the business segment like this product is geared to there just isn't anything to compete with Intel's full blown vPro/iAMT management solution.
On AMD there isn't even anything to compete with the Core i5 based Acer Aspire V5-171-6422 for 520 USD when it comes to 11.6" notebook. The 17W Trinity is also pretty weak overall. For the same money as they have appeared to be in the market you get Core i5, Ivy based stuff. Even if an AMD solution could hit the 450 mark Core i3's or Pentium/Celeron Intel stuff will be down to about 400.
You end up having something like Samsung NP535U3C compete against a Intel based NP530U3C and the price point between them aren't just gonna matter.
The 300 USD netbook market will just not exist. Except for 300 USD specially rebated notebooks.
AMD needs to get new chips out to compete in this space, as is they also is beaten by last gen Intel chips in price/performance. They obviously need to design a chip that performs well in notebooks and not designed for 4P servers with almost 20MB cache per chip. You can add performance enhancing stuff with L3 cache or whatever but the base performance with minimal amount of cache needs to be good first, it's a general computing processor after all.
batguiide - Sunday, December 9, 2012 - link
Sharea website with you ,
( socanpower.ca)
Believe you will love it.
laptop battery,CPU fan,AC power adapters.DC power adapters and laptop keyboard.
I bought two. Cheap, good quality, you can
go and ship with there.
john12345p - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
You also reviewed HP folio 9470m. Among these two HP 2170p and HP Folio 9470m, which one is ultimately the better one? These are the only two that the IT at work is offering, so need to choose one among the two. Which among these two is better? Which one is ultimately more preferable? Which one ultimately sucks less? :-)HP - Friday, June 27, 2014 - link
I'm not a fan of the new Elitebook series. The previous Elitebook series was better especially in terms of durability and looks -- 6930p, 2540p for reference. The 21/25xx appear over-cooked. The readily accessible internals through the base turns me off slightly. Why should anyone need to get to the internals that quickly? There's not much more to do there once you've done the memory or disk upgrade, which will probably only be one or two times in the usage lifespan of the machine.The machine does indeed feel bulky, rather wide I should say because of the full blown, wide keyboard. Glad I wasn't the only one having misgivings about the new Elitebook series.
nicemachines - Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - link
I bought one for like $140 used on ebay. Come to find out that the upper memory slot doesn't work in mine. I noticed in your pictures that you don't have a memory stick in your upper slot, WTF?