HP EliteBook 8570w Notebook Review: The Other Side of the Coin
by Dustin Sklavos on December 18, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Systems
- AMD
- HP
- Mobile Workstation
- Ivy Bridge
- GCN
- FirePro
Conclusion: Fifteen Inch DreamColor, But Is It Worth It?
As much as I adore the current aesthetic HP is employing with their enterprise class notebooks, their design may have run into a bit of a wall with the EliteBook 8570w. Build quality remains solid, the keyboard and touchpad are both excellent, and I still love how easy the access panel is to remove. There are a lot of really smart design cues included with the 8570w, and HP is the only company offering a 10-bit IPS panel in a 15.6" form factor.
Performance is for the most part there, and throttling doesn't seem to have really affected it in any of our benchmarks. Both SPEC workstation benchmarks take a long time to run, but they don't hit the CPU with quite the same sustained load as the AIDA64 stress test; in CPU bound situations, the results were pretty consistent with what we'd expect. Meanwhile, AMD's FirePro M4000 turns out to be an excellent budget alternative to the pricy mobile Quadro GPUs. Though AMD still has some work to do ekeing performance out of the GCN architecture, applications like Maya can benefit tremendously from it. The M4000 was able to perform as well as a Kepler GPU with more than twice its power budget in that test.
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Unfortunately, the EliteBook 8570w has two major problems: heat, and price. Thermally, the CPU can get so hot it throttles. You'll see varying opinions around here as to how much of an issue this is. When he reviewed the original Razer Blade, Vivek was willing to overlook that notebook's heat issues on the CPU since the CPU is capable of protecting itself from thermal damage; it runs as fast as it can, then cuts speed to keep from cooking. I'm not as willing to overlook that kind of problem, especially in an enterprise notebook. Out of the box, the 8570w runs as well as it ever will. If it's throttling now, it stands to reason that as dust starts invariably starting to collect inside the notebook, thermal issues will only increase over time. That may or may not be an issue depending on how often the fan is cleaned out, but I'm not big on it.
As for price, you're really paying to be able to get a 15.6" DreamColor display. That may very well not be worth it. If you're willing to go for a more conventional 1080p display, Dell's Precision M4700 comes in at $400 less for roughly the same performance, and ditches potential SSD caching in favor of just flat out offering mSATA SSDs for storage. Meanwhile, Lenovo's ThinkPad W530 is able to undercut HP's offering by a brutal $800, but you do have to sacrifice the FirePro, blu-ray, and some storage to get there.
Where mobile workstations are concerned, I'm not convinced the 8570w is the way to go. In my opinion, the primary reason to buy it would be because you absolutely must have DreamColor at 15.6" instead of 17.3". If you're in the market for a mobile workstation and need a quality panel, I'd seriously consider spending up on either the Dell Precision M6700 or HP's own EliteBook 8770w. This isn't a bad notebook, but it's not a homerun either, and I think it asks too many compromises.
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Kevin G - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - link
There is little difference between the drivers on consumer level GPU's under OS X and the workstation class video card drivers under Windows. That is the key difference between workstation and consumer level GPU's: drivers. Take a look at the cross platform software and the software vendors do certify the OS X drivers.Beyond that the other differences between consumer and workstation GPU's are often related to GPU compute. nVidia only offers full speed GPU compute on their Telsa cards and have even started to nerf the Quadro line up (though not as much as Geforce cards based upon the same GPU die).
I've been able to spot two other minor differences between consumer and workstation cards. The first is hardware based line anti-aliasing and 10 bit color support. Under OS X, both this AA technique and 10 bit color output are provided on consumer cards.
The last difference would be the cards themselves. Workstation cards due tend to have additional outputs (either DL-DVI or DP) and more on board memory for the GPU. For a laptop this isn't as critical but worth noting for desktop systems.
ananduser - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - link
You can add the fact that Win under bootcamp runs relatively poor compared to a native machine. You lose a good 25%(at least) on battery life and no optimus-type switching. The drivers are also generic and have an impact on the system's overall IOPS(due to drivers). All in all not a good machine at all. It's good for the Apple user that needs sporadic native windows access on his machine and that's just about it.damianrobertjones - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - link
Please mention that you can purchase an extended BB09, CC09 or SR09 battery for this device. BB09 and CC09 providing the most battery life.damianrobertjones - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - link
P.s. Anyone planning on buying should really consider re-applying the thermal compound as the basic application isn't the best in the world.Flunk - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - link
That is true of every notebook I've ever seen.ijozic - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - link
Just two points worthy of mention regarding the Dell..First, it was first offered with the IPS screen, as well, but most (if not all?) were plagued by blue tint issues so they are no longer offered (I'm surprised if the HP doesn't have the same problem as I'd presume the screens are pretty much the same?). So, if a better stock of displays is obtained, they might be offered again.
Second, it seems to have a much better cooling system as it also offers the XM CPUs.
Oskars Apša - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - link
Why not review workstations with 3D models and drawings that are made by some interior and graphics designers, even architects?I as a designer would see value if you had benchmarked programs like AutoCad, 3DS MAX and Corel draw with real life models, scenes and drawings.
I don't see value in primitive benchmarking that is made upon models that ar made by some benchmark "manufacturer". That might be good for game designers at most.
Also, screens of benchmarked 3D and other objects are a must.
lx686x - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - link
SPECviewperf is pretty much a standard for workstation class GPU's so I don't see a problem here.You need a benchamrk not some random scenes.
Oskars Apša - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - link
I disagree. By look the SPEC provided models and scenes look like random leftover highscool projects. Models are primitive texture vise and the same can be said about models themselves.The only good models are provided for Siemens, but that isn't the most used program by designers, or is it?
A standart made by some company for 6 year old console game development doesn't mean it is sufficient.
lx686x - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - link
It doesn't matter, if it scores lower in SPEC in will also have lower FPS in real programs as well.If you know any other BENCHMARK then suggest it...