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HP Elitebook 8730w Performance & Noise

HP Elitebook 8730w Performance & Noise In my previous write-ups about HP’s Elitebook 8730w this month, I provided some battery life figures for the 8730w Mobile Workstation when doing various tasks and also talked about the Elitebook’s gaming abilities. And now, we come to the Elitebook 8730w’s performance figures and noise. Again, here’s the configuration on the HP Elitebook 8730w I used for testing: Intel Centrino 2 (Core 2 Duo) T9400 2.53 GHz processor, 4 GB of RAM (2 X 2 GB), 17 inch DreamColor display, 160 GB hard drive and top-of-the-line Nvidia Quadro FX3700M 1 GB workstation-class graphics card.

Temperature and heat: When idling, the 8730w’s processor temperature hovers around the 39 to 41 Celcius range and when doing “light things” such as typing out this write up or surfing the net, it’s around 40 to 45 Celcius. Doing heavy (and multiple) tasks like HD video editing, graphics rendering and gaming, the processor temperature can rise up to 50+ degrees Celcius but so far, during my 3 months with the 8730w, never above 60 Celcius. Generally, you won’t notice the heat being emitted from the notebook, even under intense use (the most your palms and hands will ever feel will be an occasional “slightly warm” feeling), as it only gets hot on the underside of the 8730w… so unless you literally use the Elitebook as a lap-top and place it on your lap while using it, everything should be fine. Speaking of the heat being mostly on the underside of the notebook, things there can get hot (though it won’t burn your hand) so keep that in mind after finishing work and carrying the notebook by your side.

Noise: The HP Elitebook 8730w has a single fan with two side vents. When it’s under light to medium load, the fan runs very quietly – I wouldn’t say dead silent but you won’t notice it unless you put your ear close to the notebook’s fan location. Under heavy load, the Elitebook’s fan tends to spin up but even then, it’s still fairly quiet. You’ll hear a fairly distinct very low humming sound (much more low profile than the usual “whooshing” fan sounds of typical notebooks) which isn’t too loud or annoying… I doubt the person sitting next to you would even notice unless you’re in a completely silent, soundproof room. Compare this with the Elitebook 8730w’s consumer relative, the HP Pavilion dv7 (which spots a 17 inch glossy LCD and shares the T9400 processor) which makes a fairly noticeable “shhhhhhhh” fan sound when being put to the test.

And this is how the HP Elitebook 8730w performs based on Windows Vista’s Windows Experience Index rating system:

Processor: 5.4
Memory: 5.9
Graphics: 5.9
Gaming graphics: 5.8
Hard disk: 5.3

Again, I should remind you that the HP Elitebook 8730w uses a workstation-class graphics card (not your usual gaming graphics cards). If you have any questions or comments, do feel free to drop a comment below or email me.

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HP Elitebook | Brad | January 15, 2009 9:36 pm

8 Comments

By Grahame, October 27, 2009 @ 5:32 am

Hi,
Have just read your article and was wondering if it is an easy task to change the graphics card (mine has Nvidia Quadro FX 2700m) to something more suitable for gaming and what card you would recommend (512MB-1GB). I thought I was getting a decent gaming card but soon discovered that it is more suitable to CAD applications and not gaming. (I should have investigated more fully but saw the 512MB graphics spec and assumed all would be well!).

Cheers
By Brad, October 28, 2009 @ 10:28 pm

Hi Grahame, that’s an excellent question that you pose there. Unfortunately, you can’t change graphics cards in notebooks (at least not easily/cheaply). Workstation-class graphics cards like the Nvidia Quadro series are meant for heavylifting in terms of frame quality, while gaming cards are more suitable for producing more frames. In a non-scientific test involving a few big notebooks and modern game titles, I found that the Quadro’s (especially higher end models like the FX2700M and FX3700M) consistently produce better looking frames than their ‘gaming’ cousins, but at an average 20 to 40% less frames per second. Assuming you want high frame rates on your Quadro FX2700M, you could try installing the drivers of Nvidia’s mobile gaming cards, so your FX2700M “thinks” itself to be something like a 9600M or 9800M – driver swapping is a common solution recommended by most people to those who want to use their workstation rigs for gaming. You could also right click your desktop, go to Nvidia Control Panel > Advanced settings to adjust graphics settings (Anti-aliasing and such). Hope this helps
By Grahame, October 29, 2009 @ 5:15 am

Hi Brad,
Thanks for that. I will try tricking the card into thinking is one of these other cards. I did come across an article on laptopvideo2go and tried installing one of their modified inf files but still had no joy. I assume that these other cards are the GT or GTS models you are refering to?
Thanks again for the pointers.
Cheers
By Brad, October 29, 2009 @ 3:31 pm

Hi Grahame, great, glad I could be of help. I managed to spend a little time today looking up graphics card specs for you – for the Quadro FX2700M, I’d say the GeForce GT240M and GeForce FTS 160M are the two closest ‘matching’ cousins. You might wanna try out drivers for those (at your own risk of course =)
Nvidia’s direct driver download page http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us . In any case, I would recommend going for ‘notebook’ graphics card drivers for reasons related to compatibility and power consumption. Tell me if you manage to make things work =)
-Brad
By Grahame, October 30, 2009 @ 5:40 am

Cheers for that Brad. Am downloading the drivers (both models appear to use the same one) as I am writing this. I will let you know how it goes (fingers crossed for smooth sailing !)
By Olivier, January 7, 2010 @ 5:01 am

Hi Brad,

quick feedback .. on my 8730w unit, i recently installed Windows 7 64-bits.. makes quite a difference .. !

here are my Rating

Proc : 6.6
RAM : 5.9
Graphics : 6.4
Gaming : 6.4
HDD : 5.9

Overall index : 5.9

BTW , this is a pre-release HW 2 years old with an ATI FIREGL V5275 and 4gb of Ram

keep the good work
By Brad, January 7, 2010 @ 7:46 am

Hi Olivier, thanks for your comment. Wow that is a big difference indeed, especially in the graphics area and processor areas. Are you using the same T9400 2.53 Ghz processor as I did when testing out the 8730w?
By Olivier, January 7, 2010 @ 4:28 pm

ah .. that’s where all the difference comes from !!

i have the Intel Core2 Extreme X9100 @ 3.06ghz ..

i should read better