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ATI FirePro M7820 graphics leaked; and more Elitebook 8740w news

Bye bye Nvidia workstation graphics exclusivity, first it was the FirePro M5800 leak last month and reported marriage with the HP Elitebook 8540w. Just recently, news from an anonymous party has just surfaced about a new ATI FirePro M7820 workstation class graphics card that will feature 1 GB of GDDR5 memory and DirectX 11, and based off the powerful Mobility Radeon 5870 ‘gaming class’ card. And this puppy will find its way first into the upcoming Elitebook 8740w Mobile Workstation AND… get ready your tissues to wipe off that drool… the ATI FirePro M7820 will supposedly sit a step or two higher than Nvidia’s flagship mobile workstation FX3800M graphics card! ATI’s seriously been making a big comeback for the last couple of months and it doesn’t look like they’re losing steam anytime soon. In other news, the 17 inch Elitebook 8740w is said to sport a fully backlit keyboard (partial chiclet keys with numeric pad, no less), a “first” for an HP Elitebook.

When, when, when? You ask frantically. Patience is a virtue, my friend – likely this month. Who else here has a feeling that the leaked ATI FirePro M5800 will also appear alongside its newfound big brother, the FirePro M7820 at the same time during launch?

ATI FirePro M5800 to be based off ATI Mobility Radeon 5850?

I’m a curious person who likes doing a lot of thinking and analysis of things. And after yesterday’s revelation of an unannounced ATI FirePro M5800 card, I’ve been thinking… which consumer ATI card would be the mysterious workstation-class FirePro M5800 be based on? The answer, I suspect, lies with HP and their Elitebook 8540w. See, their current Elitebook 8540w makes available two Nvidia Quadro graphics options: the 512 MB Quadro FX880M and 1 GB Quadro FX1800M. Both are 40 nm chipsets. All of ATI’s new Mobility Radeon 5000 series graphics cards are based on the 40 nm process, plus the fact that ATI (with their recent reputation of coming out with all the good stuff) is very unlikely to use their “old” 4000-series designs for a new product… first part solved – the FirePro M5800 will be based off a card in the 5000-series.

Now, which specific card in the ATI Mobility Radeon 5000 series? The Nvidia Quadro card options for the Elitebook 8540w have bandwidth figures of 25.6 to 31.2 GB/s and TDP values of 35W and 45W respectively. So the ATI FirePro M5800 card HP has chosen should sit with specifications somewhere near those ranges. Also, the Nvidia Quadro FX1800M is a DDR3/GDDR5 card. So at first guess, one would probably suspect the ATI Mobility Radeon 5470 as the “base” of the new FirePro card, but no… it has a lower minimum bandwidth (12.8 GB/s) and significantly lower TDP (13W-15W) than the Nvidia cards.

Under the fairly accurate assumption that HP would like to keep power consumption/heat output/TDP similar to Nvidia’s cards, so to get the most out of the Elitebook 8540w’s design, the ATI FirePro M5800 will likely (with high probability) be based off the ATI Mobility Radeon 5850. The Mobility Radeon 5850 ticks all the boxes for being the perfect candidate for creating a workstation-class graphics card which matches/bests Nvidia’s top offering (FX1800M) for 15 inch notebooks – bandwidth (28.8-64 GB/s), DDR3/GDDR5, manufacturing process, TDP (30-39 W) and all are a closer match than any other graphics card that ATI has. So I’m almost 99% certain this will be it – the FirePro M5800 will be based off the ATI Mobility Radeon 5850, and time will tell if my guess is correct.

ATI FirePro M5800 graphics leaked; coming to HP Elitebook 8540w!

ATI FirePro M5800 listed in a HP Elitebook 8540w document

Big, big, BIG new folks! In the specifications/overview section of a PDF document (PDF reader required! ATI FirePro M5800 is listed on Page 9) posted on the HP Elitebook 8540w support page. Initially said to use “exclusively Nvidia Quadro” cards (though I did beg to differ), looks like HP had a change of heart over choice of graphics on the new Elitebooks (after reading my widely-spread bright idea?) and will be giving those that lust for high-end performance (example: me) a dose of ATI graphics! Workstation-class graphics too!

For now, all we have is a name in the document: ATI FirePro M5800, yet I can draw several things from this piece of info alone. First off, this card will be part of ATI’s new workstation-class graphics line for notebooks, and will be equivalent to or better than Nvidia’s Quadro FX1800M/GeForce GT335M graphics cards. Several of my trusted sources have confirmed the news of ATI making a comeback to HP’s Elitebook mobile workstation notebooks. The ATI FirePro M5800 workstation card is expected to be derived from its ATI Mobility Radeon 5830 or 5850 consumer-counterpart and have 1 GB of DDR3/GDDR5 graphics memory. Given my cool experience (no pun intended) with HP’s new Elitebook 8440p/w and 8540w notebooks, I’d say the airflow/cooling of the 8540w will be more than enough to handle this new, fast and furious graphics from ATI!

Oh, there are also numerous other references to the ATI FirePro M5800 throughout the rest of the document as well (such as the fan/heatsink section). For those interested, go ahead and download it; it’s a pretty interesting read on the guts and components of the Elitebook 8540.

New 2010 Elitebooks up for order; new ATI FirePro M5800 graphics to come

Good news folks, they’re finally up for order! Yes, I’m talking about HP’s new Elitebook models. The Elitebook 8440p, 8440w, 8540p and 8540w notebooks have just appeared on HP’s official website, are up for order and have the following base list prices:

• HP Elitebook 8440p starts at $979
• HP Elitebook 8440w starts at $1425
• HP Elitebook 8540p starts at $1299
• HP Elitebook 8540w starts at $1399

I currently have access to three of the Elitebook models above (don’t ask!) and I’ve been very impressed with them, each with a unique strangth: the 8440p for very cool (temperature-wise) and silent operation, 8440w for portable power (the only 14 inch notebook with quad-core Core i7 in the market) and 8540w for sheer power (more versatile than HP’s own Envy 15 and more powerful than some Elitebook 8730w configurations!)

So far only pre-built models are available, with “configure to order” models that you can customize expected to become available soon, later this February.

Impressed by ATI’s new Mobility Radeon 5000 series graphics cards?! Want plenty of power in your new Elitebook 8540w? Well, apparently someone listened to my plea/bright idea… because the new Elitebooks available today were initially planned as “Nvidia Quadro exclusives” but now, there’s word that ATI’s new (and currently, unannounced) FirePro M5800 workstation-class graphics card (a professional variation of one of the consumer Radeon 5000-series) will be making its way to the Elitebook 8540w some time in the future. This is according to a PDF document spotted by one of our readers, Domiel, on HP’s support page for the 8540w, one of the graphics options listed for the HP Elitebook 8540w was a “ATI FirePro M5800″ card.

I have also received confirmation from several trusted sources that ATI’s new line of workstation class graphics will indeed be coming soon for both the Elitebook 8540w and currently unannounced Elitebook 8740w. Yay for the world! Stay tuned

This message: Sent from my Elitebook

Hey everyone, guess what? A friend of mine got his Elitebook 8440p just last week equipped with the Intel Core i5 540M 2.53 GHz dual core processor and not-so-well known Nvidia Quadro NVS 3100M graphics. While he’s still doing some hard disk spring cleaning and organizing data from his old Dell to be moved to their new home, he’s feeling nice enough to let me have a little spin with his new tech toy. So far, the Elitebook 8440p feels a whole lot like the Elitebook 8440w I reviewed when it first came out – including the nice, spill-proof, tactile partial-chiclet keyboard. There’s an odd change to the items above the display though: the webcam has been shifted slightly to the right (but now in a position more centralized than the 8440w’s webcam) and the HP Night Light is slightly more ‘right side’  biased than that of the 8440w.

I’ll be writing up a review on the Elitebook 8440p soon, once I spend more time with this thing; with opinions and user experience input from my friend once he starts using the notebook for real. What I can tell you so far is that gaming performance has been surprisingly underwhelming – compared to the 8440w, I had to tune down Left4Dead 2 to 1280 x 720 and Low settings in order to play at 20 FPS (8440w manages almost double the frame rate with higher settings). I’ll have to do more testing on this, maybe update a few drivers or something. EDIT: Turns out Core i5 is real picky on whether the notebook is plugged in when it comes to choosing either performance or power saving. With the charger plugged into the HP Elitebook 8440p, I managed to play Left4Dead 2 with a frame rate ranging from 24 to 40 FPS – frame rate only drops down to 10 FPS if you’re running off battery power.

HP puts up Elitebook specifications pages

I’ve just gotten info that HP has put up specifications pages for their recently announced Elitebook models! [Thanks Allan and kj for the heads up]. No pricing or (pre-)order pages just yet, but you can still drool over the specifications and start saving up now! HP is currently offering five Intel Core i5/i7 processor options at the moment (four options for the p-professional variants), and notably some options mentioned by closet owners are missing. On the positive side, the current choices are still pretty darn powerful and surprise, surprise, HP is using Nvidia’s latest 2010 Quadro FX cards on the 8440w and 8540w, as well as making Quadro NVS graphics available as options on the 8440p and 8540p.

What are you waiting for, here are direct links to their individual specifications pages:

• HP Elitebook 8440p
• HP Elitebook 8440w
• HP Elitebook 8540p
• HP Elitebook 8540w