[Sharkfood]

Greetings,

We just purchased a used nx9010, and after initially being woo'd by the specs, I'm starting to wonder about it's performance. It has:
Pentium 4 - 2.8ghz
1 gig (512x2) PC2700/DDR-333
Radeon IGP 345M
40 Gig HD

My main concern is Sisoft Sandra's memory bandwidth tests yield about 550-600mb/s... which is absolutely pathetic. SpeedStep doesn't seem to work AT ALL, as the CPU reports at 2.8ghz whether it's on battery or AC power.. (battery life is about 52 minutes on a new battery!). Either way, Sandra's memory bandwidth is pathetic for a 2.8ghz/DDR/400mhz bus. I've ran exhaustive tests on both AC power (from boot up) to battery.. no change.

Is something wrong or are these things really this pathetic? I've got a P3 1.4ghz HP Pavillion notebook upstairs with PC-133 memory that's absolutely crushing this P4-2.8ghz/DDR in every way, shape and form. Gotta be something wrong here, or did HP/Compaq intentionally cripple a P4 down to below Celeron 1ghz bandwidth?

 

[JamesO]

Not sure which OS you are using? I suspect this machine was originally shipped with W2k and it may have been updated to XP loosing the speed step and battery utility?

Usually the speed step is a small application that needs to be installed seperately on the machine.

This was listed under W2k and not XP?? on the HP site:

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqnk/us/download/18359.html

Will probably work with XP?

You may also need to calibrate the battery and also check for BIOS updates as well. Also if the battery is close to 3 years old, may not have full useful life.

Look at this link for more info:

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/f...5599.html?submit.y=6&submit.x=7&lang=en&cc=us

As for the memory issue, I can't comment on this. May not be a real issue?? Maybe there is something to it??

JamesO

 

[Sharkfood]

Hi James and thanks for the help!

This system had the original OS install of Windows XP Professional on it. It had all of the above problems... especially the low performance w/ 480mb/s memory bandwidth.

We then proceeded to mash the thing flat (format completely).. re-install Windows XP Professional (using the OEM serial sticker on the bottom and a FULL oem XP PRO install CD) and after all the HP softpacks and a 'clean' install, the problem still is in effect.

I'm less worried about SpeedStep than I am about the memory performance. I just can't simply imagine a P4-2.8ghz with 500-600mb/s memory bandwidth. Not with DDR memory anyways. I'm assuming most Centrino/P3 notebooks have 2-3x this memory bandwidth. I only have another HP Pavillion with a P3/133 SDRAM that scores higher. It makes the unit almost completely worthless due to extremely poor performance. Multitasking is basically impossible due to this bottleneck.

The battery is also brand new (as in less than a week). The stock battery it came with was 7 months old and we suspected it may have been weak. We purchased a brand new battery from an HP dealer here (which we want two anyways) and it's no different. From what I've read 1:10 is about the norm for this laptop, with 2-hour peak being with every power-saving feature being used while staring at standby hehe.

Any insights into this particular model would be helpful. Alternatively, if anyone else has a P4/P4-M laptop with Sandra, I'd be interested in what Sandra memory bandwidth tests yield. All my laptop experience revolves around Alienwares, which are notoriously incomparable due to them being basically a "desktop shoved into a small case"..