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Mr Bill
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HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Fri Aug 12, 2011 9:58 pm

Hey guys, I am considering purchase of this laptop from Office Depot for $600 (http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/659317/HP-Pavilion-dv6-6140us-Laptop-Computer/?cm_mmc=Mercent-_-Google-_-Computers_and_Servers-_-659317&mr:trackingCode=7C30F2CA-39AE-E011-9F24-0019B9C043EB&mr:referralID=NA offer good through 8/13/11). specs are here ... http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c02888160&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&product=5128784&tmp_track_link=ot_search#N24.
Most pertinent are the A8-3500M Llano quadcore, USB3, LED screen and somewhat less important but nice is bluetooth support and blu-ray disk. What I am wondering is whether I can swap in my Intel 320 160GB SSD and dump the 640GB drive in this puppy. I cannot find anything in their support that suggests it can be done. In fact, I found one reference in the hardware manual that suggested that SSD's were only supported for Intel CPU's and chipsets.

Its my birthday and I am thinking this would be a nice upgrade from my old laptop (Toshiba Satellite A105-S4021). But only if I can swap the 160GB Intel SSD into the new unit. Thanks ahead of time for the help. :D
X6 1100T BE | Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ | XFX HD 7870 | 16 GB DDR3 | Samsung 830/850 Pro SSD's | Logitech cherry MX-brown G710+ | Logitech G303 Daedalus Apex mouse | SeaSonic SS-660XP 80+ Pt | BenQ 24' 1900x1200 IPS | APC Back-UPS NS-1350 | Win7 Pro
 
DeadOfKnight
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Fri Aug 12, 2011 11:16 pm

Mr Bill wrote:
What I am wondering is whether I can swap in my Intel 320 160GB SSD and dump the 640GB drive in this puppy. I cannot find anything in their support that suggests it can be done. In fact, I found one reference in the hardware manual that suggested that SSD's were only supported for Intel CPU's and chipsets.D

You need an Intel CPU about as much as you need Gillette shaving cream to use their razor.

This is common marketing fluff; Intel just wants more of your money. It should work fine.
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ludi
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Sat Aug 13, 2011 4:05 pm

DeadOfKnight wrote:
You need an Intel CPU about as much as you need Gillette shaving cream to use their razor.

This is common marketing fluff; Intel just wants more of your money. It should work fine.

I wouldn't count on it. In theory it should work, but some laptop kits can have a lot of vendor lock-in via crippled BIOS support. Further Google time might be required.
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Mr Bill
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Sat Aug 13, 2011 10:31 pm

Today was the last day of the sale, so I pulled the trigger. I guess I will just have to try muddling through. Whew, I am used to WinNT, 2K, XP. Win7 is a little bit of a pain. I had a heck of a time just trying to find where to change my workgroup (but I did).
X6 1100T BE | Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ | XFX HD 7870 | 16 GB DDR3 | Samsung 830/850 Pro SSD's | Logitech cherry MX-brown G710+ | Logitech G303 Daedalus Apex mouse | SeaSonic SS-660XP 80+ Pt | BenQ 24' 1900x1200 IPS | APC Back-UPS NS-1350 | Win7 Pro
 
Mr Bill
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Sun Aug 14, 2011 6:36 pm

Well ludi, you are right. I just tried the old slap it in there and see if it works and you can't get past the first bios screen. The drive is tagged as defective right off the bat. I guess my only hope is to find a bios update that accomodates SSD's. :cry:
X6 1100T BE | Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ | XFX HD 7870 | 16 GB DDR3 | Samsung 830/850 Pro SSD's | Logitech cherry MX-brown G710+ | Logitech G303 Daedalus Apex mouse | SeaSonic SS-660XP 80+ Pt | BenQ 24' 1900x1200 IPS | APC Back-UPS NS-1350 | Win7 Pro
 
anotherengineer
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Sun Aug 14, 2011 7:09 pm

Or get a crucial ssd or some other non-intel ssd.
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Mr Bill
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Mon Aug 15, 2011 1:18 pm

I am thinking it might bra matter of reformatting the SSD to the new 4K standard; which may require an SSD firmware upgrade.
X6 1100T BE | Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ | XFX HD 7870 | 16 GB DDR3 | Samsung 830/850 Pro SSD's | Logitech cherry MX-brown G710+ | Logitech G303 Daedalus Apex mouse | SeaSonic SS-660XP 80+ Pt | BenQ 24' 1900x1200 IPS | APC Back-UPS NS-1350 | Win7 Pro
 
Mr Bill
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:46 pm

Good news! After applying the recent (anti-bricking) Intel Series 320 firmware update; the laptop now sees the 160GB SSD as a device. Then it was a simple matter of using the Intel (Acronis based) migration software to move the whole lot from the laptop drive to the SSD. Got it working this morning. Yippee! :P
X6 1100T BE | Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ | XFX HD 7870 | 16 GB DDR3 | Samsung 830/850 Pro SSD's | Logitech cherry MX-brown G710+ | Logitech G303 Daedalus Apex mouse | SeaSonic SS-660XP 80+ Pt | BenQ 24' 1900x1200 IPS | APC Back-UPS NS-1350 | Win7 Pro
 
Mr Bill
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:59 am

Primary hard disk performance went from a score of 5.9 to 7.4 using the Win 7 performance benchmark. Atto shows max reads and writes of 280MB/s and 172MB/s.
X6 1100T BE | Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ | XFX HD 7870 | 16 GB DDR3 | Samsung 830/850 Pro SSD's | Logitech cherry MX-brown G710+ | Logitech G303 Daedalus Apex mouse | SeaSonic SS-660XP 80+ Pt | BenQ 24' 1900x1200 IPS | APC Back-UPS NS-1350 | Win7 Pro
 
mdk77777
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Thu Aug 25, 2011 11:26 am

Great news,

I have been thinking of doing the exact thing. Perhaps, not using INTEL....Crucial or Corsair....

How do you find the laptop in general? :wink:
 
Mr Bill
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Thu Aug 25, 2011 11:16 pm

Its my first experience with Windows 7. My previous laptop is a Toshiba A105-S4021 with 4GB and the same SDD running WinXP. The CPU in that was a 1.66GHz centrino. So, it was a little light in CPU power, especially when using Adobe Lightroom to look a pictures. It took 30-60 seconds to render a picture. Also, web browsing seemed to catch all the time when scrolling down a page and having to refresh.

The HP is much quicker, subjectively feels like less than 10 seconds to render a picture. Web browsing is smooth. The laptop immediately synched with my bluetooth phone. Plugging in an HDMI cable immediately worked with my TV, effortless. I watched an Amazon primetime move that way over my wireless and both sound and resolution were great. CPU usage was a few % playing video. I installed VLC and played a blu-ray music video and that sounded good and looked great.

Hmm, This is a 15.6" screen, what I do not like is the slightly less screen area compared to my Toshiba. The screen is the same length but just over an inch narrower in width. Resolution on the Toshiba was something like 1280x800. On the HP its something like 1366x768. Photographs look squished. I went back to the store and now I sort of wish I had gone for a 17.3 inch just to have the taller screen. I like the LED backlighting but my Toshiba screen has wider viewing angles and deeper blacks for astrophotography pics downloaded from Hubble. It seems like with this screen, I am constantly tilting it to try and figure out what is the straight on view. This bugs me the most, screen quality is not as good as the Toshiba.

I would have bought the Toshiba version of the Llano, but, only the HP had the A8-3500M CPU. All the Toshiba models are A6-3400M or lower. Also, only the HP had the USB3 support, which, by the way, I have not tried out yet.

I'm going to put civilization V on this and play some and I will write about that later.

CPUZ shows the cores running at 800MHz and then jumping to 2.4GHz on load but I cannot see how many cores jump up. I figured maybe a USB powered cooling fan support might let more cores stay cool but no clear way to see whats going on. I'll see if hardware monitor will run and give that a try.
X6 1100T BE | Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ | XFX HD 7870 | 16 GB DDR3 | Samsung 830/850 Pro SSD's | Logitech cherry MX-brown G710+ | Logitech G303 Daedalus Apex mouse | SeaSonic SS-660XP 80+ Pt | BenQ 24' 1900x1200 IPS | APC Back-UPS NS-1350 | Win7 Pro
 
mdk77777
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Fri Aug 26, 2011 6:34 pm

Thanks for the information.

I'm thinking of using the HP and adding the SSD for a laptop for my daughter.

I forked over the extra cash for 1920x1200 on my old DELL LAT., and have never regretted it.

SSD and higher resolution screens seem so much more important than an I7 processor to me. :wink:

However, your comments would definitely cause me to upgrade to the 1920x1080 screen option on the HP.

Thanks again. :wink:
 
Mr Bill
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Wed Sep 14, 2011 1:44 pm

I'm not aware of an HP model that uses the Llano and also offers a higher resolution screen option.
X6 1100T BE | Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ | XFX HD 7870 | 16 GB DDR3 | Samsung 830/850 Pro SSD's | Logitech cherry MX-brown G710+ | Logitech G303 Daedalus Apex mouse | SeaSonic SS-660XP 80+ Pt | BenQ 24' 1900x1200 IPS | APC Back-UPS NS-1350 | Win7 Pro
 
khands
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Wed Sep 14, 2011 1:56 pm

Mr Bill wrote:
I'm not aware of an HP model that uses the Llano and also offers a higher resolution screen option.


It's an upgrade but it's there, something like +$150
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Mr Bill
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Fri Sep 30, 2011 9:33 am

khands wrote:
Mr Bill wrote:
I'm not aware of an HP model that uses the Llano and also offers a higher resolution screen option.


It's an upgrade but it's there, something like +$150
Would you please post a link? I cannot find it for this laptop.
X6 1100T BE | Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ | XFX HD 7870 | 16 GB DDR3 | Samsung 830/850 Pro SSD's | Logitech cherry MX-brown G710+ | Logitech G303 Daedalus Apex mouse | SeaSonic SS-660XP 80+ Pt | BenQ 24' 1900x1200 IPS | APC Back-UPS NS-1350 | Win7 Pro
 
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Re: HP DV6-6140US Llano A8-3500M Laptop

Fri Sep 30, 2011 9:50 am

Mr Bill wrote:
khands wrote:
Mr Bill wrote:
I'm not aware of an HP model that uses the Llano and also offers a higher resolution screen option.


It's an upgrade but it's there, something like +$150
Would you please post a link? I cannot find it for this laptop.


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