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Long time lurker here and on notebookreview.com, was mostly following Tech Inferno Fan and his escapades with the eGPU. Started with a Lenovo X220 and a 660ti eGPU; now moved on to this lovely little machine, HP Elitebook 2570p. Below are my specs and potential upgrades.

CPU: i5-3360m (maybe upgrade to either a 3632qm or 3740qm)

RAM: 16GB DDR3L (Kingston, I believe)

HD: 256gb Samsung 840 pro + 500gb hdd (maybe replace with another ssd, thinking 750gb Samsung 840 evo)

GPU: eGPU Zotac 660ti

I love this machine! It's got the easy access cover, like my work Dell E6230. Feels a lot more sturdy than both the Dell and Lenovo. But alas, I do miss the trackpoint on the Lenovo, mostly the middle button.

Congrats on moving up from the X220. Of course the 2570P has a trackpoint but does, as you note, miss the middle button.

We have a running summary of i7-quad CPU VID/TDP tables here. A repaste and higher heatsink pressure by adding washers to the heatsink OR adding a copper shim between the CPU and heatsink is the minimal mod needed to run a 45W i7-quad comfortably.

A 45W i7-quad is recommended as Intel's turbo boost algorithm applies CPU throttling when encounter TDP or thermal limits. A 45W i7-quad gives more TDP headroom and performance than the 35W CPUs. An important consideration if you intend to run all 4 cores at full load.

Hi @zeal33, does these IPS screens plug and play with our 2570p?

IPS screen on our little rigs will be awesome!

Any infos?

Thanks!

The opening post of this thread here covers a Lenovo X220/X230 IPS LCD retrofit. Short summary: while it will plug in OK attempts so far fiind the IPS LCD does not clear the 2570P LCD bezel :(

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Congrats on moving up from the X220. Of course the 2570P has a trackpoint but does, as you note, miss the middle button.

We have a running summary of i7-quad CPU VID/TDP tables here. A repaste and higher heatsink pressure by adding washers to the heatsink OR adding a copper shim between the CPU and heatsink is the minimal mod needed to run a 45W i7-quad comfortably.

A 45W i7-quad is recommended as Intel's turbo boost algorithm applies CPU throttling when encounter TDP or thermal limits. A 45W i7-quad gives more TDP headroom and performance than the 35W CPUs. An important consideration if you intend to run all 4 cores at full load.

Thanks, nando. Regarding the 45w quads, do you think the temps that some folks here see as a problem, long-term? I know the max temp is 105C and some users here have seen close to 95C.

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Thanks, nando. Regarding the 45w quads, do you think the temps that some folks here see as a problem, long-term? I know the max temp is 105C and some users here have seen close to 95C.

Those 95+ degrees would be under full CPU load. If you intend to do that full time then yes, it would be a good idea to drop CPU temps. That can be done just with software, eg: (i) use TPFancontrol to run the fan at full speed to remove heat faster (ii) use Throttlestop to reduce the ,ax turbo by 100-200Mhz with associated decreased temps. Alternatively better heat removal could be done by a hardware mod such as: applying a heatpipe between the heatsink and fan to provide a secondary heat removal path OR engineer a method where the heatsink/heatpipe touches the base enclosure cover so it acts as heatsink.

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Hi, I've been using this modem as described on photo. Is therer any option to upgrade, strenght wifi signal in our 2570p?

Have you tried altering the Broadcom wifi adapter driver settings? My BCM4352 has several options that can help which I assume your BCM4322 has too. One is power output (100%). Other ones to look at being minimum power consumption (disabled) and roaming decision (optimize distance)

339ttzp.jpg

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Hi, I've been using this modem as described on photo. Is therer any option to upgrade, strenght wifi signal in our 2570p?

You can try reseating the wifi antennas, or try the WWAN antennas and see if there's a difference. I've also seen where swapping the primary and aux antennas can help wifi reception. Also see if there's newer drivers if you haven't done so yet.

I'm running an Intel 7260HMW 802.11AC wifi card. I haven't had any issues that were described in the forums, but my network is 5Ghz only and haven't checked it on a 2.4Ghz one yet. I'm getting small power savings over my 6205 as well (a few hundred mW)...maybe because I'm not using the BT side so it's only pulling power from the primary 3.3V side(see here page 35)? Nando's a fan of the new BCM chip that's in the MBA instead of the 7260. I did some reading a while back and saw that the BCM uses PCI 2.0, while the 7260 still uses 1.0 so maybe you'll get some power savings and features from that alone. I wanted to keep the Intel chip because I use a WiDi device that doesn't support Miracast and because I've had good luck in the past with Intel chips.

Good luck! I've found that a $30 upgrade is well worth avoiding the hassle of trying to make an older card behave properly.

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You can try reseating the wifi antennas, or try the WWAN antennas and see if there's a difference. I've also seen where swapping the primary and aux antennas can help wifi reception. Also see if there's newer drivers if you haven't done so yet.

I'm running an Intel 7260HMW 802.11AC wifi card. I haven't had any issues that were described in the forums, but my network is 5Ghz only and haven't checked it on a 2.4Ghz one yet. I'm getting small power savings over my 6205 as well (a few hundred mW)...maybe because I'm not using the BT side so it's only pulling power from the primary 3.3V side(see here page 35)? Nando's a fan of the new BCM chip that's in the MBA instead of the 7260. I did some reading a while back and saw that the BCM uses PCI 2.0, while the 7260 still uses 1.0 so maybe you'll get some power savings and features from that alone. I wanted to keep the Intel chip because I use a WiDi device that doesn't support Miracast and because I've had good luck in the past with Intel chips.

Good luck! I've found that a $30 upgrade is well worth avoiding the hassle of trying to make an older card behave properly.

Intel 7260 is a decent card. Only issue I discovered was with reception/dropouts on the 2.4Ghz network with the older drivers. Newer drivers being substantially better.

One area where the BCM4352 is signficantly better is it is supported in Apple OSX. Something to keep in mind if you intend to Hackintosh the 2570P.

Setting wifi port4 and card reader port3 to Gen1 speed will see additional power savings

Thanks for pointing out the 2570P does have the wifi port4 running at x1 2.0. As I already boot via DIY eGPU Setup 1.x to enable ACPI ASPMs to significantly improve battery life, I've just added an extra line to run port 4 at x1 1.0 instead ('call iport gen1 4'). Running at pci-e 1.x instead of pci-e 2.0 sees a slight decrease in power consumption. It's not like the wifi card is going to need 500Mbps instead of 250Mbps throughput. I've gone ahead and done it to the card reader port 3 as well (('call iport gen1 3').

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I'm thinking about upgrading the hynix 1600MHz CL11 RAM to Vengeance 1866MHz CL10 but I'm not sure if the increase in performance (gaming) would be noticeable. If I only use the iGPU, how much performance increase in your opinion, let's say FPS wise, can I expect to get?

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I'm thinking about upgrading the hynix 1600MHz CL11 RAM to Vengeance 1866MHz CL10 but I'm not sure if the increase in performance (gaming) would be noticeable. If I only use the iGPU, how much performance increase in your opinion, let's say FPS wise, can I expect to get?

Good question! I recently read about this, can't remember where atm. The guy made comparisons between 1333MHz vs 1866MHz and 1600MHz vs 1866MHz.

The latter resulted in 2-3 FPS increase in gaming. So I'd say it's not worth it.

Edit: this might be interesting for you:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/llano-apu-memory-performance,3017-11.html

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Good question! I recently read about this, can't remember where atm. The guy made comparisons between 1333MHz vs 1866MHz and 1600MHz vs 1866MHz.

The latter resulted in 2-3 FPS increase in gaming. So I'd say it's not worth it.

Edit: this might be interesting for you:

DDR3-1866 Benchmark Results - Seven 8 GB DDR3 Memory Kits For Your AMD A75 Motherboard

Hey thanks for the link! But all of those RAMs are faster (maybe just a tad bit) than our standard CL/CAS11 1600MHz hynix.

Linus has also this investigated this issue:

But this review mentions that they got 45% FPS increase in Aliens vs Predator D3D11 Benchmark v1.03: Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1866MHz CL10 Laptop SODIMM Memory Kit Review - Page 6 of 7 - Legit ReviewsAvP & Hyper PI

The two RAMs compared on the last review are exactly what I have on my machine and what I'm interested in.

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Hey thanks for the link! But all of those RAMs are faster (maybe just a tad bit) than our standard CL/CAS11 1600MHz hynix.

Linus has also this investigated this issue:

But this review mentions that they got 45% FPS increase in Aliens vs Predator D3D11 Benchmark v1.03: Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1866MHz CL10 Laptop SODIMM Memory Kit Review - Page 6 of 7 - Legit ReviewsAvP & Hyper PI

The two RAMs compared on the last review are exactly what I have on my machine and what I'm interested in.

I'm curious to find out why he closed the comment section in the latter article =)

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I think you should find more sources that indicates this really significant improvement before spending $30 extra per 8GB.

Side note:

This also makes me wanna test it for my self since I have access to 2 x 8GB 1600MHz vengence in my old laptop, I could then at least see if Vengence ram is better than other ram (like he claims), like my current Kingston Low volts for instance.

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Intel says that my 3820QM doesn't support 1866 although it seems that the mobo does. What's more I couldn't find any of Intel's mobile CPU that supports 1866. Now I wonder why they sell those 1866 SODIMM RAMs.... What interesting is, that these 1866 are rated at 1,5V and not the usual 1,35V. Maybe you have to somehow OC your system to enable the RAM operating at this speed?

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AMD A10-5750M takes 1866 RAM

AMD APUs for Laptops

I'd imagine that their APUs would love the extra speed

Hmm I wonder why we don't get any from Intel.

Anyway, my two 1866 Vengeance have just arrived and after putting my system to the test, 3DMark said that there's no improvement. My scores keep hovering around 60000 and 6400 for the Ice Storm and Cloud Gates tests, respectively. It's a bit disappointing because my system actually recognizes the new RAMs!

post-23046-14494997371037_thumb.png

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Hmm I wonder why we don't get any from Intel.

Anyway, my two 1866 Vengeance have just arrived and after putting my system to the test, 3DMark said that there's no improvement. My scores keep hovering around 60000 and 6400 for the Ice Storm and Cloud Gates tests, respectively. It's a bit disappointing because my system actually recognizes the new RAMs!

[ATTACH]11235[/ATTACH]

I did RAM overclocking tests on a HD3000-equipped 2560P finding that the faster RAM did make a difference in single-channel configs where it approximated a dual-channel config but made hardly any performance difference at all when using dual-channel. It appears that the HD4000 too isn't seeing a bottleneck due to RAM. *HP EliteBook 2560p Owners Lounge* - Page 21

If you want better graphics performance then consider getting a i7-3740QM or i7-3840QM, both of which have a 1.30Ghz Graphics Max Dynamic Frequency. That's 50Mhz, or 4% more than your i7-3820QM's 1.250Ghz.

Though a far more sizeable 4-10 times performance improvement can be had by attaching an eGPU via the 2570P's expresscard slot. Intel have done a stellar job of phasing out expresscard slots in the Haswell and presumably any newer notebooks. Definitely worth taking advantage of the expresscard slot for eGPU purposes while you still can.

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tried hynix 1866 and it was downclocked to 1333. maybe Crucial will have a better luck, hard to say.

I read some strange thing that Corsair RAM in some cases manage to achieve 1866MHz, even with 1600MHz rated mobo (which super weird), wish I could find the source, sorry!

If someone happens to have a 1866MHz Vengeance module, please test this.

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I read some strange thing that Corsair RAM in some cases manage to achieve 1866MHz, even with 1600MHz rated mobo (which super weird), wish I could find the source, sorry!

If someone happens to have a 1866MHz Vengeance module, please test this.

I've just got Vengeance 1866 and it works. Unfortunately 3DMark reported no performance improvement.

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I've just got Vengeance 1866 and it works. Unfortunately 3DMark reported no performance improvement.

Ohh I see!

Have you confirmed that they are running @1866MHz? (a screenshot of this confirmation).

Also, if you could test 3DMark06/Vantage/11 with your different set of modules it would be really nice! (links to the 6 different 3dmark results).

The 3DMark versions taxes the system in, sometimes very, different ways and the RAM could show improvements in certain scenarios.

If you do this we can be certain of any improvements, also your findings and contribution would be noticed summary on the first page!

Thanks a lot buddy!

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Ohh I see!

Have you confirmed that they are running @1866MHz? (a screenshot of this confirmation).

Yeah, sure, it's at the end of the last page.

Also, if you could test 3DMark06/Vantage/11 with your different set of modules it would be really nice! (links to the 6 different 3dmark results).

The 3DMark versions taxes the system in, sometimes very, different ways and the RAM could show improvements in certain scenarios.

If you do this we can be certain of any improvements, also your findings and contribution would be noticed summary on the first page!

Thanks a lot buddy!

No problem!

I use the latest 3DMark because once I used 3DMark06 and it couldn't display the score because my "graphic card" (which is the iGPU) can't be registered. So, the scores:

With 2x4GB hynix 1600MHz CL11: Intel HD Graphics 4000 Mobile video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3820QM Processor,Hewlett-Packard 17DF

With 2x4GB Corsair Vengeance 1866MHz CL10: Intel HD Graphics 4000 Mobile video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3820QM Processor,Hewlett-Packard 17DF

Although 3DMark scores always fluctuate a tad bit, the results tell me that the Physics scores are a little better with Vengeance RAM and the Graphic scores are a little better with hynix RAM. That would be against my expectation but I don't know if that means something.

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