- Joined
- Jul 2, 2007
- Messages
- 5,293
Bought one of them off Amazon, $974 after mail-in-rebate. One awesome notebook! 2.0Ghz Intel Q9000 Quad Core, ATI HD4650 discreet graphics card w/ 1 gigabyte of DDR3 ram on the card, 4 gigabytes of system DDR3 ram, 500gb 7200rpm drive, 1600x900 screen, Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit (and the usual HP bloatware).
Using Passmark Performance Test 7.0 (trial version) this thing benchmarks within 10% of most of the Core i7 Q720 notebooks in CPU performance. It should be noted however that Passmark is multithreaded and uses all cores-- a benchmark or app that uses only one or two cores and the turbo capable Core i7 Q720 will leave the Q9000 behind due to its ability to run @ 2.4Ghz in dual core turbo mode and 2.8Ghz in single core turbo mode. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD4650 benchmarks in between a nVidia 240M and 250M.
This notebook runs my main time waster app, Microsoft Flight Simulator X (SP1 & SP2) very well. FSX uses all 4 cores and is a CPU intensive app.
With HP having halted production of this model (all their quad core offerings are now Core i7) even better deals will probably be coming up on it. Oddly, although Amazon had it for $1024 before HP $50 MIR on January 1st when I ordered it, both Amazon and Newegg have raised their price on it since then.
Surprisingly, it runs cool, even when I have MS Flight Sim X cranking away in 1600 x 900 with graphics settings mostly maxed... the exhaust air off the fan port does get warm but the keyboard stays cool.
Using Passmark Performance Test 7.0 (trial version) this thing benchmarks within 10% of most of the Core i7 Q720 notebooks in CPU performance. It should be noted however that Passmark is multithreaded and uses all cores-- a benchmark or app that uses only one or two cores and the turbo capable Core i7 Q720 will leave the Q9000 behind due to its ability to run @ 2.4Ghz in dual core turbo mode and 2.8Ghz in single core turbo mode. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD4650 benchmarks in between a nVidia 240M and 250M.
This notebook runs my main time waster app, Microsoft Flight Simulator X (SP1 & SP2) very well. FSX uses all 4 cores and is a CPU intensive app.
With HP having halted production of this model (all their quad core offerings are now Core i7) even better deals will probably be coming up on it. Oddly, although Amazon had it for $1024 before HP $50 MIR on January 1st when I ordered it, both Amazon and Newegg have raised their price on it since then.
Surprisingly, it runs cool, even when I have MS Flight Sim X cranking away in 1600 x 900 with graphics settings mostly maxed... the exhaust air off the fan port does get warm but the keyboard stays cool.
