• Tag Archives HP

  • Digital Archaeology: HP Pavilion m7570n

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The HP Pavilion M7570N is a somewhat interesting machine. It was designed to be a multimedia hub and it certainly provided a lot of multimedia related functionality. It includes a DVD-ROM drive as well as a separate CD/DVD writer, a card reader that accepts a variety of media card formats, a TV tuner card, analog video capture capabilities, and of course firewire in addition to USB ports.

    Powering all of this was a Pentium D processor and 2 GB of DDR2 RAM. The one big deficiency was the lack of a dedicated GPU. However, that really only mattered for gaming and not the media oriented tasks this computer was designed for. Hardware in this machine includes:

    • CPU: Pentium D 915 @ 2.8 GHz
    • Memory; 2 GB DDR2 @ 266 MHz (533 MHz)
    • Video: Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME (integrated)

    Plus all of the above mentioned goodies. Check out the output of HWiNFO or CPU-Z for more detailed hardware info.

    The Pentium D was an interesting processor and it was a sort of interesting time for Intel in general. The Pentium 4 was nearing the end of its life as the Netburst architecture ended up being a bust (or burst?) because it couldn’t scale as much as Intel originally thought. At one time, it was thought that the Netburst architecture could reach speeds of 10 GHz. That didn’t happen and still hasn’t for that matter. the Pentium 4 HT and Pentium D were sort of stop gap measures as the Core 2 was being developed. The Pentium 4 HT mitigated the missed branch predictions of the long pipeline of the Pentium 4 modestly my adding an extra thread whereas the Pentium D stuck two Pentium 4 cores together. Both also added 64-bit extensions depending on the specific model.

    The motherboard is built by Asus. The HP model number is the Leucite-GL8E while the Asus model number is the P5LP-LE. It features the Intel 945G (Lakeport-G) chipset which was one of the earliest to use Socket 775. It was featured in a number of HP models including the Pavilion A1512X Desktop, Pavilion A1530N Desktop, Pavilion A1542N Desktop, Pavilion A1550Y Desktop, Pavilion A1560N Desktop, Pavilion A1613W Desktop, Pavilion Media Center M7500Y, Pavilion Media Center M7570N (this machine), and Pavilion Media Center M7658N. There does seem to be a fairly significant upgrade path. According to one random website, supported CPUs include:

    • Core 2 Duo E6x00
    • Core 2 Duo E4x00
    • Pentium D 9×0 Dual Core
    • Pentium D 8xx Dual Core
    • Pentium 4 6×1 series
    • Celeron D 3xx series

    There is a significant spread on possible front side bus speeds depending on the CPU including 533 MHz, 800 MHz, and 1066 MHz. It features a dual channel memory architecture with support for four 240-pin DDR2 DIMMs including PC2 3200 (400 MHz), PC 4200 (533 MHz), and PC2 5300 (667 MHz) DDR2 DIMMs.

    I recently looked at a 3.2 GHz hyperthreaded model and compared to that, this dual core Pentium D feels much snappier despite being clocked slower. The extra core really helps at least with more modern operating systems. You probably wouldn’t notice it as much with Windows XP for example. If this motherboard can indeed support up to a Core 2 Duo E6700 then that would nearly double its speed.

    The sticker on the front says “designed for Windows XP” and “compatible with Windows Vista”. Currently, Windows 7 is installed. As a multimedia center it was pretty nice at the time it was released, however, it became outdated pretty quickly both in terms of features and support. The TV tuner card is analog and doesn’t do HD. Driver support in Windows 7 was an afterthought and those drivers are hard to find. The applications that came with this PC for using the TV tuner card do not work in 64-bit Windows 7. I was finally able to find drivers and the card, at least for video capture, and it seems to work with VirtualDub. I can see how this machine would still be useful if you had any analog video capture needs. However, I doubt that the capture card that is in it would work with Windows 10/11 and I’m skeptical about it working in Linux as well.

    I’ll probably keep this computer around. It’s always nice to have a way to handle legacy media. In theory, I should be able to use this machine to capture VHS, 8mm, and other analog video formats. There are of course analog video options for modern systems, but what fun is that?

    Like pretty much any machine I turn on, if it is capably, I have it crunching tasks for BOINC. Despite the older hardware and OS, it can still crunch tasks for at least MilkyWay@home, World Community Grid, Einstein@home, Universe@home, and Asteroids@home and probably others. You can check out how it is doing overall via FreeDC.


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  • Digital Archaeology: HP Pavilion p7-1012

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The Hewlett Packard p7-1012 is a great example of why you don’t want to buy “big box” store computers off the shelf. On the one hand, it looks ok and while it has a fairly low-end CPU even for the time, there is at least a fairly substantial upgrade path. However, on the other hand, it only has a 250 watt power supply and while it can be upgraded from a dual-core cpu to a hexa-core CPU, the top of the range is off limits because of motherboard power restrictions. Worst of all, this computer has no PCI x16 slot. That limits you to something like the nVidia GT 710 if you are thinking about a video card upgrade. Given the pitiful power supply, you couldn’t do a whole lot better even if you did have an x16 slot.

    Nevertheless, even with its relatively low end dual-core Athlon II 220 CPU, with the RAM maxed out at 8 GB it still makes a useable Windows 10 or Linux box provided you don’t want to do anything too intensive (or anything resembling modern gaming…”modern” in this case being 2009 or later). Because of that, I’m not sure this really quite fits into the category of “vintage” or even “retro” but it’s getting close. Generally, I consider anything older than 10 years to be getting close to the “retro” category when it comes to computers. This one fits with that criteria but just barely. A better criteria might be anything with a single core CPU or anything with a 32-bit CPU, etc. I guess it is pretty subjective though.

    Some more detailed stats:

    • Motherboard – FOXCONN 2AB7 / H-Apricot-RS780L-uATX (Apricot) (Socket AM3)
    • Chipset – AMD 780G
    • CPU – AMD Athlon II X2 220
    • Graphics – AMD Radeon 3000 (RS780L) / Taurus (integrated)
    • RAM – 8 GB DDR3-1066
    • Hard Drive – Seagate ST3320413AS 7200 RPM, 320 GB
    • Optical Drive – hp DVD-RAM GH60L

    For more detailed specs, check out the full output of HWiNFO.

    The AMD 780G chipset was introduced in 2009 with an integrated graphics solution that was meant to provide low cost DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities to value PCs. While the chipset itself supports one PCIe 2.0 x16 slot, apparently this low end AMD solution wasn’t cheap enough for HP so they didn’t even provide that on their implementation. Also, while the chipset itself was designed to support AM3+ CPUs (or at least able to support them), this motherboard will only accept AM3 CPUs with a max 95 watt TDP. This means the best processor you can put in it is a Phenom II X6 1065T. The 1075T and beyond have a TDP of 125 watts. Still, I suppose the 1065T would be a reasonably large upgrade over the Athlon II X2 220 that is in it.

    Speaking of which, The Athlon II X2 220 is an AM3 processor with a 65 watt TDP and 2 cores running at 2.8 GHz. This Athlon II is one of a few that have only 1 MB of L2 cache (most have 2 MB) so they pretty much picked near the lowest end for an already lower end CPU line. The Athlon II is essentially the same as the Phenom II but with less cache. The Phenom II has 6 MB of L3 cache whereas the Athlon II has none. However, the Athlon II did have 2 MB of L2 cache (well, most of them anyway) instead of the 1 MB of L2 cache that the Phenom II had. I guess it could have been worse…They could have put a single core Sempron in it. Generally speaking, I think the Athlon II would have been a direct competitor to the Core 2 Duo era Pentium which was essentially a Core 2 Duo with less cache. The Athlon II was somewhat slower per MHz but also cheaper.

    As far as the graphics capabilities go, I don’t think there has ever existed an integrated motherboard solution that has risen above absolute crap when it comes to gaming. I don’t know exactly what discrete solution the Radeon 3000 IGP would be closest to but at least according to Techpowerup, it is nearly 10x slower than the GeForce GT 430 and Radeon HD 5570. That combined with the aforementioned lack of PCI x16 slot and pitiful power supply made this pretty useless for gaming purposes even when it was brand new. I guess as a relatively low power office machine or for basic web browsing/e-mail/office tasks at home it would work well enough though.

    Like any computer I turn on, I installed BOINC on this one. Being a 64-bit CPU, this CPU is able to process work units from most projects, including the ones I participate in most including Einstein@home, MilkyWay@home, Rosetta@home, Universe@home and World Community Grid. Click on the links to see how it is doing in those projects. Sadly, most rosetta@home work units require VirtualBox and gobs of memory and “regular” work units are few and far between. World Community Grid has also been down longer than expected after a recent move. Check out BOINC Stats or Free-DC for overall BOINC statistics for this computer.


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  • Digital Archaeology: HP Pavilion DV2700

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The Pavilion DV2700 is laptop that was released by Hewlett Packard in the 2008 time frame. However, like many of their models, it refers to a fairly wide variety of hardware configurations. In fact, there were versions of the DV2700 with both Intel and AMD processors. However, despite the different hardware configurations, the physical design was the same. The features that stick out were ones to make watching movies more convenient. The DV2700 has a row of touch sensitive buttons with blue backlighting along the top for controlling DVD playback and volume. There was a wide variety of HP models from this time period that had these features and the same basic physical design overall.

    Hardware in this particular DV2700 includes the following:

    • CPU: AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile TL-60 @ 2GHz, Stepping BH-G2, Codename Tyler
    • Memory: 2GB DDR2
    • Graphics: nVidia GeForce 7150M/nForce 630M
    • Motherboard: Wistron 30D6
    • Chipset: nVidia nForce 560
    • Screen: 1280×800
    • Hard Drive: WDC WD3200LPVX-75V0TT0, 320 GB, 5400 RPM, 8 MB cache, SATA 3.0

    While AMD has leapfrogged Intel from time to time in terms of performance on the desktop, they’ve had a harder time competing in lower power spaces like laptops. The Turion was essentially AMD’s answer to the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo. While it competed pretty evenly performance wise, at least for a while, it wasn’t able to quite match Intel in terms of lower power consumption. This CPU performed roughly the same as a 1.9 GHz Core Duo.

    There were two versions of the TL-60. The first was code-named Trinidad, built on a 90nm process and had a 35 watt TDP. The second version (the one in this laptop) was code-named Tyler, built on a 65nm process and had a 31 watt TDP. Otherwise they were essentially identical. These were based on the K8 architecture with minor modifications so they were more closely related to the Athlon 64 line than the Phenom line.

    The chipset, or more specifically the built-in GPU made it difficult to find drivers for. Depending on the OS, they seemed to be non-existent or a closely guarded secret. I first tried installing a recent version of Ubuntu and failed miserably. All I could get was a blank screen (or maybe it was a scrambled screen…I forget now). I spent quite some time trying to get it to work but couldn’t. I tried the default Noveau drivers and every nVidia driver version I could find and nothing worked. After trying another distribution or two, I finally got Debian to work…kind of. It still required manual alteration of config files and I could only get a 1024×768 resolution instead of the native 1280×800. That seemed to be the best I was going to get with Linux. Perhaps with an old enough distribution and old enough nVidia drivers I would have better luck…

    Instead, I decided to give Windows a try. Originally, this laptop came with Windows Vista (almost certainly the 32-bit version despite having a 64-bit chip). It also, in theory, supported Windows XP. And it was also likely possible to install Windows 7 on it. Windows 10 might work with more RAM…maybe…but I wasn’t going to put in more RAM at the moment and even if I did it would probably be painfully under-performing. I didn’t really want Vista and while I love XP I felt something a bit newer was better for this laptop so I decided to go with Windows 7.

    Installation went fine and it was immediately operable. But again, the resolution wasn’t right and it didn’t have correct drivers for the video (and a few other things). Finding the right nVidia drivers turned out to be more difficult than it should have been. Normally, you can go to nVidia’s web site, choose the appropriate category and find the drivers you need. However, the 7150M/630M seemed to be a black sheep of the family or something. No selection combination produced drivers that were appropriate. I finally found a link somewhere else for the correct drivers (back to an apparently obscure nVidia page no less) and once I installed them, things worked fine and I could finally get that 1280×800 resolution.

    It wasn’t too long before this chipset was released that AMD bought ATI. That probably explains to some degree why this chipset had a relatively short life and little support. That and it really wasn’t that great of a performer, at least as far as the GPU was concerned. It was better than Intel’s built-in graphics of the same time period but that really isn’t saying much. It only supported DirectX 9.0c and there’s only so much you can do with 2 pixel shaders, 1 vertex shader, 2 texture mapping units and 2 ROPs. Even at the time that was pretty lousy.

    When I acquired this laptop, it had 2 GB of RAM. However, given the fact that the two modules were different brands and had different specs, I’m pretty sure it came stock with 1 GB when new and was later upgraded. One GB seems a less than ideal amount for Windows Vista. Even 2 GB can be a struggle with modern web browsing on Windows 7 and Windows 7 is a bit more efficient with RAM than Vista. Having said that, I know that some computers that came with Vista (basic) only had 512 MB. Sounds like torture to me.

    For detailed specs, see https://www.megalextoria.com/DigitalArchaeology/da_Pavilion-DV2700/PAVILION-DV2700.HTM


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