Even I have an IBM laptop from 2003 which works flawlessly till now. Today's hardware quality has dropped too much. It doesn't last long because it's not designed to last long.
HP G002AX / G009AX Laptop [Honest review, Benchmarks] [AMD Beema A8 6140, 4GB, 1TB, 2GB 8570m]
Even I have an IBM laptop from 2003 which works flawlessly till now. Today's hardware quality has dropped too much. It doesn't last long because it's not designed to last long.
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So it has been a long time I have updated anything. Here are some long term updates.
1. Brought an HDD caddy. This is my 2nd caddy with the span of 1 year. Earlier caddy was also from storite, brought for Rs 750. Current one is same model now costs 600.
For the Initial impression, The quality has definitely come down. Everything feels light and plasticy. Insertion was'nt smooth but I finally got it in. Thankfully, the performance and reliablity are'nt affected.
There is a Bicolor LED that shows Green for power and Red for useage. My Earlier LED was Blue/Red.
I was able to setup a Windows Dynamic disk raid 0 using Inbuilt 1TB hdd and Caddy HDD. Both the HDDs are Toshiba MQB series. The read speed for normal drive is 80~96 MB/s whereas for the Raid partition its in the range of 192~208 MB/S. Truly double, Truly impressive scores. And they Coincide with the RAID scores I have from my earlier Laptop Caddy (P028TX) config.
2. Updated HP bios from F35 to F46. No change Noted.
3. Updated AMD drivers with Crimson 17.2 from the earlier 16.9 version. I had high hopes with this upgrade but other than slightly newer user interface, I do not see anything different.
The onboard R5 Graphics is still faulty and laptop Hangs/Restarts after 15~20 mins of Gaming.
Dedicated 8570m Is Chugging along happily overclocked to 722 Core/ 1Ghz Ram. I could not gain any OC headroom with new driver. Performance is the same.
5. I have set max CPU freq to 1.6 Ghz these days which means I have game with Overclocked GPU and better performance just at 64.C.
If I let CPU climb up to 1.8 Ghz, the temps shoot to 72.C and when full 2 Ghz/ Turbo is enabled the laptop touches a blistering 84.C. its still stable though. But I can game at 1.6 Ghz with the very same FPS so why worry?
1. Brought an HDD caddy. This is my 2nd caddy with the span of 1 year. Earlier caddy was also from storite, brought for Rs 750. Current one is same model now costs 600.
For the Initial impression, The quality has definitely come down. Everything feels light and plasticy. Insertion was'nt smooth but I finally got it in. Thankfully, the performance and reliablity are'nt affected.
There is a Bicolor LED that shows Green for power and Red for useage. My Earlier LED was Blue/Red.
I was able to setup a Windows Dynamic disk raid 0 using Inbuilt 1TB hdd and Caddy HDD. Both the HDDs are Toshiba MQB series. The read speed for normal drive is 80~96 MB/s whereas for the Raid partition its in the range of 192~208 MB/S. Truly double, Truly impressive scores. And they Coincide with the RAID scores I have from my earlier Laptop Caddy (P028TX) config.
2. Updated HP bios from F35 to F46. No change Noted.
3. Updated AMD drivers with Crimson 17.2 from the earlier 16.9 version. I had high hopes with this upgrade but other than slightly newer user interface, I do not see anything different.
The onboard R5 Graphics is still faulty and laptop Hangs/Restarts after 15~20 mins of Gaming.
Dedicated 8570m Is Chugging along happily overclocked to 722 Core/ 1Ghz Ram. I could not gain any OC headroom with new driver. Performance is the same.
5. I have set max CPU freq to 1.6 Ghz these days which means I have game with Overclocked GPU and better performance just at 64.C.
If I let CPU climb up to 1.8 Ghz, the temps shoot to 72.C and when full 2 Ghz/ Turbo is enabled the laptop touches a blistering 84.C. its still stable though. But I can game at 1.6 Ghz with the very same FPS so why worry?
3 Years Update-
1. updated bios to F48. Nothing noticed.
2. Went back to Very old 16.1 AMD drivers. In the latest versions, I wasnt able to access the Catalyst control panel (Throws Unspecified error). It seems 16.1 is about the last version that works well with this laptop. AMD crimson CCC now works again. No difference in performance.
3. GPU is happily overclocked to 722 Core, 1 GHZ mem from stock 650MHZ core, 900 MHZ MEM. No problems noticed.
4. Laptop has been moved to Secondary state. My primary laptop is HP p028TX with Nvidia 830m as reviewed here-
[Honest Review] HP P028TX Laptop Review [Core i3 1.9Ghz, 4GB ram, 1TB HDD, Nvidia 830M 2GB, Beats]
5. Using the HDD Caddy and dropped one of my older 500 GB HDDs in. Setup Software RAID 0 for a total of 1TB RAID array. Its quite reliable and works as intended. Setup is working since last year no issues.
6. Battery backups seems to be about 1 to 1.5 Hour only These days. Ran HP support assistant along with HP battery check. The battery is healthy but has lost some performance.
7. The laptop was restarting every 10~15 mins. Issue was solved by restoring system image to older date and going back to older drivers as mentioned above.
8. Stopped bothering with Onboard R5 graphics. Power & Performance is not much different with 8570M but runs quite stably. Completed entire run of Painkiller Redemption on OC'd 8570m with no issues no overheating.
1. updated bios to F48. Nothing noticed.
2. Went back to Very old 16.1 AMD drivers. In the latest versions, I wasnt able to access the Catalyst control panel (Throws Unspecified error). It seems 16.1 is about the last version that works well with this laptop. AMD crimson CCC now works again. No difference in performance.
3. GPU is happily overclocked to 722 Core, 1 GHZ mem from stock 650MHZ core, 900 MHZ MEM. No problems noticed.
4. Laptop has been moved to Secondary state. My primary laptop is HP p028TX with Nvidia 830m as reviewed here-
[Honest Review] HP P028TX Laptop Review [Core i3 1.9Ghz, 4GB ram, 1TB HDD, Nvidia 830M 2GB, Beats]
5. Using the HDD Caddy and dropped one of my older 500 GB HDDs in. Setup Software RAID 0 for a total of 1TB RAID array. Its quite reliable and works as intended. Setup is working since last year no issues.
6. Battery backups seems to be about 1 to 1.5 Hour only These days. Ran HP support assistant along with HP battery check. The battery is healthy but has lost some performance.
7. The laptop was restarting every 10~15 mins. Issue was solved by restoring system image to older date and going back to older drivers as mentioned above.
8. Stopped bothering with Onboard R5 graphics. Power & Performance is not much different with 8570M but runs quite stably. Completed entire run of Painkiller Redemption on OC'd 8570m with no issues no overheating.