Product Listing

HP Pavilion dv7 - Bigger and Shinier

By Aloysius Low - 16 Sep 2008

Performance Benchmarking

Performance Benchmarking

Since the dv7 is the first Intel Centrino 2 based notebook that we'll be reviewing, we only have at hand older Santa Rosa based notebooks to go mano-a-mano with the dv7 and we have selected the following models based on their hardware specifications.

Notebook Comparison Table
Specifications / Notebook HP Pavilion dv7 HP Pavilion dv3000 Toshiba Portege M800 MSI GX600
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo processor P8400 (2.26GHz) with 3MB L2 cache Intel Core 2 Duo processor T9500 (2.6GHz) with 6MB L2 cache Intel Core 2 Duo processor T8300 (2.4GHz) with 3MB L2 cache Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7300 (2.0GHz, 4MB L2 cache)
Chipset Intel PM45 Intel PM965 Intel GM965 Intel PM965
FSB 1066MHz 800MHz 800MHz 800MHz
Memory 2 x 2GB DDR2 2 x 2GB DDR2 2 x 1GB DDR2 2 x 1GB DDR2
HDD 1 x Western Digital 320GB SATA ( WD-3200BEVT) 5400RPM / 8MB Buffer 1 x Hitachi 250GB SATA (HTS54252K9SA00) 5400RPM / 8MB Buffer 1 x Hitachi 250GB SATA (HTS54252K9SA00) 5400RPM / 8MB Buffer 1 x Western Digital 250GB SATA (WD2500BEVS-22UST0) - 5400RPM / 8MB Buffer
Video NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS Intel GMA X3100 NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

System Benchmarks

The HP Pavilion dv7 scored pretty well in our PCMark05 benchmarks, possibly due to its more balanced hardware specifications. While its overall system score did better than the dv3000 and the Toshiba Portege M800 by a fair bit, it was barely on par with another desktop replacement, the MSI GX600 in Turbo Mode. Unsurprisingly, the dv7 didn't do too well compared to the others in the CPU department, as it's using a slightly less powerful processor with a smaller cache compared to the dv3000 (our review unit then was souped up to the max), the M800 and the GX600, whose processor is actually overclocked via Turbo Mode.

Comparing the dv7 against the dv3000 on the newer PCMark Vantage benchmarks revealed that the older dv3000 does score much better for some of the tests, including the main PCMark Suite test. The dv7, however does much better in gaming and productivity suites, thanks to its NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT chipset.


Graphics Benchmarks

On the graphical end of things, thanks to the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT chipset on the dv7, the unit was able to easily beat the other machines by a significant factor. Do note that this is also solely due to the fact that these notebooks were using an older 8400M GS or 8600M GS/GT graphics chipsets and that the dv7 is the one of the first 9600M GT based notebooks so it's understandable why the dv7 pulled ahead in the 3DMark06 scores.

In real gaming tests via Quake 4 however, the MSI GX600 was ahead of the dv7 due to the GX600's Turbo Mode setting, which gave it a slight edge (as surmised earlier in our GX600 review) due to its faster, overclocked CPU. A more GPU dependent game would probably give the edge to the dv7's newer graphics chipset, and we'll find out if this holds true when we get our hands on more Centrino 2 based notebooks for review.

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