HP DV6-6121tx REVIEW

[Prongs298]

I bought the hp dv6 6121 tx in mid october this year. And i have seen that there are very few reviews with good pictures of this laptop by any user, so i decided to do one. Being my first review, i apologize for any arrogant mistake, i mean no disrespect.

So here i go -

LOOKS and BUILD QUALITY -

I like the look and feel of the metallic surface. And the coffee like color is also pleasing. But this laptop will make any scratch look bad, because after getting scratched the silver metal is visible under the brown coat.
The keyboard is not bad, but some keys are downright awful, like the undersized arrow keys.
The touchpad feels and works great, but i don't think its built to last as much as the old dv6 or the envys.
There are creaks here and there but nothing major.
The hinges are awesome.
And the silver lining along the ports and front is not metal, but plastic and the silver coating will go off after heavy usage.
The ports are sufficient and well placed.
The vents are also nice.


PERFORMANCE and HEAT -

I got an i7 2630qm , 4GB RAM, AMD 6770M 2GB GDDR5 and 640 GB 5400 rpm hard-disk. I have never encountered any slowdowns or lockups. The processor is a speed demon and has shown its strength while i was encoding thousands of mp3's in LAME xp and in Photoshop and also while converting videos in SUPER. RAM usage stays at most on 85-90 % while gaming and i haven't noticed it that much. Hard disk is slow as expected and this becomes evident while copying to and from it. And while copying data to the hard disk, the laptop crawls and i can't game while doing this, or the game lags.
The gaming performance is just awesome and every game i've thrown at it runs at everything@max but no AA and native resolution. This is by exception of some games like Shift2, Dirt3 and Battlefield 3 and Metro 2033.
The temperatures are not bad but they are not good either. When i first bought this the temps would reach 85C for the CPU and 85-90C for the gpu.
Then in power setting i set max CPU state to 75% and then cpu temps stay at 60-70C. And in MSI after burner i reduced the memory and core clocks and incresed fan speed to 60% and then the gpu temps always stay between 55C and 72C. Even after decreasing the clocks of the cpu and gpu i can run most games at full settings. And i will run the cpu and gpu at full clocks when i get a good laptop cooler.


PICS -




















Now these three pics will show how the touchpad is gonna wear out in time -









NEW UPDATES

all right, after 6 months i update this review with what i did and faced with the dv6.

1. my screen got a dead pixel on the top right corner.
2. left hinge got loose after a security guard accidentally hit my screen with his punjabi hand while my room was being checked.
3.the right top area near the right hinge of the base area near the keyboard is creaky and has bad workmanship.
4.i can run nearly every game at full settings and without overheating. max temps are 73 for gfx and 80 for cpu. also the idle temps are 45.
5.also the touchpad did not wear out like i thought it would.

[fz8975]

Even after decreasing the clocks of the cpu and gpu i can run most games at full settings. And i will run the cpu and gpu at full clocks when i get a good laptop cooler.

do you see a drop in fps ??

[Prongs298]

of course there is a drop in fps but i didn't notice it because its not significant enough to make a game from playable to unplayable. it you can do this while ensuring that the game remains within playable fps limits then bingo.

[balkeet]

hi,very nice and honest review
but tell more about your gaming experience of bf3 and metro33.
did u had crashes and texture flickering playing bf3???
which driver version u used 11.9 or 11.10???

[Prongs298]

i am using 11.9 and i have no flickering issues in bf3 or metro2033.

but i have the flickering problem in the menu's of all the stalker games.

i had this problem in crysis and c warhead also but warhead got fixed by enabling vsync. but crysis 1 has no vsync option. and even turning on vsync has not solved the flickering menus in any of the stalker games.

But this flickering only occurs in the menu not during gameplay.

i suggest you turn on vsync.

[balkeet]

ok thanks for answering
should i go for 6121tx or inspiron 15r n5110??
i fear 6121 for hp highest hardware failure rate of 25% as opposed to dell 18% but specs of 6121 are more future proof while dell is so reliable.

[Prongs298]

them hardware failure rates also depend on the iq of the person using it and the no. of laptops both hp and dell have sold. They are higher for hp as it has sold more laptops and coincidentally much of the people using them are @#$%^&*. And hardware failure due to production or manufacturing defects is rare.

If you are not stupid enough to let your cat or dog lubricate your laptop, or to use it as a fly swatter, you can safely buy the 6121tx.

[balkeet]

lol
i got ur point!!!
that was big help.

[balkeet]

hey,can u plz upload the screenshot showing ur 6121tx cpu and gpu temperatures at full load i.e after playing 3-4 hours of high end gaming at performance mode of hp??!!!

[Darshan Singh]

Hi, I have bought the same laptop. I have some queries.

First, HP allocated 300 GB of HDD space to C drive whereas I want that space for other partitions. The partition cannot be shrinked beyond 300 GB. So the only option left for me is to format and install the pirated Windows. I just don't understand why companies don't give full control to the consumer when he is paying for that. Do you have any suggestion regarding that?

Secondly, the processor is although i7 but it is clocked at 2.00 GHz and I have seen some games specifying around 3 GHz processor for playing. So I want to know whether such games can be played on this laptop or not? I don't want to take any risks of overclocking but tell me in detail what you talked about decreasing or increasing the clock speeds by using MSI burner.

Thanks

[ramraze]

Hey.

Thanks for your review. Could you do me a favor - maximize all performance (power mode), , without underclocks, active cooling etc and try Battlefield 3 on 1366x768 all LOW settings and play for 10-20 minutes and tell me what fps you are getting at MAX, AVG and MIN. If you want to, you can fraps it and benchmark a little bit.

Thinking about buying this laptop as well, just want to know what kinds of fps is possible to achieve in native res