Rumor: HP is Working on a Gaming Laptop

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Psalms101Man

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VoodooPC:

Acquisition by HP[edit]
On September 28, 2006, Rahul Sood announced on his blog that HP would be acquiring VoodooPC for an undisclosed amount. Rahul Sood will be assuming the position of Chief Technology Officer for HP's Global Voodoo Business Unit.

In August 2007, HP announced the HP Blackbird 002 gaming PC with the label VoodooDNA inside the case. The HP Blackbird can have its hard drive replaced in just 12 seconds[citation needed] due to the tools-free entrance design, and was released on September 15, 2007.

New direction[edit]
Since the acquisition of Voodoo in 2006, the business has been re-developing the brand of Voodoo. This was culminated on the 10th June 2008 with the revelation that Voodoo will focus on high-end, top spec computers rather than gaming machines. Voodoo will also continue with Voodoo DNA machines with HP.

For the launch of their new brand direction they used the tag line of 'Blending Art, Innovation and Performance;' confirming the businesses future as a HP brand.

The Envy 133 laptop has been announced as generally available, while the Omen will (initially) be purchasable by invitation only.

Current products[edit]
As of October 18, 2009, both the HP Firebird and Voodoo Envy 133 are no longer available for purchase on HP's website. The HP Envy line of notebook PCs is touted by HP as "building upon the Voodoo ENVY legacy".

Other available products:

HP Gaming Mouse with VooDooDNA
HP Gaming Surface with VooDooDNA
 

amk-aka-Phantom

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it might be a good idea for HP to try making a gaming desktop first.

It might be a good idea for HP to stop flooding the market with useless junk. Majority of their laptops still come equipped with hideous 768p TN panels, suffer from poor thermal management - they should really thank Intel for Haswell ULV series that allow them to install the same useless "cooling" as always and get away with it due to low heat production of those chips. (Meanwhile companies like Asus that get cooling right cram dedicated GPUs and ULV Haswells into an ultrabook case...) I do not believe that HP can make a good laptop, let alone a gaming one. I kind of like their business and workstation series, but even those are overpriced and boast of "HD" (768p) screen as a default option - disgusting, I don't accepted less than IPS FHD in a modern laptop.

No sane gamer will buy an HP laptop or anything HP, for that matter. That company can't even get mainstream laptops right - why buy whatever garbage they call a "gaming" one when we have, say, Asus ROG?
 


That's a pretty damning (and convincing) indictment, ouch.

 

melvis72

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Sorry but I would never buy a HP(Hunk of Poo) desktop or laptop. They have fallen far down the ladder with quality and customer service, not that Dell is any better.
 

Scionyde

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h3ll yeah HP. If they can manage to beat out Dell's price on the alienwares, I can see them being really. successful here.

It wouldn't be too hard - there already plenty of brands that price better than Alienware - Asus, Gigabyte, Lenovo, MSI, Sager/Clevo...Admittedly, Alienware does high-end SLI that not many other brands attempt, but in single-GPU laptops, they're notoriously overpriced for the level of hardware provided.
 

Christopher1

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I've kinda soured on gaming laptops lately. I keep on reading about "nVidia chips overheat at every turn in laptops!" way too much (though it usually comes back to solder that has cracked and is repairable).
 

chugot9218

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Bought an HP desktop years ago, had a wireless card installed as an add-on, it never seemed to work. Was about to send it in for repair which was a process in itself, when I tried moving my wireless router next to the PC to see what would happen. What do you know, I had signal, it was just that poor of a card.
 

Chris Droste

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Give me a 14 or 15.6" screen, 1080p with an 870M or 880M GPU with a backlit keyboard and I will buy. Asus ROG has an 850M on their 15.6, and MSI Dominator has an 860M on their GT60 (15.6") I don't want to have to carry around a 10lb monster just to game on a laptop! hell, Haswell i5 would be more than adequate as TOM's has proven in the desktop space, why not an i5 4xxxU + GTX 880M in a 15.6" format?
 

amk-aka-Phantom

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Give me a 14 or 15.6" screen, 1080p with an 870M or 880M GPU with a backlit keyboard and I will buy. Asus ROG has an 850M on their 15.6, and MSI Dominator has an 860M on their GT60 (15.6") I don't want to have to carry around a 10lb monster just to game on a laptop! hell, Haswell i5 would be more than adequate as TOM's has proven in the desktop space, why not an i5 4xxxU + GTX 880M in a 15.6" format?


There is a newer Asus G551 that will have GTX 860M GDDR5 (and potentially Broadwell). There is a real difficulty stuffing a 870M or higher into a 15.6'' enclosure and keeping it cool, the tech is just not there! MSI tried: http://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-GS70-2PEi71611-Notebook-Review.119833.0.html and has FAILED with thermals! It's physically impossible at this point, I reckon, these chips just run way too hot.


Now, why U-series Haswell might not be a good idea for gaming: most of them (i3-4010U, i5-4200U, i7-4500U) have a 15W TDP, it's ridiculous, they die in prolonged workloads in most laptops and they suck at multithread due to lower amount of cores. Apple, and Asus in some Zenbooks, use ULV Haswells with higher TDP (like this one with 28W: http://ark.intel.com/products/75992/Intel-Core-i7-4558U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz), it's a much better compromise, but these chips are RIDICULOUSLY costly compared to normal i5/i7s.


Most modern games will run very well at 1080p with high settings on a GDDR5 860M (and even GDDR5 850M, and even DDR3 850M). I have a DDR3 750M in my Asus N550JV and STILL I can play BF3 multiplayer at 1080p on medium-high (mostly high) settings. So you CAN game on light laptops. Hell, Asus even has a "gaming ultrabook", UX32LN (ULV Haswell of your choice plus GT 840M), though of course it has to drop to 768p on most games to run them smooth at adequate settings. You can game on many laptops with modern nVIDIA cards! (Really don't know about AMD, my knowledge of their stuff is outdated by now.) Especially Maxwell. They solved the issue of low memory bandwidth by adding extra cache to the GPU, even a 850M is a very powerful mobile card.


Wait for Maxwell 870M and 880M if you want top settings in a 15.6'' laptop. Current 870M and 880M are still Kepler and thus run hotter/consume more power. Maxwell is amazing and it's a pity nVIDIA didn't release their top cards based on it right away. I hope they'll appear along with Broadwell!
 

Chris Droste

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well, i did notice that ASUS ROG recently released a 15.6" on the 850M GPU and i don't actually know much of mobile GPUs, but when i looked over on some reviews here and even GPUBoss, it was showing that if you wanted at least 30fps across the board even the 860M was lacking, but i guess that could be the Kepler-based one based on what you're saying? It seems like they're the only laptops with SERIOUS thermal solutions too, though some people talking about the MSI Dominator series shows they have some "turbo fan" button setup to play in gaming mode. I guess i originally made the assumption that the new 850/60/70/80 were the maxwell parts just starting to come out. Maybe if i wait around til Christmas they'll have an 870M Maxwell on a 15.6" that seems to be my only real hope. I really don't feel like chancing $1300 on an 850M for the time being especially if i have to order it online.
 
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