HP Compaq nw8240 Workstation Review
Do you demand power? HP's high-end workstation laptop is capable of handling the most demanding applications in a mobile package. The nw8240 workstation sports a fast Pentium M 770 CPU running at 2.13 GHz, 2GB RAM, high resolution 15.4' WUXGA LCD, and a powerful ATI FireGL V5000 128MB graphics card. It is obvious the nw8240 is no performance slouch. HP took a departure from the usual plain designs you would find in most of their models. The Workstation on the other hand comes in a sleek graphite-colored chassis adding to its stunning looks. As a powerful desktop replacement workstation, this notebook is also relatively portable, weighing a mere 5.8 to 6.1 pounds and measuring only 1.1 inch thick.Overview
Do you demand power? HP's high-end workstation laptop is capable of handling the most demanding applications in a mobile package. The nw8240 workstation sports a fast Pentium M 770 CPU running at 2.13 GHz, 2GB RAM, high resolution 15.4' WUXGA LCD, and a powerful ATI FireGL V5000 128MB graphics card. It is obvious the nw8240 is no performance slouch. HP took a departure from the usual plain designs you would find in most of their models. The Workstation on the other hand comes in a sleek graphite-colored chassis adding to its stunning looks. As a powerful desktop replacement workstation, this notebook is also relatively portable, weighing a mere 5.8 to 6.1 pounds and measuring only 1.1 inch thick.
It's no surprise, with all these benefits come at a price. This configuration easily surpasses the $2000 mark. Workstation machines are made to take on professional applications, but how does the nw8240 perform in consumer graphics applications such as games? Also, is the HP nw8240 a better alternative to laptops such as the performance-thin Acer Travelmate 8104? We will consider these questions in this review.
Design
Portability
HP did a great job combining portability and functionality. With dimensions of 14" x 10.4" x 1.1" and weighing only 6.1lbs, carrying this laptop around should be relatively painless. Unfortunately, with emphasis placed on slimness and lightness as opposed to sheer durability, be sure to keep the laptop well protected with a specialized laptop backpack or other form of carrying device.
Case and Design
The HP nw8240 chassis is constructed out of magnesium alloy. Unfortunately, due to the emphasis of portability over durability, the result is that the casing is a bit pliable. In other words, when pressing on the casing, one can see the casing cave in slightly. While this may sound like a big deal, HP emphasized that they installed sturdy protection over the important components, such as the hard drive.
The hinges seem to be very durable. When the laptop is closed, there is a slight gap between the lid and the body of the laptop.
The status lights are located on the bottom left corner of the laptop. They depict the basic functions: wireless, power on/off, charging on/off and hard drive activity. The icons are repeated on the side of the lid so that the user can see the laptop status while the lid is closed.
Keyboard
One of the most impressive feature is the HP nw8240's ergonomic design. While the keyboard layout is standard, the keys are specially designed to offer outstanding grip support, improving typing comfort and speed. Instead of the usual smooth surface, the nf8240's keyboard is rough enough to keep your fingers from slipping in all conditions. The keyboard is also exceptionally stable; there is no give whatsoever, even when pressing hard on the keys. Key depth is also higly above average. The HP nw8240's keyboard is definately one of the best typing surfaces that has gone through LaptopLogic labs.
The HP nw8240 also comes with an appreciably large quantity of dedicated buttons: power on/off, HP Info Center, wireless on/off, Presentation Mode, and the standard volume mute, volume increase, and volume decrease.
There is plenty of space to rest your palms for a comfortable typing experience.
Touchpad
The touchpad is pleasantly smooth and of proper size. Like most implementations, there is a scroll bar to the right of the touchpad to scroll in applications such as web browsers. There are three mouse buttons, all of which are rubberdized for added comfort and grip. Surprisingly, HP also included an eraserhead-type mouse control, along with an additional three mouse buttons for use with the eraserhead. The eraserhead is also rubberdized and very easy to control. As an added bonus, tapping the eraserhead results in a left mouse click.
Connectivity Options
With HP's emphasis on portability, the variety of ports unfortunately suffers. All the essentials are included: headphone and microphone jacks, 3x USB 2.0, serial, VGA-out, Kensington lock, Ethernet, modem, and Firewire ports. However, certain ports that would be nice to have in a workstation are not present, such as DVI-out and a CF slot.
Front
The front is relatively sparse, containing the indicator lights, latch, and infra-red sensor.
Rear
The back of the HP nw8240 is sparsely populated, just containing the power connector and VGA-out.
Left Side
The left side of the laptop contains the PCMCIA card slot, SD slot, Firewire, 1 of the 3 USB 2.0 ports, a ventilation opening, S-Video, modem, Gigabit LAN, and the Kensington lock.
Right Side
The right side of the laptop houses the serial port, DVD+/-RW drive, 2 of the 3 total USB 2.0 ports, microphone port, built-in microphone, and headphone port. Unfortunately, since its on the right side, the disk drive and USB port placement can potentially interfere with the mouse.
Heat and Noise
Due to the thin profile of the HP nw8240, there is little space for a decently sized heatsink. Even though HP tried to make the best out of the situation by using a copper-based heatsink instead of an aluminum-based heatsink, in order to sufficiently cool the laptop, a loud fan was found to be necessary. The end result is that the laptop becomes quite loud during high CPU/GPU usage situations. However, even with the fan running at full speed, the laptop still easily heats up. Although the keyboard areas of the laptop rarely get warm, the underside can get incredibly hot, especially when performing graphics card-intensive work. Therefore, it is recommended to keep the laptop on a well-ventilated desktop.
Upgrading and Expansion
Like most laptops, the HP nw8240 only offers a few user upgradeable components: the integrated wireless, RAM, and hard drive. These components are accessed by unscrewing panels on the back. Even though the graphics card is PCI-E, which is touted to be upgradeable, the HP nw8240 does not offer an easy way to do it! The CPU is also very difficult to access.
Processor/Chipset/RAM
The nw8240 uses Intel's latest Pentium M platform, codenamed Sonoma. As most of you know, this update to the popular technology brings a faster front side bus, PCI Express, High Definition Audio, Serial ATA, DDR2 RAM, and more. Our model came loaded with the Pentium M 770, running at 2.13GHz with 2MB L2 Cache on a 533MHz FSB. The Intel 915PM chipset is used, providing discrete graphics via ATI's FireGL V5000 GPU. The higher bus speeds help improve performance as does the faster RAM running synchronous with the FSB. DDR2 is also Dual Channel capable, meaning that using two identical memory modules effectively doubles your memory bandwidth.
In our recent Sonoma Platform article, we determined that dual channel brings very little real world performance improvement. While DDR2 is also clocked higher than DDR 333, it has higher latencies which reduce the positive effect of the higher speed. Latency refers to the amount of time it takes for data to enter and leave the memory, thus higher latency produces less performance. Our model came loaded with 1x1GB stick of DDR2 533, leaving a slot open for one more SODIMM module. Regardless, the Sonoma platform's new features are a big step in the right direction. The new feature sets added to the Centrino platform make mobile systems capable of doing everything a desktop can, with battery life to spare.
GPU
Since the HP nw8240 is classified as a workstation, it uses the professional equivalent of the ATI Radeon X700 Mobility 128MB graphics card: the FireGL V5000.
Although both the X700 and the V5000 are essentially the same GPU, the V5000 has optimized drivers which vastly improve workstation rendering power while still maintaining high gaming performance. Therefore, like the Radeon X700, the FireGL V5000 has 8 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex shaders for outstanding midrange performance. To lower heat and power consumption, the V5000 is clocked lower than recommended specs at 358MHz core and 330MHz memory speeds.
Due to the high amount of vertex shaders (6), the V5000 is able to outperform extremely well in professional rendering applications involving high polygon count models. For gaming, the FireGL V5000 is no slouch either. In the general graphics card category, the ATI Radeon X700 Mobility ranks as #1 in performance in the mobile laptop section. Since the performance penalty the V5000 faces for gaming is rather small, the FireGL V5000 still ranks as the top graphics card in the thin-and-light laptop category (high-end graphics cards are unfortunately only found in much larger and heavier laptops), beating the NVIDIA 6600 128MB in both performance and power consumption. Although there is little information available about the V5000, we know that ATI sets its midrange graphics card TDP (thermal envelope) to be 14W. Compare this with the 18.8W TDP NVIDIA 6600 128MB.
There are disadvantages with the V5000, however. Like its X700 counterpart, does not support SM3.0, which will limit the graphical effects in the latest games. Realistically, this should not become a large issue since the graphical options in the latest games stress out even the highest end graphics cards, much less the mid-range V5000 part.
For gaming, due to the graphics card only having 128MB of video RAM and 8 pixel pipelines, do not expect to play the latest games at the laptop's native resolution. Standard 1024x768 resolution should most definitely be doable at high graphics quality, or even 1440x900 resolution with graphics settings turned lower.
Display
Our HP nw8240 model came with the highest resolution available: WUXGA, which has a resolution of 1920 x 1200. Like all screens at this resolution, viewing text at native resolution is much too difficult, necessitating most people to raise the font DPI to 100-110. Unfortunately, it became quite obvious that there were many problems with the screen, especially when compared against one of its competitors, the Dell Precision M70. Brightness and viewing angle were the major problems, both visibly worse than the M70. The reason is that while the brightness in the center of the screen is acceptable, the edges of the screen are a bit dimmer that what is usually deemed as acceptable.
The dreaded "sparkles" also make an appearance with this LCD screen. For those not in the know, "sparkles" is a condition commonly found on ultra-high resolution LCD screens. Essentially, a panel inflicted with "sparkles" will "sparkle" when you move your head from side to side, which is where the name comes from.
Judging from these cons, it would be wise not to choose the WUXGA resolution when purchasing this notebook, although this problem may be fixed by the time this article is released.
Sound
The HP nw8240 boasts a nicely designed stereo sound system rated at 2W. Unfortunately, even though Sonoma supports Intel's High Definition Audio standard, the implementation is still the standard AC '97 codec. The sound is a slightly better than normal, but do not expect much from laptop audio.
Features Continued
WiFi
The HP nw8240 model we tested used the Intel PRO/Wireless 2915BG (802.11a/b/g) card. WiFi can be turned off when not needed to save power by simply pressing the dedicated button. Wireless speed and strength, like all laptops with this card was never a major issue.
HP uses proprietary wireless connection software to manage connections, which works good enough for its purpose. It's essentially the same in function and ease of use, which is definitely good enough for its purpose. Bluetooth is also available as an optional feature.
Optical Drive
The HP nw8240 model we tested came with a DVD+/-RW drive, great for all your multimedia needs. Interestingly, the drive writes DVD+R/W media faster than it writes DVD-R/W media. The drive is a special super-slim model designed for minimal weight. The down-side is that the drive is a bit flimsy though.
The disk drive speeds are as follows:
- CD Read 24x
- CD Write 24x
- DVD Read 8x
- DVD+R/W write 2.4x
- DVD-R/W write 2x
Hard Drive
Utilizing the fastest Hitachi 60GB 7200RPM, the HP nw8240 model we tested is able to access files much faster than laptops using standard 5400RPM hard drives. The HP nw8240 is configurable from HP's website with virtually any type of hard drive, except for the latest 80GB and 100GB 7200RPM models. As these hard drive models are still somewhat expensive, we would like to see them included as an option in the future.
Battery and AC Adapter
The HP nw8240 uses a standard Lithium Ion 8 cell battery rated at 69Wh (watt-hours), weighing 0.980lb (0.445 kg). Battery life was exceptional for such a high performance laptop. Even when performing intensive tasks like watching DVDs, battery life never drained below 3 hours. This is without optimizations (such as from our Battery Optimization guide), which is impressive indeed. When performing light tasks and after optimizations, battery life should even exceed 5 hours!
Unlike most performance laptops, the HP nw8240's power brick is exceptionally small, with dimensions of a mere 5" x 1.97" x 1.1" and weighing in at 1.11 lb, including the power cord.
Security Management
Since the HP nw8240 is targeted towards businesses, security and data protection is of vital importance. HP Client Manager Software (CMS) provides asset tracking, alerting, diagnostics, and SoftPaq distribution. For more information, refer to the HP website at http://www.hp.com/go/easydeploy
There are also a slew of other features geared towards security.
- Configuration Control Hardware
- Memory Change Alert
- Ownership Tag
- Set-up Password
- Power-On Password
- DriveLock
- Enabled for PC SmartCard options
- Kensington Lock Slot
- Optional TPM (Trusted Platform Module) embedded security chip
Software
HP included a lot of proprietary software with the laptop. The table below shows a list of everything that's preinstalled, included on CD, or available for download. There's an impressive amount of proprietary software. However, this may not be a good thing as people are usually used to the standard Windows software and it's a bit difficult to revert Windows to its original state.
| Adobe Acrobat Reader HP Local Recovery provided by Altiris* HP One-Touch Button Software HP Mobile Print Driver Synaptics Touchpad Driver HP Help and Support HP ProtectTools Security Manager: BIOS Configuration for HP ProtectTools Credential Manager for HP ProtectTools HP Wireless Assistant Sonic RecordNow! (for optional DVD+/-RW and DVD/CDRW drives) Symantec Norton Antivirus with complimentary 60-day live update Intervideo WinDVD - DVD Player (for optional DVD+/-RW, DVD/CDRW and DVD drives) |
| Software on CD | Intervideo WinDVD Creator - DVD Authoring (for optional DVD+/-RW drives) |
| Additional software available from the Web | HP Client Manager Software |
The HP nw8240 was set to run at full performance by setting the power scheme set to 'Home/Office Desk', meaning that the CPU will not underclock while running the tests. For the battery performance test, the power scheme was set to 'Portable/Laptop'. This activates SpeedStep technology, which lowers CPU speed when not needed, thus increasing battery life. Screen brightness and audio were both set to 50% and Wi-Fi was turned on. Each test was repeated 3 times to ensure accuracy. Before each test was run, the laptop was rebooted and its hard drive defragmented.
Setup Method
The HP nw8240 was set to run at full performance by setting the power scheme set to 'Home/Office Desk', meaning that the CPU will not underclock while running the tests. For the battery performance test, the power scheme was set to 'Portable/Laptop'. This activates SpeedStep technology, which lowers CPU speed when not needed, thus increasing battery life. Screen brightness and audio were both set to 50% and Wi-Fi was turned on. Each test was repeated 3 times to ensure accuracy. Before each test was run, the laptop was rebooted and its hard drive defragmented.
Bapco MobileMark 2005 is the latest version of the premier notebook battery life and performance under battery life metric based on real world applications.
- Office Productivity: The workloads in this category model a mobile professional at a fictitious automobile company. The worker creates documents using Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, accesses email, and creates graphics and animation with Photoshop and Flash to include in a multimedia presentation. An Internet browser is used to view presentations. The user also invokes file compression and virus detection in the background.
- DVD Playback: The DVD playback 2005 workload is based on a 1 hours 55 minute movie that BAPCo has created from content provided by BMW. The DVD playback test starts the movie playerapplication, sets up a full screen playback, and the loops over the content on the disk in the DVDplayer. This playback will continue until system shutdown at battery depletion.
3DMark 2001 SE PRO build 3.3.0 measures graphics performance by benchmarking the CPU, memory, and graphics through a series of 21 tests, including simulated games, theoretical tests, DX8 feature tests, and image quality tests. Resolution was set to 1024x768 with all default settings.
3DMark 2003 build 3.6.0 measures DX9 performance through a series of 3D game based sound, graphics, and CPU tests. Resolution was set to 1024x768 with all default settings.
PCMark 2004 build 1.3.0 uses real life application tests to generate a combined score by running specific tasks like application loading, game tests, 3D rendering, multimedia encoding, and more. Resolution was set to 1024x768 with all default settings.
PCMark 2005 Advanced build 1.1.0 is the latest update to Futuremark's popular overall system benchmarking program. The 2005 version adds multithreading, DirectX 9, Windows Media Player 10, virus scanning, High Defintion video playback (WMVHD), and a vast number of other tests to its suite. Testing your computer's CPU, RAM, hard drive and graphics card, PCMark05 drives your computer to the max to determine its strengths and weaknesses.
Doom 3 (Version 1.1) using the built-in time-demo, initiated with the console command timedemo demo1 precache.
Test1:
| Test2:
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Half Life 2 (Source Engine 7) timedemos Canals 08 from Anandtech.com with the following tests and graphic settings:
Test1 (Low Image Quality):
| Test2 (High Image Quality):
|
FEAR ( First Encounter Assault Recon) is one of the latest FPS games featuring brilliant graphics.
Low:
- Medium Computer
- Low Graphics
- 1024x768 resolution
Medium:
- Medium Computer
- Medium Graphics
- 1024x768 resolution
High:
- High Computer
- High Graphics
- 4xAA
- 4xAF
Configurations
The HP nw8240 was compared with the popular Acer Travelmate 8103 and Dell Inspiron 9300 notebooks. The Acer Travelmate 8103 was chosen since it's a non-workstation laptop with very similar specs, while the Dell Inspiron 9300 was chosen to see how the HP nw8240 stacks up versus a desktop replacement laptop. As we will see, it does quite well indeed.
| Specifications | HP nw8240 | Acer 8103WLMi | Dell Inspiron 9300 |
| Processor | Intel Pentium M 780 2.13 GHz | Intel Pentium M 750 1.86 GHz | Intel Pentium M 730 730 1.6 GHz |
| Front Side Bus | 533 MHz | 533 MHz | 533 MHz |
| Chipset | Intel 915G | Intel 915GM | Intel 915PM Express |
| Hard Drive | 60GB Hitachi 7200RPM 8MB cache | 100GB 5400RPM 8MB Cache | 80GB Fujitsu 4200RPM 8MB Cache |
| Memory | 1GB DDR2 533 | 512MB DDR2 533 (2 x 256MB) on Dual-Channel Mode CL=4 | 512MB DDR2 533 |
| Graphics | ATI FireGL V5000 128MB | ATI Radeon Mobility X700 128MB | Nvidia GeForce 6800 Go 256MB |
| Operating System | Windows XP Home w/SP2 | Windows XP Professional w/SP2 | Windows XP Home w/SP2 |
| Battery | 4,400 mAh | 4,800 mAh | 4,400 mAh |
PCMark04
PCMark 2004 is a good way to determine the strengths and weaknesses of a computer. PCMark runs many tests, such as application loading and video encoding, and comes up with a final score, with many different subscores. By comparing the subscore, it is easy to see the strengths and weaknesses of your laptop.
With its fast CPU, hard drive, and graphics card, it is no wonder that the HP nw8240 wins overall in PCMark04.
The HP nw8240's 2.13GHz Pentium M CPU is obviously faster than the 1.86GHz and 1.60GHz Pentium M CPUs found in the Acer and Dell, respectively.
Laptops with similar CPUs also have similar memory bandwidth, as shown above. Interestingly enough, the single-channel RAM ultilized by the HP nw8240 actually pulls ahead, probably due to its faster CPU.
Even though the HP nw8240 and the Acer Travelmate 8103 have essentially the same graphics card, the HP nw8240's powerful 2.13GHz CPU gives it the edge.
The HP nw8240 easily wins due to its fast 7200RPM hard drive.
PCMark 2005
PCMark 2005 is the latest iteration of Futuremark's popular PCMark series, which tests overall system performance. The HP nw8240 does quite well in this test. Notice that graphics performance is the laptop's strong suit, while memory performance is the laptop's weakness. Overall, the HP nw8240 has a very respectable score of 3156.
| PCMark05 | HP nw8240 |
| CPU | 3452 |
| Memory | 2248 |
| Graphics | 3050 |
| HDD | 3780 |
| Total | 3156 |
3DMark 2001
3DMark 2001 is actually a few years old, but it is still a great test for overall system performance.
This test is pretty much CPU and RAM limited. Even though its graphics card is less powerful than the Dell laptop's 6800 Go, the HP nw8240 wins overall due to its faster CPU.
3dmark 2003
3dmark 2003 is a popular DX9 test which emphasizes graphics card performance.
The HP nw8240 falls between the Acer Travelmate 8103 and Dell Inspiron 9300 as expected.
3dmark 2005
3dmark 2005 is the latest DX9.0c benchmark, heavily taxing even the most powerful graphics card.
3Dmark 2005 is designed to emphasize both the CPU and GPU. Thus, with its high-end 2.13GHz Pentium M CPU, the HP nw8240 has a substantial lead over the Acert Travelmate 8103.
Gaming PerformanceHalf Life 2
Half Life 2 is no doubt one of the most famous DirectX titles ever released. It is incredibly scalable, claiming support for graphics cards all the way to DirectX 7. After testing, it is determined that even the highest resolution of 1920x1200 is (somewhat) playable! However, testing was done at 1024x768, as not all laptops can support such extreme resolutions.
Due to the low graphics requirement of the low graphics settings test, the HP nw8240 easily wins due to its powerful CPU.
Even the high graphics setting test still has a large dependence on the CPU. Hence, the HP nw8240 performs similarly to the Dell Inspiron 9300.
Doom 3
Doom 3 is the latest game in the famous Doom franchise, released by Id Software. Doom 3 uses the latest in graphics technology, and is famous for its use of shadows.
Due to the ATI FireGL V5000 being optimized for image quality in OpenGL mode, the HP nw8240 performs poorly in this game.
The same is true when image quality is turned up, although the gap between the Acer and the HP notebook is lessened.
Battery PerformanceMobileMark 2005
MobileMark 2005 is the latest in battery life benchmarks, featuring a series of scripts simulating real-life battery usage. The HP nw8240 performs very well, getting close to 5 hours battery life doing simple word processing and document reading. When playing back DVDs, the HP nw8240 lasts about 3 hours, enough for just about any movie.
| MobileMark 2005 | HP nw8240 |
| DVD Playback | 184 minutes (3:04) |
| Productivity | 204 minutes (3:24) |
| Reader | 287 (4:47) |
CPU
Compatible overclocking software was not found, so CPU overclocking could not be performed.
GPU
Due to the small cooling solution, the GPU overclock was limited due to heat. The GPU could be clocked up to 420 MHz, a 17.3% overclock from 358 MHz. The video RAM's max overclock was a mere 355 MHz, up 7.6% from 330 MHz.
Results
Many benchmarks did not show much improvement after overclocking. This is due to the immense power of the NVIDIA 6800 go GPU, which causes relatively graphically unintensive benchmarks, such as the game benchmarks at low settings, to become bottlenecked by CPU and RAM. On the more intensive benchmarks, overclocking should show a great improvement over the regular stock settings.
Pros
- Powerful midrange ATI FireGL V5000 graphics card
- Fast general system performance
- Up to WUXGA LCD resolution
- Respectable battery life
- Lightweight at 6.1 pounds
- Good quality sound
- Stylish chassis
- Powerful security and data protection features
- High quality keyboard with great grip
- Dual touchpad and eraserhead options
Cons
- Poor WUXGA LCD brightness and viewing angle
- Runs hot and loud
- Expensive
- Chassis is structurally weak in some parts
Recommendation
HP illustrated its emphasis on design and performance with its latest nw8240 workstation. Without a doubt, the HP nw8240 is a laptop of exceptional quality. Surprisingly, the most impressive aspect has nothing to do with performance: the keyboard, touchpad and eraserhead are the best I have ever used, as its well-constructed and extremely comfortable for extensive usage. The addition of powerful security and data protection features is a huge bonus for a business professional.
Unfortunately, there are drawbacks as well. Monitor brightness and viewing angle is poor. The chassis is also bendable in multiple spots, and one can distort the LCD screen by merely pushing gently on the back LCD panel. As a side effect of focusing on portability, the laptop runs hot and loud. Expect to pay quite a premium for this mobile workstation, as the base model starts at $2099. Our configuration sells for a whopping $2949.00 on HP's website. The extra cost should be justifiable to those who do not place price as a priority and need a powerful desktop replacement machine for CAD and business use.
However, the pros heavily outweigh the cons. As the temperature and loudness of the laptop are expected side effects of focusing on mobility, this is also acceptable for those who place portability as an important factor. Although WSXGA+ and other resolutions were not tested, we feel that brightness and viewing angle should be satisfactory for those models. If you're a general consumer andprefer apowerful desktop replacement that is semi-portable, you're better off buying the consumer-oriented laptops such as the Acer TravelMate 8103/ 8104.
For professionals who demand power and mobility, we give the HP nw8240 mobile workstation Laptop Logics Highly Recommended award.
Availability/Warranty
Our test model is available for $2,949 with a 3 year warranty including on-site service. The HP nw8240 is also available from HP's website starting at $2,099.
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