14 DAY TRIAL // HP China has started selling what seems to be the first mass available Ivy Bridge notebook on its Chinese website.
The mobile novelty is called HP Pavilion dm4-3110tx Beats Edition and its a music-centric Beats Audio-branded laptop.
The mobile processor powering HP’s new baby is Intel’s Core i7-3612QM. This is a CPU working at 2100MHz with a Turbo frequency of 3100 MHz when only one core is involved, 3000 MHz if two threads need maximum performance or 2800 MHz when three or four cores are solicited.
The lowest frequency is 1200 MHz and the socket is BGA 1224. This is a HyperThreading enabled CPU so the operating system will basically see eight available CPU cores. It comes with 4 x 256 KB of Level 2 cache and a big 6 MB of Level 3 cache.
The memory controller is a dual channel one and the maximum memory supported by HP’s HP Pavilion dm4 laptop is likely to be 8 GB in a dual channel configuration.
The HDD size is 750 GB and the default RAM size is 4 GB.
The screen is of particular quality as some models come with cheaper panel that has a 1366×768 resolution, whereas some other dm4 notebooks have a 1600 x 900 panel.
The power behind the screen is, surprisingly, AMD’s Radeon HD 7570M 1GB GDDR5 dedicated video card. We’re surprised to see that HP’s first Ivy Bridge notebook is Radeon HD-based and not Nvidia Kepler-based.
In a meeting we recently had with them, we could tell that Nvidia’s PR managers were very proud that they’ve managed to get so many Kepler/Ivy Bridge design wins, and they were especially proud to have HP as a notebook partner. Last year, HP was not part of Nvidia’s laptop design wins.
HP’s new Pavilion is made of black aluminum and has Triple Bass Reflex subwoofer. It also comes with a chiclet keyboard with red backlight and a HD 720p web cam called HP TrueVision HD.
On the connectivity side, it features two USB 3.0 ports, one HDMI port, Bluetooth connectivity and a fingerprint reader, one VGA port and a multi-format media card reader.
There is also a standard USB 2.0 connector, powered by the HM77 Express chipset.
The HP Pavilion dm4-3110tx Beats Edition comes with a 6-cell battery and a 90 watts power adapter and it weighs just 1.9 Kg - that’s almost 4.18 pounds.
Pricing sits at 1078 USD or €815 for the European buyers.