Hardware – Vamspaz

Black Myth: Wukong on the HP Victus 16- will it game?

Aug 172024

Unless you’ve been living under a graphically heavy rock, you would’ve heard of Black Myth Wukong by now. Built using the latest unreal engine 5, it is destined to be a graphics card killer given it’s gameplay footage. Fast paced action forms the core of the game, which almost always beckons high fps.

High fps would then need strong hardware, specially with ray tracing capabilities to truly enjoy the game’s beauty. While we wait for the game to release tomorrow, let us try and understand what it can ask from a laptop, specially a 30 series one like the HP Victus 3060.

My Victus is the 7 5800 H with a 3060 and 16gigs of RAM. When I bought this three years ago, cyberpunk 2077 was already out for almost an year. I did want to play cyberpunk and went for this laptop. Never have I felt the need for more out of the laptop. As I mentioned in an older post, games like days gone, metro exodus rtx edition run great at 1440p. Cyberpunk too runs great (enough).

However, one thing which didn’t bother me originally but is starting to take over is the fan noise. I think it is the age of the fan blades, or the cpu paste or something else like bad chips. I won’t go much further here explaining the state of the laptop but that’s the summary of the laptops state.

I installed the benchmark tool published officially for Black Myth Wukong and there are many options available there. You could play around with the resolution (depends on the monitor), rtx setting, frame gen and get the max, avg and min fps.

The tool just crashed at the cinematic graphics setting with rtx at the highest and frame generation off. I know this is too much to expect of the laptop, but hey. Learning by experience. What impressed me about the laptop was that it managed to complete the test at just one setting lower than cinematic. Mind you, it eek’d out only 18fps max but the tool completed.

Where the benchmark felt much gamer friendly was with the frame gen on. There were frame drops in three places, but in the end we got 81 fps with at rtx disabled, frame gen on, 1080p and high graphics preset.

This test is just to understand what can happen to the laptop when you do dive into the game and buy it. What may be a disappointment is that the fast action may not be that smooth as we will start seeing on streamers’ rigs.

Thank you publisher for giving us this tool to plan what to do next.

HP Victus 16 – 3 years review

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Jul 282024

This review is of the OG model, 5800H with the 3060 after using it for three years now.

When I bought this in 2021, it was one of the cheapest offering for a 3060. My main criteria for buying the laptop was that, the price. Second was the number of ports on offer. 3 USB type A, 1 type C with display out, 1 HDMI, Ethernet and the SD card slot. As I intended to game on a monitor, the display quality wasn’t a big concern for me.

You can check out the one year review here.

After that review there weren’t many changes done to the laptop. Only change I did was to upgrade storage to 2TB, which makes the total to 2.5 TB. There has been little to no dip in performance, though it needs a monthly clean up of dust (pretty dusty at my place).

Steamdeck diaries: Day 1

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Jan 192023

Received my Steamdeck today and boy O boy is it a beautiful device. I have put some photos below to prove my point but I do agree that opinions may differ.

The front is a 7 inch touch LCD screen, with joysticks and buttons or both sides. You have two more buttons on the top for each cover and four in total on the back. Plenty of controls for gaming.

HP Victus 16 – One year on

Hardware 1 Response »

Jul 262022

It was June 2021 when the Victus was announced and soon after that I bought it. It has been one year now and here are my thoughts on how the laptop performed.

With months passing, what would you consider would hurt your device? Elements (environment), price, expansion options, support.

Lets start with the performance. Has it dwindled? No. It still outputs great visuals. All AAA games I threw at it fared very well. I’ve played Metro Exodus, Cyberpunk 2077, NFS Heat, GTA-V, among many more and none disappointed me. The model I bought, also mentioned in an earlier blog post, was the 5800-3060 combo, and that 6 GB VRAM shines.

Before I go ahead with the update on the laptop itself, let me tell you how I used it and it may affect the idea of how the laptop aged. Firstly, the laptop was always used with an external monitor, keyboard and mouse setup. There were very few occasions otherwise. Secondly, it was used not only as a gaming machine, but also as a video/photo editing, multimedia consumption “rig”. Thirdly, the laptop was almost always placed vertically, as shown below, with wires coming out of it from all ports. I’ll expand on this setup later.

The Victus can stand — The Victus can Stand

As time progresses, the one thing which is sure to degrade is the battery. With heavy usage and always charging mode, the battery now is at 89.25%, which is a good enough situation. The battery went to zero twice; I forgot to turn the laptop off.

Changes done to the hardware are limited to just adding a 500GB NVME SSD. Basically, the laptop was a great buy, and with very minimal change in the price, I’d say it was a great buy. In 2022, the same laptop has been launched with a 165Hz screen, which is very subjective to if you use it or not.

Now to the setup part. This vertical (almost) setup hasn’t really been a problem with the device strength. There is no bend anywhere, no sign of giving in to the forces involved. I could close the laptop and place it in the same stand, which I did in the beginning, switching the laptop on always required me to open it and place it back. With the current setup, I can keep the screen open. This is where the hinge is tested, and no problems here.

I never had any need to contact customer support, partly because I maintained the laptop a bit; cleaning it every 2-3 weeks for dust and grime. Also, running applications sourced from genuine places. (Say no to piracy)

This post is a short one, just to keep you updated on how the laptop is right now. Do comment if you would like to know more.

The Sony PSP in 2022 and beyond

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Feb 062022

The Sony PSP was launched in the early 2000 and was a much welcomed device all over. It was a great multimedia device, supporting internet browsing, media playback and of course, games on the move.

It used a proprietary disc format, called a UMD, which held games, movies and other media. Moreover, it used a Sony format of storage, Memory stick pro duo which could be used to store media and saved games.

HP Victus 16, a review- Yay or skip?

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Sep 122021

About a month ago, I was searching for an upgrade to my FX503. There were lots of options and I went through comparisons of the 1050 with 1650, 1650ti and the 1660ti. I finally decided to take the HP Omen with the Ryzen 4600 H with 1660ti. The build reviews were nice and the performance was great, owing to the 6GB VRAM. Also, the selection of ports was decent. I needed a type-C port.

Amazon gave a suggestion about the new laptop launch, the Victus line right around the sale day and the listing got me intrigued. Gaming laptop at 72k. My initial budget was 70-80k and this 3050 model was well within the range.

Then I pulled an all-nighter comparing 3050 with the 3060 and boy was I taken aback. The 3060 performed so much better and I now had to manage my budget by pushing it over a lakh. Nail biting stuff but I went through buying the 3060 model.

The packaging was fairly minimal.

The port selection is quite useful, all being high speed ports of version 3.2. The type-C port is version 3.2 gen 2 too with sleep charge and display 1.4 support.

Port Selection Left — Port Selection, Left

The HDMI port supports up to version 2.1 which is great for upwards of 4K 60 FPS with a supporting monitor or TV.

Galaxy tab S7 – a capable tablet

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Oct 042020

Ever got bored of gaming on the same old small screen of your phone? Ever felt the need to own the Snapdragon version of a Samsung device instead of the Exynos one? Ever felt the need to own a device which isn’t a laptop but can act as a lightweight one?

The galaxy tab S7 has it covered. Well at least the second need may not be very relevant in this case, as the tab S7 (hereon referred to as the tab) doesn’t have an Exynos version. The tab’s insides include the latest (at the time of this writing) Snapdragon 865+ chipset, 6 gigs of RAM, 128 gigs of storage, and a respectable 8000 mAh battery.

The hardware externally is great too. You get the S-pen in the box, which can attach magnetically at the back. The USB type-C gen 3.2 is quite handy with different peripherals. Also, you may fancy the attachable, optional, keyboard cover which comes with a kickstand. The cameras are OK, just OK, not the note or the S series level.

With the commonalities aside lets dive into the gaming part. The 865+ proves once again why it is best for gaming. On this tab, you can see its prowess. I’ve tested the tab with the following games:

Nvidia shield Tegra K1- Gaming tablets from the yesteryear part 2

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Feb 212020

The Shield K1 tab was quite a masterpiece of its time. An excellent 8 inch display with a 1900X1200 resolution IPS panel with dual front facing speakers, an okayish front and rear cam combo (both 5 MP with HDR), a mini HDMI out(upto 4K output), an OTG compatible micro USB port, a micro SD card slot and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

The exterior is nothing to complain about. The speaker grills are covered with rubber and the back is plastic with a rubber finish too, for a great grip. All this external interface is built around an NVidia Tegra K1 processor with 192 kepler cores for graphics with an ARM Cortex 2.2 GHz CPU, attached to a 2 GB memory. Storage is 16 GB which was not bad for a 2015 device. The 128 GB supported micro SD card slot allows one to use a memory card as internal storage which can be quite handy.

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