Complete Buying Guide to the HP dm1z

The HP Pavilion dm1z was recently refreshed in early 2011 with a new chassis and spanking hot new tech from AMD in the from of the AMD Fusion line of APUs (Accelerated Processing Unit, combining the CPU and GPU together on one chip). Previously launched on HP's website in early July, 2010, HP lists this laptop series among the "Ultraportable" laptops, along with the tm2t, dm3z, dm4t, and dv5t series of laptops (although only the tm2 and dm4 are currently in production). You can find the latest HP dm1z coupon code for the popular ultraportable from our always updated deals above.

Current Specifications

You'll find that AMD's brand new Fusion APU hands down blows away any Intel Atom based ultraportables in terms of performance and gives any Intel Core 2 Duo CULV based machines a run for the money in the graphics department. Inside the laptop you'll find a dual-core 1.6Ghz powered CPU combined with a discrete-class Radeon GPU running at 492Mhz (why they didn't round the clock speed up to 500mhz is beyond us). The APU supports full 1080p decode, DirectX 11 and Shader 5.0 --- all this in a tiny TDP of only 18W --- a definite impressive feat by AMD.

• AMD Fusion E-350, Dual Core 1.6Ghz
• Radeon HD 6310M GPU, HDMI/VGA out
• 3GB DDR3 RAM, optional upgrade to 4GB or 8GB DDR3 RAM
• 11.6-inch LED Brightview Widescreen display (1366 x 768)
• 320GB hard disk drive at 7200 RPM
• Optional upgrades of up to 750GB or 128GB SSD
• Wireless-N with Bluetooth standard
• 6-cell battery for up to 9.5 hours of battery life

This 11-inch ultraportable was previously sporting AMD's Nile platform, which was a step above generic Intel Atom equipped netbooks and ultraportables. While the Nile processors were no slouch, the new AMD Fusion platform in the 2011 redesigned dm1z are by far much better than the Nile platform, with comparable performance and battery life to Intel Core 2 Duo CULVs. In previous Nile platform, you have choices of: an AMD Athlon II Neo K125 1.7Ghz processor, Athlon II Neo Dual-Core 1.3Ghz processor, or the Turion II Neo Dual-Core 1.5Ghz processor. On the current model, you now have one single choice of a 1.6Ghz dual-core AMD E-350.

Gaming on the HP dm1z

But can it run Crysis?

Ah, the end-all barometer for computer performance. Although this particular question is a bit silly for an ultraportable laptop, knowing its performance for a demanding game title will give you a good idea on its 3D capability. Unfortunately, Crysis might be a stretch as Far Cry 2 at the lowest detail in 1366x768 nets you about ~16 FPS, so Crysis should not be too far ahead in terms of performance, considering both of these game titles are relatively close in hardware requirements and game engine specs. Granted, this frame rate is somewhat playable, but 16 fps can be quite noticeable in stuttering, never mind when the action really picks up.

Having said that, gaming on this ultraportable is plenty possible. HP dm1z and Minecraft? Done. (Fine, almost any modern laptop with a decent CPU can do Minecraft, the dm1z being no exception). Call of Duty 4, Left for Dead 2 are both very playable at lowest settings and lowest possible resolution. Modern Warfare 2 is at about 28 fps at lowest settings, so that will give you an idea on the laptop's gaming performance.

SC2 is at about 35 fps, and WoW will be plenty playable at medium settings. You'll be pretty set with any pre-2009 games without crazy settings, and if you decide to use the HDMI-out to output to a monitor or lager HDTV, keeping the resolution below the native resolution of 1366 x 768 and 720p will give you very acceptable gaming performance.

More Links and Resources

• A superb review on the HP dm1z written by Dustin Sklavos at Anandtech.
• Check out the Lenovo IdeaPad S205, a very smilar 11-inch portable laptop from Lenovo.