Some games do work well, though imperfectly. I obtained solid stereoscopic 3D with Batman: Arkham Asylum and Dawn of War II. However, some image ghosting was visible, probably due to imperfect 3D image convergence. Moving close to or further from the display didn't have any effect. The Tridef utilities seemed to offer no way to calibrate the screen and glasses. The ghosting was quite faint, and not particularly distracting, but it's still there, and isn't visible when running on an Nvidia-based system.

Civilization V popped up a message in-game that "Tridef Ignition does not yet support DirectX 11 mode for this game. Please try again with DirectX 9."

Running in DirectX 9 did yield pleasing stereoscopic 3D, but at the cost of some cool DX11 effects. Again, Nvidia's 3DVision ran the same game just fine in DX11 mode.

Okay, so stereoscopic 3D games are a mixed bag when trying to run on the Envy 17 3D. What about 3D Blu-ray? The tale here is much better. Both the Disney 3D Blu-ray sampler and the lone 3D test on the THX calibration disc worked superbly. The Disney clips are all animated, and look really good. The sound quality seems the same as on the original Envy 17, which is to say pretty darned good for a laptop, though you may want headphones if you're looking for deeper bass.

Clearly, HP, AMD, and Tridef have a lot of work to do to catch up with Nvidia's two-year lead when it comes to gaming in 3D. However, HP's Envy 17 3D offers a robust stereoscopic 3D experience for Blu-ray 3D, and if that's your primary interest on the stereoscopic side, the Envy 17 3D delivers.