Sony Vaio FS as a gaming machine ???

hi,
I'm new to this forum so I hope I'm posting to the right section.

ok, I saw this ne Sony Vaio FS laptop and I'm thinking of buying it. I'm just wandering whether it's good as a gaming machine? I know it has great capabilities (at least that's what Sony says about it) but they don't even imply anything about gaming on it. So does anyone knows what kind of games will I be able to run on it? Will it run FarCry, The Sims 2, Unreal 2004, etc...?

Here are the tech specs:
- Pentium M 1.7
- NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 6200 128MB TurboCache™ (32MB Discrete Video Memory, 96MB Dynamic Video Memory)
- 512 MB (256MBx2) DDR-SDRAM (DDR333)

thanks.

 

Don't try to run high games like FarCry and UT2004 on it, the 6200 is not the one to get. Look at 6600s(if there is one) or above, and on ati's side, x600 (only the one with 256 mb) or above).

The 6200 has confused me now, because even though I know off the bat that its not the medium-high end gaming GPU to get, it kind of sounds like its IGP or like half-half. I'm confused about it now, but its not the kind of GPU for the high end games like FarCry.

 

ok, thanks. What about the S Series. They come with ATI Mobility Radeon 9700. Will games run on them?

 

the S series is definetaly a better choice for gaming. You can run FarCry, Halo, sims2 unreal04 at probably medium to medium-high settings. Since its not 128 mb, it probably may give in at too high settings.

 

thanks. I guess I'll go for the Vaio S then.

 

It's not quite as simple as that. It's always best to do some research before making a judgement. The Turboforce 6200 is actually quite a good gaming card and will run Far Cry and similar games pretty well at the lower resolutions. I know this because I checked out the websites that comprehensively review graphics cards. See for instance: http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/nvidia/nv44/index.php?p=18.



The point is that the FS is considerably cheaper than the S series, so the equation is between very good games performance for 33-50% more cash, or not quite so good games performance for considerablly less cost. Do you really want to pay all that money for a smaller screen and an improvement in graphics power that really only matters at high resolutions in the very latest games? It's up to you.

 

Its really up to the buyer, if they want more power, but the 9700 does perform better than the 6200. And plus, the higher the resolution, the better, as far as I've heard, even in gaming.

 

There isn't THAT much of a cost differential here, especially with the rebates. I see the bigger tradeoff in form factor and screen size. The S series is treading the line between ultraportable and the smallest of the the thin and light segments. Are you willing to play games well on a 13.3" screen or is that too small for you?

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Hard Drive finally blew on my Compaq 2800T - Looking to get a new laptop.

 

I'm puzzled by the claim about there being little cost differential. Here in the UK the turbocache FS will retail at just over £1000, while the high end S series,with the 9700 64 MB graphics is at least another £500, more typically £1600-£1700. That's a considerable amount of money, and even when the new S variants emerge, with even better graphics cards, the price will be close to £1800, if experience with Sony is any guide...Don't misunderstand, the S series is great, but maybe, just maybe, the SF represents real value for money...

 

I'd say go for the S-Type, the Go 6200 is essentially a shared memory video card. On the Sony site they label it 128mb, in reality it is 32mb dedicated and 96mb shared with system RAM which is no good for any graphic intensive operation.
Also for comparison the Radeon 9700 has 4 pixel pipelines while the 6200 only has 2 pixel piplelines. I have also seen benchmarks comparing two similar systems where the only difference was the vid card (Radeon 9700 vs Go 6200) and the 9700 beat out the 6200 in every category.
Bottom line is the Go 6200 is a shared memory GPU while the Radeon albeit being slightly older is a dedicated memory GPU. In addition, the 6200 is an entry level card aimed at basic consumer use whereas the 9700 is aimed at the mid to high end gpu market. I would go for the S-Type w/MR9700.
For additional info check this thread
http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11027

HKG852

 

Thank you all for replying Last few days I've been doing some research on laptops and still can't deside which one to buy. All great notebooks seem to be either huge or expensive and those which are actually smaller or cheeper dont't offer good performace. I'm really confused now.

Can anybody please comment Acer Aspire 2020? I've read some reviews and I think it's better choise for me.

 

The latest edition of What Laptop magazine has just reviewed the FS with the Turbo Cache card and gives it a 3D Mark 2001 score of just over 8000- I only saw the review briefly, in passing, so somebody needs to verify this...