Notebook Maker Crippling Their Own Products

My Sony SZ is theoretically capable of running the RAM at full 667 MHz but Sony cripple it at 533 MHz. Sony also disable Virtualization Technology and Advanced Host Controller Interface. Sony disable these features in the BIOS, even though the hardware is theoretically capable of having these features.

Why do Sony and other notebook manufacturers do this? Why not turning on all features so that they can put them in the advertising and get more sales? Is it a heat issue or something else?

 

Well for one, the model you linked to used pc4200 ram which only runs at 533 Mhz, which would cause the FSB to run at the same speed. Perhaps you could replace it with PC5300 ram and run at 667 Mhz, but generally the higher latency on the pc5300 ram makes it run at the same speed or slower than the pc4200.

 

Yes but the CPU and the chipset of that model are capable of running 667 MHz RAM, Sony just disable it in the BIOS for unknown reason. I tried PC2 5300 RAM but the BIOS clocked it down to run like PC2 4200 RAM.

Speaking about latency, the RAM of my 7 year old laptop is 2, run at 100 MHz but it is certainly slower than the other 2 RAMs we are talking about, eventhough their latencies are slower.

 

There was a thread about this in the Sony section but it was closed due to the rather heated debate!

 

Feel free to search for information on the issue, there is a ton posted in the forums here. The general consensus is that there is no speed advantage to the CAS 5 667 MHz ram vs the CAS 4 533 Mhz ram. If they disable it for some reason that is certainly odd, but not surprising. This is common practice for many hardware components and bios's. For example, many lower grade video cards (e.g. 7600 gs vs 7600 gt) disable pathways on higher end boards and sell them as cheaper ones. It costs less than to produce a whole different board. In this case, SONY probably sells a more expensive model that has the 667 bus enabled.