Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

Anyone else getting a huge slowdown in FPS in the middle of gaming? Maybe 5-10 mins into Skyrim it becomes ultra sluggish..

 

Ok, thanks.

Could someone with the S15 see if it has the same issue? (I guess so, but I hope not...)

 

I haven't tried GPU-Z, but when I try to clock past 540mhz, MSI Kombustor reports the highest clock as being 540mhz too like Afterburner. I'll check and see if GPU-Z is reporting differently than Afterburner and Kombustor.

edit: Yeah, GPU-Z is reporting it differently than Afterburner/Kombustor. I don't know how to tell which is reporting it correctly, but I a gut feeling that GPU-Z is wrong here.

 

Some mentioned similar problems. You could solve this by setting the cooling to "priority to ventilation".

 

Okay, using Nvidia Inspector, I found some interesting results.

You can SET the Base Clock Offset to whatever you like, but the GPU never goes above 540mhz. Nvidia Inspector properly displays both the targeted offset and the actual GPU clock, unlike GPU-Z. MSI Afterburner/Kombustor are reporting the GPU clock correctly but don't tell you why it's lower than what you set.

I think the whole thing is made more complicated by the fact that there is a Boost clock (like Intel's Turbo in Core i5/i7) and it might be purposely keeping the GPU clock lower so Boost won't cause the GPU to crash. Except Boost doesn't seem to be enabled in this GPU BIOS version. I wonder if we will need to hack the GPU's BIOS to enable more OCing past 540mhz.

 

Well, for anybody curious about how this laptop's gaming stacks up against desktop PCs in 3DMark 11:

S15 with Intel Core i7-3612QM and Geforce GT 640M LE (540/1050):
P1532 3DMarks
Graphics Score 1379
Physics Score 5858
Combined Score 1204

Media PC with Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4ghz) and Geforce GTS 450 (850/2000):
P2415 3DMarks
Graphics Score 2290
Physics Score 3481
Combined Score 2309

Gaming PC with Intel Core i7-950 (4.0ghz) and 2x Geforce GTX 470 SLI (730/1850):
P8330 3DMarks
Graphics Score 8637
Physics Score 7780
Combined Score 7183

For gaming, I think I would still choose my gaming PC over my laptop. GTX 470 SLI is getting pretty long in the tooth and is easily outperformed by a single GTX 680 but I'm not at the point where I feel like I desperately need an upgrade. Probably around Haswell and the GTX 700 series next year I'll think about an upgrade to my gaming PC.

Obviously I don't use my media PC for gaming, but I threw the results in there so you can see how the laptop compares to a more mainstream desktop PC configuration. You can see how having DDR3 for the VRAM in the laptop GT 640M LE just kills graphics performance compared to GDDR5 in the desktop GTS 450. The 640M LE and 450 actually have similar core configurations in terms of texture units, ROPs, and shader units though obviously one is Kepler and one is Fermi. However the 640M LE has a much lower clock speed (540mhz vs. 850mhz) and uses DDR3 instead of GDDR5, which results in effectively 50% real-world performance compared to the 450.

 

that person came back and reported this slowdown even though he had set it to ventilation. could it be cpu throttling?

 

so i wanna ask, no mouse including with the original box? only the laptop and charger? thats it?

 

I ordered an S13 premium today. i7 processor, 12GB RAM, 2GB GPU, 256GB SSD. I dont have the knowledge or the confidence to swap out the HDD or ODD but i do have the money so I just payed up for Sony's SSD. Got the 8% discount and $100 off the sheet battery. It's not expected to ship until July 6th though. I'm excited!

 

Wait so it wasn't solved.. man I find myself wanting to just return this

 

Hard to image it's CPU throttling. I've played Diablo III at 1600 x 900 for an hour and the CPU cores never rise above 55-60C according to CoreTemp. Also it a quick flick of the graphics switch brings the FPS right up again for me (problem only happened once when gaming).

 

People in this thread are ridiculously picky. Sorry to call you out exProphecy, but if you're a "serious" gamer get a desktop with a gaming keyboard/mouse. A laptop keyboard and its graphics card are always going to make compromises. Similarly, for those complaining about the red/orange color issue: who in the world does any professional design work on a laptop 13.3" screen? You need a monitor.

This a quality, multi-purpose laptop that looks good, is reasonably priced, can game a bit, is thin-and-light, and with a few mods is blazingly fast. Is everything perfect? No. But if you're so into games or design work that these minor nuisances are deal-breakers, you need to pony up some more cash and get something better suited to your specific needs.

 

Can the new promotion of the free dock be combined with the free PS3 deal? (US promo, at least)

 

Have you tried the Nvidia Verde drivers instead of the Sony drivers?

 

Just want to say I've had 3+ hour gaming sessions with this awesome thing and I have never had any kind of throttling. Are you using an s13? maybe the cooling is worse compared to the s15.

 

Yes, I just installed them this morning. FPS in games went up just a little, synthetic benchmarks likewise just a tiny bit. The Verde drivers behave perfectly and they'll be a blessing in terms of getting quicker updates.

 

I did pony up more cash and got this laptop. $1500 isn't chump change to me. It's hard earned money.
Anyways, it was either this or the M14x. I decided on this because it had an extended battery.

Oh and after I install the Vaio Control Center, I get an error saying this battery is not compatible with this device or something. It forces me to hibernate and replace the battery. Anyone else getting this error? I tried removing the extended battery and restarting but it gives me the same error.

 

Have you tried increasing the Power Limit in MSI Afterburner?
This is to prevent the Dynamic Boost to downclock it back.

Try follow the same guide as OCing the GTX680 from the link below :
GeForce GTX 680 Overclock Guide

 

Look in the "Sensors" tab of GPU-Z, then use the drop-downs to "Show Highest Reading" or "Show in GPU-Z Window Title"..you'll see that 540mhz is as high as it goes, despite what it says on the main page. Also seems to peg out at 65C on my machine after a long stress-test (20C ambient temps).

That said, my default out of the box clocks were 450mhz, so it's a nice little bump, even it it isn't the full bump to 640M (non-LE) speeds.

It's not an option with the 640LE using Afterburner 2.2.2, nor do voltage controls actually unlock

 

I did not read the whole thread but on the first page it seems that the Wan drivers are missing from US site.

I think they are ont he french one.

Here is the link:
Sony : Pilotes pour VAIO SVS13A1W9ES | Télécharger des mises à jour pour SVS13A1W9ES

Click on the "> Windows 7" line at thte bottom of page and Wan drivers are the first one.

Dont know if they work worldwide

 

Would like to build an eGPU solution around a Sony S13A (i7 Ivy Bridge + 640LE) and a 560ti.

The S13A doesn't got an express card slot right? If no (and i'm 99% it's no) does its mPCIe (used by the wifi card) is easy to access? (i mean on a daily basis.)

yet an other Q... Is it possible to disable dGPU (640M LE) in the bios and just keep iGPU as primary GFX?

Anyone tried an eGPU on it so far?

 

Don't buy from Elgiganten. If you ever find that you need to return anything, they'll do whatever's in their power to screw you over.
The Samsung series look very nice. I personally dig ASUS, but the S13 sported all the things I wanted from a 13.3" notebook, and it was available way faster (haven't even heard release dates of any of the other notebooks I've been lookin at yet, and the S13 is already sitting in my lab).
I personally find the build quality of this laptop supreme (but note: I do not have many laptops to compare it to). It's a bit prone to fingerprints, and it's almost as big as my gf's 14" Thinkpad. I also noted that the viewing angle when looking at the screen from above is a bit meh, but luckily I don't have an urge to jump up and down all the time, so I just adjust the screen accordingly.

Other than that, I'm absolutely in love with it.

There's a fingerprint reader on my S13. I'm from Europe though, and I also had the option for the 1600x900 Premium display.

I played D3 about half an hour, when I had the slowdown. I did the ventilation trick, and played for an additional couple of hours, without it getting the slowdown again. I can only say that it worked for me (for the time being).

One google search. One.

Man I find myself wanting you to return it also.

 

The wifi card is, I think, underneath the plastic panel, so you'd have to remove two screws every time you wanted to use it.

The BIOS is very limited - no gfx options in there. The bios covers basically just date, time, boot options (uefi/legacy) and boot order.

Petrov.

 

I got this error three times when I was installing the drivers/utilities after the Win 7 clean install. I kept going with the driver/utility installations and it went away and hasn't come back. I'll check when I get back home when the error started (ie after which driver/program) and when it stopped popping up (because I was taking notes).

Petrov.

 

Thanks, much appreciated! I'll give them a try later and report back. + rep

Petrov.

 

Thanks for the info.

Know any software that can do the job?

 

EU s13's come with fingerprint readers? good to know

LOL

 

Good to hear about the build quality. Personally I've never understood the whole "It's plastic so it's crap" line of thinking and have been perfectly happy with my cheap MSI for the last four years, but I guess a tiny bit more quality feel never hurted anyone.

Also, interesting thing that fingerprint reader. I'm from Europe too, so there's still a chance I'll have one, unless they sent you an S13A by accident I thought it could be a fairly convenient extra feature, but wasn't ready to pay any extra for it.

 

i have no real need for it either, but as a poor student i will pounce on any freebees that come my way

 

Anyone with the 640M LE overclocked it ? Any inputs on performance after overclocking ? Thanks

 

I've noticed something weird. Whenever I put my laptop to sleep, it keeps turning itself back on after a few mins of sleeping, then going back to sleep again. I can tell it turns on because the ODD makes the clicking noise, the wireless light goes on, and the hdd light flashes.

This also happens with hibernate. I tried disabling Rapid Wake, but it didn't change the behaviour. Need a fix for this. Perhaps it has to do with the order that I reinstalled stuff after the win7 clean install...

Petrov.

 

No, no, you misunderstood me^^, I retry to put the ventilation on balanced, and, then, the issue comes back.
I never had this issue again when the ventilation was on priority to ventilation.
But, now, I use the balanced mode and wait for the issue with speedfan (for the processor, but the temps seems always pretty good, 65° max) in back and nvidia test tool (which will tell me if 640 is On/Off), and I will tell you but I really think that it's a probleme with optimus.

 

I've read about problems with sleep on various laptops when wake-on-LAN is enabled, maybe try disabling that in UEFI (if there's an option)?

 

Did you try the changing the setting? As far as I remembered it did solve the problem.

Edit: Arès1511 just clarified:

 

Lowlife, thanks for the suggestion - but I'm actually using Legacy boot mode in the bios, because my USB boot stick wouldn't get recognised by the laptop if i used UEFI boot mode when I tried to do a clean install of win 7. Perhaps that's e issue, that I'm using legacy boot mode in the bios...?

Petrov.

 

Some indeed tried. Core speeds seems to be limited to 540 MHz though, but increasing the memory as well can give quite a performance boost. See for example:

Edit:
Also updating the driver with an .inf hack can increase performance:

 

Hi.

Please anyone can confirm that USA sonystyle.com's s13 premium HDD customized model(if you choose HDD, not SSD) can support SATA3 (6G/s)?

You can check by Intel Rapid Storage Icon on right-bottom side of screen.

 

I can't speak for the US model specifically, but the UK model is only 3gb/s.

Petrov.

 

So, it's really really weird....
I manage to see again the slowdown of the FPS (70 to 19) and it's incredible...
So, I had speed fan and Nvidia test tool runing in back and I was playing to wow in full size screen (important for what happens next).
I played and the problems appear... so I immediately ust the windows key to go to see what is the problem... and thats now where it becomes funny.
The temps of the GPU was 68°C, Proc 1 and 2 65°... so it seems that it isn't a throttling problem.
And look at Nvidia (immediatly after reduce the game) and, i let you guess, the 640 was on!
So I click on the WoW icons and my FPS was at 70.... I don't do anything, no switch etc..., nothing!
I did the test two times to be sure, same results.... if anyone have an idea.... (it really seems that priority to ventilation solve the problem, but it makes some noise and, almost, and don't understand WHY it solves the problem when you look the temps.... I will tell you if the issue appears with the priority mode)

 

An update. I closed all the program's that we're capable of being closed in my icon tray and the problem appears to be resolved. I'll try and work out which background app was causing the issue of waking from sleep...

EDIT: the culprit was Samsung SSD Magician, which is the program that comes with the Samsung 830 SSD. If you exit that and take it out of the icon tray, the laptop sleeps very peacefully...

Petrov.

 

Following this thread everyone that checked this had SATA2. Of course it is strange why Sony did not use SATA3. However, perhaps needless to say, during use you will not notice the difference between SATA2 en SATA3 and it is still way faster than HDDs. Unless you really need the SATA3 speed, I wouldn't bother.

 

I concur, with an SSD in my SVS15 "only" running in SATA II mode, it's blazing fast. I have a SATA III SSD in my 4Ghz 2600k desktop system (same SSD, Crucial M4) and the VAIO is just as fast to boot and open programs.

Simple fact is, I just don't do any sustained large transfers from another high speed source on my VAIO where I'd notice the difference between 3Gb/sec vs 6Gb/sec.

 

Anyone going to try one of these? Not exactly cheap but cheaper than the other 1Tb SSD.

 

Indeed. Large transfers and maybe also when multiple programs work together.


I guess that a letter to Mr Sony will not change anything ...

 

Personally, I wouldn't go for it. Apart from the fact it is a lot of money and for me it's not worth it. Sandforce controllers shown high percentage of failure in several or maybe even most of their products. I do believe this could be improved, but before this is actually showed, I would not dare to try. I would rather stick with the SSD's that already showed to be reliable and good, like the Samsung 830 and the Crucial m4, although these are not available with > 512 GB.

 

You must install the Sony Shared Library. See my earlier post listing what I installed & in what order:

Intel® Chipset Driver 9.3.0.1019 (reboot)
Intel® 7 Series Chipset Family SATA AHCI / SATA RAID Controller 11.1.0.1006 (reboot)
Intel® Management Engine Interface 8.0.0.1262
Intel® SATA Driver Registry Patch 120417 (reboot)
Synaptics® PS/2 Port TouchPad 16.0.0.5 (reboot)
Microsoft® Hotfix KB2708549 Update 6.1.7601.17832/6.1.7601.21854 (reboot)
Wireless_15.1.1_s64.exe - Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6235
Intel®HDGraphics3000/4000Driver - Win7_64_152612.exe (reboot)
Intel®_USB_3.0_eXtensible_Host_Controller_Driver.zip 1.0.5.235 (reboot)
Intel Wireless Display Driver - Setup 3.1.29.0
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT640M LE Driver 8.17.12.9618 (reboot)
Intel® Centrino® Wireless Bluetooth® 4.0 + High Speed Adapter 1.0.13.30079 (reboot)
Realtek® PCIe GBE Family Controller 7.53.216.2012
Realtek® PCIE Card Reader Driver 6.1.7601.92 (reboot)
Realtek® High Definition Audio Driver 6.0.1.6570
Audio Driver Registry Patch 20120308 (reboot)
Sony® Firmware Extension Parser Device Driver 8.0.2.3 (reboot)
Sony® Shared Library 5.10.0.12150
Hotkey Utilities 1.0 (reboot x 2)
WebCam Companion® 4 Software 4.0.21.457
VAIO® CPU Fan Diagnostics Software 1.1.0.09200 (reboot)
VAIO® Hardware Diagnostics Software 4.5.1.1424000 (reboot)

 

What about OCZ? Are they any good? I currently have a small Crucial but am thinking of upgrading it when my 13A arrives.

 

The US 15" model is only SATA II - 3Gb/s. I called Sony support and they state that "all VAIOs are only SATA II, 3Gb/s". If there's any truth to that, it is really disappointing.

Also, the BIOS options are RELALY limited. There are very few adjustable settings there. See other threads about BIOS hacks on other Sony PC's, that reveal/enable the full BIOS options.

 

What benefits do a BIOS hack give? I'm just a casual user but if it's useful I would give it a go.

 

Sony was halfway lying to you. See, the Ivy Bridge mobile chipset supports SATAIII by default. Sony has chosen to disable SATAIII through their BIOS modifications. So, if someone could unlock the BIOS, we might be able to find a way to switch back from SATAII to SATAIII.