Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

Malmer - my experience precisely as well, albeit with Path of Exile. The beta driver FPS would jump all over the place, the 301.42 non beta drivers were a lot more stable.

Also, seriously give Path of Exile a go - I played D2 for many hundreds and hundreds of hours and I far, far prefer PoE to D3...!

Petrov.

 

Turbo Boost occurs when the CPU is not using all the cores but one core or more cores are working hard. On dual-core CPU, there is only one Turbo clock because either 1 core is working or both are. On a quad-core CPU, there are 3 Turbo clocks, depending on whether 1, 2, 3, or all 4 cores are working. This is automatic and the CPU Turbos up when it's able to remain within it's temperature envelope and throttles back if it gets too hot.

Windows is a SMP OS by default, so it's rarely in a state where you're only using one core. You might find yourself in states where you are using just 2 of 4 cores on a quad-core CPU, and then you'll get whatever Turbo clocks your CPU can get when 2 cores are operating.

You can watch your CPU's Turbo Boost using this:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=19105

 

Thank you! Very useful info

 

This game does look interesting.
I need an activation key to join the beta?

 

Thanks for the link I have been looking for something like this! +rep

 

I made a purchase on the education store (belgium) and after inserting my school information and made a purchase I had to email them a copy of my student card.

 

^ me too. Except im in the Netherlands

 

So all you need to do is scan the student card and mail it to them? Formally I'm not a student anymore, but my student card is still valid till august 2012 .

 

I don't think much of ARPG's in general, and I'm not looking for an alternative, as I played D2 enough back in the day. I wasn't actually going to play D3 either, until out of nowhere they announced the Monk class. It's really the only reason I'm hooked on it.

 

I thought the docking station did come with the hdd, 500gb? unless the sales rep is daft?

 

ive seen docking stations without HDD's listed on the sony online shop as well. Perhaps he was was referring to those?

 

Thank you, but did I need to modify the inf.hack to install the non beta? If yes, which one? The same that the non beta drivers?


BTW, can us recuperate the BIOS of an SSD version and use it on our laptops? Cause I know someone who have an SSD version, so if you can explain how to extract and share him, I can ask him.

 

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I didn't need an .inf for any of the drivers. The Sony ones are found here, and are much more useful, imo, than the beta drivers.

 

Heya.

what are the differences between the Sony S 13.3'' and 13.3'' premium?
I really want to get the carbon fibre gold one. It's only available in the 13.3'' S Series Premium.

Im heading to university in a bit and I kinda need a good reliable laptop. I'm leaning towards the Vaios. Which of the two should I get?

What customization should I choose i.e graphic card, memory storage etc? When surfing the net I open many tabs at a time so I don't want a laptop that hangs. Is 13.3'' too small a screen?

I'm would like to get MS OneNote but are there any good alternatives out there?

Help?

 

You can get access to the beta by prepurchasing $10 of store transactions. Note that the game is built around NOT being pay-to-win - the only things in the store will be cosmetic or nongameplay affecting. I would NOT play a pay-to-win game.

I sponsored as a Gold Sponsor, for what it's worth - and I've already got huge value for money and we're not even in open beta yet. It is close to a full game already.

Petrov.

 

Well, when I spoke about non beta drivers, I spoke about the 301.xx, which I can't install but that Petrov manage to.

If you see this post Petrov, can you explain how to install 301.x drivers instead of beta drivers?

 

^ Very interested in knowing that as well.

I tried the 500M series 301.42 drivers, which (obviously) didn't install =P
Didn't care to try out the desktop 600 series 301.42.

 

Ares, Malmer, I just followed the guide that was posted in this post by Faceless Rebel:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony-owners-lounge-forum/669429-official-2012-sony-s-series-owners-thread-84.html#post8643607

It involved downloading the drivers and the modified .inf file, then putting the aforementioned inf file into the correct folder, then running the driver setup. Sorry but I haven't really been following the to-and-fro on these inf issues. Is this not working for you for some reason?

Petrov.

 

Huh, didn't try those, but according to Faceless, the performance seems to be the same as the Sony released ones.

I'll just leave the Sony ones be then, until we get an official Nvidia non-beta release.

 

what 3G modem is used is S15 and S13 ?
and does it have GPS support?

 

Hi All

My Second Day with this.

i7 2640M
13.3inch
1600x900
HD6630M

Came with a 750GB Sata and 6GB Ram. Got impatient when I bought it (the 36GG with 8GB and Quad SSD was $400 AUD more) and bought an OCZ Octane 128GB SSD (don't flame me! they were out of 830's, M4's and 530's and I was feeling poor after just buying it!) and an extra 4GB of Ram.

This thing is FAST! fresh build with no crapware and Im EXTREMELY impressed.

Firstly, just a thanks for the First Post on this thread telling me to install the Sony Shared Library! I finally have my FN keys working with my Web Cam not losing its driver every so often. The Stamina and Speed switch also works too now!

Apart from loving it to bits, I have some small gripes that i thought I'd share.

* the multigesture keypad is a little poor. Its slow to respond and the mouse buttons on them also feel a little cheap. thankfully I use a mouse 80% of the time

* my keys sometimes squeak! usually the Backspace and Space key. Not all the time, but they squeak!

* The fan gets crazy loud at times. Not really an issue for me as Im usually canned or IEMed up, but in quiet places, it could be annoying for others.

* battery life could be improved. i was using the speed switch that resulted in it draining quickly. havent tried it with stamina. im all for battery use but dont go too crazy with dimming the screen (im about half way) so I would be happy with 4-5 hours (i think i got an indicated 3 with speed before I plugged)

other than that, im supremely chuft with this unit. It was this or the new Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook which featured an i5 3317, a 128GB SSD, a soldered in 4GB of RAM (no upgrades) and integrated graphics (though it was Ivy Bridge).

For the $200 I paid over it for the Vaio I get twice as much Ram, a gruntier (but hungrier) CPU, the potential to add more capacity (to sacrifice the ODD), a discrete video card, and the need not to have dongles attached for VGA, network, etc.

I definitely made the right decision!

 

Received my 13A an hour ago. My first problem is that I am unable to boot from a CD. I want to do that to back up the HDD before starting. I have checked the setting in the BIOS is the default one of booting from the internal ODD first but it just won't do it. Any ideas?

 

Have you checked that the CD is in fact bootable on another machine, just to make sure?
Also, if you have another bootable CD, try that out, just to makes sure it's the machine.

My SVS13 booted from the W7 CD from the get go.

 

Here's a quick (or slow) vid of the 13.3" S Premium boot up and a little bit of Skyrim ^_^

Sorry for whatever noises you guise hear bleh

Sony Vaio S Premium Series 13.3 Skyrim Gaming - YouTube

 

I think that's sensible - I found relatively little difference between the two, nothing you'd notice in real world usage/gaming.

Petrov.

 

Have you tried switching the Bios boot setting to Legacy, rather than UEFI?

Petrov.

 

Thanks, Petrov, that worked. Sorry but I don't really understand the difference between legacy and UEFI. I guess I have to switch it back to UEFI afterwards to boot into Windows? Is there a setting (I normally use ImgBurn) so that future CDs I create are UEFI compatible?

 

Do you enjoy the machine exProphercy?

 

Glad it helped! I'm no expert on how to create CD's that are UEFI compatible per se, sorry. I did link, however, a guide in my first post on this thread about how to make a UEFI compatible USB boot stick - so perhaps a CD is the same process? I'm guessing. I'm sure there will be a guide if you google "Win 7 CD boot uefi" or smoesuch?

Petrov.

 

Why aren't there professional reviews of this new Sony Vaio S15? I cant find it online.

 

Does a 9.5mm SSD fits with the S13A or do we need a 7mm?

 

@HiGGz : 9,5mm are fine.

Thank you Petrov, I'll try that soon.

 

Yep, I'll email them once I received and the BIOS is still limited. I just ordered last Friday.
I'm communicating through their business sales department, so there could be a higher chance that they will care at least.

If you want me to mention anything specifically that can strengthen my argument, please let me know.
e.g. Models in other countries have BIOS that supports SATA3. (I think I read in this thread someone mentioning it's SATA3 in France & Korea? How about Japanese models?)

 

No, at least, in France, the SSD's (sony factory SSD) version of the S15 (and certainly S13 and S13A) are in SATA III.

 

Hi, I was wondering if Samsung 830 works right out of the box because I know you mentioned 9.5 mm works, but 830 is 7. Do I need to get the notebook upgrade kit? Thanks!

 

It would be worth calling it SATA 6Gb/s in your communication rather than SATA3 so there can't be any confusion on their side

 

Yes it is actually £120 from the i5 to quad core i7...I was referring to the upgrade of dual core i7 to quad core i7

Thanks Wizzard! Do you think it would affect battery life too much? i'd be surprised if the heat and noise increase is that much from i5 to i7

Anyone feel like putting up a review for the s15??

 

I set up my order on the Sony US site but it wasn't showing any promotions so I called them. I basically told them that I wasn't sure what promotions I qualified for and I wanted to call and make sure I was getting everything. Since I had my order already saved in my cart I just had to give the rep my login info and he was able to pull up what product I was looking at. That's when he offered the dock (which I declined), then the $100 off the sheet battery (which I accepted), and then the free Vita/PS3/8% discount for students. I took the 8%.

 

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I assumed he knew what he was talking about, but I was surprised about no HDD. Another synopsis of that portion of my phone conversation:

Rep: You can get a free docking station.
Me: Ok cool. That has an HDD in it right?
Rep: No, no HDD. It's just a dock.
Me: Wait... What does it have then if not an extra hdd?
Rep: Well it's a place for you to set your laptop and it has extra ports for USB, eithernet, and monitor hookups.
Me: But the laptop already has all of those ports
Rep: Yeah it's just if you wanted extra ones
Me: Ok I don't want that.

 

Reposting this as no one seems to have replied Like, when I plug headphones in it only goes in about 3/4ths the way and I cannot force it in any more.

 

Sorry to report but working fine for me - tried it with a number of headphone jacks including a logitech headset and all work fine. The last couple of mm definitely has more resistance than usual but other than that all ok.

I remember seeing a post that suggested that output was bass-less if using the stock audio drivers and going to an external amp. I also haven't experienced that problem (and I'm going to an amp and proper shelf speakers)

 

Saw this. Ordered immediately and now I have to return my unopened crucial m4 to amazon!

 

so i'm getting this laptop and i have questions. VAIO S Series PC | Sony | Sony Store USA

i have a few questions if you don't mind to answer them please.

1. does this laptop over heat? if it does how fast.

2. is the sound quality that bad, if so will my headphones and my own speakers sound bad?

3. is the fan loud?

4. is it fast for surfing the web, gaming and other stuff

5. should i get 15.5 inch or 13.3?

my spec's will be:
Quad-core i7 at 2.1 ghz, 1080P display, NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M LE (2GB), 640GB (7200rpm) HDD, 4 GB RAM


also what does an ssd do? and were does it go?
thanks!

 

you should probably just get a macbook

 

It appears I'm getting SATA 3 speeds with my Samsung 830 256GB, I don't know how reliable the benchmark of SSD Magician is but here are my results:

http://i.imgur.com/hPJBO.png

 

Hey if anyone recently got a 15" from Sony with the free docking station I will buy it from you if you dont need it.

Has anyone had issues upgrading the HD to a SSD? The rep I just chatted with told me it wasnt possible.

 

ha! I was literally thinking this about a millisecond before you wrote it - great minds, etc etc

Petrov.

 

I haven't received mine yet so I can't answer your other questions, but if it helps you decide, you can't even get the 13.3" with quad core or 1080p display. That's only available on the 15.