Official NEW SVZ Z series Owners Lounge

Yeah, I was talking about the Ultra class 10 Sandisk SD cards. Not a fan of the slow speeds of the micro sd solution and too cheap for a large memory stick; if I had the money for that I would have gotten the 256GB Z.

 

The Z has some tremendous throttling built in. Put windows power management in performance, make sure VAIO control center is set for ventilation and then install and run throttle stop. In throttlestop, set the multiplier to turbo, and switch it to game mode.

This really boost performance. For instance, SFIV AE is a total mess without throttlestop. Dolphin EMU is the same.

This works with the HD4000 and the PMD.

For those of you wondering..

The PMD is great with some games, but utterly worthless with others. The new revision of the PMD OCs at 885/1100.

Good with...

Max Payne
SFxT
BF3
BFBC2
NFS
BLOPS

Worthless with... (Compared to HD4000)

MW3 - Better fps, but dialed down settings
Rage - Crashes more often then not.
Alan Wake - Unplayable either way
Dolphin - Just flat out worse
Diablo III - Due to the PMD being erratic for some reason. Although frame rates are double.

Believe it or not, with no AA and shadows you can run BF3 on the internal monitor @ 30fps / 1080p with medium to high settings. Get about 10fps more when using an external monitor.

Almost every game gives you better performance on the external monitor. MW3 for some reason and the few others listed are an exception to this claim.

As for the track pad. It has been a PITA as well on my end. It does not like to accept input while pressing keys on the keyboard at the same time. Makes trying to squeeze in a few rounds of MW3 pointless on the go without a mouse. :/ I am sure its a driver issue, or protection to stop us from the mouse moving while typing.

Try those tips and check back.

 

Thanks for the tips! I forgot about the power management throttling. After it screwed me over on my desktop (windows 7 was set to power savings and giving me a whole bunch of trouble), power settings are the first things I check and I forget about them sometimes. Interesting the problems you're having with the trackpad though, its got to be a driver thing. I imagine it wouldn't affect many people though; I wouldn't dream of playing any video game with a trackpad no matter how nice it was.

 

"No need for N. Ghost. All you have to do is hit the assist button above the F11 key, and click create recovery media. Then make a windows repair disc.

Once you have completed this, reboot with the repair disc and USB stick (If that's what you use for your recovery media) and follow the prompts. Click advanced restore and select to restore it as one drive. This will get rid of the recovery partition and get you your space back. You can even elect not to install the additional bloatware at this time.

Its quite simple."

Thats sounds easy! But will i lose the the hibernation/rapid wake option if I restore as one partition?

The manual states that the hibernation files are placed on the factory delivered recovery partition.

 

Hi all,

I have been following this thread quite closely for the past few weeks trying to convince myself to take the plunge and order my Z3.
A few days ago I finally convinced myself to do it!!

I couldnt justify the cost of upgrading to the 256gb ssd/8gb ram combo so just hoping 4gb ram will be enough for the future.

Just have a few questions for current Z3 owners:

If you enable 'Quick Boot' in the bios does this improve boot-up time?
Has anyone tried using the fingerprint reader for logging into websites?....Does it work well?. This is one feature that I really like the sound of.
I have downloaded the Windows 7 SP1 ISO in preparation to make a bootable USB install disk using RT7lite (i dont want to keep any of the bloatware).
Can I just delete the recovery partition and resize the drive to take up the free space as I believe it uses quite alot of space up?

look forward to your feedback,

thanks

Andy

 

great info here, thanks. Answers a lot of questions I actually had about HD4000 vs PMD performance.

I believe the same thing about the touchpad being non-responsive while using the keyboard, probably just over aggressive palm detection. Very annoying.


What's the model number of your PMD? Is it VGPPRZ20A/B?

 

Should/can I use the same settings for my Z2?

thanks

 

anymore feedback on the fan on heavy workload? has anyone seen more reviews beside the mobiletech one? thanks for your help. I need an upgrade from my loud Z1

 

That's the model I have.

It can only help. The HD series needs everything it can get.

I would say, full blast, the fans are 25-35% quieter and sound like they are pushing air through a smaller opening. Although, they ramp up slower and down much faster than the Z1.

 

Any feedback on this would be much appreciated.

 

thanks for the feedback on the fans. if there is any more feedback I appreciate it. is anyone of your owners running Lightroom 4.1 on this machine? If yes, is it working flawlessly? And does the Dock or the VGA/HDMI support monitors with more than 1900x1200 pixels?

thanks for your help and feedback!

 

Hi, everyone. I have a new SVZ and a question about headphones. For desktop use I have a headset terminated in two three-conductor 3.5mm plugs, one for microphone and one for headphone. I've been searching for an adapter so I can plug this into the VAIO's five-conductor jack. I have found this Startech one on Amazon, which looks good except that the plug is four-conductor. I've held up four- and five-conductor plugs next to each other, and the contacts are not aligned, so I'm skeptical that it will work. Has anyone found any solutions for this? Thanks for the help.

 

The max resolution of the PMD's HDMI port (based on the video card specification) is 1920x1200. So I believe that's going to be the limit. In theory the VGA port can go higher but what current high res monitor uses VGA?

 

Andy,

Do not settle for 4GB of ram since it is soldered and the system by itself takes +- 2 gb of ram......
In regards to the drive, eventually some 3rd party vendors will offer alternatives.
The booting time on mine with Quick Boot is about 11 seconds
According to the manual, after you have burned the recovery media that I see you are not going to use , if you boot from the discs you will find the option to delete that partition that on mine is around 21 GB.

Mario

 

Qwaarjet,

The touchpad on mine works incredibly well.

 

ThreeD,

I am running Lightroom 4 and CaptureNX2 on mine.

They both run incredibly well on this machine ( I7 QC).

Just keep in mind the Lighroom is not difficult to run even with an I5 processor. The same applies to Capture NX2.

The ones that will really test this combo are Photoshop 6 and DXO IMHO.

 

Never said it didn't work well in general, just said it doesn't work well when gaming. Not that i'd like to use the touchpad anyway when playing a FPS, just kinda annoying that I can't use the wsad combo simultaneously with the touchpad.

 

Thankfully, the US SVZ13 only has the option to buy it with 8GB of ram, so that was an easy enough decision
If you do end up going with 4 or 6GB, I've optimized windows 7 to idle at around 650MB ram usage, although out of the box I have no doubt it will use 2GB+

 

I also sent you a PM if you want to talk there.

Hey, thanks for clarifying the design of the power media dock for that color. I wasn't planning on getting a blue ray burner since I have never used those kinds of discs. I don't have my computer yet so I don't want to make a final deal until then but what were you thinking of selling it for? I'm just worried the blueray is going to make it more expensive than just ordering from sony when they release the new one. I don't leave for college until mid august so I probably won't buy until late July.

 

Thanks for all the info.
Unfortunately in the UK it costs another £400/500 to upgrade the ram as you also have to upgrade the SSD to 256Gb as well, and I cant justify paying that.

My Z3 with 4GB ram is already in production. That sounds really good, how did you go about getting Win7 to use so much less ram?
Also have you tried the fingerprint reader for logging onto websites yet?

 

Any of you z owners like to report a 3dmark 06 results, as well as frame rates for bf3, d3, or any other games you may be playing with the ivy bridge cpu. I'm looking for 1366 and 1600 resolution results for the game so and standard for 3dmark.

Thank you!

 

Newbie,

I think, this is good news for all of us and specially fro you:

How Microsoft Reduces Memory Use in Windows 8

The fingerprint uses Authent Truesuite and it work wonderfully weell. I even downloaded the las update from the Authentec website itself whic is compatible with the latest Firefox and Chrome as well.

What I did was checking on the startup programs to unable them to boot. Then I checked the resources that were taking a toll on RAM and unistalled them. Suites like Vaio Playmemories, VAio Gate, AMD drivers and software, Karspersky since I am not purchasing the dock etc.

On top of that, I realized that even though I have a big fan of the latest Norton Suite which is bundled with my Internet service and the laptop does not fill slow at all. It might be eating more resources than a regula antivirus since it does so many other things that you can do with w7 itself. Therefore, I uninstalled it and installed Microsoft Essentials and its place which is also free.

Now, after rebooting my Z3, instead of having 2.2GB of ram being, used the system is cureently using 15 GB of ram (idling .

Finally, after burning the recovery media there are instructions in the manual in how to boot from the disc to get 20GB partition space back

 

Just got my Z3 in the mail today... they forgot to send me my extended sheet battery, but other than that I am very satisfied with the purchase. I can confirm that using a 2xmicroSDHC -> MS ProDuo works great - I've added about 120gb usable space for under $55 using the SD and MS slots (I had one spare 32gb microsd card already, though). See attached pic. I've installed spotify and Firefox but nothing else. Windows takes up a lot...

 

Matt, keep in mind that once you have burned the recovery discs for your system, you will be able to boot from them and get 20 GB back from the recovery partition. You will find the instructions on the online manual.

 

Yes, I've heard people saying similar things here before. Is this something I need to do immediately if I want (e.g., does it mess with the windows partition in a way that requires it to have a lot of empty space, or something) or can I do it later when I've used more space? I'm not actually 100% sure I even want to do that, since I think I'll be fine using a passport usb 3.0 drive for my storage (and I can definitely fit all of my programs with plenty of space to spare on the SSD) Also, I tend to be terrible about keeping track of discs. I wonder if I can transfer it onto one of the SD cards...

 

Well, I've had bad luck with this:
Deleted partitions, wiped ssd clean, installed Win 8.
Wanted to go back, loaded restore DVDs, got error "Recovery partition or media cannot be found". Reboot.
The End.

 

I'm tempted to leave the recovery partition in place, due to the 256gb SSD. If I had the 128 (which I would have had if I didn't get the on-sale clearance model) I'd likely be trying to remove it. However, I'm not that desperate for extra space considering I have about 290gb free including my SD cards...

 

Here is my link to my 3dmark06 scores. I have 8gb ram, 256gb ssd, and the quad core i7. I am loving the computer and the keyboard is great once you get used to it. I haven't had time to test any games yet.

Intel HD Graphics 4000 Mobile video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3612QM Processor,Sony Corporation VAIO score: 6262 3DMarks

Also can you use a hard drive as the recovery partition?

 

I am currently using a hard drive as a recovery partition. I made a clone of the recovery partition, before removing the recovery partition. However,
for Vaio Care to recognize the recovery partition on my hard disk, I have to reboot with the hard drive connected. In addition, I had to change the
partition type of the hard drive for it to be recognized as a recovery partition ... I did this using diskpart.

There is only one drawback ... if you have the original recovery partition, you are able to use "Vaio Care" to uninstall or install the bundled software and drivers. With the recovery partition on the hard disk, "Vaio Care" only allows me to re-install the bundled software and/or the drivers.

 

Yeah. I think I have enough space that it's not worth the bother for me to remove it. I'm getting sub-10s boots (from cold off to login screen) without removing any of the preinstalled software at all, so I'm pretty happy with the performance. I doubt 20gb is going to make a big difference in the long run, as I'll likely be carrying around a small USB 3.0 external hard drive with me anyways. Thanks everyone for the information, though.

 

Wow.... I just tried to delete the recovery partition using both of the recovery sets I burned, one of the sests is on dvds the other on a bluray..
and same thing, the discs were perfectly burned in the slowest setting that check for errors and I experienced the same, RECOVERY PARTITION on media can not be found.......

After several attempts, I contacted support, they escalated me me to 2nd level support and they realized that something went wrong since the media was properly burned. They are sending me a set of recovery discs by mail.....

 

To all the owners of the new svz series, one question from a lucky z21 2011 owner :

do you think there are any problems to go to windows 8 on release? i think drivers/programs for svz are nearly the same on both series?

 

I'd be very interested in finding out if the DVDs you will get will work.
My suspicion is that they won't. I created both DVDs and USB stick, getting the same result with both. There seems to be a bigger problem.

 

I had no trouble recovering from "brick" mode by using recovery DVDs supplied by my local SonyStyle store.

 

But did you have your recovery partition deleted?

 

Hey Donfed, thank you very much for posting the 3dmark06 results. Quite helpful!

 

Please!!

Can someone please try connect the z1311 to a 2560x1440 monitor using a high quality super high speed hdmi -> DVI-D cable so that we can get closure on which kind of maximum resolution this laptop supports for external monitors?

Mind you, the sony vaio z is ivy bridge and supposedly this includes hdmi 1.4a support and intel specifies the maximum resolution of the HD4000 to be 2560x1600 so there is no good reason why the z1311 would not support this on the hdmi output unless sony decided to implement different hdmi phy hardware.

Also, make sure it is a hdmi->dvi-d configuration because many monitors apparently only support higher resolution on the DVI input.

I'm not interested in the PMD, only the onboard hdmi connection.

 

How did you get a Memory Stick that was 64gb? I'm looking online, and haven't found any major manufacturers that claim to do it. The max they go up to is 32gb.

- Tim

 

Ah wait - so that was an adapter for Memory Stick that had 2 micro-sd's inside?

- Tim

 

Amazon.com: Dual MicroSD MicroSDHC to MS PRO DUO Adapter. Converts Two MicroSD or MicroSDHC Cards To MS PRO DUO: Computers & Accessories and derivates

 

Hi Espresso1,

I am the proud owner of one SVZ since two weeks ago now, and faced what seems to be the same issue than yours below:

Actually, after doing some tests with different boot DVDs I soon found out that something was not working quite right with the USB port. I then disabled "XHCI mode" from bios (F2 at start, advanced menu), and then I was able to reinstall from recovery media I created earlier !

I don't know why that is not working, I guess this mode needs a specific driver which is not part of the install-OS environment thus it cannot read from the DVD. Hopefully the issue you face is the same than mine and you'll be able to reinstall disabling this mode as well.

 

That's a great idea.

I will also do the same thing as you.

 

Ahhhh... smaht!

How is the speed, compared to the native SD card? I've heard some people have had performance issues with those adapters.

- Tim

 

It's not fast. I haven't done much testing on the speeds of either card yet, though.

The 64gb SD card I got was supposed to be class 10 and UHS-1 (which lists max theoretical speeds of 50 MB/s) However, I copied over a few video files (~3gb) and the speeds reported by windows were about 13 MB/s. I was kind of hoping for 20 or 25, but, whatever, I was expecting slow anyways. I'm mostly going to use them for like, storing documents and stuff.

I haven't really done much with the MS card except to verify that I could copy files on to it and read them back. I can check later today or tomorrow and see. I should note that the two microSD cards in it are not the same. One is a normal class 10 microsd, while the other is a class 10 but claims it supports uhs-1. (second one: this)

 

Thanks for all the info! If you do test it, please post back here. I'll post back the speeds I'm getting on mine as well. I ended up getting these two:

Newegg.com - Mushkin Enhanced 64GB Secure Digital Extended Capacity (SDXC) Flash Card Model MKNSDXCU1-64GB

Newegg.com - SanDisk 32GB Memory Stick Pro Duo (MS Pro Duo) Flash Card Model SDMSPD-032G-A11

Yes, I paid the extortionate amount for the MemoryStick(tm). :-/

- Tim

 

Angel , YOU ROCK, it worked. I was able to boot from the burned bluray disc for the first time running the Vaio Care Rescue Option. Unfortunately, after following the instructions on the manual I never found the option to free up disk space. The partition was not even listed. It may ne encrypted....

Removing Recovery Contents to Free up Disk Space

Create Recovery Media if you have not yet created it. [Details]

If you recover your VAIO computer from the Recovery Media (optical discs) on the model without a built-in optical disc drive, connect an external optical disc drive (not supplied) to the computer. [Details]

If an AC adapter is supplied with the external optical disc drive, plug the AC adapter into a power source.

Insert the disc into the optical disc drive or connect the USB flash drive (not supplied) to the USB port while your VAIO computer is in Normal mode.

Note

If your VAIO computer is equipped with the USB port that is compliant with the USB 2.0 standard, connect a USB device to the port.

Turn off your VAIO computer and turn it on once again.

If you are using an external optical disc drive, restart the computer and press the F11 key repeatedly until the VAIO logo disappears.

Press the or key to select VAIO Care Rescue and press the Enter key.

Click Tools and Start advanced recovery wizard.

When the “Do you need to rescue data?” message appears, make a backup copy of your data, if needed.

Follow the on-screen instructions until the Select recovery type window appears.

Select Custom recovery - Remove recovery contents.

Follow the on-screen instructions.

 

So I was planning on waiting for an update to the power media dock from the 6650m to 7670m (I didn't order it with my computer) but I found this tidbit on Sony Asia site:

"*2 The name of graphics accelerator differs according to the graphics driver installed on the main unit connected to the Power Media Dock. It will be AMD Radeon HD 6650M if you use the Power Media Dock with VPCZ2. It will be AMD Radeon HD 7670M if you use the Power Media Dock with SVZ1." -http://www.sony-asia.com/product/vgp-prz20a

A very interesting point that I didn't realize that the firmware was on the computer itself, I knew the cards were the same, just renamed, but the benchmarks are still slightly better. I wish that the US sony site had said that, I would have gotten the PMD when it was $50 off a few days ago.

Just wanted to point this out in case a few people were interested in ordering the power media dock and were wondering why sony hadn't changed to the new one on their website.

Also, maven1975 send me a PM when you can about your PMD. I don't need the blue ray player but if you will sell it to me for less than a CD only version I would be interested.

 

Hi all,

Expecting my new Z3 to arrive in the next couple of days!!

If I manage to get a recovery usb media drive to work and delete the recovery partition does this mean I dont need to go through the lengthy process of reinstalling Windows 7?.

Also, will I be able to use the talkmobile/vodafone sim card out of my mobile phone with the wwan adapter/sim reader in the Z3?.

cheers,

Andy

 

It had already been established long ago that it was the same PMD, just rebranded for the SVZ The benchmarks are better because the drivers used are much more updated now.

 

Newbie, check my previous post.

I copied and pasted the instructions to do so from the online PD manual that comes with the laptop.

Again, following the tip from Angel, I was able to boot from the recovery bluray disc I burned, however, even following the instrucions step by step I as not able to see the REMOVE RECOVERY CONTENTS option anywhere.
There must be a way to decrypt the recovery partition.
If you sucessfully manage to do it this way, you would not need to reinstall W7.

My last hope would be to perform a clean install of the upcoming non beta windows 8 .