Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge *PART 2*

FYI - I noticed on the Sony Canada site, the F-series is now available, however, the premium screen is not. I called Sony Canada a few minutes ago and customer service guy told me that Canada will not be getting the premium screens at all??? Has anyone else heard this?

ZH

 

Are you sure its i9?It shouldn't be released until sometime in june. The new model is coming out pretty soon. Any link?

Most likely retailer returns, since the product is EOL already, so you have limited options there.

 

EOL?? wasn't the f-series annouced this year? or am I out to lunch on this one?

ZH

 

The current version of the F-serie is EOL. A refreshed version is coming soon.

So, the F-series isn't EOL, but the current models in this notebook family are.

In a Dutch forum, someone called Sony and they told the new models should be available in a month (or less) and that prices will be +/- the same. They couldn't say more.

 

About the battery issue showing only 86% full the next morning..bla bla.
I left for vacations, leaving the laptop 5 days turned off, on battery. When turned on again the battery life was 66%. After fully charging it the whole issue disappeared and the next morning I get a fully charged battery! Weird...
By the way, my start up time is over 3 min. with 10 startup programs and about 87 services!!!

 

Sorry for my mistake, of course its either i5 or i7.

 

The F11 is EOL. Probably he meant they'll have no more F11s with the 1920 X 1080 screen. Don't call it a "Premium" screen by the way, it's far from that!

1920 X 1080 screens will be available again with the release of the F-series generation 2 at the end of June. As will the faster version of the video card (with 1 Gig ). Those haven't been available to Canadians for three months.

 

Well only your local Sonystyle can tell you exactly the info you are looking for and what specifics they have @ the present.

You are in luck, here is a review in Polish & that model has the same semi glossy display as the US model: on the excellent Notebookcheck site VAIO_F11M1E/H review. They also have this F VPC-F11Z1/E review with the Premium matte display. That review was translated from their German site to English, maybe it's now also available in Polish?

Check: Vaio_F_Series Monitor Profiles Roundup & US glossy vs. EU Premium Displays and also the Sony_F_Series Owners Display Poll where you can see that the satisfaction rate is much higher for the matte version compare to the regular semi glossy 1080p.

Check also: Vaio_F Series: 1080p Premium is LED & Color Spaces Clarifications but that does not garantee that the current products offered are. Call them.

This is for the matte Premium 1080p, the small triangle is the smaller color space representation of the semi glossy 1080p. I would spend the money & get the matte. If the Premium 1080p would have been available in the North American market, I would have gladly spend the extra $ for that option.



******

Battery Discharge 5 Days & Slow Startup Time

"...leaving the laptop 5 days turned off, on battery. When turned on again the battery life was 66%" - All rechargeable batteries loose capacity over time (self-discharge). The discharge rate may be higher if you have enabled some device to wake up the F as it consumes energy to listen to them, just a guess but makes sense when reading the quote below. Check this artile on Sony_support: The computer is completely turned off but the battery is still being drained:

For example: shut down the F & press the ASSIST key. Magic!

Check this post for tips about the powercfg Power Efficiency Diagnostics tool: VAIO_F Series Waking Up Problem & powercfg Diagnostic Tool.

"...my start up time is over 3 min. with 10 startup programs and about 87 services!!!" - Yuck! Maybe you could add even more cr@pware & beat the world's slowest boot time record?

Check: F11_Series: Installed Vaio Software Comparison & Bloatware? and VAIO_F MSCONFIG out, Autoruns in! and this very good tutorial that includes useful links: Speed up Windows 7 on w7forums.com.

 

Hi,

Got my Vaio F yesterday and i'm loving it!

With my budget in mind i first went fore the Vaio E 15 inch, but when i had seen it in the shops the screen looked like a mailbox (16:9)

next too it was a F that looked soo much better!

Soo i configured on Sonystyle and came up with this:

i3
4GB
GT330M
1920x1080
320HD
Black

So for a little more i got everything in a 'budget' F!

The screen is very nice, and the system is very quit no whining etc.
alsoo the i3 is fast enough (well its amazing....)

Sorry for my englisch (i'm from the Netherlands) just want to give a reply, because this forum has helped me a lot!

 

Congrats & welcome to the club!

We don't mind your "englisch" as you probably speak @ least 3 languages contrary to most of our friends in that big country that I won't name.

I am really interested by your feedback about the F with i3 CPU! Could you check this post and report about the battery life please? VAIO_F Series Memory, Battery Discharge Rates Power Plans:



Is your display matte or semi glossy? Did you add your vote in the Sony_F_Series Owners Display Poll?

Thanks for taking the time to post your feedback. It's refreshing compared to those who just post a problem, get some answers & never come back to say thanks or to say if the suggestions worked or not.

 

Thx!

I will give a feedback on the battery-life, if i'm done playing

About the screen, i have no comparison, but my desktop i have with the same res. on a 20' samsung is worse?

I find the screen (with the brightness fix) just georgenous (wrong spell i know...)

Give me a couple off days and i'll get back too you.

 

Welcome fellow Dutchie!
I have the same config as yours except the CPU.
Your screen must be semi-gloss, because in Europe the matt screen is only available on the i7 configs.
The screen is okay when calibrated (sorry Joe they couldn't change my vote on your poll).
I have calibrated my screen with a Spyder3Elite and anybody is welcome to use my color profile:

 

Hey Joe, I just wanted to let you know I double checked, and with a clean hard drive (and retail Windows 7), nothing happens when you hit F10.

 

Wow, a significant post title. Is that a first? Thanks for that & also for the reply!

So I presume that with the recovery partition deleted, when booting while pressing F8 > Advanced Boot Options > you don't have the highlighted Repair Your Computer option that can bring you to the Recovery Environment > Startup Repair, Command Prompt, System Image Recovery, etc, right?



Note that you get the Recovery Environment with the Windows 7 System repair CD disc (could be on a USB memory stick) or recovery discs or any Win 7 DVD. Don't forget to bring one of those when going far away from home since you deleted the recovery partition.

*****

 

Thanks... so, is it worth getting the F11 from the US (good old mailing address in Buffalo), or holding off to the end of June. I really want at least 1920x1080 as the x900 just isn't good enough.

 

Thanks !

 

Thank you for sharing your custom monitor profile for the 1080p semi glossy.

I added it to the Vaio_F_Series Monitor Profiles Roundup & US glossy vs. EU Premium Displays.

If any body else want to add their custom monitor profiles created with a colorimeter, just PM me with a link to your post. That's a nice thing to do as not everybody can afford a colorimeter.

And those who don't see the need to get one, well try one of these profiles to see the light.

 

So I just purchased a new VPC-F1190X and was just playing around with a few things when I noticed that in the Windows Event Viewer under Applications and Services Logs->Microsoft->Windows->Diagnostics-Performance->Operational that there are events from November 2009, which is strange to me since my laptop is a CTO that supposedly was built in April 2010.....does anyone have an idea as to why I might be seeing those events..Am I paranoid in thinking I might have got a refurb??

 

Event Viewer shows that on my system too. It's most likely an artifact of testing the Windows build that was used to create the image that is used to load the computer. You're seeing remains of the prototype computer used to assemble the image. Quite fascinating actually!

Windows is not installed on new computers, it is simply copied as an image with appropriate drivers and utilities and prepared Registry directly onto a new boot drive. (Using a professional version of something like Norton Ghost.)

P.S. There WERE no F11s being sold in November....

 

Hi folks. Been watching a month or so. Amazing stamina and focus here!
Great to see such a dedicated enthusiastic crowd here. Lots of great input us potential buyers can just sit and drool over so thanks all for your time and effort.
I am a potential buyer and looking forward to the refresh. So much so that I thought I'd journey into my nearest Sony Style (UK) today in Inverness (Scotland) to actually see an 'F' in the flesh but alas there were none. Just E series. I asked where they were and the man told me the stock was gone. I tried to get more info about them but I think I told him more (after reading this forum) than he told me about the June refresh. So I had a play with the track pad on the E series. It's a bit like a cats tongue Could probably adapt to that over time but that's just weird feeling. So anyway, come the refresh, I'm looking for an F I7 (Unless an I9 is included for the same current price as an I7 – Not sure I even understand the concept of the I9 – If an I7 Extreme is a 6 Core then what is an I9 ?) 6GB RAM, 500GB 7200 HDD, Premium Display (If that’s still an option in the UK after the refresh), Win 7 Ult/Pro (Not sure if the Ult features are worth my while yet) Bluray Reader, and Hopefully a DX11 GPU beit the same as the current E Series ATI or will Nvidia manage to squeeze in a DX11 Mobile by next month? USB3 also would be nice if they don’t sort out this lack of commitment (lack of enclosures) on the power over eSata (eSatap) Betamax saga. It's like waiting for Christmas. So anyways, thought I’d pop in and say hi and thanks to those that have contributed so much here. It doesn’t go un-noticed ^^

 

The i7 extreme 9X5 6-core is a desktop series. Everyone is calling the mobile non-extreme 6-core the i9. A new i7 with lower TDP will be offered along with the i9. The GPU will have to be Nvidia.

You'll like the laptop...

 

hi everyone,

I just noticed that the F series can't be ordered from Sony online (in USA). any thoughts about this? is the new model right around the corner?

 

Still available here VAIO F Series PC | Sony | SonyStyle USA

 

i don't think so. i go to that url and some generic page comes up on the side of which it asks for an email address if i want updates. i don't see it being available.

 

I have no problems going to checkout. You need to enter an e-mail address to order.

 

We could re-type all the posts about this or go back 5 pages & READ.

 

Gooooood mornin' everybody (or afternoon or evening if you're not in the US). In fact, goooooood 07:28 GMT-4:00 everybody

Sorry to interrupt your conversation here guys (great stuff about the refresh), but I've done some tweaks with Crysis yet again.

I read somewhere that consoles render MW2 at 600p and then upscale it back up to whatever resolution your tv happens to run. This gave me an idea. Since the nvidia card in the Vaio_F automatically scales images to fill the screen (not the same as the hardware upscaling in consoles, but its more or less the same concept), I turned the resolution down to 600p (1024x600) (which sucks, I admit). BUT it means that you can crank more of the settings up (fancy object based motion blur, realistic shadows, dx10 effects, etc).

One way you can trick your brain into thinking the screen resolution is higher than it really is, is to play at a super low resolution (640x480, for example) for a bit and let your brain acclimate to the change and then turn up the resolution to 1024x600. Try it - it works .

It's a matter of personal choice, but I would rather have better effects and a lower resolution. Anyway, I posted a youtube video of this if you would like a gander. Crysis can look quite beautiful a highest settings .

LINK FIXED: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEqr4lKfUQ4

EDIT: I see that youtube links are now automatically changed to fit the video title. Great feature NBR!

 

thanks for your profile

 

Hey mangosango...youtube is saying that the vid was removed.

 

I finished SC: Conviction.. A bit more brutal than earlier titles and I can't say it felt like a Splinter Cell game. Still it was very entertaining.

Gameplay was crappy with glitches and stalling occuring until ubisoft released their update for the game. Also before the game started, the game popped up a window saying that the GT330M was not supported. Now the update fixes that.

I managed to finish the game with user ease and zero slowdown during combative situations with these settings.

Lowering detail levels from what i've used do make the mouse much more responsive but with these settings i've used i've been able to walk,run,crouch, and jump easily. Also aiming and firing using the mouse was still responsive. there was no lag.

One thing though, I tried playing this with the OC profile of 600/800/1625 and the game would run choppy as hell and crash after 5 minutes. The fans ran quieter as well. Playing non-oc was fine.

Mouse sensitivity highest
1280x720 res
high shadows
high detail
4x AF
4x AA
HDR? rendering on
Ambient occlusion on
Realtime reflections on
Vertical Sync off

 

Thanks, makes sense....I was worried there for a second

 

Thanks for the reminder - youtube compression gave the video some strange artifacts so I upconverted the video to 720p and re-uploaded it. Seems to be fine now.

I haven't tried the update yet, but yeah - my first time playing the game I was something like 25 fps with everything turned down to low at 1280x720. I got past the washington monument level and then I just gave up because the game was being so glitchy and sloooooooooow.

I'll try the patch and the settings you suggested (thanks for posting them btw ) and hopefully that will improve performance by a bit.

 

I think with my settings I got a steady 20fps. 1280x720 with everything off and low detail is giving me 29-34fps.

the update improved the glitches though I don't think we're going to see much of a fps increase.

I know some people like high fps but I wasn't seeing gameplay stuttering around 20fps.

 

may be something is wrong with my browser, but i can't get to a page on the US Sony site that will let me purchase an f.

 

Wait until June and all will become clear..... Meanwhile, go back and READ about the refresh that is coming next month, for which you DO want to wait.

I have a feeling "Considering" is missing the thrust of the conversation..

 

Yeah no stuttering, although 20 is just a tad low for me.

With OC of 600/800/1625 I'm getting 22-31 fps depending on the area. No stuttering though. Usually it hovers at about 24-26 ish. Meh, not the greatest, but its ok.

I'm using:

1280x720
Environment - High
Shadows - Low
Ambient Occlusion - Off (most of the game is so dark it doesn't make much difference anyway)
HDR - On
Realtime Reflections - On
Vsync - Off
No AA (although I've observed that 4xAA will bring the FPS down by ~10% ish. That ~2fps at 20fps).

EDIT:
I've just been trying out deniable ops for the first time (to make a gaming vid ) and I noticed that my framerates in deniable ops are so much higher than they are in the story. With 4xAA and high shadows I'm getting about ~35fps in most spots.

 

Splinter Cell: Conviction is up (for performance figures see To No End and my posts above)

YouTube - Splinter Cell Conviction on the VAIO_F11

More gaming videos in this post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...es-owners-lounge-part-2-a-45.html#post5986590

 

On the clean retail install, if I hit F8 "Repair Your Computer" is still the first option, but when I choose it, it tells me to insert the windows disk and reboot because it can't do it from there.

That may just be because I don't use Windows Boot Manager by default.

 

Anyone know if hyper threading can be disabled? I am running processing a cube on SSAS and it is taking about 4 times longer on my F1 than it does on a Athlon dual core workstation. Thanks.

 

You can set the number of cores a program uses in the task manager. Open up task manager and go to the processes tab and find the program you are running. Right-click and select "Set Affinity...". Selecting only CPU 0, 2, 4, and 6 should disable threading for that program.

 

Don't forget it runs at 931mhz on battery.

 

Intel Core i7-720QM Processor product page:"Max Turbo Frequency 2.8 GHz ...refers to the maximum single-core frequency that can be achieved with Intel Turbo Boost Technology..."

i7-720QM:
Max Turbo Boost Frequency
4 Core: 1.73 GHz
3 Core: 1.73 GHz
2 Core: 2.40 GHz
1 Core: 2.80 GHz
Core Frequency: 1.60 GHz with DDR3-1333
LFM* Frequency: 0.933 GHz (same as 933 mHz)
Shared L3 Cache: 6MB

*LFM: Lowest Frequency Mode: the power saving CPU clocking mode used by the Vaio_VPCF11 when running on battery which has a power output too low (54W) to be able to feed an F working @ full speed which needs up to 100W + 10% according to_Sony's power requirement specs. That's why the VAIO_VPCF11 comes with a 120W A/C power adapter.

Note that since it has 4 cores: 0.933 GHz x 4.



A graphical example of how Core i7 Mobile Turbo Boost works from hothardware.com's Intel Core i7 Mobile CPU (Clarksfield) Review.

 

also note that many programs still do not fully utilize multiple cores. it does not split the program into multiple threads properly to use the .933 GHz x 4 so it will just be running off a single .933 Ghz core.

 

Time to upgrade those programs.

Note that the other stuff you run will be on other core so you can run 3 single thread programs simultaneously for example.

 

Crysis singleplayer gameplay is up. I realized that all of my crysis vids were of empty multiplayer maps.

All 5 parts are in this playlist:
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

 

Also, The Last Remnant is up:

​

Gameplay is silky smooth at 30+fps with highest settings at either 1280x720 or 1920x1080.

 

Why not shutdown your other applications to get the max turbo boost CPU speed in one core if running a single thread applications?

To see that in action:
- Download the free Intel Turbo Boost Technology Monitor gadget (18.6 MB)
- Download the free Cinebench 11.5 64-bit.
- Run the single core Cinebench CPU test with web browser & whatnot opened & check the max speed on the gadget.
- Close all other applications & see the max speed go up to 2.8GHz in the i7-720QM case because the unused cores & hyper threads will be parked. See that with Start > search: Resource Monitor.

i7-720QM:
Max Turbo Boost Frequency
4 Core: 1.73 GHz
3 Core: 1.73 GHz
2 Core: 2.40 GHz
1 Core: 2.80 GHz



The visual explanation:

 

There's only one thing I know of where my machine slows to a crawl on battery, and that's a flash game called Dofus.

I wouldn't subject anyone to that misery. It's a $7/mo IRC chat for me and it just makes me glad I have what I have IRL (my family, for example) because I can't get anything there xD

 

I went to my local Sony Centre (UK) yesterday to pick up my new Vaio yesterday. I have known these guys for over 20 years and regularly buy from them so they always let me test any new kit I buy in store before I take it away, lucky for me. Model being purchased was VPCF11S1E/B as I wanted the EU Premium Matte screen.

I took a USB stick with me with a few programs to test the screen for defects before I purchased the item. I have to say I am very disappointed as the screen had terrible light leakage at the bottom of the screen. It ran in a semi-cirle starting at each of the bottom corners and going about a quarter of the way up the screen as it met in the middle. This portion of the screen just looked light a milky grey mess while the rest of the screen had a good black level.

Needless to say I did not purchase the Laptop and unfortunately they did not have any more in stock. As I said very dissapointed as this is supposed to be a premium screen and certainly not worth the (£1200) asking price.

Other than the bad screen I did like the black matte finish of the case as well as the keyboard and styling of the Vaio. It seemed pretty fast but had way to much bloatware installed. So overall really liked it but I just need to get one with a reasonable screen.

Anyway I will have to wait for them to get some more in now and hopefully I will have a little more luck next time.

PS Thank you to the guys that answered my questions regarding memory configurations

 

MATA BD-CMB UJ141AS
There is no firmware update available for this unit. I had a new package of 10 CD-Rs, and as I said not even half of them worked in my Vaio, but they worked flawlessly is another computer. I couldn't even browse D:\ with some of the discs inserted.