Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge

Well the F1190 I saw at BestBuy CA was a demo, sale units were coming in next week. I like getting precisely what I want in a system, since I have to live with the choice for several years; but I DID see a Toshiba Qosmio 505 with Bluray, an open-box special (shipping marks) that was very very nice indeed, and that I could have got right there and then. But no...I was set on a VAIO. And impulse buys always seem to bite you in the neck later.

 

Somebody please post a video on youtube or photos. Im dying to see this laptop!

 

I know that maybe not the best time to ask since You may be really pi***d off right now, but can You "owners" tell us "waiters" anything else about the new kid?

Like how's the keyborad, the trackpad, is it getting hot, is it fast, the sceen... anything You noticed that can interest us all.

 

For whatever reason SonyStyle US seems a bit pricey compared with SonyStyle CA. You CAN phone up SonyStyle and talk to a Human, say you saw the same unit cheaper and negotiate the price, a 5% reduction at least is a given... It's nice to deal with Sony directly, and there is a post-sale discount offer for other Sony goods.

 

Question: Are the ff worth the $300 difference?

1. 1920x1080 compared to 1600x900
2. NVIDIA GT 330m 1GB compared to NVIDIA GT 310m 512MB

I do not watch movies using a laptop and most of the time I have an external monitor.

Laptop will be used mainly for programming (web and desktop).

I'm actually comparing these two models:

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921666075673#accessories

and

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-VPC-F114FX-16-41-Inch-Laptop-Black/dp/B00322PYX6/ref=sr_1_35?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&s=pc&qid=1263551886&sr=1-35

 

You don't need a good gpu for watching movies, if you don't intend on playing games either than theres no need in paying more for the better gpu. But, if you are using a second monitor then a better gpu should definitly be considered.

 

You can Game with a 330 (though not Crysis) and a more powerful GPU means faster hardware rendering, if necessary. Also Bluray looks lovely at the native resolution without dithering. But none of these things matter to you, so...

Oh, and the Amazon unit is BluRay READ only, the SonyStyle one is a WRITER. That's a $120 difference right there.

 

Actually, I think that crysis is possible on med-high settings at 720p with this card. There are some youtube videos of the gt 240m playing crysis at high settings, and the 330m is supposed to be a higher clocked variant of that.

 

not?

or You mean at full?

 

sounds much better

by the way, OC can be "safely" done on the 330, right?

 

That's good to know, so I can easily play a couple of hours of Fallout 3 at best resolution while out of town on a convention setup.

 

Is there an actual score availble of this card? I thought its still unknown, and therefore a bit early to claim it can play certain games on highest resolutions...

 

Some preliminary thoughts....

This is the first time I am using "island" style keys on a keyboard, where the keys sit individually and not brush against their neighbors. I feel this is just perfect. Typing is a very slick experience.

Mine is supposed to be a black but I consider this "black" as more of a really dark-gray (only the top and the bottom) and the keyboard area is a lighter shade of gray. The keys are black. The backlighting works really well but need to test it a bit further.

Mine is the i7-820QM and even though I have not done the highly processor intensive stuff like image editing and so on (which is where the power from all of the cores in the quad-core structure and the 8 threads will kick in), for casual usage, this is VERY fast. I also have 8GB of RAM. My harddisk is the 500GB 7200rpm version and not the SSD. I am assuming that the SSD would have been even more fast.

I can hear the fan running (not nearly as loud as my HP/Compaq 8710W) but don't feel that the machine is hot at all....probably a bit warm now but that is it and I have been at it for over an hour - running youtube videos, other internet browsing stuff and so on.

The HD screen, even though glossy, is just fantastic otherwise. Very high resolution and I am comparing it against my other laptop, which is an HP machine with 1920x1200 resolution screen. The fonts are smaller (due to the high resolution) but obviously fits a lot of stuff into the same screen.

The speakers are passable - not too bad for notebook speakers - but for good performance, I would hook it up with some external speakers than rely on the built-ins.

After a while, I seem to have gotten used to the high-pitched hum that folks are talking about. But can clearly hear it, if I consciously listen for it. Hope there is an easy fix for this.

I have always used trackpads (never used external mouse) and find the trackpad to be accurate and easy to use. I have used a little bit of the "gestures" and zoomed in and zoomed out via the trackpad and it seems to be working well.

The laptop itself is tight as a drum, with no creaks or other unpleasant sounds - at least not yet. Will know for sure, after using it for a bit.

 

I wouldn't say it has nothing to do with software/drivers.... when i disable the display driver for the geforce 330m it goes away altogether. It also goes away in SAFEMODE.

Other cases with the same issue, although with different systems, have been solved with updated chipset drivers.

 

As of now, there isn't. But looking at the raw numbers
and some educated speculation as well as a performance test, it seems safe to say that very graphics-intensive games will run fairly smoothly with some settings dialed up at lower resolutions (1024x768 or even 1280x720) and other games at full resolution.

 

I've also pinpointed the exact location that the noise is coming from.... between the touch-pad and the hard drive. Pushing down on this spot makes the sound much louder.

Interestingly i've noticed that the buzzing/screeching takes on a slightly different pitch as i use the touchpad.

oh well...its going to be sad to see her go...

 

And this is an overview of all cards. .. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

 

This may be far fetched, but, could it be that the problem can be 'fixed' by loosening or tightening the right screws?

In any case, I am going to contact sonystyle about this problem and ask if they are aware of it and whether they test laptops for this prior to shipping. Perhaps others should do the same, with a reference to this thread.

 

I wonder if the issue is HARD DRIVE vibration? This is the other end of the notebook from the CPU fan. Speaking as a computer technician I would remove the drive and VERY temporarily put a bit of damping, rubber or something, between the drive and the frame, see how that changes the character of the sound.

Maybe the issue is power management of the HD, standby spindown may be the missing control, not CPU power-saving.

 

But how to reconcile this with the observation that disabling the graphics driver removes the sound alltogether?

Perhaps the graphics card/driver are causing the problem by making something in the laptop between touch pad and harddrive resonate. Of course, your fix of putting something dampening there might still work then, so it is still worth trying.

Is it, by the way, easy to access the hard drive on the F series? It was really difficult for my current laptop (A215M) in any case.

 

In regards to the buzzing.

I just noticed something on Sony's support site. The F series comes with the 330m but the support site only offers the driver for the 310m. Is the 310 and 330 the same chip and would it require different drivers for each card?

 

Even more ideas folks!

If disabling the graphics driver helps, then perhaps not disabling it but configuring it differently would also help.

 

Just get the drivers from Nvidia.

 

I just ordered mine today. Unfortunately they are now listed as Out of Stock until beginning of February (in Canada).

In case anyone else is interested, mine came to $1206 taxes included for this configuration:
-Intel® Core™ Quad i7-720QM processor (1.60GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 2.80GH
-16.4" VAIO Premium Display (1920x1080) featuring the NVIDIA® GeForce® G211P GPU (1GB VRAM)
-4GB (2GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1333
-500 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive [7200 rpm]
-DVD +/- R DL / DVD +/- RW / DVD-RAM Drive
-Standard Capacity Battery
-Microsoft Windows® 7 Professional
-Fresh Start™
-Keyboard Backlight
-Black
-No Engraving

To anyone else in Canada, there is a $100 off coupon that ends today. Just enter MYWIN7VAIO when checking out to get the discount.

 

Don't leave any damping material in there, it's just a test, the hard drive will not be able to dissipate heat as well with the damping.

I can't reconcile your statement regarding GPU drive versus hard drive vibration, and I won't be getting my F11 until the end of next week to see for myself.

A modern mechanical hard drive doesn't run at full speed by default, it ramps up to the RPM needed to efficiently provide access depending upon the number of files being read or written. Internal power management controls this. If it's disabled then the drive runs at full speed all the time. Seatools will tell if the power management is enabled or not, and maybe can be toggled, otherwise a firmware update is required.

IF the noise is only heard when the full GPU drivers are installed, then that means it is only being heard when 3D is enabled, and that therefore is indeed an issue with the GPU fan. Possibly therefore the GPU fan is running at full all the time, whereas it only needs to ramp up during heavy use, such as during rendering or gaming. A GPU utility such as ATItool or RIVAtuner can check for this and try to control the fan.

There may be only one fan and the GPU and CPU heat sinks connected by heatpipes. In this case EITHER the GPU or CPU thermal management will control the fan speed and may ramp it up.

Probably a chipset thermal mangement driver takes precedence over individual CPU and GPU controls, and THAT is what's causing the problem.

If it IS the above issue, then I suspect this whole thing is actually an easy fix, with just a software patch required. For sure it wouldn't be anything to do with BIOS or overall computer design.

 

The frequency is so high and fast-reacting that I think it would be unlikely to come from any "macro-scale" vibration like hard drive, fan, or loose screws. There is no audible ramp-up like you would expect with a spinning fan or hard drive, and the noise has a constant on-or-off character. It's gotta be coming from one of the chips resonating at high frequency. I've read somewhere that the piezoelectric effect caused by the CPU constantly switching voltages causes the high frequency buzz, which sounds plausible, but I'm not 100% sure how the details work.

Anyways, I don't think it's the hard drive or the physical assembly, but the idea that you can press down on the case to make it louder contradicts my idea, so maybe I'm wrong here. The sound IS identical to what my Core 2 Duo Thinkpad T61 makes when it's on battery power, which also points the sound being a chip problem. Disabling the C4 power mode on the Thinkpad via RMClock resolves the problem, but that's not possible on the Core i7.

In addition, turning up the CPU minimum power state to 100% reduces the buzzing noise, and running small tasks like webcam or video playback will stop the noise altogether. So it seems like running the CPU under a small load will stop the noise. I'm not sure how to consolidate that with the finding that disabling the video driver kills the noise. Maybe disabling the video driver transfers extra load to the CPU?

Another really obnoxious thing is that the noise gets carried through the sound card. I was playing Star Trek on Blu-Ray, and whenever the movie was paused, the high-pitched sound was coming through the stereo's speakers at a VERY loud volume.

*sigh* I was sad to see such a nice laptop go. I guess you get what you pay for, though. The Vaio F is probably the best value Core i7 laptop out there.

 

I'm guessing, too, that it is a voltage issue. If the sound is the same as the high-pitched whine that plagued C2D cpus, then it's probably the processor switching between different power levels. Disabling the graphics driver would put the bulk of the graphics processing on the cpu, which makes sense in reducing/stopping the noise altogether. Hopefully it'll be able to be resolved with a bios or firmware update. If it is the processor making the whine, however, then it's probably an industry-wide issue rather than a model-specific problem. Does anybody know if other core i7 laptops have this same issue?

 

No it's not the CPU; the CPU, ANY solid sate device, is just a solid piece of (complex) stone, nothing can vibrate. HOWEVER the issue you're referring to is with coils in the power supply distribution that resonate, usually when the supply is under heavy load, but certainly the "tuning" of the coils is changed depending upon load and they may vibrate at low loads instead. The noise problem was an issue with many Gigabyte motherboards, among others. Also some Nvidia video cards were affected. (oh really....?!)

So maybe there IS a problem with a couple of components used on the F11's motherboard or a peripheral board. Oh dear...

 

That's probably not a related issue. HD access and power supply noise coming through the sound card is a VERY common problem with any system, and is related to grounding of the computer, and how the external system is connected. Almost every field setup I do with a laptop and video projector will show system noise coming through the speakers.

And it can be drivers and other things. When I pause a Bluray on my Asus desktop (clone) system there is a semisoft screeching noise from the speakers until playback is continued, then it goes away.

And speaking as a fan who started watching Star Trek from the day "Man Trap" first aired in 1966, I can say that what they've done with the franchise in the new movie is fantastic! I just LOVED that film!

 

I removed the HD last night...but that didn't help in isolating the problem since the noise doesn't arise until windows loads anyways.


As for calling SONY Support... I DID. The rep didnt even know the F series was in the hands of consumers yet. Absolutely no history on it thus far. They offered to send a tech out.. but i refused.. As that was likely to put me past my 14-day return period.


I was about to copy the drive onto another HD I have on hand and loading WIN on that HD...but the thought of going thru all this on a new system that cost me $1,300 kind of ruined my morale.

 

Reminds me of the noise over head High-Voltage power lines make.

 

Many ceramics can exhibit the piezoelectric effect, where an electrical field induces mechanical motion. The high frequency of the noise suggests that it's a very stiff material.

Plus, the noise is identical to the Core 2 noise, so I think we can be pretty sure that it's a chip problem (either Intel, Nvidia, or other) and not any sort of power supply noise. Plus, if you think about it, it's pretty doubtful that anything in the power supply could be vibrating fast enough to create a ~15kHz noise.

Then again, I'm no electrical engineer, but that's just what my instincts tell me.

As for Sony support, honestly, they always seem surprised that they sell computers at all. Their support people know NOTHING, which is why I returned mine. Don't count on any long-term support from them.

 

If the issue is a voltage issue then it might also be a windows issue, assuming that the OS is in charge of controlling the power levels of course. In that case, it is interesting to see whether the issue also occurs with other OSes.

 

There's never been a documented case of a CPU vibrating, it's not possible. The thing is a mass of microminiature circuitry all doing different things. There's no overall mass that can set up a sympathetic vibration. But the the coils I'm talking about are filtering chokes which are wound on ceramic forms and have been shown to vibrate at the power supply frequencies of 15Khz or more. They're supposed to be locked solid in a hard wax solution that prevents movement, but that can break down.

There's a very good analogy, vibration of the flyback high-voltage transformer in CRT TV sets can often be heard by the viewer, that's at 15,734 Khz, with a subharmonic of half that frequency (7867 cycles, quite within normal hearing) caused by resonance in the core.

 

I am getting a bit worried about this noise problem now, but there is a 30 day return policy so I am not cancelling the order. The good thing is that I will be running linux so I might have a bit more control. I also plan to run the windows which is on it through Intel VT from linux. Just have to be really careful unboxing the laptop when it arrives so that I can return it. Also, asked sonystyle.nl about the problem. It also depends a bit on their reaction what I am going to do.

 

Me too; originally I was going to be hypercritical of the unit because I wanted to try out the supposed "G211P" video card, but now I know it's a 330, which is fine. But I will check the noise thing right away.

I just this minute, while writing this, got the email that they've begun building my machine. That's good, since the Grey F11s were in backorder when I placed my order on Monday.

 

I'm going to the sonystyle store today to see if perhaps the issue is limited to the bestbuy batch... I know the one's they have in stock are the VPCF112FX also listed on sonystyle.com

Does anyone here who does NOT have the bestbuy variety (VPCF115FM), have the same problem?

 

My F just arrived. As I surmised earlier in the thread the screen is like a plasma screen, glossy but muted. I'm coming from an AW that was stolen so I'm a little underwhelmed by the looks. The AW was sexy. Having said that, this F series is a very nice looking notebook. The inside is more of a dark gray color than black I've listened closely and haven't heard the noise yet others are hearing. I'm over 50. I'll post again this weekend after I let my younger wife listen to it. (Keep the jokes to yourself ) She's over 40 but has excellent hearing. Here are the specs on the CTO I ordered:

US-VPCF1190X-LBOM
Component: No Additional Video Editing Software
Component: Intel® Core™ i7-820QM processor (1.73GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.06GHz
Component: 16.4" VAIO Premium Display (1920x1080) with NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M GPU (1GB VRAM)
Component: Fresh Start
Component: No additional Office Software
Component: No additional Photo Editing Software
Component: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1333
Component: Blu-ray Disc™ player/burner
Component: No additional AntiVirus Software
Component: Keyboard Backlight
Component: Large Capacity Battery
Component: Black
Component: No Engraving
Component: Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64-bit
Component: 500GB Hard Disk Drive (7200rpm)
Quantity: 1
Description: VPCF1190X Configure-to-Order

 

Expensive machine eh! - The Best of Everything. Me, I'd go down to 720QM and 4 gigs and then install the SSD. But since I added Premiere Pro I didn't have the budget for more hardware. I think you'll be happy with that!

 

The ONLY difference between your specs and mine, is that mine is Windows Ultimate while yours is Windows Pro. Identical, otherwise !

 

AW was stolen and coverd by insurance....figured why not treat meyself. it is blazingly fast. I'm coming from a 2.8ghz and a 2.53ghz. Astonishing really. Hey I'm just getting into video editing. Ws discouraged from ordering from Adobe and Vegas from Sony as it was suggested that it would be way beyond my skill set. Got any suggestions for newbie video editing software?

 

Since we're all bragging...


Product: F2NBSP10-LBOM
Component: 500 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive [7200 rpm]
Component: Blu-ray Disc™ Read and Write Drive
Component: Fresh Start™
Component: Gray
Component: Microsoft Windows® 7 Professional
Component: 4GB (2GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1333
Component: Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
Component: Intel® Core™ Quad i7-720QM processor (1.60GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 2.80GH
Component: 16.4" VAIO Premium Display (1920x1080) featuring the NVIDIA® GeForce® G211P GPU (1GB VRAM)
(Actually a G330M)
Component: No Engraving
Component: Keyboard Backlight
Component: Standard Capacity Battery
Quantity: 1
Estimated Shipped Date: 20100121

 

One of my regrets was not to have ordered the Sony Vegas Pro 9.0 during the CTO process. Later on, I realized that the price Sony was charging for it during CTO ($399) was over $100 less than what Amazon was charging for it.

 

Premiere Elements 8, Pinnacle Studio 14, - those are others I've used. Studio 14 is not bad...

And really, once you understand the layout, Premiere is very logical, and has a lot in common with Final Cut Pro, the best editor of the lot.

 

That's why I included Premiere Pro CS4, at $345 that's ridiculously cheap.

 

Very good selection ! I wanted to maximize the RAM and also the processor, since I will be doing quite a bit of image and video editing on this.

 

Agreed. I noticed that during the CTO process and was not sure if that was a typo. Either way, it is a bit too late for regrets.

 

I can update the Ram any time, just buy the sticks at my computer supplier. The 720 CPU is a BIT slower than the 820, and I think has a slightly smaller cache (not sure), but it still beats the Q9450 in my current editor, which is plenty fast enough, even for non-standard transcoding (without hardware assist or optimized encoding algorithms.) But I did want a legal copy of CS4, my CS1 is long in the tooth.

 

Believe it or not, I was looking through CTOs for older FWs (pre-590) and some of them provided Adobe Premiere CS4 for just $48! However the basic system itself was over $2000 for a T6600.

 

The 720 has 6MB of Cache while the 820 has 8MB.