Official Sony VAIO F Series i5/i7 owners thread *Part 3*

For those dealing with long booting time and even for those who dont, ScuderiaConchiglia had wrote a method for Vista and Windows 7 users to do a boot file defrag themselves, like Tune XP does.

Windows 7 boot files defrag script

Vista boot files defrag script

You must read the entire post and follow his instructions.

I couldnt thank him enough.

 

"You could always superglue a 2.5"..." - Or: How to install a secondary hard drive in the optical drive bay of a VAIO_VPCF Series.



How to Replace the Hard Drive (HDD) of a VAIO VPCF Series Laptop

 

Interesting. Since this defrags only boot files (correct me if I am wrong), this would work with a SSD HDD as well?

 

You are a bit late to the party, Gandalf_The_Grey & I have been posting about the Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid HDD/SSD in the last few pages.

 

Yes, only boot files are defraged with those batchs.

Seems like Windows 7 does turn off defrag for the SSD, but leaves the scheduled defrag enabled just in case you plug mechanical HD's in at a later time.

I dont have a SSD drive and cant tell you if its possible. I think I read somewhere else that a SSD drive cant be defraged.

 

I am sorry but I find this statement funny.

You post benchmarks & boot time data for your machine which is a 820 CPU, 8 GB memory with SSD & cost over $2000 & I post mine for a 720 CPU, 6GB memory & HDD which cost a total of $1450 including the HDD 7200 upgrade

How is this comparing "apples to apples" and what does "you get bested" is doing here?

I never said that you made a bad buying choice. If it fits your needs, criteria & budget, then all is OK. Just like it does for me. What's the problem?

You point out that your machine is real fast, I'm just saying that mine is also real fast... considering the money I spent on it.

I can't find the link right now but I posted way back that I will probably get a SSD when the technology matures, the capacity gets larger & the price lower. Meanwhile early adopters, please keep on buying SSD's to help speedup the process.

 

My understanding is defrag, prefetch, and superfetch are disabled most of the time with an SSD. However, when I go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters I still see a value of 3 when it's my understanding the value should be zero when disabled. Should we assume it's not disabled and the SSD is not communicating this, or in our case with the Toshiba SSD there are performance issues?

SSD and Windows 7

Question is- has anyone changed the value on their prefetch or disabled superfetch in services? And if so, any instability, speed increases or decreases in performance?

 

I know that silly. My response was intentionally implying the non-removal of the optical drive.

 

I run my computer with all of these parameters set for SSD. I disabled Prefetch and superfetch along with drive indexing. I disabled defrag, although I have manually defragged a few times. I originally disabled the paging file, but there are a few programs that look for and need the paging file for some reason (Windows Media Player is one) so I set it for 8GB. I also turned on write caching for the SSD, which makes for faster writes, but can cost you data loss if power is lost. I don't see this as a problem as the F11 has a battery!

If anything, these changes may have slowed the SSD down a bit, but it also greatly reduces reads and writes, which will hopefully prolong the SSD's life.

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1661

I hope this helps.

Bill

 

Hey, I just figured out that this Atheros AR9287 wireless card is capable of 300mbps! I had read that it was, but could not get it to work. After changing some factory defaults on my DIR-655 extreme router, all is well!

Bill

 

I have a crazy wireless setup at home using that router, because I'm good like that...I've always had 300 Mbps (when using an 802.11n card) even prior to me getting this laptop. What settings did you change?

Here's my wireless setup:

Neighbors who live across the street allow us to use their internet. I recently upgraded their hardware and my hardware. They have a new DIR-655 with three 7dbi 12" high-gain antennas sitting by the window (only the antennas, router is on the floor underneath tv stand). I have a wireless N range extender in my living room by my window, with two 7dbi 12" high-gain antennas. Antennas have a direct line of sight to each other. I'm currently in my basement, connected at 300 Mbps, to my neighbor's wireless router which is across the street (about 90 feet). It's just as fast and reliable as if I was in their own house. I've hit over 2 MB/s ... (2,048 KB/Kilobytes per second for people who get confused.) Like I said, I'm good like that!

 

My factory settings were for Auto b,g,n and the channel width was set to 20Mhz. I changed the settings to Auto g+n and set the channel width to Auto 20/40Mhz.

 

Fishon,

One thing I forgot to mention about the SSD...when you turn off search indexing and reduce or get rid of your paging file, you free up a lot of space on the drive. After a clean install and before loading all of my old files and programs, I made these changes and freed up over 16GB of SSD space! If you already have a ton of additional programs and files on your SSD, you could see a larger increase in free space.

It may take a restart before it shows up on your C drive properties. Check it before and after.

Bill

 

Well, have you tried that on a_F11 w/ a Windows 7 64-bit OS?

I created a restore point, downloaded the Restart Time small script & after optimizing my Restart time with Autoruns for Windows v9.57, I measured consistently 63 sec. on the Balanced Power Plan & 60 sec on Performance:



Then I ran the DefragBootFiles.bat you suggested following EXACTLY the how-to instructions. It took about 12 minutes to complete:



Then I ran again Restart Time to see the result of the boot files defrag: 85 sec.!



Now I don't know if it's Windows 7 or the utility I found in the OEM recovery disc #2 that I extracted with SonyExtractor_v0.1a: MOD-PC_Boot_Optimization.mod > MOD-PC_Boot_Optimization.EXE > installed as: PC Boot Optimization:



But I ran several time the Restart Time script & my results kept on getting better & better to finally stabilize @ 55 sec.

 

I did a Vaio Update and now my screen resolution has gone to 800x600, how can I fix this?

 

Reboot.....The old drivers have been uninstalled, so it's gone to default VESA mode, the new drivers load after rebooting.

 

One should always reboot after an update.

 

Recently if you recall another fellow posted the same complaint in the F-series thread,.. twice,.. it was stuck at 800 X 600; guess what, he hadn't yet rebooted after installing the new driver... In fact he didn't even mention that he HAD updated the video driver...

 

I have rebooted twice and it hasn't solved the issue....the highest resolution is goes to is 1280x1024

 

Yea, I would hope! 2MB/s is only 16Mbps. Sounds like they have either cable or FiOS (I'm assuming you mean you get 2MB/s transferring from somewhere on the internet, not just from their house to your house). 300Mbps would be 37.5MB/s. Of course, that is a theoretical maximum, which you'll never actually see.

So while having super fast wireless is nice, you'd see the same performance at 54Mbps with 802.11g... at least for transfers over their internet.

(Not meaning to rain on your parade, just wanted to add perspective)

 

True.

I have been over 6Mbps download speeds (48mbps) when running at 130mbps. My internet will not get faster by going to 300mbps. In fact, right now, although my computer says I am connected at 300mbps, my router is fluxuating between 240-270mbps as my signal strength is 72-80% because I am about 35' and 3 walls from the router.

Still, the faster connection should be very helpful once my NAS is up and running.

Bill

 

Well, false. We used to use their 802.11g network, never saw anything above 300-400 KB/s. Don't forget there's distance involved, and 802.11n helps a lot with distance. Plus given the 5 7dbi high-gain antennas...well you know the drill.

 

The NVIDIA Video Driver 257.15 Beta performance is the same as 197.44, at least on my VAIO_F11, i7-720QM, 6 GB memory, GT 330M, Win 7 64-bit Ultimate and 500GB 7200 RPM Seagate Momentus & for these 2 benchmark utilities.

I followed this from the NVIDIA Release Notes (v257.15):

So I uninstalled Nvidia Tool & rebooted. Then uninstalled 197.44 & rebooted. Then installed 257.15 & rebooted.

Here are some benchmarks made with the free & portable (no install needed) Cinebench 64-bit & Furmark utilities after updating the Nvidia video driver from OEM Nvidia driver to 197.44, then to 257.15 Beta on my F clean install done with OEM recovery discs. As with the previous benchmarks, I disabled the anti virus & used the exact same settings. The apples thing...

 

There are a number of factors that affect the attainable data transfer speed between two wireless devices. What I was pointing out was that if you had 802.11g vs. 802.11n running at full speed, either would easily saturate a 16Mbps link.

With two 802.11g APs and Yagi antennas, you'd have a nice link between the houses, and wouldn't throw the signal all over the place.

But I digress, this is an F series forum, not wireless, sorry...

 

I don't know...I believe he is correct. There are 8 bits to a byte. Therefore, 300Mbps speed transfers 37.5MB/second, about the speed of an older hard drive, but 2-3 times as fast as most USB2.0 transfers.

If you are running wireless G, your connection speed is rated at UP TO 54Mbps. However, it slows down as distance increases and you may only see 24-36Mbps. If you are actually, say, 25' from the router and your real speed is 36Mbps, you are only transfering about 4.5MB/second. This is about 1/3 the speed of USB, but still quite fast for internet...about 3 times the speed of T1 internet!

You are running Draft N, which can be much faster. However, if the connection is the same with Draft N as it is with wireless G, you may not see an internet speed increase unless you have blazing fast internet speeds. The advantage will be easily seen, however, in peer to peer data transfers such as from computer to computer or from server to computer.

You may very well have seen a speed increase, but it may be due to better antennas increasing the signal, or it may just be that your old wireless G was not MIMO enhanced, while your new wireless Draft N network is MIMO. This could easily explain your gains.

Finally, when you download, you are also dependent on the host server. I have downloaded back to back programs where one will download at a snails pace of 400-500Kbps, then download another program from a different server and see download speeds approaching 6Mbps. Then, as I did this morning, I can download a file from my wife's laptop. Here, I saw a transfer rate (thanks to the 300Mbps speed) of 30MBps (240Mbps). This is blazing fast and probably was limited by her hard drive performance.

Still, these speeds are only 25-30% of what a gigabit wired connection could have produced with a fast, newer 3-1/2" hard drive instead of my wife's 3 year old laptop.

I do believe that you saw transfer gains. I just question how you achieved them. My guess is the antennas gave you a better signal transfer and you are now using a full MIMO system, where before this your system was probably not MIMO capable.

I hope this helps.

Bill

 

Thanks so much for the fast response you guys . I think I was under the impression that you couldn't READ data from an SSD after a number of read/write cycles (as opposed to just not being able to WRITE data on it). That makes a huge difference for me .

 

A wired connection is pretty much always faster. At night I get ~ 20 Mb/s dl/ul on wireless, but on a wired connection I get 100+ Mb/s dl/ul. That's over 5x faster.

 

Restarting still hasn't solved my issue.....

 

I'm betting you don't have the nvidia drivers installed?

A quick way to check is to go into your control panel and see if the nvidia control panel is there (should be a green/black looking thing).

 

Yes, I understand what you're saying. Definitely the MIMO and the antennas helped. I do not believe it is draft N anymore as the specification was finalized prior to me purchasing that router. I don't think they changed anything from that time.

Umm...

Look into this program called Flashget. I would go with version 1.9, not the latest one as it's more stable. Once you play around with the settings you can remove the ad that's on the right permanently. If I download a file in Firefox from a decently fast server, I will get 300 - 400 KB/s. With Flashget, I get 1+ MB/s. I suggest you try out that nice piece of software I've been using for years. It really is incredible how much faster a download will go when you're not using the browser!

 

Also, Starcraft 2 is up:

YouTube - Starcraft 2 Beta on Sony_Vaio F - Part 1
YouTube - Starcraft 2 Beta on Sony_Vaio F - Part 2

Gets a consistent 60fps (except on rainy or wet maps light Twilight Fortress). at 1280x720 with the following settings:

Textures - Ultra
Post-Processing - Ultra
Reflections - On
Effects - Ultra
Shaders - High
Lighting - low (can't really see a difference between low/med/high).
Shadows - High
Terrain - High
Physics - Ultra
Models - High
Portraits - 3D
Movies - High

 

Hi everyone. I've been lurking for a few days, and decided I need to post after reading pages and pages of info on the F series.

I ordered a VPCF1190X CTO on Monday, with the following specs:

16.4" VAIO Display (1600x900) with NVIDIA® GeForce® 310M GPU (512MB VRAM), 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1333, Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64-bit, Intel® Core™ i7-820QM processor (1.73GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.06GHz, Fresh Start, Blu-ray Disc™ player/burner, Keyboard Backlight, Large Capacity Battery, and 500GB Hard Disk Drive (7200rpm)

I don't consider myself a videophile or an audiophile, but I like a quality product. I like video to look good, but I've been OK with my 720p TV for years now. I will be using it day-to-day for web-surfing, watching videos (downloaded, streaming, DVD, BD, etc.) and will be bringing it to work to use as an entertainment center for my long breaks (I work at a news station) so I need it to be an enjoyable video-watching experience.

I will also be using it for video editing (with Premiere CS4) and graphics/pictures (Photoshop CS4). Not everyday, but I need a computer that can handle that stuff. I will also be editing HD video for the first time on a personal computer.

My question is, did I make the right choice and will I be happy with my purchase? I'm seeing a lot of negative talk around here regarding this computer and I would hate to think I made a mistake after getting nothing but quality from Sony for years.

The computer that I'm upgrading from is an HP Pavilion m7750n media desktop, with a crappy HP vs19e monitor. I have had no real complaints about this setup for the last couple of years, so will the F series blow me away? Sorry for the long post.

 

I work with several machines that are identical to yours other than our machines having the base 720QM processor. You may be very happy with the machine. Ours with the slower processors (and aftermarket SSDs) work very well.

The only problem you may see is with the display. Don't get me wrong. The display is very good in our church settings, but I have to say that it is not as good as my 1080p display on my upgraded unit. The main difference is that my colors are slightly better and my viewing angle is better.

Then again, you may find it perfectly acceptable. I have had no complaints from anyone using these machines in our church office...and I have asked them several times how they like them!

Bill

 

I've read a lot about that, and if the 1080p screen had have been an option, I would have upgraded, but sadly it is no longer available through SonyStyle.

The display is my main concern, but it's less about it being 1080p vs 900p than it is about the quality of the viewing experience. I don't expect the laptop to replace my TV in terms of movie watching, but it will be used as a "quick fix" for late night when I don't want to wake anyone up with the loud TV/surround system and also for work, where I sit around for hours at a time and really need something to entertain myself with.

I've seen it mentioned earlier in the thread that this computer is geared toward "people who shop at Best Buy and not people with real computer know-how," and I definitely fall closer to the former in that regard, so hopefully my worrying will be for naught and I'll be perfectly happy with my purchase.

My girlfriend has a Toshiba Satellite laptop she bought for $400 and the display on that looks really nice to me. I just expect Sony to blow me away with their products, like they usually do. I have a feeling that the light-bleed that I keep seeing pictures of during dark scenes in movies is going to bother the crap out of me though.

 

Back when the new Samsung LED back lit tvs came out, I went and looked at them and was amazed and awed at the picture. Then doing research I found out what to look for and the picture didn't seem as good anymore. My F11 display IMHO is great, but I'm sure and expert could look at it an find negatives. Sometimes "ignorance is blizz". If your happy with your display, that's all that matters. Enjoy your laptop.....

 

For design purposes, the color reproduction on the screen is mediocre at best, but the processing hardware is top-notch

 

guys does anyone know the release date of the F12 in the UK

 

Does anyone have a picture of a (preferably reference quality) Blu-ray being played on one of the 1600x900 displays?

 

hello all

Just wanted to ask, it seems as though only the F series laptops have the rewriting Blu-ray drive, is that correct?

At least from the UK store that is.

 

I think people have said June 26?

 

I'm kind of a mix between the people with real know-how and the people who shop at Best Buy...

 

I've read some posts that said June 26 in UK. In Canada, the manager at the Sony Style in Toronto told me he's getting a new shipment of the F-series on June 14 or 15.

I will let you all know what happens. If they get it, I'm buying it

 

Whats the difference?

 

x - y = z

z is the difference.

What difference were you referring to? Quoting posts helps maintain the flow...

 

I cannot for the life of me figure this out...and Sony reps told me it's an unpublished specification. Is the ExpressCard slot in the F series 1.0 or 2.0?

 

Thank you Bill. Rep added to you. My understanding is that SSD is native to Win7 and we should not have to do these adjustments, and if this is true, Win7 has determined this SSD] should be set in a manner which the laptop came. Anyway, I guess just try and tweak and determine for ourselves if we side on performance or preservation. Still a bit confusing though. Lots of conflicting info and conjecture on the subject.

 

Fishon,

The only things that W7 actually changes are:

Usually, auto defrag is shut off. You can, however, still manually defrag your SSD.

TRIM is activated.

Although these other items may be good for SSD, Microsoft decided NOT to make these changes. I read a MS paper once where their engineers talked about how they had originally made some of these changes, then decided to leave it to others. If I recall correctly, it was simply to cover their own butts as there are a million different scenarios that could occur and SSDs are still in their infancy.

I continue to use System Restore for exactly the reasons stated...it can save your butt.

All of the others are set pretty much as stated in the article. I actually always had the paging file turned off, and still do on our church machines. However, my paging file is present, but is small. I have it simply because there are a few programs here and there that are programmed to utilize the paging file and will not work well without it. This has not been a problem on any of the church machines, which are set up as mobile workstations and do not have any programs that require a paging file.

Bill

 

I hope you included Premiere CS4 at the bundled price of $299. With that you get a free upgrade to CS5. Thus Premiere CS5, full retail version (Activated to the laptop), for only $299 when you buy the F11/12 CTO.

 

Appears to be June 19th in Europe, and now possibly North America (for order availability, that is. Shipping may STILL be after June 26th for CTOs). Since I was given the June 26th date in February, a one week error after four months can hardly be considered "Way off..."

 

You can buy the Panasonic UJ240 BD-writer (used in the F-series) aftermarket for less than $200 and, by switching rails, install it in almost ANY laptop.