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

mangosango - what's your general experience with the F11/12 and 3d programs such as Maya(speed, stability)? Have you tried out any CUDA apps?

 

What do you mean when you say the F is stereo only?

 

There are only two speakers. Left and right. Surround sound is not possible.

 

Does anyone know if the F12 uses a mini-PCI card for WiFi? I really would like 802.11a and although it's not a deal breaker, I'll replace the WiFi card if it's possible.

 

Hello,

I have owned an F11 since they first came out. I have noticed just now that my battery dies even when the laptop is off. If I charge it to 100 percent, shut down the computer, a few days later it will be maybe 60 percent left than after a week or so all the battery is drained even though the computer is off. I took out the battery after charging and than put it into the laptop maybe 3 days later and the battery had 90 percent charge. Anyone else experience this issue? I apologize in advance if this question has been asked already, there is a lot of pages to this thread and a search didn't yield much info for me. Thanks

 

omaroo, my advice to you is to just buy one...and figure things out later. If you have the money to spend, go to a Sony Store (or wherever else you can buy them from), checkout the laptop, and if you want it then buy...I bought this laptop pretty much on impulse - my PC died and I neededa new laptop that could match my old desktop in terms of power for my work. Was browsing in the Sony Shop and just made the choice there and then - no time to research prices/compare specs with other laptops etc.

Then I came across this forum, read about the problems after my purchase. Even so, I'm not regretting my purchase at all. My laptop came with a 2yr warranty at no extra cost, when I bought it instore.

Impulse buying instore is a great feeling...especially when you can afford to!

 

I did .. and tested it by producing a frequency response curve; the mic jack is a mic jack and NOT a hybrid line in / mic jack as you will find in some laptops. i.e. the response is not flat, and is designed to emphasise voice. It picks up next to nothing above 16khz.

No big issue, but if you are doing any serious line-in recording you'll need to get an expresscard / USB soundcard.

 

He's made over 160 posts about whether to buy this laptop or not. He started back in JANUARY.

He's not going to buy one, never will. Stop feeding the troll

I've followed Joe and added him to my ignore list.

Now if everyone would just stop replying to him ...

 

So we come across as a bunch of whinny crybabies. Good to know you filtered though all of that and can see this is an excellent laptop.

 

My F12 has the same atheros 9287 chipset as your f11

 

Hi,

I now own a vaio F12. I did the clean install as Joe wrote:
http://www.monteverde.org/images/Sony_Vaio_F11/Vaio_F_Series_Clean_Install_Guide.htm

I had to do it twice tough, cause I missed the restart driver . On the second
attempt I did not use the discs but installed from the rescue partition.
This time I got it right and all worked out well.

One thing I noticed, is that the task to kill is no longer called
"Restore Complete System" but "Vaio care rescue".

Also the recovery center has a different name and other user dialogs.
Just don't get confused here.

To get the function keys working, I followed the instructions from ilfuca:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/460685-win-7-fresh-install-guide-vaio-f-series.html#post5903300

Just follow the instructions from step 7.

Thanks to all the people here for there ongoing contribution!

Servus,
kcirtaP

 

Anyone knows how I can make the Broadcom bluetooth drivers override the native windows 7 ones after a clean installation?

 

But if you have the line coming from a receiver into the laptop USB port, would this not give you the desired quality? And external soundcard would not be needed? My apologies since I have not fully researched this topic yet. But since it's kind of come up here on the forum, the mic input question, I'm asking if anyone has experience with recording vinyl with their F or any other similar system. My understanding is that you need a receiver along with software like Audacity or Abobe Soundbooth for sure. Anything else about this topic I'm a noob.

 

I have finally bit the bullet and pulled the trigger on an F12 EU, this will be my first ever laptop, I wanted to take advantage of the free Blu-Ray writer.

Now then, I can say that there is still hope for omaroo, I have been looking for the perfect laptop for some time and finally came to the conclusion after scouring Notebook Review that there is no such thing as the perfect laptop, I have looked at Dell Studio's, Studio XPS 1640, 45 & 47, Vostro's, Latitudes, HP Envy 15 1st & 2nd Gen, Envy 17, Sony FW & finally F12.

I have ordered what Sony list as an VPCF12XE

Intel CoreTM i7-740QM, 1.73GHz
Windows® 7 Professional(64bit)
Premium Black
320 GB Serial ATA (7200 rpm)
8 GB 1333MHz DDR3-SDRAM
Blu-ray Disc(TM) writer
41.6 cm LCD, 1920x1080, webcam
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M 1GB

Hopefully I will receive it soon, although it says ships in 2 to 3 weeks.

 

I didn't know that. But why in the menu has the option to enable dolby surround?

 

Just gave you a rep point for your order. Give us your input when you get it and let us know if you consider it a whiner. Seriously, do well all have the same sound coming from our laptops or are they different? At this point I believe they are all the same and it just bothers some more than others. i7 processor along with a cool system= no problem.

 

Thanks I have rep'd you back, I will certainly give you my feedback, I work for an IT company and I end up having to rebuild pc's & laptops on a regular basis for our clients, so I hope I would have a good idea of how noisy it is or isn't, I am sure compared to the 6 servers about 10 feet away from my desk it will be very quiet

 

Try this link out.

Dolby - What is Dolby Home Theater v3?

 

It emulates surround sound. To really experience it, put on some headphones and watch your favorite movie with both of the Dolby enhancements active. You'll most likely pull of your headphones at least once because you're sure that you heard the noise coming from your speakers as well as the headphones.

 

kcirtaP, thanks for the feedback & glad you worked it out.

If you could spell out the details about the differences vs_F11, I would be happy to add it to the guide. Edit: I updated the guide with some of your observations.

Specifically: "Also the recovery center has a different name and other user dialogs. Just don't get confused here." - Could you run it w/o actually doing a recovery & make some screen captures or do some snapshots?

"On the second attempt I did not use the discs but installed from the rescue partition" - I forgot to mention that, it's the easiest if you are installing on the OEM HDD & want to keep the OEM recovery partition anyway.

Did you check the resources usage & size of the OS on the C partition before installing additional software like I did?



*****

I have a spare HDD & if someone could mail me a set of F12_OEM recovery discs, I would gladly use them to write an F12_clean install with OEM discs guide.

Don't worry, your specific unique product key is not in those discs. It's a mass Sony_OEM activation key that works in conjunction with your BIOS. It checks if the system is a_Vaio than proceeds to install the OS & the Vaio_added value software + bloatware if you don't abort the process like kcirtaP & I did.

That's why you don't need to go online to activate it with Microsoft after that custom clean install with the user created OEM recovery discs.

*****

 

^ this (imo it really only works with headphones).

It basically delays some sounds after others, tricking the brain into thinking that the sounds aren't coming from two speakers mounted on the side of your head. It also widens the soundstage, so the sound doesn't sound as "intimate." This can be good or bad depending on what kind of sounds you're listening to. For instance, orchestral music, movies, and games and benefit greatly from this sort of effect, while techno or other synthesized music (in my opinion) sounds better without the effect on.

 

Follow links in this posted just a few days ago & read replies by other users on the subject: VAIO_F Series Wifi Card.

 

Thanks Willscray! I ordered one today for my F12. All my docs, music, videos... are on my QNAP server. So I only a small HD. I hope it's gonna make a big difference.

 

Just a follow up.
Today, after waiting 4 weeks(!), I finally gave up expecting my new F12-series to ever be returned from Sony Vaio Support (Teleplan in Colchester) and managed to get a refund from the store.
For you all that are more patient Sony are, according to Vaio Support, working on a new BIOS version that is supposed to fix the problem mentioned above.
I wish you all luck with that.

 

I do not have a WD SSD, so I can't speak from specific use. I can say, however, that my SSD has made an incredible difference in overall performance, and mine is not one of the very newest and best SSDs for speed. Mine is probably quite comparable to the WD SSD you purchased.

If yours performs like mine, you should see most everything happen in about 1/2 the time.

After you have it installed and running, check here and I can give you some hints for SSDs. These hints will, in some cases, speed the SSD up even further, while other hints will slow the SSD's performance a bit, but will free up resources and SSD space, and will hopefully cause the SSD to last longer.

One other thing. Before installation, make sure that the firmware is the newest for your model and check to see if it can be updated. If possible, update to the newest firmware before installing anything, at least before installing anything after windows. Firmware has been very important in the overall performance and reliability of SSDs.

 

I'm with you guys. Just added omaroo to my ignore list.

 

I have 5.1 headphones, but it's a lit bit scary to watch movie and hear from headphones when you're alone in the house.. You can't hear anything else..

I have logitech Z3 speakers. It's better to emulate dolby surround with them or not? I watch HD movies with DTS sound and i want full experience..

Last, Sony Vaio F11 has Dolby Home Theater v3, but we can make use of it with headphones or speakers, right?

 

YAAAY!! They're going to do an EFI update to fix the fan changing speed all the time?! AWESOME!!!

 

The only way to do that is to wait that the system gets hotter before kicking it into higher rpm and once it's in higher speed, wait that it gets cooler than the actual switch telling it to slow down.

It's normal that the speed varies as the computing needs varies & consequently the heat produced varies according to your current tasks.

I think that the current F11_BIOS update already did that to my F11_system. I hear less fan speed variations. Check the blue arrows in my screen grab below, it's the point when the fan goes into higher rpm. The bottoms of the yellow line is when the fan slowed down, hence the temperature going up until the fan is kicked into higher rpm again. Note the shorter cycles at the end of the graph:

 

You have two options for good quality sound from a vinyl rip:

A) Get a USB soundcard and use the line-in port on it to capture the sound. Test at various input options and try to get one where there is no noise induced by the connection; it should be as quiet as possible (no hiss) with no audio playing. Something like 80% on each is usually where you start, and tweak until it's just right. In audacity you should record so that the peak dB level is, at maximum, -5 or 10 dB.

B) Use a USB record deck! They're pretty cheap, and if you're after the most hassle-free transfer these could be the way to go. True audiophiles will bemoan the quality of the deck itself, but they're usually grand.

Personally I rip vinyl on a desktop using an ASUS Xonar - Amazon.co.uk: asus xonar - Electronics & Photo - which is a fantastic series of cards. Nothing captures the warmth of a vinyl record onto digital quite like one of those ... for the price, anyway

 

I would like to try it on my F. Could you describe how you ran your test & mention which tools or utilities you used?

 

Agreed. I don't use the Dolby enhancements for music playback. The depth and distortion is all wrong. It sure is great for movies though.

I hear you. I feel like the world is super tiny while I'm plugged into my headphones. Can't hear outside noises, and that could be creepy if I didn't live in such a safe part of town.

I mainly use external speakers, Logitech V20, which I love. They have different drivers and enhancement software than the Dolby enhancements on the Realtek drivers. I find that music playback, like the other options, is best heard w/ none of the enhancements on.

This is really sad that it's come to this. I'd join up, but will just pass over his posts until he's left one stating that he's got his VAIO in hand. We've all offered a lot of advice. A lot of advice has been patiently provided, but there really isn't more we can do until the questions stop moving in circles.

P.S. - Good God, Joe Bleau, the BBC could film an entire episode just from the wildlife that camps out on your laptop!

 

I used ToneGenerator ( Tone Generator Software - Audio Test Tone Generator Download ) on a reference "good" soundcard ( ASUS Xonar DS - Sound card - 24-bit - 192 kHz - 107 dB: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo ) to create a sweeping tone from 20hz - 20khz (the typical range quoted for 'human hearing') and recorded the result on the mic jack on the Vaio F.

A true line-in will show equal sensitivity to the full range of frequencies, but a mic port will be 'tweaked' to reduce background noise (low-pass filter).

There seems to be a low-pass filter at about 16khz on the Vaio's mic port.

Not a fault, not by a long way, but it is not a "line in" port.

If you wanted to generate the same results without spending any money you can generate some frequencies in Audacity - though it would be painstaking to do all 18980

Beyond the raw frequency response, the mic port will also show a much MUCH worse SNR than a line in port - as the the pickup is always boosted on a mic port, even with the "boost" turned off.

 

Thanks for the info but some steps are missing, no?

After "and recorded the result on the mic jack on the Vaio_F", then how did you check the frequency response?

Did you try Listen to this device and > Advanced tab > Studio Quality?

Testing the F's mic jack input with a music player capable of sounds higher than 16khz should work too, no?

 

Nice spider Joe

 

Tx. My cats found it about 1 meter from where I was typing on the F. They were quite excited. It takes about 2 minutes to tame a Tarantula. We don't have deadly ones in Costa Rica. She could climb on the US semi glossy LCD BTW.

 

Oops. Yes.

To check the frequency response you can do an FFT in Audacity ... I forget by now if this is a stock tool or a free plugin I grabbed. Either way it's simple to get.

You then get a graph of frequency against amplitude, rather than amplitude against time

Whether it's set to 'studio quality' or 'CD quality' won't matter (I very much imagine it is up-sampling to get to 96khz.. "Realtek" hardware audio is not 24bit/96khz ... that's just a built in Windows preset) as the Nyquist frequency on a 44.1khz sample is 22khz ... which means that is what the ADC low-pass filter will be set to. 16khz should be fine.

Again, frequency response aside, a mic port doesn't have the fidelity of a line in port. It's got too much gain on the input, the impedance is wrong.

 

Hi, I'm new to this forum and I'm consider of buying a sony F-series laptop. I'm having a hard time deciding because I don't really quite get this turbo boosting the processor thing. I know that (for example) a computer can be 1.7 gHz and goes to 2.8 gHz when needed w/ this turbo boosting. Something like overclocking right??

I wanna know if it will cause the computer to overheat if it goes to 2.8gHz (the max) and stay there for a while - an hour or 2.

Also, is this a decent laptop to play games with? Not a total hardcore gamer, but would like to play some games. Probably just starcraft II when its out.

 

I have a favor:

Could anyone post all avaiable color profiles as links or send me PM ? I know there is mat800 profile, Joe's profile and there was also another one I would like to try and compare.


Please post links to all avaiable color profiles - its important.


Also, I received yesterday my F12S from warranty service - document stated that there wasnt any dead or defective pixels but the screen had holes on the opposite side (internal side). They switched it for brand new and all I could say is it doesnt have 1/3 light bleed/clouding. 2 CCFL backlit is visible on top and the bottom and little shadow in the corners but this screen is simply brilliant. Sony also added blue cleaning cloth with Vaio logo as part of being sorry about the defective screen.

Blu ray sticker was cool. Blue Vaio cleaning cloth is even better.

 

I have a VPCF11Z1E/BI that broke and had the motherboard replaced. When it came back it only had half the RAM i purchased it with. Also in the VAIO Control Center is says the model name is: VPCF11Z1 EI rather than BI.

Can somebody with one of these laptops please tell me what their control center says under system information? Also, what should the L2/L3 cache memory be?

 

Here's a little colour profile round-up that I've found going through the thread (thanks to Joe Bleau): Vaio F Series Monitor Calibration and Users Created Profiles Roundup

It mainly covers F11 series' though I'm going to try the VPCF11 Euro Premium matte 1080p profiles on my F12X when I get hold of it this week. I'm not sure what the results will be since results vary within the same model numbers and this would be between generations... Please could someone give feedback if you have tried this already?

There seem to be some dedicated F12 profiles in the works, but as Joe Bleau suggests: "...buy a colorimeter to get the best of your F viewing experience, you can also use it on other computers & charge your friends some $ or drinks to recoup the investment" - I will probably end up buying a Spyder3Elite and doing exactly that after uploading a profile (for an EU premium matte F12X) here :-D

 

Thank you very very much! That is what Ive been looking for!

 

OK,

So I've done some more testing, and I would like to retract my statement that the Realtek audio produces a 16khz low-pass filter effect; it seems, for all my technical analysis, I had a wire slightly earthing

But, I tested again, and came with some different, verified, results (NEW! With added screenshots!)

The mic port is, unfortunately, a mic port.

The classic test of a soundcard's input is to see if the port auto-gains when the input is low. This is very useful on a microphone - if you move a few inches away, you can surprisingly half (or worse) the sound pressure and ergo amplitude on a basic mic, so this feature helps to flatten what would otherwise be a very distracting sound characteristic.

I tested this on the Vaio F to see if the amplitude response varied, based on the level of input it received. This was tested at 44 & 96Khz 'studio quality' to the same effect. The image below is from the latter.

First, I calibrated a constant tone which was around 98% peak amplitude. This is around the level most CD's are (controversially) mastered at; and so is a typical input from a 'line in.'

I then paused the tone and started recording. After a moment, I played the sound, then stopped again. The results are here :

​

Point A is where the port is just recording silence (the soundcard is rated at -105bD, so this is the baseline noise profile here).

Already, you can see it is boosting the sound very, very significantly.

Point B is the sound being played. No problem here, the tone is captured properly and zooming in shows that it is not clipping. If you look closely at the start, you can see the card is capturing too much sound, and has to ramp it down. It is most visible by looking at the lighter blue inset, or the bottom of the block.

Point C is where the card / port gives up it's secret. Recording the exact same blank silence as before, the card is now picking up less noise; it has attenuated for the differences in sound amplitude.

Point D, and it's back to super boost. This would be a startling amount of noise on a line-in port.

I did some further tests on the audio capture, to see how suitable it would be for music.

The following is a FFT analysis of the card recording a blank input:

​

It's baseline noise level is a quite poor -75dB , no surprise as it is ramping the gain.

Notice, however, the area on the left of the graph. Below 6khz the card seems to be amping the sound even more, leading to more noise in transmission. Why isn't this surprising? Because 6khz is seen as the higher end of the human voice range (speaking, not singing); it is boosting sensitivity in the range of human speech. If you record music like this, you will have one hell of a time getting the EQ settings right to balance it out. The most likely scenario is that bass sounds are clipped, leading to low frequency distortion. This is often known as the 'speaker killer' sample There are also noise spikes all over the place.

One thing you are looking for in a recording solution is a level response curve. To test this more thoroughly, I generated a white noise sample from 20hz to 22050khz, and recorded the result. The following was an FFT based on 4.3 million samples:

​

Even when playing the sound the mic port is still boosting the lower frequencies, there is no doubt this is operating on a 'boost voice' profile, which is likely hardware / firmware encoded. There is also a noticeable trail off above 19khz when the recording profile is set to 44.1khz ... it should, mathematically, be fine until 22.05khz. It seems to be applying a low-pass filter.

Set to 96khz, the problem goes away.

The final test, was to play a block of sound, and check that it is not 'leaking' out into the rest of the sound spectrum. Here I chose white noise, with a high-pass @5khz and a low-pass @10khz:

​

What you have here is a lot of low frequency noise induced when recording, not a desirable characteristic.

All in all, the card is fine. It's a decent laptop soundcard, and actually does seem to have full 96khz/24bit recording. It is though, heavily marred by the lack of a line-in port to make use of this. A bit of an odd decision, especially since they don't seem to have marketed it's credentials as a 24bit sound device.

Summary : fine sound input for a microphone. Very poor input used as a line-in.

 

My BMS33 Vaio bluetooth mouse (the one that looks like a pebble) broke after about 7 months of use. Left click is no longer responsive but right click is fine. Opened it up to see if there was something affecting the parts but unfortunately that's not the case and most likely i've worn it out after use with a lot of left clicks in AutoCAD or gaming.

They are nice visual complements to the F series though and I had no connection problems with it. When it was working, it was actually very responsive though holding the mouse needed getting used to.

Can anyone suggest a bluetooth mouse that can look just as well with the F but handles better??

 

#1 TurboBoost is Intel's way of factory overclocking. It is built-in to the processor itself. I have the Core i7 820QM processor, which is rated at 1.73GHz. When running benchmarks, I can watch a single core go as high as 3.06GHz, and stay at that speed for the duration of the testing...sometimes as long as 20 minutes. I would guess that in a relatively cool environment, it could run at this speed indefinitely. Two core testing yields both cores running at 2.8GHz. Three cores run at 2.33GHz. All 4 cores at 100% during benchmarking will run at 2.0GHz for an extended period of time.

As a clarification, I am not sure if everyone gets these types of speeds. I have all of my Windows performance settins set to maximum performance, both plugged-in and on battery. Also, I use a small program called "i7Turbo" to turn off EIST and C1E. These two instruction sets are turned on by default when Windows starts, so whenever I restart my machine, I run "i7Turbo" and turn these instruction sets off. This keeps my machine from throttling down at idle and at other times when the processor decides that it doesn't need all the power. This cost battery power and uses more power when plugged in, but it makes overall performance rise quite a bit, at least when benchmarking.

#2 Search back a few weeks (on this thread) and you will see where we were comparing the amount of temperatures our individual machines were producing. After 20 minutes with all 4 cores plus the GPU running at 100% load (a very unlikely real-world scenario), the highest my machine went was something like 73C. This is actually MUCH cooler than other Core i7 laptops that have been tested in this way.

#3 Sorry, but I can not help you much as I am not a gamer. The GT330M GPU is apparently a capable gaming GPU, but not AS capable as the best ATI GPUs or the newest Nvidia Fermi GPUs. Look for Mangosango on this thread. He is able to play a lot of games with this machine, and has posted quite a few youtube videos showing the results of his playing.

 

To clarify slightly, TurboBoost is less about 'overclocking' than it is realising that the limitation of a multicore design is the lower clock speed on each core.

The thermal design on a quad core has to be able to withstand all 4 cores running at 100% (max thermal output).

With only two cores running, you have less thermal output. It's not quite half, but it is a lot less. What TurboBoost does is say: "Right, we can run four cores at xxxxhz safely without overheating, how quickly can I run just two?"

It then ramps up the clock speed till it reaches a level that it feels is safe.

One clear advantage of the Vaio F is it's fantastic cooling; my i7 reaches maximum TurboBoost and stays there indefinitely A lot of Laptop owners (ALienware m15x .. HP envy ...) are discovering that using their machine flat-out will eventually induce throttling, as the cooling system can't cope and temperatures spiral towards design limits.

 

Hi 2 all.
I want to make a recovery disc for F11 series.but I don`t know how I can.
pls help.

 

+1 Rep given. Informative post.

 

Desperately need a response.. you know that i7Turbo appllication u mentioned.. can you clarify on the instruction sets it turns off?

Also does it stop it from throttling down on battery power? Because when on battery power my F11 always throttles down to 900 megahertz.. even with high performance set. Does the i7Turbo solve this problem?

 

first F12 review:

Sony VAIO F12 review
Sony VAIO F12 review | Laptops | Reviews | PC Pro