Official VAIO E Series Owners Thread

You could cause your gpu to overheat and crash. I'm not sure how likely breaking anything is. Please let me know how it goes.

Would you mind posting your current highest clock rate that you've achieved WITHOUT voltmodding? Just for a point of reference.

 

I oc'ed my 5650 with bios modding to 600/900 and works great so far. No problems with stability or glitches, etc.

 

Yes I know.
Only 625/900.

Yes I know.. but check this out.
How about 700/1000 ?

 

Well definitely let me know how it goes. I've heard of 700/ 1000 before. Just got 5mhz at a time...

 

Could you please tell me, how did you oc'ed your bios? I think I've tried all the available software to do that, but still no results. I have mobility 5650. Thanks.

 

Read this from page 9.

Sony VAIO e overclock project (secret)
1. OC the gpu voltage ( wtx how to do this ???)
2. OC the gpu clock and memory clock
3. OC the intel vcores multiplier
4. Upgrade the memory (ram) modules
5. OC the memory timings
6. Sony VAIO win !

The target is to reach above 20000 points on 3DMark05 (of course with performance stability).

 

It would be so much easier if we could just mod our bios.

 

Anyone have the most recent ATI drivers that we can download? Downloading from the site won't work.

 

Why are there different configurations for sony vaio laptops in usa and in uk ?
And why do the same parts in uk cost so much more then in usa ?
Why is sony not adding backlit keyboard to all their laptops ;\ ?
And why they don't add options for ssd drives for most of their laptops and full hd screens ... ?

 

the only thing that pisses me off my VAIO ea is that I cannot set ATI settings to resolution 1360x768 for HDMI output!! I tried everything and the only suitable resolution is 1280x720, however this is not the native resolution for my TV!

 

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/mobile/10-10_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc.exe

 

Thank you very much.

 

Where did you get that from by teh way? And is there a quick way to check for updates?

 

It's on the ATI servers, the link just isn't advertised. Just replace the 10-10 with 10-11 etc when a new Catalyst version is released

 

does any one know if u can add a second hdd into a vaio eb, i want to keep the original 500gb for storage and add a small solid state(because they are not as expensive as the big ones)for the os and applications.

thanks in advance for any advice given

regards

 

afi2k, if you didn't order the second HDD Sony probably removed the option to put it in (annoying I know) but you can remove or hotswap your disk drive for another hard drive (what I want to) or you can use a hybrid drive.

 

Hm I had really noticeably worse performance with those ATI drivers... switching back to the ones Sony provides I suppose.

 

That 10.10 is crap is no secret But 10.2 (the vaio official one) isn't much to be happy about either.

10.3 increases performance noticeably vs 10.2.

10.4 adds DXVA support for higher profile H.264.

I'd go for anything between 10.3 and 10.8


--

On another topic. I reinstalled Windows on my Vaio, this time without doin the recovery DVD thing but rather a clean install so windows gets to configure itself after my hardware.

Pros: Boot-time on my SSD was shortened by a noticable couple of seconds. It can simply start loading from the disk faster. Sometimes the "Starting windows" screen can't even finish its animation.

Cons: Driver hell. I found everything I needed on the US sony site (and I found it to be VERY important to install drivers for everything BEFORE I install Vaio control center because otherwise control center won't include all options!)

But I can swear the fan used to be less noisy before. That is bothersome. The CPU/GPU load can be almost 0 but you can hear the fan anyway.

The GPU temp reports 45ish C in idle. Anyone else with this temp?

 

Do you have a link to the one you suggest? =p I'd appreciate that. I went ont he drivers site but it's hard to find them.

 

I am running 10.10 and they are great, its the first time ive stuck with a driver since 10.5, since the 5xxx series ATI cards were given a considerable boost with the 10.5's which you can find reported everywhere in news posts when they were released, quite surprised you find 10.3's best.

 

10.10 made Mass Effect 2 so slow it was nearly unplayable or close to it.

I'll try 10.5.

 

ATI Mobility Radeon 10.5 Drivers Direct Links - Guru3D.com Forums

That's what I'm going to download.

 

Hm that link didn't work.

 

10.6 seems to be installing.

 

thanks hungryman for the advice, i purchased my eb from sonystyle uk they dont have the option to add a second hdd on purchase so am wondering if it will be possible to add the second ssd, does anyone know of a way of checking this?

regards

 

Can't wait to get my 14" EA series I ordered the following configuration:

Core i5 460M
14" 1600x900
4GB DDR3 RAM
500GB 5400RPM HDD
BD Writer
Radeon HD 5650

I went just for plain black. Some of the colours they offer are really hideous, but I suppose girls might like them. Now I will just need to get rid of my HP DV3507EA, which has served me really well...

Has anyone tried installing any Linux distro on these laptops? Did it remove the ability to boot into that quick web mode?

 

You only get the option to purchase a 2nd installed hdd with the EC series, since you got the EB (15") there is only 1 hdd bay, however you can install a 2nd hdd in the optical drive bay using an appropriate caddy.

 

Blue is a boy's color. So I picked that. Black just seemed too Darth Vader for me. Blue was electric and outrageous and different enough too ensure at least a few people will snicker at me. I agree that the other colors are more feminine. Except perhaps the Geico Gecco Green and maybe the dark purple.

 

You have to love the way Sony markets these colors - Coconut White is Smooth and Sophisticated, Lava Black is Dark and Mysterious, Hibiscus Pink is Happy and Bright... No matter which color you pick beyond gunmetal black, you've complimented yourself for $50. In my case, I'm "Daring and Unique".

 

10.10 were really awful for me too. I was getting really bad frame rates in most of the games. I reverted back to 10.9 for now.

 

^I'm a girl & chose the blue 1 so I disagree about it being a boy's colour lol, there are many girls out there who's fav colour is blue!!
Mind you, I would have gone for the purple one had it been out before I bought the blue one... Still waiting for those stupid keyboard skins to come out in the UK in fact - I'm not giving up hope!!!

 

Hehe, the last thing I would want would is people snickering at me and drawing attention to my £1000 investment

I'm sure though that my girlfriend would have loved the pink colour...

 

I would like to buy a VAIO EB soon. I'm going to start out with a 7200RPM HDD and wait another 6 or 7 months for SSDs to drop a little bit more in price.

My big concern is that I do not know how easy or difficult it will be to swap out the HDD for a SSD. I know on some laptops its a simple swap while on others you have to take things apart.

Can you guys give me some pointers/tips. Thanks.

 

linky

Take a look at the right side of the page where most of the pictures are. Seems to be pretty straightforward.

 

Thanks for the quick response! I'm going to take a look at this now.

Additional Question*

I've never removed a HDD from a laptop. I'm not sure what to look for. What indicates that this process is straight forward? Thanks again for your patience as I am new to this.

 

Try youtube searching "remove hard drive from laptop" and watch a few videos. It won't be exactly like yours but you'll see what a hard drive is and how laptops tend to be layed out.

 

So 10.6 really slowed me down as well... I'll try 10.3... but honestly this is the last try before I go back to 10.2 lol

 

Maybe I'm doing something wrong but 10.3 was just as slow. I don't see why I get such poor results...

 

Apparently I've been installing them incorrectly. I didn't wipe my drivers first. On 10.4 and it's running very well. I'll probably try newer ones.

 

No. It was 10.3 which was the performance patch. 10.5 was really nothing notable other than improved loading times for BF:BC2

articles about 10.5:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/amd-rolls-out-new-ati-catalyst-105-drivers/8420
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/3311/ati_catalyst_10_5_windows_7_driver_analysis/index.html
http://www.downloadatoz.com/driver/...gaming-performance-analysis-on-windows-7.html

See? Nothing in 10.5 to be excited about except for if you play bad company 2 of course.

 

It's very easy, don't worry about it. It's just a matter of unscrewing a few screw, sliding the old HDD out, sliding a new one back in, and screwing up again. Well, it's pretty much impossible to screw up, but you get the idea.

 

So I deleted my CCCenter when I installed the new drivers... any way to get it back without going back to 10.2?

 

Anyone know if quad cores are compatible with our laptops? EC.

 

I'm running 10.10. Now that I've properly installed them they're working fine.

 

Please do test out my problem then.

Go open catalyst control center, go to desktop and displays, look closely at the lightblue to blue gradient (this is just an example of a picture that needs 24/32 bit color depth to look good). Close the laptop lid, reopen (provided you have turned off the auto-standby on lid closement). See if color depth has become bad when looking at the gradient again.

 

Just did this, image was the same as before closing the lid, completely smooth transition between colours, using 10.10 drivers.

 

DAMNIT. WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE WITH THIS CRAP!? RAAAWR!

I even found a sony power management update that was supposed to fix my problem, directed at the vaio EB. But it only fixed so that the desktop didn't turn 16 bit. All third party applications still got ruined colors.

But you do have it set so that it doesn't go on stand-by when closing the lid, right?

 

Dear Vaio E owners -
Sony has an offer in the UK where you can upgrade your sony with a free blue Ray writer. I'm interested in running VMware workstation on the VPCEC3S0E.

Would you know if the Sony VPCEC3S0E has the intel VT enabled, or whether you can enable VT in the BIOS ?

thanks in advance,
Morgan

 

I would do this but I uninstalled the CCC and it's become impossible to reinstall >.< lol

Did you wipe your drivers after you uninstalled them before installing 10.10?

Here's how I installed:
Device Manager --> Uninstall Graphics Drivers
Reboot into safe mode
Run Driver Cleaner on ATI
Reboot into normal mode --> Insteall 10.10

 

VMware doesn't need VT to run, VT is only for windows virtualization via Microsoft's own software. But yes, VT is autodisabled in the bios and you can change that if you like (no point unless you want to run "XP Mode")