Sony CW i3/i5/i7 Official Owners Thread

i want to know whether i can change 5400 to 7200 onot. sdd is too much for me now. i knew theres ppl removing the dvd rom to put the sdd. if i just change the hdd to another 7200 hdd isit easier?

 

if you buy the right size 2.5" it should be PnP, but some people have said its not worth it really to upgrade from 5400 to 7200 between a little loader and more power. dont really get that much of a performance boost unless you are always copying files.
I'm personally waiting till a 256 or 512GB SSD gets reasonable price

 

I just got the new 330GT drivers 2 days ago and re ran 3DMark and got a score of 6140, so basically the same as stock, havent noticed any differences. I need to test out if they work better with OCing, since before when I would OC and the use the HDMI out to my 1080P LCD it would reboot my computer and put everything back to stock....

 

Thank you for the info. Im really considering the Sony vaio Cw or E and now the Asus N82. I was just wonering how much of a diference is the price? for the N82? thanks alot mate

 

Anyone able to customise a CW on the SonyStyle UK website? Seems to say that every configuration is unavailable... have they discontinued it?

 

It just says Out of stock.

 

Yeah, but for absolutely everything. Yesterday I could at least configure a Pink and Yellow one. Today: nothing!

 

Yep, I rang SonyStyle and the guy told me it's end of line and they're just using up the parts that are left. The replacement is the E series 14", due out in a few weeks but it only has an ATI 5145 GPU. It's actually a downgrade but yet the same price, what a croc.

 

Yeah, I just cancelled a Lenovo and a Dell order so I could get the CW, just in time for it to disappear. Need the 1600x900/GT330M version as there's nothing comparable out there it seems...

 

tried out almost all the demanding demo games available in steam, cw26 had reached its limit. =( cant play ultra/high in dirt2, dawn of war, total war, just cause 2 and RUSE. all below 20 fps in 625-1325-1090 im guessing its CPU bonded because RUSE, JC 2 and DoW these large map games can only get around 15 at HIGH. while small maps like batman played FREAKING WELL AND SWEET!

 

Are you absolutely sure about that? I was told that all the mobile i series CPUs are soldered in. Because if what you say is true, and it applies to the E series as well, I think that solves my problem (no 1080 screen option on the USA CTOs; and the only ready-made E with a hires screen, the VPCEB17FX, comes only with an i3).

 

Go back to page 110 at the bottom and look at ps2cho pictures of the internals and it looks like the CPU is removable.

 

Hey everyone.... Last night my CW27FX/L GPU kicked the bucket. Was tooling around with PhotoShop and *poof* freezup city. Forced reboot, then got a BSoD and memory dump, citing nvlddmkm.sys (nVidia driver) was to blame.

Hmmm.... So I successfully rebooted into Safe Mode, killed the 8.16.11.8783 video driver, was able to boot into Windows normally and grab the updated 8.16.11.8867 driver. Meanwhile, the old driver decided to auto-reinstall itself (grrr!) So after many reboots, uninstalls, BSoDs, etc., got the updated driver installed. Still BSoD'd booting into normal mode!!!

Backed-up all my data to external drive, just for S&G's, tried a full restore...... Guess what? Restore got to the 1st reboot, annnnnnnnnd! More BSoD's / dumps on boot (still nvlddmkm.sys). So, my only conclusion -- bad GPU; since the possibility of a software / driver / registry glitch was ruled out going 100% back-to-factory.

Just a heads-up, in case anyone else has one die.

 

how the hell was sony voted #1 laptop manufacturer in some publisher a few months back with all the problems they've had

 

How long have you had your laptop before it died and also did you do any OCing of the GPU? if so how long have you had the OCing going for? Thanks

 

I don't think you can conclude the OC was the cause. It's like saying every engine from a manufacturer is exactly the same. No engine is the same. Some will have slighter better mpg, some will have a little more power. A handful out of the production will have catastrophic failure and others will go on for 250k+ miles.

It's just the way it is. Overclocking has stood the test of time and hardware. I would not be discouraged I sure haven't as I have been overclocking a long time now. Cores are tough cookies.

I have only ever damaged one CPU from overclocking....Ahh the days....AMD Duron 900MHz. Stock voltage was 1.5v IIRC...I pinmodded her to 2.1v and ran at 1300MHz on air @ 80c load. Back then on the 180nm process that was suicide, especially on air. Hell even those doing dry ice would be cautious above 2.1v!! It ran for a long week before no longer booted up at anything under 1.8v for stock 900MHz

 

31 days, no OC, ever. Although, I certainly thought about it. Factory load, too. Dunno.....

In my research, I found people had similar problems with Pista 64 versions, and nVidia 8-series chipsets. Some people concluded it's a hardware problem, some say software. My conclusion -- perhaps both, after reading this. Cliffs notes: throw a big chunk of data at the GPU, it stops reporting to the OS....OS and drivers freak out, then run the GPU into thermal overload, then death (just a theory from what I read). The only definite fix others posted that worked: clean OS load, new GPU.

 

I'm only worried about OCing the GPU mem not the core too much and having that failing.

 

Anyone would like to confirm which one is correct?

Thanks in advance!

 

Hey all.!
I am getting ready to buy a Vaio model VPCCW22FX . The one I am looking at has the Nvidia 330, but still says 1366x768 resolution screen. No BlueRay. Is this correct Sony's web site gave me the impression that the Nvidia 330 machines had the higher res screen.
Also the site I am buying from sells something called "Sony VAIO PCGA2SYLPE 2YR Extended Depot Warranty" . It is 49.99 . Anyone familiar with this I usually dont buy extended warranties but this seems cheap for 50 bucks and appears to be from sony not a third party??
I like the White, but this site is selling the Red model 40 dollars less so probs going to get the Red unless they drop the price when I call them..
Thanks for tips..

 

Hi - new to the forum... bought a Sony Vaio CW FX27 about a week ago -loved the specs and love the laptop even more!! This is a performer.

However, when I shutdown the laptop last night it had some 58 percent battery remaining. Firing it up this morning, it had less than 10 percent. I did a "Shutdown" and not a sleep or hibernate.

Then, I read on Newegg that there is a ??known?? battery drainage issue with this model? Anyone care to add or help?

 

There are alot of threads about this and there is a thread specific to the cw here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=465569

I posted my cw problem experience there. For me it was more that the cw was reporting the wrong battery level than an actual drain issue. I shutdown with 53% remaining and started back up next day to 13% yet I was able to run my laptop for over an hour without shutdown and without the meter moving from 13%.

Hope that helps.

 

Almost just bought one with Sony Style they offered me some discounts but apparently their cto machines you cannot get the nvidia 330...

 

Ordered from Compusa.com .. 12.5% Bing cashback makes it $761. A few compromises.. i3 not i5 / nvidia 330 but 1380 screen / 500gb hd but 5400rpm / Red was 30 dollars cheaper than other colors for some reason.. But I think a pretty good price, free shipping no tax. Sony Style was willing to discount price, but they couldnt get me the 330 video. i decided I'd rather go i3+nvidia 330 instead of i5 and nvidia 310. Still cheaper the way I got it. Time will tell! Seems very loaded to me only thing missing that I swore Id get in my next laptop is a backlit keyboard! New Dell Vostro 3400 looked real nice but couldnt match up for this price.. My Averatec 2370 finally bit the dust this afternoon cant wait any longer!

 

Personally I would have preferred the i3 to the i5, but the only way I could get white, 330m and 1600x900 was to get the i5.

 

Sent back my HP DM3 last week. Custom Build with the 9300 CPU too, but the touchpad was garbage. Props to HP for 100% refund at 21 days.

Ordered my CW/I3 from Amazon today, should be here in 2 days. Free shipping and no tax - which in Kalifornia (thanks to our Governator) is almost 10% so I'm happy!

 

Nivida just came out with their own (updated 197.16) drivers. You can download them from Nvidia's website.

Anybody having issues installing them? It's telling me I don't have any compatible hardware.

I have the i5/330m/bluray Sony CW.

 

LAME

From:
http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t164627.html

 

Shipped and on its way!! Ok just realized, as loaded as this thing is, there is no esata port?? Wow. So, since I have prime I went to amazon and ordered an expresscard esata port. Anyone use one with this pc? I am going to use it right away to copy my old laptop drive data to the sony.

 

Can anyone tell me what the max memory is on the i5 CW? 4GB? 6? 8?


thanks.

 

8Gigs, FTW!

 

Great. Thank you.

 

4GB is more than enough for most users.

 

I thought I would be fine with 4GB but just having aim, yahoo, msn, skype open at all times. and now with just this window open for firefox I'm using 47% of my 4GB, once I open zune for music or start looking at youtube. I tend to start getting towards the 70-80% mark of Ram usage.
I can't wait till that new samsung ram comes out that is suppose to use 40% less power and should be cheaper. Not ready to drop $400 on 8GB yet and I don't think it is worth upgrading to only 6GB.

 

Did you try rebooting your laptop then re-open all those apps? Sometimes memory usage get high when you refreshed the same page for multiple times on FF.

80% = 700+ MB free

 

Holy crap! i think my hard drive in my vpccw22 just died.

When I turn on my laptop it says "operating system not found". I can't boot into the factory partition and when trying to install via CD, the only hard drive recognized had 0 gb.

I can't believe this happened!! I bought this thing about a month ago and the hard drive already died?!? The only thing I did since I bought it was just a clean install via partition (i.e. cancelling sony vaio program when it booted into windows first time). Did any else experience anything like this???

I'm gonna call customer service to see if sony will replace the hard drive. Has anyone else dealt with replacing/repairing their CW's? Any words of advice?? Any suggestions other than calling sony customer service??

Thanks in advance guys.

 

buy a 7200rpm hdd and plug it in XD

or just buy a 512g sdd and FTW

 

Yeah on my old notebook with XP, Firefox would use an insane amount of RAM when I had loads of tabs open and went into standby/sleep. Closing Firefox or rebooting solves the problem. You should not need more than 4GB for doing everyday tasks like web browsing and organising music files.

 

@yndrg

If you read this whole thread there was only one who reported the same problem but it was with CW27.

Let me find that post for you

Update:

** Or you can just ask for a replacement since its just a month old.

 

I just bought a HG Duo memory stick to use as a dedicated readyboost drive. However it has uncovered a problem with the memory stick drive on the CW. If I go into sleep mode the drive will show up but not be accessible the next time I start windows. Basically this send the computer into a whirlwind which requires a manual power off with the power button.

I've tried re-installing the latest drivers with no avail. I have a feeling this is a driver problem with the memory stick reader. Can anyone else test this to see what happens on your notebook with readyboost setup on the memory stick reader when you enter and wake from sleep mode??


Thanks...

Edit: BTW I have the CW21fx with stock install of windows 7 x64. I did strip off the un-needed sony crapware. And the readyboost works perfect on a fresh startup. So for now I am stuck with shutdown/restart.

 

hmm i had my first BSOD yesterday with error from win32k.sys.
Do you guys know what it is? I was shutting down computer and suddenly blue screen... and i did nothing major before that... no game no under/overclocking whatsoever.

 

If your using 47% of your ram with just one firefox window open I think you need to look at your install. Maybe get rid of some junkware on there and cleanup your startup processes.

 

Whoever wants to clean up and reduce the idle RAM usage, just run some registry checker and get stuff fixed and cutdown on the startup things......i used Ccleaner and my idle ram usage is just 28%. Now wiht music plaer on and tabs in Opera along with msngr running its jst giving me 38% usage.......it'll improve a bit on the startup times too.......

 

I ran Vaio Care, and now with AIM, yahoo, MSN, SKYPE, Microsoft security essentials and just this window open in firefox I'm at 40% usage. I have used RevoUninstaller and got ride of most of the sony bloatware, that I dont use. When I first got the laptop. I have currently 86 Processes running.

 

Just a note on battery drain:

I think it may simply be a reading error. I lost 28% of my battery due to drain however the actual runtime of my laptop was as it should have been - I still had that 28%.

 

Yep. It was confirmed by ckonbman on post #1972

Thanks for posting anyways.

 

Hi all, anyone knows if the Intel i7-920XM (not the i7-620M) is compatible with the Sony CW27?

 

That chip probably costs more than the laptop! But would be great if it fits make a nice easy upgrade in a year or so...

 

I'm more concerned if the i7-920XM will fit/run smoothly on the CW27

My i7-620M will be dispatched today, running out of time to cancel it

 

sorry wrong post