Sony Vaio Z i5/i7 (VPCZ1) Official Owners Thread Part 2

Thanks To confirm: in normal Windows (not game), you couldn't use more than two screens, now you can (?). That would be useful for placing my VMed-Ubuntu screen. It'll be interesting to see how many other restrictions the latest driver removed.

Btw, you're not getting any negative side-effects are you? E.g. more heat and fan speed?

 

No, not quite.

Before the update I had the same multi-monitor setup running OK for everyday use. (That's my home setup. In my office I have 3 external USB monitors). i.e. I have been able to use 3 and 4 monitor setups since the beginning.

What's changed is that I couldn't run FSX on a multi-monitor setup and now I can.

 

Hey:

DELETE This Key from the Registry, but take a Backup (EXPORT) before you delete it, This will fix your 2 seconds delay.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\igfxcui

Will

 

I fix it myself the hinge "clicking"... Problem is now gone but definitely?
Someone know if the problem will recur?

 

Another question: If not working on battery and having the hybrid graphic set to Auto it keeps using the speed mode and never changes. Is that normal and can I change that behaviour so that speed mode is really only used when necessary?

 

You are connecting to your monitor with HDMI, correct? Only the nVidia graphics (Speed mode) can access the HDMI. In Auto mode, if an HDMI monitor is detected, the hybrid graphics will continue to use the nVidia hardware.

 

Correct.

10c

 

Can you guys shed some light on Installing the newer nVidia drivers? I tried the install, but it stalls, and I never succeed in updating it, are there any standard procedures before the upgrade? like Uninstalling the old one, and setting the mode switch to SPEED?

Any improvements noticed as well?

 

I kept the switch on auto mode, then uninstalled the Nvidia driver first which seemed to uninstall the Intel driver as well. I then tried installing the new driver before rebooting, the reason i took this approach is because i noticed in the past the computer will try to automatically reinstall the previous drivers on reboot. but after the computer booted nothing was installed and both video cards were still driver less. so i then installed the new drivers and on the second reboot they were installed which was confirmed in control panel so in short i would 1. uninstall 2. reboot 3. install new drivers in auto mode and it should work.

 

I think the sony support site for the VPCZ1390X wants you to have the Nvidia card active (so either auto & plugged in or on speed mode). The driver from that site however kept giving me an error saying that i got a 32-bit installer and it cant install the new one because it's a 64-bit installer or something along those lines... then it'd tell me to reboot, but i'd still have the old drivers installed. So after rebooting twice and still having old drivers, i just downloaded the package from the Beta Drivers Thread and installed that. I'm not sure if there's a performance boost though...

 

No external Monitor in use. It's simply the notebooks display.

 

OK, first real bother since i got the laptop. My computer blue screened yesterday. After restarting it, the raid setup reported one of my drives had failed. After crying for about half an hour, i resorted to deleting the setup, formatting and recreating. But i didnt, instead, i ignored and after a windows disk integrity check, it restarted again and showed the same screen. After another half over of lamenting it went on to start the computer and ... well ... that was it. It worked like normal. Disk speed tests are same as before. The Intel Raid Utility however still marks it as a failed drive. There is an option to verify the drive but you will have to convince me to as it is working well still and dont want to mess that up.

 

get Sony to replace that ASAP, you gonna have constant problems with it.

 

Hello everyone. I have a brand new SONY VAIO Z12X9E/X for sale. It's the i5/520M model, 128Gb SSD, 6Gb RAM, 1600X900 screen, WWAN, GPS, Premium Carbon and intact (it's still in the box )! The retail price is 2300 Euro. I'll leave the selling price open, but if anyone is interested, please make a serious offer and pm it to me. Payment can be done through PayPal, or direct bank transfer. Thanks in advance, sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but didn't find a dedicated selling area.

 

NBR Marketplace

 

ok thanks Qwaarjet, sorry about the above post...

 

just updated to the latest nvidia driver .9024 and all is sweet (from the z13 download page)
does anyone one know of any others that can be or should be updated from the z13 page.

 

If you use the Fingerprint system you can update that.

 

I have a VPCZ1290X with the regular screen.
What is the benefit/risk of the latest nvidia driver .9024?
thanks.

 

Its fairly new so i don't think anyone has complaints as of yet

 

A while back i posted that my Z12 wouldn't resume from sleep without black screening forcing me to shut down and giving me the "display driver stopped responding and has recovered" kernal mode error on rebooting. After trial and error to reproduce this and see what was the cause i realized it begins when i use EasyBCD to dual boot WinXP. At first i thought it was the program but then realized after that apparently the video drivers do not like going from one operating system to the other, guess it has to do with Win7 using hybrid vs. WinXP not doing so. Has anyone else had any success dual-booting OS's with this laptop less the video driver instabilities?

 

If you do that, prolly good idea to get the latest driver package from the Upek's site too

 

I noticd that after I updated the wifi drivers a week or two ago, my wireless signal has decreased. I had no problems playing games downstairs before but I did have the problem where the wifi would just intermittently turn off and i would have to restart the lappy regardless of flipping the wifi switch. Now the intermittent turning off is gone but there is some intermittent lag

 

Have any of you compared the real application of having an i7 720QM (true quad core vs the i7-620M (dual core)? the reason I ask is I bought a Dell Latitude e6510 off their outlet with a 25% OFF coupon (paid $742 +tax) and it came with a i720QM, 4GB of 1333MhzRAM, a nVidia 310 video card (only 512MB of video memory) and a Full HD 1920 x 1080 screen. Also has the backlit keyboard. yes the HDD is only 7200RPM, not an SSD, I am SERIOUSLY thinking of returning it to by a 1290 or 1390, only because this thing is heavy. I am not a gamer, but do a lot of pretty heavy duty photo editing (Lightroom 3.0 and photoshop). its a tuff call since this was such a great deal...

 

IMO there is no logic reason to spend extra $100 on a i7 core which is basically extra 1mb cache and faster clock speed unless my the work I perform on the laptop requires or can take serious advantage. i5/i7m are same cores otherwise

 

Corrado - I agree when talking about a dual core, like the i7 620M, but when going to a real i7 with a quad core like the 720QM and up, maybe it is worth more money. I am not sure what applications will be (and already are) able to take advantage of the quad core, but I suspect most will very soon.

 

And I agree with you. Im sorry I was referring to the Z series selection between i5M and i7M. They are the same cores. but when you jump to i7QM there is a leap in performance and I DO recommend it in term for long term investment because quad cores will be supports by future OS and/or apps. It's matter of time only :]

 

Aren't the mobile Quad Cores also heavily downlocked, like 1.6 ghz per core? I'll take two cores at 2.5+ ghz tyvm.

 

^bingo. i7 for mobile isn't there yet.

 

Assuming you are fully utilizing them, 4x 1.6gz quad cores would thrash a dual core 2.5gz setup.

 

charts please.

 

benchmarks from notebookcheck attached. the i7 620m is faster in most benchmarks than the 720qm.

 

Through data, it is shown that 720QM is is 91% more efficient, benchmark breathtaking than i720M. Thank you for clarifying.

 

What do you mean by 91% more efficient?

The normal use of that term would be to say that it uses 91% less energy to do the same calculation. Since I don't believe THAT is what you are trying to say, you must be trying to imply something else entirely.

 

For clarification, i7QM beats i7M in nearly all test except one.

 

Am I looking at this wrong or did you link the wrong image because that chart shows the quad core ahead of the dual core in all but two benchs?

 

I believe in a lot of those, such as SuperPi, the lower the number is the better the performance is.

 

soujisama, good to read that right now, because the same thing happened to me yesterday (and it even happened 3 months ago!!) and your post gave me hope to maybe recover some data, because my last image / backup is a few days old since i was traveling. how exactly did you perform the disk integrity check? with windows chdsk via commandline? or did you use any sony tool? thanks a lot for helping me out, i was just going to put the old image on it with a bad crumbling in my stomach about the huge loss of data - and YES, as it happened the 2nd time now i'll call sony tomorrow, they have to send me a new one. by the way, i've got the quad raid setup if this is important...
thanks!!

 

Of course!

But if you are utilizing only one or two cores, the MUCH higher clocked dual core setup wins.

Now the question is, which is the more common scenario for you.

 

Even fully utilizing all cores the 720QM isn't that much faster.

 

Once you boot into Win 7, open the Intel RST utility. From there (select the "Manage" tab), you can reset the drive back to "normal." Then click on the array, select "Advanced" and run a verify. This is a non-destructive verify. I would be surprised if the verify doesn't find any bad sectors.

If this happens after resetting the disk to normal, I would take it in to Sony and have them replace the drive.

 

Most current apps perform better on higher clocks than on more, lower clocked cores.

Current games for example seem to prefer higher clocks over more cores, even those with physics calculation will use the GPU/CUDA for those types of operations.

I'm not sure I trust the benchies on the previous page. Even if they are right, those are synthetic benchmarks that shows differences that you will never see in the real world.
I remember seeing many benchmarks with real world uses and apps PREFERING higher clockspeed over more core (especially lower clocked cores)

 

Here are some more benchmarks, not for these specific mobile CPUs but just a general comparison between dual and quad core desktop i5's. The difference here is the desktop quad core has pretty decent clocks compared to the notebook version, so any instance where the quad core leads by a large margin is going to be much less pronounced with the mobile version:

Bench - CPU - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

Feel free to link other benchmarks as well, it is interesting to to compare. But at this time it seems that unless you're doing a LOT of video encoding or running other highly optimized multithreaded applications, then dual core is still the way to go because of the higher clock speeds and better performance/price and performance/wattage ratios.

Not that you have a choice with the Vaio Z, since the i7's that are supported are still dual core.

 

Ahem....

Ok I installed the Z13's video driver on my Z11. The installation completed without issues BUT after I rebooted the temperature was definitely higher than before (69 versus 58-ish). This resulted in higher fan speed and hence noise.

Not only that, when I open Windows Photo Viewer and move the window, it's jerky. Like the graphics card has issues keeping up. Definitely, something is wrong. I had to do a system restore.

On a different note, the new Z13 driver didn't seem to update the GPU BIOS.

 

43-44 idle on NVIDIA here, I'm on 260.63.

 

So will the Z13 be released in the US are will they go straight to the Z14?

 

thanks a lot M3Rocket, but the problem is, since one SSD failed / jumped out of the stripe i can't boot windows... also tried a lot of stuff with "TestDisk", amazing little app, but the stripe set data seems to be corrupted... grrrr

 

does anybody know if it's possible to change the keyboard and buy it as a sparepart?

sony germany told me that I can order the z13 with us-layout on september 29.... but the timeline was wrong... and they do not have a clue when it's really possible...

the worst sales people I've ever talked to are the german sonystyle people ...

 

My Z12 came yesterday, increased DPI to 113% to make it readable comfortably.

Did anyone here made semi or full clean install of W7Pro? I have around 90 processes after boot (and after uninstalling and disabling some apps). But I still feel like the lappy can be a bit faster. I have 6GB ram and 31% is occupied, 128GB HDD and about 73GB free (i have only Office and Chrome installed) - well 108GB is empty HDD with hidden partition and around 15-20GB would be W7, so where are my 10-15GB?

 

Hi wolfman, yes you can get the keyboard as a spare part. Please PM me for exactly what you need.