Sony Vaio Z i5/i7 Official Owners Thread

Dear Jonathan,



This is to advise you that production on your customized VAIO computer has begun.


To track production status or to check the status of other items on this order, please go to My Account and select Order Information.

Estimated Shipped Date: 20100322

^ ?!!?!?!??!?! March?!

EDIT: Oh, nevermind, we are in March. XD

 

In the US SonyStyle still can't definitively say that they're going to have any pre-order stock of the VPCZ11FHX/XQ on the 19th. I had them check the warehouse and they still have no estimated receive date on their side.

Stefan

 

I have one friend who uses Photoshop as part of his career and travels a lot. Of course, with all the camera equipment to carry around, laptop weight is a factor. It seems that the Vaio Z is an excellent candidate, but is there an alternative laptop to the Vaio Z for this particular scenario?

 

I pre-ordered the VPCZ11FHX/XQ on 2/8 and the ship date has said 2/9/10 ever since. I called SonyStyle today and they had NO new information on when it would ship.....they told me that if I ordered one today, it would ship on 3/31, but I already new that from the website.....

 

Finally got my Internet connection working on the Z. Ran the 3Dmarks and got 6275, with the i7 620 CPU and 6 Gb RAM.

 

Ok heres my very quick intial impressions of the Z
"Its the Dogs Bollocks"

I have i7, 256 Qaud Raid disk, 8GB

Windows Vista Ratings ( on High Performance )
Processor : 6.9
Memory: 6.9
Graphics : 6.3
Gaming Graphics: 6.3
Primary Disk: 7.9 ( wow)
Minor Gripes
Loads of CrapWare - Norton, McAcfee, Ebay, Orange
Battery is loose ( I have the extended batttery )

I have Created the Recovery CD's and just to be sure I also used Acronis to back up to an external hd. Acronis recognised the drive as 1 drive.

Mappy

 

Nice! What screen do you have and what are your impressions?

 

Man I wish the 256gb ssd configuration in the U.S and Canada are quad raid instead of dual raid... congratulations on the new computer tho

 

Just to give you an idea of how fast this Z is
Here are the ratings against my m15x

m15x
(2 year old) which has a Win7 Ultimate, X9000 processor, 9800GTM,8GB and Intel X25-M 160GB (with trim)

Vaio Z
Win7 Ultimate, i7 620, 330M, 256 Qaud, 1920x1080
Z m15x
Processor : 6.9 6.4
Memory: 6.9 6.4
Graphics : 6.3 6.7
Gaming Graphics: 6.3 6.7
Primary Disk: 7.9 ( wow) 7.1

Overall 6.3 6.4

All in a small and sturdy package - the m15x was a heavy monster

The screen is really good, Coming from the m15x which is well known
for numerous build qaulity problems (just search these formums for Mappy and you'll see the issues I've had) the sony seems solid and robust.

Mappy

 

They should be Qaud Raid - Here in the UK on the CTO page the text is

256 GB Ultra SATA Flash SSD

or

256 GB Ultra SATA Flash SSD [ + £ 280.0]
(2 x 128 GB) Solid State Drive

Only on the advertising is Qaud mentioned - I would confirm with the sales rep first though!


The Intel Storage Manager program that comes with the setup shows
4 61gb drives

Mappy

 

Does anyone know what is the speed comparison of the i5 and i7 model of Z?

 

I get 6.4 on graphics and gaming graphics.

 

yea apparently it's different in the north american CTOs. It's listed as 256x1 and there already has been at least two people who said their 256gb configuration was only dual raid.

 

Oh no!

Right refund time, clearly this machine is defective

 

Do you have any idea as to when the refresh is comming?
Because then again ... buying such a laptop, and getting the refresh in 1 month after buying it .... is well crap >.<

Wel ... come to think of it. I think the refresh will come somewhere in the summer? that should be about right I guess ...

 

The problem isn't Acronis not recognizing the drive when you back up -- the problem is when you need to restore.
Try booting from your Acronis-made disaster recovery image and see what Acronis says then.

Remember, a backup is only useful if you can actually restore from it.

 

Surely when I go to restore, Acronis will again see a single drive and restore to where everything was before?

Sorry if thats a bit n00b but Im not too hot on all this RAID business

What about the restore disks that I made with the Sony program - surely they will work?

 

Acronis' rescue environment isn't a full blown Windows, but a limited environment without Intel Software Raid drivers. When you boot it, it won't see your RAID as a single drive, but as individual drives.
According to one user here, you can get it to work by buying an expanded version of Acronis, and then add the drivers yourself -- before making the actual backup.

Yes, Sony's backup should work, unless there's something wrong with the DVDs. Since the backup process doesn't verify, there's no way to know until you restore. For my older Z, the restore image failed on the second disk when restoring (luckily, I had a raw disk dump done from Linux on a network drive, so I could recover that way). Others have reported similar issues.

Again, an untested backup is little better than no backup at all.

 

That's really interesting. I got a 5.9 on my "Graphics" score and a 6.4 on my "Gaming graphics" score.

Have you made any adjustments in any part of the graphics pipeline???

 

Nope, just put the power plan into high performance mode

 

Question for VPCZ1 users. Do both GPUs always show under device manager? If not, if you uninstall the Hybrid Graphics drivers and install standard Intel Graphics drivers does a second video device (the nvidia one) still show up under device manager?

Seems to me getting Optimus to work on the VPCZ1 shouldn't be that difficult.

 

Is the switch above the keyboard on Speed?

 

Yeah, I had forgotten that I ran this straight out of the box. I'm in high power mode now (and also set the refresh rate to 40?) and am now getting 6.3.

 

The switch was in auto mode and the power plan was high performance

 

@Mappy
What games do u have?

 

I would recommend running it with the switch on Speed if you are testing for performance. I doubt Auto switches to the Nvidia GPU for a simple windows benchmark.

 

If new Z is ruining on AC power then auto mod will switch to speed mode. So since he was probably ruining test on AC power it was actually speed mode.

To tell you the truth only big reason I am missing optimums on new Z is because I can't update GPU drivers just by visiting NVIDA site. Otherwise, simple logic of the auto switch on the new Z is just like I would like optimus to work (I suppose you can set simple profile like that with optimus drivers).

 

Does anyone use the battery care feature? which seems to limit the charge to 80%... is this good to use during our first few times of battery charge?

 

Real world comparo:

Desktop system recap:

Asus P6T Deluxe
i7-920
12 GB RAM
3 x 750GB 7200 RPM RAID 0

Recap of Z:

i7-620M
8 GB RAM
4 x 128GB Quad SSD RAID 0

On my Visual Studio app the desktop machine takes about 50 seconds to build.

On the Z: 13.5 seconds.

'nuff said.

 

Good news rmcx. I suppose reason for this are SSDs. During building process VS is more writing files than using processor power.

 

Very cool.

I wonder how that would compare to an i5 dual raid Z (can you send me your source code so we can find out? )

 

Looks like the VPCZ117GG is back in stock on the Sony Style HK site now, get 'em while they're hot!

I'm going to ask my mate in HK when he is coming to Japan next and see if I can work something out!

EDIT: Strange, its not listed as being out of stock but it still won't let you add it to the basket!

 

Wow; didn't realize the Z got such a high 3D Mark.

Sony VAIO Z (2.53GHz Core i5, NVIDIA GT 330M) 3D Mark 6193 Battery life 4:25

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/23/alienware-m11x-review/

 

Looks like something going on with the Z U.S. web page. The prices are crossed out and the new prices appear to be the same. Also none of the laptops show pre-order any more.

 

They moved the estimated shipping date of the CTO to 3/30 now. I really need to make up my mind before it gets moved to April

 

How does the Bing 5% work

That may mean that SonyStyle Stores will have those preconfig. model available in store and in stock.

For those with Silver, have any of you verified if that color is milled with carbon? Or is it magnesium?

 

Hope so!
I'm thinking 256 GB since that would be the cheapest Premium Carbon Fiber.
Don't wanna pay for Verizon but whatever. They may drop their $60/ month fee to match the iPad's $29/month eventually...a chance? If not I have my trusty iPhone to tether wirelessly.
Since they are claiming a ship date exactly 6 days from now perhaps that will be the day they are released in stores.

 

Actually Optimus is quite a bit better than the Hybrid Graphics/Switchable Graphics. The initial difference is not really clear when hearing about it. There is a video showcasing the differences between switchable graphics (hybrid graphics) and optimus on youtube. But yes the fact that Nvidia will be supporting optimus basically means that any new drivers that they release should be able to be modded and used like any other Nvidia notebook graphics drivers.

It seems like the i5/i7 Vaio Zs should be able to run optimus if setup properly.

 

Optimus is a different architecture then the dual graphics in the Z. In the Optimus pipeline, rendering is always handled by the integrated gpu, even though graphic processing switches dynamically between the discrete and integrated GPUs. I don't believe the Z will ever be able to support an optimus driver, as the underlining display pipeline doesn't match.

However, as cool as Optimus seems, I think there are some real downsides to it vs the Z approach.

There are times where battery life will be more important than graphics performance, and on the Z it will be very easy to override the auto mode and always use the integrated GPU (and remember, on the new Z, even the integrated GPU doesn't suck, it is faster than the discrete mode in the old Z). It is not clear to me that optimus is easy to override -- launch the wrong app and the discrete gpu will take over perhaps without you even knowing it.

I think the Z solution, while not quite as "magical" as optimus, will work just fine and give me the most control over the performance vs battery decisions.

 

I have two issues maybe someone can help me out on.

1. When I run the Verizon utility, it can't get through initializing the hardware.

2. When I run "Vaio Update", it says "Can't acquire configuration settings for Vaio update"

I have the fresh start option. Makes me wonder whether I have to maybe install something for these to work correctly.

Any ideas? Anyone else have this issue?

 

No, the discrete GPU does the rendering when it's enabled. After a frame is complete, it is sent directly to memory over the PCIe bus by the Optimus Copy Engine; the only thing the IGP does is send the data to the screen. All of this is entirely possible on the new Z.

Optimus is plenty customizable; see here.

 

Download and use VLC player for .MKV files and you should be able to hear sound after that.

Cheers.

 

@Mappy: If you get the time, I think a few of us would be interested to know how long the extended battery lasts with that i7...

Cheers.

 

7 hours with i5, above average lights and tons of game installs.

I am currently installing my huge game collection in my shin Z. Should have around a hundred titles this week end.

I will post results of many titles.

So far I am impressed by its performance. I improved my Fraps score over my LG P310.

Anyway, when it will be ready, I'll post all of this, maybe in a new thread...

 

I bought the VAIO Z, poverty model, with the Core i5 and HDD about a week ago. Love it.

I was actually debating between the Z, TT and the X but just decided to buy the Z to replace my MacBook and buy a X for on the go browsing.

Anyone debating between the TT and the Z- get the Z. Pretty much the same price/weight but far more powerful.

Between the TT and the X... harder decision but get the X. The lighter weight is (for me) more useful than the dual core proc and DVD drive. After all a lappie of this size would mainly be used to watch videos (MP4 and avi files rather than DVDs) and to browse the web- not for gaming (well the 4500MHD on the TT isn't going to be 'gaming' all that much) and autoCAD. At least that's my reasoning.

Just my 2c... but if you're looking for a netbook-sized with laptop-specs the TT is for you. I'd rather have the lighter weight esp. since I'll be carrying it around to the office and restaurants.

 

As a point of comparison:
On i5-540, 1600x900, 256GB: I get about 4h in auto mode, surfin the web (mostly just trying to keep up with this thread)
Keyboard backlight was on about half that time. LCD Brightness about half way up (reasonably bright)

Sounds like the big battery would definitely be good on long trips.

 

Yes it is nice elegant solution and it will switch to GPU depending on application. What I am trying to say is that switching on the fly depending on application, beside cool effect it's not practical. If I am for example on the battery I don't want optimums to automatically switch based on any application (starting youtube video for example). If on battery I want to be always in stamina mode and if necessary I want to switch manually. On AC power usually I want Z to be always in speed mode. So as you can see current Z auto switch is covering my needs.

As I said I know you can probably set this behavior by using profiles where you can even manually set application that will use GPU. However I am hoping to be able to set profile with something like this: don't switch for any application just let me switch it manually .

That said of course optimus is the way to go. From hardware point of view you don't need any complex settings with multiplexer like in new Z. As far as I understand you only need Optimus Copy Engine and it is already part of new GPUs like 330m. Only thing that worries me about optimus solution is if having that setup is consuming more battery power then solution with multiplexer like in new Z.

From user perspective most important benefit is getting drivers from NVIDA and no need to wait on Sony or anybody else for it.

 

Well, in this review Optimus got pretty much the same battery life (slightly longer in fact) as a system using only IGP for Youtube browsing and such. Sure, that wouldn't quite be the case with the 330M rather than the 310M, but you also have to consider that in a situation like this the GPU would take load off the CPU, and hence the difference in power consumption wouldn't be quite so large.

I also think it's highly doubtful that Optimus wouldn't have manual settings. Indeed, the context menu option is entirely adequate.

 

Hi People

1) USA SonyStyle SSD 256GB is Quad or not ?
1) USA SonyStyle SSD 128GB is Dual or not ?

Thank you.

 

Looks like no one has mentioned any problems with win7.
My core i5 with hdd model quite frequently has problem with win7 shutdown (hangs) and hibernating (hangs). Anyone else experience this?