Beta Graphics Drivers for VPC-Z

I stumbled across some beta graphics drivers for our VPCZ11/12's here. Supposed to fix the blank screen and youtube issues. Nvidia is version is 190.24 for those of you that care. Anyhow, if someone has a rapidshare/megaupload/etc. account please pm me the necessary details. Thanks.

 

1st the LCD brightness tweak, then you somehow find the part number to the Z12's mini-sata cable for our Z11's, and now you "stumble" upon beta drivers for our Z? you're by far my favorite member here beaups

 

Here ya go.. found it based on the version number you posted. I recompressed it using a non-sony self extracting exe. Nice find beaups.

Nvidia Version: 190.24
Intel Version: 2021

I am already tearing it apart to find out the nitty gritty.

I swear if this is the only thing setting that is needed to fix the issue across the board I am going to shoot myself:

Under commonBase this setting is included
HKR,,LidAlwaysOpen,%REG_DWORD%,1
Now to test this with newer drivers.

 

And Nautis swoops in and steals favorite member status from beaups!!

 

^hey now

 

No no.. I am just quick.. All cred goes to Beaups well to sony for finally doing something but beaups for spotting em. This has gotten me to upload a Hybrid Graphics 260.63 package a bit early but I want to see if that string fixes things across the board. Will be up in 20min.

 

just tested sony's beta's. Everthing works fine. Switched between speed/stamina a dozen times and everything worked as it should. Starcraft plays just fine as well. For me personally, I'd just like the blank screen after waking up the laptop to be fixed. I guess i'll see if it finally works tomorrow morning!

 

Z13 officially launches 9/26, wonder what drivers they'll ship with. At least we know Sony is working on things.

 

Does 190.24 support CUDA ?

 

Yeah I was waiting on em to see. Figured they might be the only chance of updated drivers for you lot. I have been hammering their servers nightly to see if they posted em yet.

They tend to pay attention only if there are serious bugs. While testing the new model they must have noticed the youtube bug among others.

If I read right these are unreleased betas from sony?!?

Yep Cuda 2.2.

 

So whats the installation procedure? Just uninstall the intel/nvdia driver and install this? or just install this?

 

i installed the beta's over existing drivers (i was using the lenovo ones) and it worked just fine.

 

thanks for the file... i realized that this is somehow not 19x.xx because i can't see the nvcontrolpanel2...

 

Great find beaups will be giving this a go now

 

Has 9/26 been confirmed?

 

Can you post a link to these drivers?

 

How am i supposed to give someone a rep point??

is there a special button??

 

Here's the link to Nautis' repackaging of them... http://nautisiandesigns.com/drivers/latest/EP0000226701.exe

 

Has anyone installed these driver?
what's new on this new beta driver?

thanks

 

for me, it fixes the black screen after waking up from hibernation when in speed mode.

it's also supposed to fix a youtube issue, not sure exactly bc i've never experienced it.

also, newer drivers are always better when it comes to newer games. The original stock drivers had some strange graphic glitches with BFBC2, you could force dx9 mode to remove the glitch, but with these newer drivers the tweak isn't required. I haven't benchmarked since I don't expect noticeable gains in performance, I just like that they fix bugs

 

I confirmed it for you, yes.

 

I guess I should wait until the official driver is available in sony website?

I actually want to try it out; I can just install it in case something goes wrong, right?

 

lol

/10 char

 

Beaups -
Great find, where did you ... stumble... upon it?
Tried it out, it seems that it's working ok for me, but I notice a higher battery consumption (as reported by Battery Bar). Can anoyone else confirm / refute this? Since I tend to use the laptop a lot on battery this is kinda important to me.

When do you guys reckon that the drivers will become official?

 

Im sorry but is this the global release date or just for a particular country?

Cheers

 

^US. It's the official launch date but I'm sure you'll see it show up online prior to that at various places (like over the next few days).

 

After a couple of false starts/bluescreens, they appear to have taken!

Thx.

 

Has anyone confirmed that this fixes the BSOD streaming video issues?

 

Testing it right now - few hours and still no crashes / issues... but I think it needs much more testing to be 100% sure that the issues are gone.

But, in any case, new VPC-Z graphics driver >and< from Sony (not Nautis ) - this is really an interesting thing.

 

shame they didnt use 196+ to support flash gpu decode.

 

LCD brightness tweak? I did a quick search and came up with nothing. What tweak is this?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/497093-how-fix-dim-screen-vpc-z.html

 

Got my first driver restart today It was during Firefox browsing (Firefox 4 beta, with hw. acceleration)

Still no crashes with YouTube playback, though...

 

^Hard to diagnose the culprit when you are using a beta browser and beta drivers

 

I have exactly the same problem with FoxIt reader, which is definitely not beta (and, the driver restarts also happen with original released drivers

The only thing that connects Firefox 4 and FoxIt reader in this regard is that they might be using DirectX for accelerated drawing. If hw. acceleration is switched off in Firefox - problem does not happen. FoxIt is harder case, as I don't think I could switch off usage of DirectX there.

If someone from Sony reads this, I would be definitely willing to run some debug/diagnostics tools if they could be provided

 

FYI, this is the same driver version that is shipping with the Z13 (at least the nvidia portion)

 

When uninstalling these does it kick to a black screen? I have gotten a couple reports of this happening with the 260.63 hybrid graphics set for the VPC series.

 

Nautis, I did not have any black screen problem when uninstalling either the 190.24's or 260.63's.

Unrelated but, I haven't been able to get my NVIDIA HD Audio Device to show up in Playback Devices (when connected to my HDCP-compatible HDTV via HDMI) with any driver, official or otherwise. Might you have any suggestions on what to try?

 

Thanks. Too bad my brightness is already set to 255 lol, though my FHD is pretty damn bright at 100%.

 

These drivers caused a BSOD and I wasn't able to restart back into Windows. I had to load last good configuration. I rolled back to the original drivers and all is good.

 

I just confirmed 190.24 are the official drivers for Z13. I got the windows XP nvidia driver which is already up for download and its 190.24 version.

 

^I told you guys that yesterday. Nobody listens to me

 

I was listening

 

So the official driver for Z13 will work for Z11 and Z12, right? since they are all sharing the same hardware?

 

Does this driver fix the youtube issue?

 

^It's "supposed to".

 

Im using them now on the Z12 and it seems to run just fine.

 

So since its officially out, its not considered a beta anymore?

 

I've tried the NA, Europe and Australian Sony sites. None of them have the Z13 drivers listed yet? Can someone please point to which Sony site has the official Z13 video driver?

 

The windows 7 version is not out yet. As I mentioned on my post the offical driver for Windows XP was released and its 190.24.