Discoveries on Vaio SA/SB/SC Switchable Graphics

I tried it on 11.8 (as per this thread) the night the game came out. It ran okay but the texture pop-in was terrible. I installed the performace driver the next day but it caused multiple graphics card crashes, and a few blue screens to the extent that i never made it into rage. I rolled back to 11.8, installed 11.9 and tried rage again but it locks up a few minutes in. I'm going to roll back to 11.8 (my last stable) and will give 11.10 (the preview) a go tonight.

11.10 - http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/GPU122AMDCat1110PreDriverV2.aspx

Will report my findings.

UPDATE 1: so far so good (knock on the proverbial wood.)

Using the 11.10 drivers i was able to play about 30mins of rage just now, which is a lot better than the 30secs i was able to play a few days ago. Texture pop in is still there but it's much better than before.

UPDATE 2: Annnd i spoke too soon. So rage plays fine, but the 11.10 driver has made it so that no hardware accelerated video works. I just get a green screen (audio's fine though) with most flash content and playing anything through media player classic/ itunes/ windows media leads to a black screen (again audio plays fine.) Rolling back to the 11.8 driver fixed the problem. I might just have to shelve rage for now, or install the 11.10 driver when i know i'm ready for a weekend long gaming binge.

 

Arrgghh the AMD Driver team are hopeless.

The 11.8, 11.9, 11.10 Preview V2 & latest Official Sony Drivers (apparently 11.6) all freeze when I attempt to play Minecraft.

I'm currently running 11.5 as that seems to keep Minecraft running ok, but I did have a graphics driver restart yesterday which was indicative of driver issues I used to have on the original Official Catalyst drivers.

Hopefully it won't happen again as this is quite frustrating :-/

 

I have had the same problems with RAGE and with Minecraft (ever since the big update). I haven't tried going back to an old driver for Minecraft, since I play a bunch of other games that benefit from newer drivers.

For RAGE, I ended up keeping the AMD WHQL 11.9 drivers installed on my system so I can actually watch accelerated video and use other OpenGL applications. Trying 11.10preview2 resulted in the same issues - green/corrupted flash video and other OpenGL programs crashing.

Here is what I did instead: I downloaded the 11.10 preview 2 drivers, let it open up and decompress the files but then clicked "cancel" at the first prompt. I went into where the drivers were extracted (My directory was: C:\AMD\AMD_Catalyst_11.10_preview2_Win7_Vista\Packages\Drivers\Display\W76A_INF\B126530 ) and grabbed the 64bit atioglxx.dll file from there (you will find that it is compressed to atioglxx.dl_ or something - you need to go to your command line terminal, go to that folder and type:

expand atioglxx.dl_ atioglxx.dll

I've also heard that a program like 7zip can open up the .dl_ file and you can expand it like a zip or .rar just fine

That will give you the uncompressed dll, which you then put in your C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Rage\ folder). This will force Rage to use the 11.10 preview 2 opengl driver, but leave the rest of your system using the more stable 11.9 drivers.

I also went into Steam and added this launch option for Rage (right click on Rage -> properties -> "general" tab -> set launch options): +cvaradd jobs_numThreads -1

Apparently there are some issues with dual core processors which can be alleviated with this option (I have the i7 which has 2 extra virtual cores but this still seems to reduce crashes)

So with 1) the latest rage patch 2) the 11.10preview2 opengl driver and 3) jobs_numThreads -1 RAGE seems to perform nicely and be the most stable (I have had a single crash that took a while to happen - freezing graphics, sound eventually stops, then the graphics driver recovers and you can close Rage).

Also, the Smart Vsync option in the graphics settings seems to cause some annoying stuttering, so I just leave Vsync off (I don't mind the tearing).

 

Cool! Thanks for posting this. I'll give this a shot sometime this week. (Fingers crossed)

 

Well, scratch that - I just jumped back in and had to go back to a previous mission area (wasted garage), and had another driver crash

Still trying to figure out what could be causing it. Contrary to many complaints, I have no problems saving or loading levels (before the patch it would crash during load/save many times), but now I get random crashes while playing. It's hard to predict them.

I'll keep trying things out to see if I can find a decent configuration.

 

Hmmm...i just played for about an hour and was okay (no driver crashes) but i may have just gotten lucky. If it helps my in-game video settings are as follows:

Res: 1360x768
Fullscreen on
Antialiasing to 2x
Vsync on
Large texture size
Ani filtering off

 

Hi All,

Pretty much a newbie here....love the VAIO SA, hate having to switch from Speed to Stamina each time I unplug...I've updated any drivers which the system has asked me to, but I have not taken any extra steps. Long story short, is there a way to make the graphics autoswitch when i plug/unplug the charger. I know there has been talk about this in the forum, but it all seems to relate to special/different drivers, modding, etc....Is there a "auto switch for dummies" thread i'm not seeing?

Thanks much all.

 

Hi, as other noticed, the Intel HD in my vaio SA (and also in vaio Z2) supports only OpenGL 1.1 while in the official website it's advised as OpenGL 3.0 compliant, so my question is: it's a driver issue or some kind of limitation only VAIO with switchable graphics have? The sofware I used to check this is OpenGL Extensions Viewer

 

I'm actually using my SA series laptop on top of drawers that are pushed underneath a desk connected to a 27 inch monitor via HDMI and running one USB 2.0 socket to a keyboard (that can be used to wake the computer) and another USB 2.0 socket connected to a hub that sits on my desk. I never shut it down, I simply put it in sleep mode as I have to pull out the drawers to have access to the laptop.

For this reason, its really tricky to pull out the laptop in order to gain access to the speed/stamina switch so I mostly leave it in stamina in order to reduce thermal fatigue.

I'd kill for a software switch for the GPU drivers. A physical switch is kind of annoying when the catalyst drivers appear to support software-switching.

NOTE : The reasons I bought a laptop is that I mostly work from home as a developer and the times that I need to leave to go to show software on demos, it helps to have everything already configured in the PC rather than synching between a laptop and a desktop. That said, 95% of the time, I don't use the laptop keyboard/display and have it hooked up to my 1920x1200 monitor.

 

yeah I also would appreciate very much software switching but nautis tried without success. I believe he gave up now.

 

So I just tried installing the new 11.10 Preview 3 drivers, and I still get corrupted hardware accelerated video (flash video) on websites.

I was hoping that this was a temporary bug with the 11.10 preview 1 and preview 2, but according to this: https://twitter.com/#!/CatalystCreator/status/126409396031991809 it may not be

I am hoping that this problem exists with other notebooks, so that AMD will fix it, or maybe Nautis can figure out why these new drivers are breaking flash video for us?

 

Oh and those drivers make Rage crash even quicker than the previous Guess I'm rolling back to 11.9 for my system and the 11.10 preview 2 atioglxx.dll file :\

It seems like there may be some issues with dualcore cpu's and hyperthreading, from what I can tell in the forums.

 

any news on the drivers?

i have installed FIFA 12 which suffers from stuttering occasionally (supposedly common to a lot of AMD graphics). i'm using the original factory-installed SONY drivers (not the updated ones), but VAIO Update is telling me there is a new driver available which is about 275MB in size. why is it so huge? i understand that it's the Radeon HD driver plus Intel HD driver packaged together, but does it contain other things as well? any information on potential performance upgrades (or regressions) using this new SONY driver?

 

You want to know why? Sony packages the drivers in there. Twice.

That's why.

And no... I am not kidding. I've extracted the installer before, and noticed in the TEMPEXE folder, there is another installer, of large size. Extracted that. Identical contents (minus one giant installer). No clue why Sony did it that way. Maybe that's for 32bit/64bit, I dunno.

 

wow! SONY never fails to amaze me...thanks for the info though
so you suggest i go ahead with the SONY driver update? the reason i'm a bit skeptical is exactly because it comes from SONY!

 

Well, if you are still on stock, it moves ya from 11.2-->11.6. Cannot hurt, lol.

 

i installed the latest SONY graphics drivers. the stuttering is happening less frequently now in FIFA 12 but stills occurs from time to time (fyi, i'm running my 6630m with 655MHz/955MHz GPU/memory clocks when gaming). one thing i realized is that the color profile now reverts back from my custom calibrated profile to Intel's default a lot more (i just don't know why Intel thinks it knows what i like better than me though!), and i have to reapply it in Control Panel every time. fortunately, the "Reload current calibration" button now works much better than before! weird...

 

i just realized, the CCC in the SONY-provided package is different from the stock AMD one. does SONY actually tamper with the CCC and remove some of the options?

 

Is it running in Advanced mode?

Also, in "Stamina" mode, most of the CCC options are not avalible. Better than the old 11.2 drivers which simply would refuse to start outside of "Speed" mode.

 

yes, it's set to Advanced View. it has some options, but compared to the original AMD CCC, it seems very limited to me (see below, e.g., for CCC 11.5 and compare the left-hand side options with the ones in our CCC 11.6):

 

Hydravision is an optional install, you have to download it seperately.

As for the GPU scaling option, I dunno, that option has not worked for my AMD desktop cards, nor my nVidia desktop cards. Does the option show up for external displays?

 

no, it does not show up when i connect the laptop to an HDTV via HDMI. btw, i just posted that picture as an example to show the difference and did not mean only that particular option. for example, the "Performance" tab is also missing.

 

That mostly has to do with mobility drivers vs desktop drivers, as the primary items under there are:

Overclocking (only desktop cards)
Power throttling (only desktop cards)
CPU power control (mainly/only AMD systems).

 

i see. thanks

 

I've confirmed that the "locking" of the computer which is happening to me (lasts from 30 to 50 seconds) is ATI-GPU related. When I use in stamina mode it doesn't happens. Could this be nautis drivers related? (I have removed nautis drivers and reinstalled original one, but the problems persists). It really seems that "gpu stopped responding and is being restarted" thing of windows, but without a message saying so, only everything locked (mouse pointer included) for that many seconds. Very annoying.

 

i get the same locks when i overclock the 6630m too high for gaming. it locks for about 20 seconds and then comes back to life. when i lower the OC frequencies a bit, it works fine.

 

yeah the problem is that I've never overclocked it. I believe it could be custom drivers related?

 

If yu restore your system with original drivers and the problem still persists, then its some wierd thing with the other drivers. Probably some SATA-harddisk connection, memory errors (module misplaced, errors), or something that i dont know of.

either way, you'll have to restore to original state (better yet do a clean install) and check. as you install drivers when doing a clean install, reboot everytime and check how things are.

i dont know of any other short cut to figure out the problem.

 

After checking the windows error report I've found the issue (which I already knew was VGA related):

Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

What can be causing that error? My vga is not overclocked and never was. Driver is original sony one. defective ati vga?

 

Hi I noticed a bug with flash player 11.1 and intel graphic card. Whenever I try to play a full screen clip on youtube (for example what do you got from Bon Jovi) the quality is bad even at 1080. The first thing I notice is the very bad quality of fonts and icon on the play bar (where you can see seconds played from the clip) and the movie is pixellated. This problem disappers when using the radeon 6630. With flash 10.3 everything was fine even with the intel hd...
P.S. I use 2509 intel driver

 

I notice the same issue using the Intel card. With any quality on youtube even 1080p. The images don't look as sharp. Using the ATI card all looks great.

 

!! I thought I was the only one with that issue. I even had screenshots (it shows up there ), taken to prove my point.

 

Catalyst 11.11 is now out. i was wondering if i just install the new AMD drivers without updating the Intel drivers, would the switchable graphics still work?

 

So at least it's not my fault... But, do you think it's driver issue or a flash issue? Have you tried with older version of intel driver?

 

I would guess flash at fault. I'm using the stock drivers provided by Sony on 23SEPT2011. 2476 Intel drivers, and most guess the CCC is 11.6 for AMD.

 

I installed with no issue, and the switch still works.

 

Catalyst 11.11 and catalyst 11.10 both broke my videos for the ATI 6630M =(

anyone got 11.11 working with video (such as youtube) with the 6630M?

 

Have you tried disabling hardware acceleration?

 

Yup the lettering quality of the video player is definitely bad. I only noticed it after i read your post. However, the actual video is sharp and clear even with intel. For example, I watched planet earth clip on youtube if 1080p. (even though the screen itself will only support 720p)... same with bluray playback.. no problems with the actual video quality over intel or ati.

i have the updated sony's intel drivers from september and amd catalyst 11.11 on VPC-SC.

 

where did you guys get the 11.11 cat drivers ? The ones on amds site say my drivers are update date. Modded inf ?

 

drivers: ATI Catalyst? Mobility Display Driver

release notes: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalystSoftwareSuiteVersion1111.aspx

 

Still can't install. Installer shows that my graphics are already updated. Question, are you upgrading from the stock Sony drivers ? I'm using the modded 11.9 posted by Nautis.

 

The new stock drivers (Sept) put some insane driver version number that makes the AMD installer think it's from 2056 or something, lol. It's not like nVidia's installer, where you can force it to install older drivers over new ones.

 

Yep, didn't work.

On my video player (Splash player), I managed to watch videos only after enabling "Force Video Overlay", but it seems to just turn off Aero. Any ideas on how to fix this?

 

i finally received my BF3 discs and installed it on my SA290X (latest SONY GPU drivers). with the fullscreen resolution set to 1366x768 (native resolution of my HDTV), everything on high, MSAA off, and post-AA (FXAA) set to high, the game is very smooth in single-player campaign. i have the in-game v-sync off and am using D3DOverrider to force v-sync and tripple-buffering on. as mentioned on [H], the post-AA does a fantastic job taking care of all the jaggies without the massive frame-rate penalty of MSAA. i have overclocked my 6630m to 725MHz/950MHz on 0.905V, and the maximum GPU temp was 90C with the average on 85C (no notebook cooler, laptop raised by a book).

i am happy!

 

no problem like this here. "original" Sony drivers factory installed - > updated AMd drivers to 11.8 -> Sony erleased their updates -> again updated amd to 11.10 and then 11.11 - went smoothly.

 

In my case also the movie itself is played not perfectly, the quality of movies at 720p and 1080p (even if better than the lettering quality) is clearly lower than when I play it with the radeon or with intel and the old version of flash (10.3)...

 

I did a clean install of just the 23SEPT drivers, so I dunno

 

Intel had released a new driver, 2559 to be exact. Has anyone tried it yet?

 

we cannot (not without losing switching functionality), until we get the modded set from Nautis.