Discoveries on Vaio SA/SB/SC Switchable Graphics

uninstall the GPU drivers from Control Panel, then use Driver Sweeper to remove all AMD driver leftovers (some people suggest doing it in the Safe Mode), and reboot. you should be greeted with a 800x600 VGA resolution; if not, you still got driver junk left. user Driver Sweeper again to remove whatever is left. (i myself had to go through two runs of Driver Sweeper to get rid of all the junk.) to be on the safe side, use CCleaner to scan the registry and remove the AMD entries (or you can do it yourself with regedit if you feel comfortable doing it). reboot again. when you get the 800x600 resolution in Windows, it means your system is clean. now install SONY GPU drivers.

i'm currently using 8.862.4.1000 drivers from SONY ( download link at SONY UK), and they're very stable for me. the newest ones kept crashing constantly, so i had to revert back.

also, try playing on a lower resolution, 1366x768 maybe. 6470m is not as powerful as 6630m, so playing at 1080p might very well be taxing it too much.

good luck.

 

Okay I will download driver sweeper and do as you say. Thanks a lot. I will update you when I finish.

 

I put on the original driver from that site you recommended and it runs great. I also figured out that my monitor has an option to display at 1360x768. Its not 1080P but it clearer than 720P and the game is running smooth. My last and final question is does that updated driver you originally recommended really make a big difference because I very happy with this and I don't want to over step my luck. Thank You Very Much!

 

great
like i said, the very recent GPU driver update from SONY keeps crashing my Battlefield 3 games, so i don't use it. if the drivers you are using right now are stable, just stick with them. stability comes first for me.

 

Yeah, seemed to install but didn't make a difference. Might try again though.

 

for those with video playback issues and/or overclocking problems on newer AMD drivers, see this post on Guru3D.

 

excelent. that did the trick. thanks

 

i'm glad it worked for you although the OP on Guru3D should be thanked, not me.

for me, i prefer to stay on my current SONY drivers (11.6, i believe) as they're stable enough to play Battlefield 3 (with rare crashes here and there) and also support overvolting the GPU.

 

Okay, not sure if this has been posted elsewhere. Did a search, didn't find anything so here goes:

I came across this post in the Z hybrid graphics forum about getting switchable graphics to work in Win 8 on one of the Zs.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...vaio-z-s-hybrid-graphics-340.html#post8353736

The author has figured out that Win 8 is draconian about driver enforcement and has managed to install his switchable graphics driver by booting into windows with driver enforcement turned off, installing the driver and rebooting back into windows afterward.

Seemed simple enough so I thought i'd try it. It worked to an extent, at the moment i'm running Win 8 with what seems to be the AMD gpu active, though I can't seem to switch back to the intel gpu. I spend most of my time in "speed" mode so I don't mind, though I know there are a lot of you out there who regularly switch between the two modes.

I say "worked to an extent" because the only version of the drivers that would install for me are the 6/10/2011 SA video drivers, which translates to: 8.823 by sony's numbering, I forget if that's 11.4 or so by AMDs numbers. In order to get the driver to work I unpacked the sony installer using universal extractor and installed the drivers manually (by locating the *.inf) in device manager for the intel and then running the catalyst setup for the AMD gpu. Trying to use the sony installer just ends up hanging.

Whenever I tried to upgrade using one of the newer packages I kept on getting the error message in the pic. I haven't tried installing a newer catalyst driver direct from the AMD website but I thought i'd post my progress here since I know next to nothing about video drivers in the hopes that someone in this thread might be able to either get the newer sony/amd packages to work or have any insights.


Edit 1: from this point I tried updating to 11.9 as per the original post on this thread and it seems to have worked! (3rd pic) Progress of a sort....

 

the link cannot download the modded intel driver.....where can i download it cause sony official driver and patch still crash once a while...

 

I started playing ALAN WAKE and got surprised that it uses a lot of GPU power... my 6630 did not even reach constant 30 fps in the lowest of all graphic´s options, so I decided to overclock and I must say it works like charm.

 

Intel Grahpics Drivers 2509.rar

re-uploaded.

 

are you getting "display drivers re-starts" when using the ATI vga in windows?

 

That method worked quite well - running these drivers and replaced the indicated files. Overclocking with TRIXX and flash video/accelerated desktop video both work now! I ended up using the video acceleration related files from catalyst 11.11c for my SA (11.12 dlls didnt seem to work), and overclocking dll's from catalyst 12.1.

Now, the question is how many more new versions of the catalyst drivers will be able to handle these file swaps? I'm assuming eventually the rest of the drivers will change and these old dll's will break functionality or cause crashes. Hopefully, these video playback issues will be sorted out and maybe overclocking will be enabled again in the stock drivers

 

can i ask for your OC values?

 

I am using 700/900 stock voltage

 

@fscussel: sorry, my question was for donnieblasko, and i was wondering if replacing the DLLs would fix the overvolting issue. you're running on stock voltages, but have you tried overvolting with newer drivers?

 

No I haven't, and I don't recommend overvolting, it's a little to much danger for just a little improvement you can get.

 

well, i'm getting a lot of improvements by adding 4mV to the core voltage (from 900mV to 904mV). i'm running 725/945 now, but on older SONY drivers. i'd rather keep the overvolt feature than upgrade to the newer drivers unless AMD fixes this issue.
again, thanks for sharing your information

 

can you do 700/900 with stock voltage?

 

i have not tried those values, but i had previously tried benching and gaming on 725/900/900mV (25MHz higher core frequency than yours), and my laptop locked up. i had to increase the core voltage by 4mV to make the machine stable again, and the respective 3DMark06 score became 9130 (with SM2.0 score of 3275 and HDR/SM3.0 score of 4086).

i'll try 700/900 on stock voltage and report.

 

yes, once a while...somemore the screen freeze...

 

Thanks for the hard work especially on the switchable graphics part. Can I ask someone to kindly update the link on the first page for the modified intel HD graphics drivers since both links are dead.

Many thanks.

 

I would like an updated link to the Intel drivers too.

The AMD Radeon driver link works for me, though. I'm going to upgrade just this driver for now, hope it goes well!

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...sb-sc-switchable-graphics-32.html#post8388355

 

Oops, sorry I didn't see that post before. Thanks a lot!

 

Could I request a new link for the modded Intel .inf file? Preferably one that's known to be working with the 2622 driver.

Both of the links I see in the thread now go to a "file deleted" page.

 

It won't work with 2656, 2696 or 2712.

 

Thank you.

I didn't even know there were drivers newer than 2622- are they beta? At the Intel support site, when I select "Intel HD Graphics" and "Win7 64" all I see are 2622 and 2509.

Edit: did some more searching and found this:
http://leshcat.blogspot.com/2012/04/catalyst-123-whql-unifl-for-switchable.html

Which includes the Catalyst 12.3 and Intel 2696 - anyone tried them on a Vaio S, and how did it turn out?

 

2656 is the lastest one. 2696 and 2712 are test drivers AFAIK.

 

just a fyi, when playing Battlefield 3 with my overclocks (735MHz core/933MHz memory/904mV core voltage), i used to have constant crashes to desktop with audio looping or just simple "'Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered" crashes to desktop. they used to happen very randomly in about 20-30 minutes into the game, and not even in all games. there are numerous reports online (see EA UK Battlefield 3 forums, for example) that the issue is related to the on-board Realtek high-definition audio codec, and people who have disabled their on-board audio in BIOS and bought an external USB sound card never encounter this issue again.

i am currently using SONY drivers, 8.862.4.1 (not the latest ones which are 8.862.4.2, but one version before that) which allow overvolting the GPU. i uninstalled the Realtek High-Definition Audio drivers through Control Panel > Programs and Features. upon a reboot, Windows 7 installed Microsoft's generic HD audio drivers, and i have not had a single crash even after hours of playing Battlefield 3.

it seems to me that the issue is indeed related to Realtek drivers.

 

I posted this on the SA owners lounge maybe this is the rite place:

I have one problem with the stock ati drivers if anyone has a solution that would be great.
The option to change desktop color is missing. there used to be a way to change saturation and contrast for the Desktop/games which is no longer there under Manage desktop.

The video color overlay options are all present but they are not useful for games. anyone know how i can get those options back?

 

bump anyone? I have tried to look everywhere nobody has mentioned about the missing desktop color controls tab?

 

are you using SONY drivers, AMD drivers, or Leshcat drivers?

 

is there anyway to disable the color correction from this laptop

everytime i play a game in fullscreen, i have to manually adjust the gamma to fit my preferences and whenever i do so, i notice by default the colors are warm, and switching the gamma turns them to cool colors

 

so how to use latest intel drivers?

 

I have been suffering with ATI driver "stopped responding and restarted" forever, without overclock, but it has never happened when playing a game. I was even thinking that I had a deffective GPU. I've uninstalled the audio driver and i'm hopping that it solves the problem! thanks!

 

Interesting, I wonder if updated drivers direct from Realtek would also solve the problem? I've been having the hangs/driver crashes and would prefer a solution that lets me keep using a non-generic driver. Having the Dolby options is rather nice.

 

If you go to the Leshcat site that I linked, they have all the instructions. Basically you download their package, use the uninstaller/cleaner, then install.

I haven't checked the site recently to see if they have the latest Intel drivers, because I started using Sony's which were recently released.

 

Sony release some updated drivers?

 

Link is down

 

that leshcat drivers suite broke my video playback and I see no reason for installing it. No improvement in anything.

 

hi im using the updated official drivers from sony for my SA, Vsync does not work in any of my games even after a rollback..it wasn't working before either. Does vsync work for anyone in games? if so can you tell me your INTEL & AMD driver version? I think its an issue with the Intel driver as color and screen refresh rates are controlled by intel.

All games are running at only 59hz.. deus ex doesnt even show 60hz unless i change to dx9 same with max payne 3 dx11 59hz

 

Sorry for asking for help with an obviously very old "problem" (from the very first post of this thread):
I simply want to get rid of the "Configure Switchable Graphics" context menu entry for which Nautis provided a download link for a Registry patch back then (07/06/2011).
Unfortunately, this file seems to be gone from the external file hoster, so I simply ask Nautis - or any other user - to provide the corresponding Registry tweak again.


Here is the excerpt of Nautis' very first post where this 'hack' got mentioned:

I hope someone can help me out with this as these two folder context menu entries bother me everytime I want to switch between different file views: Usually, 'View' is the very first option of the folder context menu - now it's the third because of these additional switchable graphics entries.

Best regards,

FNW

 

Is it possible to use the HP AMD switchable graphics drivers which have dynamic switching? (and to disable the speed/stamina switch)

 

yeah, i would like to know that as well.

EDIT: this is the original post by jeremyshaw, describing which registry key to delete to remove Switchable Graphics context menu item.

 

^ here you are: fixing video playback and overclocking problems

also, if you don't mind, could you please take a moment and report this bug to AMD ( link here) so they, hopefully, fix it in the next version?

 

yeah, do report it. as far as i could gather on the net, it's not related to the switchable graphics. it's more of a general bug that happens to a lot of people. i have reported it.

i'm overclocking the GPU. it runs at 735MHz/933MHz/904mV and when i play Battlefield 3, it gets up to 86C. but it's well within the thermal envelope of the chips, so i'm fine with it. it gets loud (as it should) since the fan should push the extra heat out of the chassis and keep it cool. it doesn't bother me, since i'm gaming with my headphones on. fyi, the 2012 model with Ivy Bridge CPUs and Kepler GPUs runs much cooler.

 

Do you really gain anything over the 11.12 drivers? I dont think you'll see any improvement atleast for the 64xx or 66xx radeon series gpus. I don't see any major bugs with 11.12 too.

 

Does anyone have a possible solution for that aero lag when you're starting the laptop on speed mode? I also have the same problem and the only temp fix is turning the theme into basic mode and then back.