Does sony still restrict video card drivers?

Hello everyone! As I've said before, I previously had an SR series which I had a love/hate relationship with... In particular, I was very irritated by Sony's continuing policy of preventing the end user from using the reference drivers on the ATi cards. I told myself that I would never again go AMD, since I hated all the problems I had with CCC and the like... I thought NVidia all the way, since I've always enjoyed their Drivers and Linux support, etc.

Anyways, for anyone who owns some of the newer models, like the S series (I'm getting very interested in the rumors of the new Z series and the SA series), are you still stuck with the drivers on the download page, or will it let you get them off of AMD's site? Sony never keeps their up to date

 

Yes, they still have VERY outdated drivers on thier site. Fortunately, you have this forum and forums.laptopvideo2go.com to help out.

 

Wait... so Sony does indeed restrict even their current laptops to OEM drivers? And, if I'm not mistaken, this forum you linked to provides the modified drivers like what Mobility Modder used to do?...

Why can't Sony be nice and open up to the reference drivers? I had to laugh when I called Sony the other day about the Z series (I know... shoulda checked here first, but calling them wasn't too bad) and the sales rep had no idea that they did this with drivers. He's like: "It looked like standard CCC to me, with all the features and stuff, but I don't know much about these things". If it weren't for this kinda crap I wouldn't even think twice before buying their stuff.

 

Don't worry too much about display drivers - the two forums I mentioned seem to have this covered. I have a VPCZ1 series VAIO and I'm running it in Optimus mode with nvidia 275.27 and intel 8.15.10.2361 drivers - both drivers the latest available. I'll try to mod hybrid drivers next after I've played around with these for a while.

Sales reps are generally far less nerdy than the typical visitor to this forum. I don't even bother talking to them - just go there to look at and touch the items on display - the technical info and user feedback I get off the net.

 

So.. I noticed there aren't any ATi (AMD) drivers on this site... is this confirming my policy of: "to hell with AMD graphics - even if they are better in some respects, the drivers are ridiculous"? From looking around, it seemed that the Mobility Modders project is no longer updated, and it's quite a bit more complicated to mod yourself.

 

laptopvideo2go.com is for NVIDIA drivers NOT AMD/ATI drivers
For AMD/ATi drivers look at HardwareHeaven.com/Mod Cat

unfortunately the last update was in 2009, have begun a process of renovation in February 2011 but only for 32bit versions ... and definitely the OEM issue is sh**!

I think the same as jacob_s NVIDIA is better...the only reason I have not bought the vaio C series is amd/ati..i still have doubts about it

 

While Mobility Modders have not issued an update since 2009, does that mean their utility no longer updates the latest AMD ATI video drivers?

Post-Edit: Never mind. I understand the issue now. While the utility probably still works today for older video hardware, it has not been updated for the AMD's latest generation of video chips.

 

well to install amd drivers in the vaios, is basically to:

unpack the drivers

go to device manager

select install new drivers for the gpu

and you are done

thats why there isnt modded amd drivers, its not needed

 

interesting ... did not know that

 

Wait... what laptop/video car do you have? I know it didn't work on my SR. The reason ATi knew you had OEM was Sony used a unique DevID that they didn't allow ATi to include in the INF file... that's what MobilityModder did... it added your DEVID to the INF, and then you used Windows to load the driver. Really, this was my question: has AMD been allowed to add Sony to their supported products? I don't really care if the AMD installer works, just the driver inside.

 

yes this works since the last year E models. and it works on the C series. no modding is required

however I havent saw how things are going in the S lounge, since it has a physical switch


but yes sony should strive for more driver support, simply let the gpu makers do it

 

completely agree

 

@Mr_MM: So, to clarify:

• The AMD/ATi Reference Driver Installer still does not work.
• For the recent C and E series computers, if one extracts the drivers and then manually installs them (through the Have Disk method, I suppose) it will work fine.
• You can confirm that the drivers Windows installs are indeed the ones in the folder and not ones that it got off of Windows update.
• Sony apparently hasn't added very many customizations to their driver's INF file, because no functionality seems to have been lost using reference drivers?
• It's not just the SR series that Sony seems to have ignored in terms of graphics updates.

Is this correct? Also, can anyone confirm this for the new S series, or others (F, Z, etc)?

If this now works fine, I will be very happy!

True, but I feel they are also lacking in other areas - it would be nice if they could keep the chipset drivers up to date on their site, considering that it appears they are just repackaging stock Intel drivers. Whatever happened to the days of going around and getting the correct drivers from the various manufacturers?

 

yes those are correct

I sure cant, as I said, havent been seeing the owners lounge of any of those. however the Z needs to get modded drivers.

never heard of those days

 

Thanks for clearing that up! I'll read around. This is very good news indeed, though Sony still should just let the graphics manufacturer provide the drivers and stay out of it completely.

Good point - sadly, they never existed

 

There's the problem with the VPC-Z... it was one of the few laptops with hybrid graphics which uses both Nvidia and Intel graphics... So I don't think that'll happen til Nvidia and Intel come together. In any case, I'd rather have superb hardware because hardware is harder to mod aftermarket than software. And when you have threads like this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/342947-my-discoveries-vaio-z-s-hybrid-graphics.html who needs support.

Same with my N900 (recently retired to my sister as i wait for the N9 Meego phone ), poor support from Nokia, but it's open source and the community fixed all the problems, but the hardware was superb w/ FM reciever, transmitter, GPS, bluetooth, and even IR transmitter even though half of those were not supported to begin with, the community pulled through and delivered functionality for that. The N900 didn't have MMS support either at launch, but again the community pulled through and within a month, had MMS support (It took iPhone users a year to get it because they had to wait for Apple to add it into their phone).

 

You know, that's a good point, and I've certainly taken advantage of this idea before. I bought a Sony PSP a while ago, found out how restricted it was, modded it, and never looked back! It was an absolutely amazing SNES emulator btw! Same with my Original Motorola Droid: I knew Motorola wouldn't keep up with Google like they promised, but I liked the phone - everything was much better when rooted with CyanogenMod.

Yet, when it comes to laptops, my general policy is to avoid features that seem "gimicky" or are not well-supported. I would rephrase your statement:

as

Webcams, microphones, touch-screen volume controls, proprietary remote controls, etc., are all just more things to worry about in the future when the current OS doesn't support your laptop and your laptop wasn't popular enough in the community to get support there either.

I don't have a Z series, but I wonder what the holdup with the switcheable graphics is... the way I would like to see it implemented is NVIDIA supplies the drivers for their chips, Intel supplies the driver for their graphics chip, and all Sony does is supply a tiny piece of software to do the switching, as well as whatever circuitry is necessary. Is this a pipe dream?

 

AFAIK, Sony does squat. Hybrid drivers need nvbridge_int.kmd. Nvidia makes new versions from time to time, but doesn't post it on their site. Maybe they give it to the laptop manufacturers, including Sony, who just sit on it. The only way we get our hands on an updated version of nvbridge_int.kmd is when Microsoft releases a new driver on Windows Update Catalog.

 

I can use the standard ATI mobility driver installer for all the lastest releases on my EB with a 5650, you just need a direct link to the download and its fine.

 

Only for Desktops and Acer netbooks.