Going round in circles VAIO VPC-F13Z1E/B Vs Asus N73JQ (Europe) Graphic/3d designer

Hi there,

I have been going around in circles for last few days trying to decide which laptop I should go for!

I am down to the the above mentioned models from Sony and Asus but countless hours on the net and neither is pulling ahead. Basically both have similar CPU, graphics card, full HD screen. I will list what is bugging me and maybe you can help me decide

Btw I am a 3d/Graphic designer. A Dell Precision or HP workstation class laptop would be 100% perfect for me but they cost silly money ($5000+) and I rather buy a solid self built desktop workstation and a decent laptop to compliment it for that kind of money. Which is exactly what I am trying to do.

Ok so.....

VAIO VPC-F13Z1E/B........Vs...........Asus N73JQ

Price in $USD- $2000 USD vs $1800- Win Asus. More for less.
Memory - 8GB RAM max vs 12GB max- Win Asus
Cooling - Whining fan noise vs excellent cooling and quiet- Win Asus
Hard Drive- 1x500GB HD vs 2x500GB HDs- Big win Asus
Display - Matt Screen vs Glossy screen- Big win Sony
Graphics Card- GT 425M dedicated 1GB vs GT 425M 1GB Optimus thing- Big win Sony
Optical drive- BluRay Burner vs BluRay player- Draw as I don't care about it much
Built quality and looks- Draw
OS- Win 7Home Premium 64bit Vs Win 7 Ultimate 64bit- Win Asus
_____________________________________________________
Total - 2 wins for Sony Vs 5 wins for Asus.

So Asus should be a clear choice right? Not really

- Glossy screen I have never used and from seeing glossy screens for few minutes in shops in general I am not sure about them.
- I use Autodesk 3d Maya software and it seems Optimus thing is very buggy and interferes with the software. I am not sure if there is any way to switch it off and allow the GT 425M to be in charge exclusively?

So you see even though Asus would have been my 1st choice the two -ve points could be show stoppers.

 

Well it is possible to disable Intel Integrated when you wish to, so I guess you shouldn't really have any problems with that.

As for the screens, the Asus screen as you mentioned is a glossy screen and not very high quality. The F series screen isn't the best either but its definitely better than N73 screen and should serve you better for the kind of usage you mentioned.

If you don't mind shelling out 200$ more and can live with the fan noise get the Sony !

Edit: Just curious, where did you configure the F ? The price seems a bit too steep. You can get pretty much everything maxed out for 2000$, the specs you mentioned shouldn't cost more than 1700$.

 

Are you sure about that? So you think I can disable it on the Asus? How come so many people are having problems trying to disable it? Unless they are old posts. So how does one disable it?

Yes big negative for the Asus there. Yeah I realize that the Sony screen is no champ either but at least it won't blind me

I am in Europe mate. The Sony is actually $2200 here. The shop where I could potentially buy from has offer on it hence it is $2000 currently So to be precise Sony is $1979 and Asus is $1799.
1 Swiss Franc is equal to 1 USD right now.

Here is a Google translated version comparing specs next to each other- CLICKY

What do you say? If you can't view the comparison page then let me know I will post a screen grab.

 

Something to keep in consideration is storage space. The VAIO only has one bay for HDD/SSD, as well as the optical bay. To add another storage drive, the ODD needs to be made external. Looks like the ASUS has 2 storage bays and one optical, so expanding is sooooo much easier AND get to keep the ODD.

Me? I opted to make my bluray drive external. It has its ups and downs, but I prefer the storage space and portability it offers. Got my movie (DVD & blu ray) collection on an external 2TB. When I want to take to a friend's house to watch, I just move over the movies in question to my 2nd HDD.

 

Well I guess in that case go for Sony Vaio F. And since you are in EU, if you are lucky you might just get a BRILLIANT screen, and even otherwise you would get a pretty decent screen with better color reproduction.

And its lighter, and has a much better keyboard. Plus runs slightly cooler too though much noisier

 

I am posting from laptop shop on the Sony. Fan is quiet but I am not stressing the CPU so.....

I wish there was an Asus here to compare. Seems nice but I can't hekp but thinking that the Asus with a matt screen would have been better bang for $.
I will sleep over it and then order one of them tomorrow.

It looks like the sony as the glare screens are show stoppers for me.

 

^ If you don't use the laptop outside or facing a window, the glossy screen is not bad. You actually get better colour reproduction with a glossy screen (matte screens are mainly for people who do lots of field work outside like photographers etc. You lose a bit of dynamic contrast with a matte screen).

That said, I think you will get better hardware in the asus. IIRC, unless you render with maya hardware (heheh... maya hardware...) or are doing a playblast all renders done on Maya software and mental ray need a general-purpose cpu, so I don't think your graphics card will have a huge impact on the performance (maybe it will help a tiny bit if you have a ridiculously high number of polygons being drawn on screen in your work window, but I doubt maya requires much gpu-acceleration to display objects in the work window).

The 12GB of ram in the asus will help tremendously. For games, you usually want very high-bandwidth ram and not necessarily more ram (for gaming 6-8GB of ram is optimum because it's much easier to overclock), but for 3D/motion work you will want the highest capacity of ram possible (speed is important as well, but unless you're running a render farm it's better if you have more ram ).

I think the asus is better for you. You get more ram and you can put maya to work on a separate hard drive from your boot drive. I can't comment on build quality, as I haven't owned one, but I know that asus makes fairly reliable machines.

EDIT: I think the sony has optimus too? I can't remember if they put it in when the refreshed with the new gpu or not....

 

mangosango thanks for the post. After getting home from the shop I as starting to lean towards the Asus now. I feel I am paying too much for the name with the Vaio and getting less.

Yes more RAM is better for Maya and Adobe products. Graphic card is very important too but not as important as CPU/RAM. Plus the GT425M with 1GB is no snail for Maya use. Is more than enough for what I would do on laptop. Super heavy lifting will always be on my desktop workstation.

Interestingly the local online shop had 10 Vaios and 10 Asus lappys 2 days ago. Asus are down to 3 already while Vaio is still on 10 Kind of backs my bang for the buck which is on Asus's side.

Ok I will think for one hour and then order the Asus......before they get sold out again.

 

Well the specs on the online shop I am buying from says Sony does not have it while the Asus does.
Although on the N73JQ owners thread they are saying that i7 quad core CPUs do not have Optimus. I am finding it all confusing I must say.

Here is the link to the thread. Read from post No. 178 onwards and tell me what you think PLEASE!

 

That is true, only the i7-6xx series supports optimus technology. If I recall correctly optimus relies on two graphics chips in order to function (one is usually just a weak intel integrated card). The i7-6xx series of cpu's have an integrated graphics chip built-in, which makes it perfect for optimus. The quad-core i7-7xx and 8xx (or 9xx hehe) series don't have the onboard graphics built-in.

If the processor is an i7-740 then I don't think it supports optimus natively (not unless asus has managed to cram integrated graphics into the laptop as well).

 

Checkout my answer to your question within the F thread.

 

Thanks for the prompt reply

I wonder if the GT425M can drive a 2560x1600 res external display? The 30" display had DVI-D Dual link connection so the VGA output form the laptop won't drive it. So does that mean the HDMI connection will do the job? I will need something like a HDMI to DVI-D Dual link cable right?

 

Will do now

 

@lap_lap

The link you had poster earlier, according to that Sony has 8 gb ram and Asus 6, right ?

 

Right. Sony has 2 x 4 GB sticks and no more slots. Asus has 3 x 2GB sticks and max capacity of 3 x 4GB=12GB. For now 6GB will do but in the future I will have to get 3x4GB sticks. RAM is cheap these days no?

Why you ask?

 

Ok went with the Asus. It's done deal now/ordered and I can pick it up tomorrow morning. The shop was down to last piece after the other 9 flew away in the two days since the new delivery had arrived.

 

I have had a (US) F11 since July, and not a day goes by that I don't hate the whiney fan noise - ALWAYS noticeable. If I were doing it again, I think I would go for my other choice - G73. Might be swayed by the Euro Sony screens though; US screens are nothing to get excited about.

I don't believe either will run 2560x1600. I sold my 30" after I got mine.

 

Now on sony.fr you can get it for €989 ($1285) including the premium screen (i7-740qm, 4GB, 320GB, premium screen, dvd). Order online and deliver it to some friend/relative in France.

Just add some SSD, move the HDD instead the DVD, insert 2x4GB instead of the original RAM and that's it.
This is what I'm doing now, for €1278 I'm getting: i7-740qm, 8GB, 120GB Corsair Force SSD, 320GB secondary drive, Premium screen, premium black (laptop was 989, ram 2x40 (sorry, I live in Romania and that's the price for 2x4GB), SSD 189 from pixmania.fr on promo, HDD caddy ~20).

And regarding the Optimus thing (switchable intel graphics + nVidia) on that Asus, it's a big win Asus. Optimus is a switchable video technology which lets you choose which video card you run onto, and on that Asus you can choose to go with the embedded one on battery and switch to the nVidia one while plugged in. It's a major improvement for the battery life (have an Acer with such and it goes 8h on i5).