HD 3470 or IGP for SR?

Hey,
I've been looking at the Sony SR recently, and I noticed it had the Intel IGP and the HD 3470 options for video.

It also costs $100 extra.

I'm not gonna try to play any games on this, I have my desktop for that - this'll be my portable studio platform to compose and edit music; doing programming/browsing/word processing; and watching a movie or two once in a while - House!

Now, would getting the HD 3470 over the IGP when it comes out make a significant enough difference in terms of performance and battery life to warrant the extra $100? Battery life matters to me the most, definitely. IGP>3470 for battery life?

P1's offering the SR with WinXP, would that lengthen battery life?

Should I go for 3GB RAM or 4GB RAM?

 

I'd expect the IGP to have better battery life than the 3470, and for what you're planning to use it for I don't think you'd see much if any performance difference.

 

I second what trwrt said. IGP will be fine for what you're doing.

 

Yeah I third that, an igp is good enough for anything but gaming or 3d work.

 

Will an IGP provide comparatively higher battery life?

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Yes it should.

 

Theoretically it should, how it works out in real life is unknown though.

 

time and time again. people i know get laptops w/ IGP claiming "oh its for school i'll never have time to play games!" or "I only game at home and i have an xbox or pc for that"

then when I',m rockin out at starbucks playing hitman or in my dorm room playing some counter strike with my dedicated graphics VAIO FZ w/ 8400 GT looking freakin sweet and giving me great FPS, they say "damn i should have gotten graphics card laptop..but i never though i'd have time or want to play on a laptop"

ultimately it's up to you. i preffer power over battery life, but not so much that battery life is <1 hour. 2 solid hours of balanced mode with wifi will suffice. however, if im typing a paper, i could care less wtf power settings I have. All i know is when I'm done writing that POS paper, i'll find an outlet (srsly its 2008, where the **** do you live, in a log cabin?) turn off power save, and I got my dedicated GPU to rock out on.

IMO.

 

Well, I'm hoping to be able to go a full 8 hour school day unplugged - obviously it'll be on sleep mode when I'm switching between classes and such.

 

well then you might consider the IGP a must, and the extended battery and always keeping it on power save. lol.

8 hrs on a laptop battery is pretty amazing. the SR is supposed to be able to run for a good 4-6 hrs on the standard battery, if you figure your gonna actually use it for that long within those 8 hrs, then get it with the standard battery. If you expect to use it more than that, get the extended battery so it can get through the day.

 

About how much would getting the HD 3470 chop off the battery life?

And P1's offering the SR with WinXP, would that lengthen battery life?

 

I didn't know schools lacked power outlets these days Just recharge if needed.. get the extended battery if you are really concerned.

Now, if you REALLY ARE SURE. I mean.. 100% that you will not game, just get the IGP. I'm sure you can still play basic games on the IGP, but probably nothing modern unless on the lowest of low settings.

I have no idea how much the ATI card will cut battery life.

 

See WinXP/P1 question.

Well, is there a real difference between what the IGP can run and what the 3470 can run?

 

I don't know off hand. I'm unsure if the ATI card is DX 10 compatible or if the intel IGP is. But the mattery between the cards is performance. I'm sure they can play the same games, but the ATI card will provide better FPS and allow you to boost up graphics levels to look decent.

Windows XP will naturally probably have better battery life out of the box, due to it's lack of graphical enhancement. Vista has aero and whatnot plus runs alot more processes to boot, so those combined will probably affect battery life, out of box.

BUT, you can turn aero off and even run the interface using the old windows 98-ish interface.

That's all I know, sorry.

 

I just realized (since I'll be editing video on Premiere Pro, and that might like a... video processor) I might be better off config-ing on P1 with:

4GB RAM
Windows XP
(and the forced HD 3470)

I hope I won't be losing too much battery life with the 3470, and I also hope the WinXP will more than make up for any slight battery life loss the 3470 might incur..

Although, should I go for 3GB or 4GB RAM?

 

windows xp is old but still widely used. i would suggest moving on to vista. also, get 4 GB so some of it runs in dual chnall mode

 

i second wat Duke says. the SR has an incredible battery life so why bother downgrading from Vista to XP just to save some energy (don't expect it to be much) the question is do you want/need the dedicated GPU as it actually will suck quite a lot more than the Intel.

 

I will be doing video editing on it, and I figure a video card might actually be nice for that.

Unless I'm wrong?

Also, if I get the 3470, will the SR automatically switch between the IGP and the 3470 when each is appropriate?

 

There isn't a switch between dedicated GPU and IGP on SR. In other word, if you have a dedicated GPU, ATI 3470, you will be always on ATI 3470.

 

SR only comes with one card, so there is no switching. You may switch with a SZ or a Z series only. SZ requires a reboot of the machine with the switch and the new Z series does not, but if I am right, you might have to close all applications first.

 

Not yet at least... Some of the upcoming montevina laptops will have both dedicated and integrated graphics built in which will allow you to switch between them depending on whether performance or battery life is important.

 

Sony Z has this switch, Sony SR does not.

 

No one answered the question, will it be handy to have a 3470 if I plan to do video editing on this machine?

 

It would help if you were planning on editing hd video otherwise I'm pretty sure even an integrated card would suffice.

 

Okay, so the Final Countdown:

I will be for sure:
Typing essays
Editing video (Premiere Pro, After Effects)
Editing audio (Audacity, Soundbooth)
Composing music (Finale), using SONAR for sampling
Light Photoshop work

How good is the X4500 at running old games - old i.e. Ghost Recon (the original), Rainbow Six 3 Raven Shield, etc?

So for the tasks listed above, should I get the IGP or the 3470?

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What kind of video will you be editing?

Some HD video editing software requires a dedicated video card.

 

Well, the resolutions of the vids I edit are usually around 800x600 to 1280x1024, but I render to a larger resolution usually, especially if the video I made has like 7.2megapixel photos in it.

So 3470 if I want to be able to use this machine to edit video for the longest time possible? Even taking into account the 3470 gets 1.5 less hours on battery than the IGP does (3.5 vs 5)?
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i will only use my laptop for similar purposes, but i opted for the ATi...its worth it, and the new SR has some mechanism I heard that allows even the dedicated card to run efficiently why using light things. It only drains battery life when playing games. (this is what I have heard from the new mont. chips w/ ati)

 

Yes a HD3470 would help if your edit software is able to use it.

Those numbers are incorrect as far as I know.

3.5 hours is the real world number.
5 hours is Sony specification.

I expect the difference to be 30-50 minutes.

 

Unrelated question:
Does Premiere Pro REFUSE to run with a 5400RPM drive - it says on the official page 7200RPM is required.

 

Wow... really?

I don't know... but Premiere does not play nice with AVCHD, so I won't be using it.

 

It will run with 5400rpm too, because some 5400rpm are actually faster than 7200rpm drives.

The fastest 5400rpm drives are 320GB, because of the higher data amount per platter.

 

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/systemreqs/
I've been using Premiere Pro for a while and I've grown to quite like it, so I'll probably keep using it - though thats not to say if I found something I like more I wouldnt switch.

Well, I was reading on a link from the Sony UK site I think it was, they listed the laptop with the IGP as having 5 hours while the one with the 3470 had 3.5 hours - both labeled as being tested with MobileMark. And seeing as other tests are coming in with the 3470 having 3.5 hours, I'm beginning to think there really is that huge difference.


I was reading in one of the other posts that the X4500 was faster than the 9300M GS/8400M GS...
The only games I'm gonna care to run are Ghost Recon (original) and Rainbow Six 3 Raven Shield - both came out in like 2002, and my old X300SE on my old old desktop could run them both maxed, I have my desktop for hardcore Bioshock-ing.
Will an Intel X4500 be good enough to run those 'maxed'?

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i dont think the X4500 is better than the 9300 GS. anyone is free to correct me.

 

Well I suppose bottomline would be is X4500 > X300SE? since I know the latter can run the two games I listed.

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Interesting. Do you have that link?

That is incorrect I believe. AC500 posted benchmarks yesterday of X4500 and 9300M. 9300M was quite a bit faster.

 

I can't seem to find the forum post with the link - needless to say it had SR in the title - but the links led to a site with a brown-ish Sony frame, I'm pretty sure it was Sony, and showed a VN and an XN, one with the HD 3470/7200RPM HDD, and another with the X4500/5400RPM HDD.

I need to knoowww if the X4500 is halfway decent for the game I listed.

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Here are the 3D Marks for X4500 and 9300M.
http://image.itmedia.co.jp/l/im/pcuser/articles/0807/24/l_tm_0807typezr209.jpg

 

FOUND THE LINKS
from this post originally: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=272948

Links:
IGP - 5hrs (300 minutes)
http://vaio.sony.co.uk/view/ShowPro...9XN&site=voe_en_GB_cons&category=VN+SR+Series

3470 - 3.5hrs (210 minutes)
http://vaio.sony.co.uk/view/ShowPro...9VN&site=voe_en_GB_cons&category=VN+SR+Series

Most sites are saying 7200vs5400 has very little difference (0.4 watts max), so we'll just ignore those differences, but the above seems like a HUGE discrepancy.

And fine, according to reviews CITED by Wikipedia, the X4500 might be > than 8400M GS.

I SOOO need all the battery life I can get.

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It seems incredible 300 minutes. I'd love to see some user reports on that.

 

Same, man,
How exactly does the MobileMark batterymark test anyways? What does it make the computer do?

If the battery life difference is that great. . . man.

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I am not sure but Google is

PS. 4GB vs.3GB does make a difference, but not that big.

 

The Ati Downclocks, so if you are just lighly surfing typing etc. it will most likely come very close to the other card battery life wise.

 

As for the battery life of the HD 3470, it seems that the 3.5 hour mark is only slightly off the mark, with the guy that did the first impressions/review getting 3 hours...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=277739

Well, even if it does downclock, either way, it's another piece of silicon to pump juice to.

Whoa it almost seems as if Sony is just ripping the battery specs of the SZ.

 

I am in the same boat. Trying to decide between the Intel or the ATI. I can put up with the 3.5 hr the HD3470 offers but just wondering if the IGP would slow down overall system performance since it is using system memory and they do have to share bandwidth. Anybody knows?