My discoveries on Vaio Z’s Hybrid Graphics

Will check out the latest Dox set when I can. I have to make due with a nonfunctioning keyboard/touchpad (using USB mouse & kb now) and sound but everything else seems to work ok now on my Vaio Z. Means hopefully I can test these drivers and see if I can help anywhere.

I posted up a very early breakdown of the INF from the latest official sony drivers here. It has the nvidia, sony and hybrid graphic specific sections color coded. It also links certain sections to the corresponding sections on MSDN. Will update it more when I can. Hope it will help those looking to build sets of their own.

Best advice I can give is to use a compare tool and compare the official INF with one from Intel drivers and Nvidia drivers to see the differences. If anyone has any specific questions be sure to ask here or PM me.

Anxious to look at Doxs latest set.

 

delete please - found info

 

Great to hear from you Dox It gives us some chance there will be some new version for our "old" Z

 

It took me a while to read through this whole thread. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the hybrid software switcher to work with just the following 2 registry key entries in the registry section, "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\Hybrid":

DisableUI - DWORD - 0
DisablePowerPolicy - DWORD - 0

The above didn't work on my Vaio Z690 running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, BIOS version R5031M3, & the latest Sony stock Nvidia GPU driver (version: 8.16.11.8735).

However, the good news is that I managed to get the hybrid software switch to work by adding one other registry key that was described very early in this thread onto the above system. However, by adding this registry key, the DisablePowerPolicy registry key that had previously provided the "NVIDIA Hybrid Graphics" (where it contains options to set the "On battery & Plugged in" values to either "Save power (integrated graphics)" or "Increased performance (NVIDIA GPU) in the individual power plans under the "Power Options > Advanced settings" menu will be gone.

Therefore to make the hybrid software switcher work using the Sony stock Nvidia GPU drivers (without the previously mentioned "Power Options > Advanced settings" options) is to have the following 2 items in the registry at the location, "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\Hybrid":

DisableUI - DWORD - 0
HybridPlatformRole - DWORD - 1

If anyone is able to find the necessary parameters to add into the registry to enable the "Power Options > Advanced settings" options that also allow us to set the "NVIDIA Hybrid Graphics" for "On battery" & "Plugged in" settings for our individual power plans, that will be great & I supposed it will probably be real close to the new Auto mode hybrid GPU options for the new Vaio Z successor. Good luck.

 

@SPEEDwithJJ:

I wonder if you have the latest nvidia AND intel driver working on you Z now? I do not need auto switching (at least not now ) but I would like to work with the latest drives for each GPU.
If you know how to make it work, can you tell us?

 

Sorry.. Just got back from a weeklong business trip and small hospital stay. That is correct JJ those are the two options you would need in the registry to get the Hybrid Graphics stuff to shop up with the official Sony drivers. Actually you can probably delete the DisableUI key completely.

It has been a minute so off the top of my head I cant remember what you would need to get the stuff in power options working the way you want it but the information should be in this thread or in one of the many files on my site. The reason that it does not work for you by just enabling those proper registry settings AFAIK is because nvidia has changed the default way Hybrid Power works for Hybrid Graphics notebooks. Doesnt mean that it cant be done however. Additional registry settings you may want to try are "DisablePowerPolicy", "HidePowerSetting", "DisableSmartHybrid". Probably set all of these to 0 or try to use one or a combination of them and watch the results. There may be a few more I have forgotten I will post more if I remember. Glad to see someone taking time to poke around this stuff though.

Also with the Hybrid Power/Graphics UI enabled you may want to keep in mind the automatic switching prompt that may pop up and not allow the GPUs to switch until a specific application is closed. This prompt and lockout is in place to make sure any programs using specific 3d functions do not have problems if the GPU is switched when that program is running. I have seen a few cases where it will prompt to close a program that really inst using any specialized 3d features though. In this case nvidia added an application whitelist and blacklist. The following is an example whitelist:

HKLM,"Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\Hybrid",WhiteList,%REG_SZ%,"msnmsgr.exe,Yahoomessenger.exe,PDVDDXSrv.exe,PDVDCinService.exe,PDVDOnServi
ce.exe,FAService.exe,WebCamDell.exe,DellVideoChat.exe"

I was working on a basic application for all of this Hybrid Graphics/Hybrid Power stuff that would adjust these settings, allow for addition of apps to the back/whitelist, and do basic GPU switching using the "SetMode" registry setting. These registry settings are where all the magic happens.

 

Jorlin, I'm using the stock Sony GPU drivers. I'm sorry I'm not of any help to you in regards to implementing the latest Nvidia & Intel driver into the Vaio Z notebook. Hopefully, some other members are able to help you out ASAP.

 

Nautis, I'm sorry to hear about your small hospital stay. I hope you've return to good health & stay that way for a long, long time.

I've tried all available combinations (setting them to 0s & 1s) using both "DisablePowerPolicy" & "DisableSmartHybrid" together with "DisableUI" & "HybridPlatformRole." Unfortunately, I couldn't get the "On battery" & Plugged in" NVIDIA Hybrid GPU options to show up in the power plans. However, "HidePowerSetting" is something that I've not tried yet. Maybe that will work. I wonder if anyone else know of any other registry DWORD names that I can try on. I definitely agree with you that it is a matter of getting the correct registry names/settings in order for it to do what we want with the hybrid options.

 

I just poked around a bit for ya. Try the following:
"HybridPlatformRole"=dword:00000000
"AllowAdditionalDisplays"=dword:00000000

The automatic power switching stuff only seems to want to work on Hybrid SLI rather than Hybrid Graphics. These options identify it as Hybrid SLI and remove the Additional Displays option which is really only for desktops AFAIK. Not sure if this brings any functionality difference though. You may want to test battery life between the two modes.

So for reference:
"HybridPlatformRole"=dword:00000000 = Hybrid SLI
"HybridPlatformRole"=dword:00000001 = Hybrid Graphics

Under Hybrid SLI you will see three options that can be switched "Save Power", "Increase Perfrormance", & "Additional Displays". Additional Displays is used to output to a display connected to each GPU. The best example is in a desktop Hybrid SLI setting where you have an onboard nvidia GPU (mGPU) with display connector and an additional discrete nvidia GPU (dGPU) with its own display connector. The additional displays setting would use both of the two connectors with a monitor hooked up to each. AFAIK it doesn't due much in a notebook setting though I have to admit I haven't really checked it out. That would be the only reason I recommend disabling it per the above "AllowAdditionalDisplays" setting.


The dirty little secret to all of these fancy SLI/GPU Switching technologies is that it is primarily in the software and not the hardware. If it weren't for my poking around we wouldn't even know the Vaio Z uses "Hybrid Graphics". Sony would rather let you think everything is done using their magical hardware switch.

For educational reference I will quote something I posted elsewhere:

Note: The quoted parts of the technology definitions come from Nvidias technical documents and other places. The rest of the information here is put together by me so it may not be 100% accurate.

 

Just a bit of FYI for everyone. It seems as if the new Intel drivers don't want to work properly with the Nvidia drivers in our traditional Hybrid Graphics setup.

The newer Intel drivers work on their own away from the Hybrid Graphics configuration, and work extremely well. Its only combined in the Hybrid Graphics config that they seem to stop functioning.

I have a hunch it may be due to the new GUI/Control Panel included with the Intel Drivers. We will see if there is a way I can work around it.

The reason I have this hunch is because in order to get the combination of Intel and Nvidia drivers working as Hybrid Graphics the following is part of what takes place.

Traditional Intel INF

Hybrid Graphics INF

You will notice that in Hybrid Graphics the igfx service points to the nvidia service and driver. This is a crucial part of the Hybrid Graphics difference and what helps make the GPU switching possible. I have to assume that since the Intel service is not working properly this causes problems with the GUI initialization.

 

I am running a Benq S42 and haven't been able to get auto switching on batter/plugged in for quite a while. Have tried alot of the reg editing and no luck so far with getting these options back, and even get them back to work.

Also my power plan for plugged in has the brightness turned up but resets itself to same as battery sometimes, quite annoying.

 

Wish I had some better suggestions for you. The slight difference in the way your S42 and our Vaio Zs are configured can make things complicated sometimes. Have you tried the settings I mentioned for JJ? Try this:
"HybridPlatformRole"=dword:00000000
"AllowAdditionalDisplays"=dword:00000000
"DisablePowerPolicy"=dword:00000000
"HidePowerSetting"=dword:00000000
"DisableSmartHybrid"=dword:00000000
Or a variant of it and they should appear under advanced power options. Not sure about brightness. Maybe "BacklightControlPolicy"=dword:00000001 if its not already there. May want to try 2 or something also.

Edit: These all under HKLM,"Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\Hybrid" btw. Also which drivers are you using Kulprit?

 

Nautis, what is the latest version of Intel graphics drivers that you know/believe will work in a hybrid graphics package?

2021 = black screen on startup
1986 = black screen on startup
1930 (from your 191.66 package) = fine

 

I've not had time to try new combinations out since yesterday. But to help others save some time while testing, I'll mentioned what I've also tested. However, do take note that I'm not using the latest Nvidia &/or Intel GPU drivers. I'm basically only using the stock Sony Nvidia/Intel drivers.

I've played around with all possible combinations of "HybridPlatformRole," "DisablePowerPolicy," & "DisableSmartHybrid." The thing is that I'm able to get the options ("Increased performance" & "Saved power" options as well as "Additional Displays") for the NVIDIA hybrid icon to show up in the system tray when activating "DisableSmartHybrid" &/or "DisablePowerPolicy" with "HybridPlatformRole" set to off (0), but the options when clicked don't work at all.

However, I'm happy that I'm able to switch the graphics mode using the software switch (through system tray icon after setting the "HybridPlatformRole" to 1) because I feel that it will reduce the chances of the silver paint around my Vaio Z notebook's physical GPU switch peeling off through regular switching as I need the NVIDIA GPU while I'm using my notebook with the docking station at home while using the Intel GPU on the go.

On a side note. I also have a 15" unibody MBP (with Nvidia chipset/motherboard) running Windows. I wonder if I play around with the registry settings & add in/set the "HybridPlatformRole" to 0, will I be able to get the MBP to use the integrated Nvidia 9400 GPU instead of the dedicated Nvidia 9600 GPU when running Windows?

 

I'm using the Official (Asus i think) x64 drivers for Win7. As far as I know they are the only x64 ones that work with Win7 without any changes to major files. Like using test mode and such. Cheers for all the info Nautis, will give them a try.

 

Let me know your result because I think the Asus stock drivers are almost the same as the Sony stock drivers. Thanks in advance.

Yep. Agreed that Nautis has been a great help all this while. Nautis, thanks to you too.

 

I just tested 1972 which I am on now and seems to be working fine. I am going to try to get the new ones working.

When it comes to the newer Intel drivers it seems like the new packages with "GfxUI.exe" & "Gfxres.**-**.resources" files seem to black screen. As I said probably due to the non use of intels igfx service and using nvidias instead. I am going to poke around em to see if I can find what is causing them not to work. They work in a Intel only non Hybrid Graphics setup but something about the HybGfx config causes the black screen.

Silly of me to have not checked the actual functionality, sorry bout that. As you said it use to work fine. I am sure if we do some more poking around we will figure it out.

Not sure if you've tried my little proof of concept app here. It works by switching the SetMode. I have talked about the SetMode registry setting here in the past. It switches GPUs instantly as soon as the value is changed in the registry and could be useful to implement in an actual utility. It also shows that you don't need to rely on a hardware or taskbar icon to switch GPUs. It is a stupid little app but another thing that can be used to switch GPUs if ya need it.

Others have asked me about the MBP. I would love to be able to get both GPUs working in Hybrid SLI on em. I'm not sure a simple registry hack will get it to work though. If we can find a way to get it to see the 9600 in windows I am sure we can get it to work properly.

 

for people who tried sonys official win7 x64 drivers:

Do they include the additional resolutions such as 1366x768 and 848x480?

 

What monitor has 848x480?

 

I'm using the stock Sony drivers. In the Nvidia control panel, I do not see options for 1366x768 and 848x480 resolutions. The closest to those that I can see are 136 0x768 and 800x600.

 

Even though Mass Effect 2 min system requirements state that the z doesn't meet the min requirements, i took a leap of faith and bought it anyway. I'm only about 2 hours in, but here are my results so far.
Frame rates get pretty bad at 1280x768, which is the minimum setting for wide full screen mode.
It's still playable, though barely, and looks great even with all graphics settings set to off. Other than the frame rate dropping, the game has been fairly stable so far.
Quickly changing to 800x600 helps a lot, which is what i do in areas where frame rates get really bad.

Vaio Z590
VC: 9300M GS 256M Ram
Processor: Core 2 duo 8400 @ 2.26ghz
Ram: 4gigs
Win7 64 Pro
Video driver is the one OP has listed.

 

SPEEDwithJJ & namaiki:
Thanks for your reply, I might try it out!

848x480 is NOT selectable in Windows, only in games. While most games do support 848x480, some dont. Example of games that DO support 848x480 are Source games, Fallout3, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Mass Effect, Street Fighhter 4 etc.

If you have time, would you mind trying a game or two and see if 848x480 is there?

 

I don't know why but I noticed graphics performance DECREASING on W7 when compared to Vista. This is using official 8.16....... drivers from the US. That exact reason is making me consider down-grading back to Vista (or I might go as far as XP)

Have you tried playing on Vista?

 

Using the same drivers as on Vista?

 

I'm using W7 x64 drivers in my W7 x64 OS.
I do heavy duty video encoding / editing and it lags alot, whereas Vista just breezed through it.

And I've used the Powermizer switch with Nautis recommended me 3 dozen pages back or so -turned powermizer OFF on AC, which is when I do my edit work. That just solved the lagging whenever W7 is idle with the nVidia chip, but still overall the Z on the video side of things is still laggy. An example is when I'm viewing a 1080p .mkv that I freshly encoded. Editing them on Vegas; feels like the machine is going to freeze everytime I output to file...

So I'm assuming a x64 Vista driver will fix the problem?

 

Not necessarily, but *something* has changed, and hopefully it is not Windows 7 that is responsible.

 

I believe the Win7 drivers may rely more on technologies like Cuda and the sort for encoding/decoding of videos. Nvidia also may have changed a bit more when it comes to video encoding/decoding with the Win7 drivers.

One of the only real differences between the Vista and Win7 drivers at least on the INF side of things is the following:

Note: using Sony 187.35 INF.

To further explain, this is the section of the INF that registers DLLs. 01 is Vista and 02 is Win7. Looking at the difference between the two we can see that nvdecodemft & nvencodemft are set to register on Win7 but not Vista.

This can also be seen further down in nv_miscBase_addreg__01 and 02.

EDIT: For those wondering what I am talking about with 187.35 when it comes to Vista. Sony removed part of INF which basically identifies Vista and says... if this is Vista go to these sections. If you look at the template (nvmvsz_template) you can pretty much see what is missing.

 

is the link down? because I can't download the drivers at the moment..

 

What link?

 

the link in the first post by OP to download the drivers

 

...is not down, if that is what you are referring to.

 

I wish we had some updated soon

 

Hello guys.
Can anyone point me directly to the newest version of Nvidia drivers for my VGN-Z550N/B on Windows 7 x64? I currently have this version: http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VGNZ550NB&upd_id=3730&os_id=29

Thank you!

 

Looks like our Hybrid Graphics has evolved into Nvidia Optimus. Looks like another challenge.

No one has attempted to put together a new Hybrid Graphics package except for Dox huh. Hmm.

 

Looks like challenge for you Nautis Or should I say it's no challenge for you Nautis, what do you think?

 

@Nauts

Can you please compare drivers for new i5\i7 Z with old Z drivers and tell us what's different. Especially if you can find any clues on architecture of hybrid graphic in new Z. Judging by automatic mode behavior described in manual it seams like it's not Nvidia Optimus.

ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/PUB/VAIO/ORIGINAL/VPCZ11/GRAPHICS_DRIVER_NVIDIA_HA_S6_8.16.11.8849.ZIP

 

I'm still sticking with that 186.88, as a program I use daily appears to be broken on 19x.xx.

 

Nautis, I have read:

Not looking too good..

 

Didnt even know these were out. Thanks igorstef. Ill let ya know what I find.

EDIT: Well these drivers are silly. They are already setup for our Vaio Zs on the Nvidia side as evidenced by the nvmvsz_template.txt file. (Seriously open it in a text editor and scroll to the very bottom where you will see entries for NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS) The nice thing is that these may hold the key to getting the newer Intel drivers functioning properly. Overall great find.

EDIT2: nvumdshim.dll, nvumdshimx.dll, nvinit.dll, nvinitx.dll, & nvcoproc.bin are new files referenced in the template but not found in the driver package. UMD Shims, Inits and CoProcessor? Oh my.

Agreed. Nvidia has been known to fib a bit in the past though with what really happens with their technology. Shall see. I wouldn't get my hopes up too much. As I am sure you have noticed drivers on the Hybrid Graphics front have gone somewhat stale. I figured they were either looking to drop it or come out with a new technology to replace it.

 

Also, there was something along the lines of Optimus can use normal drivers.

More in the talk thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5857979

And half a driver(might be the whole thing? or maybe Optimus is another software that pulls the strings over a normal driver) here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/optimus_technology.html

 

Interstng. Thanks for keeping me up to date on the latest information. Makes me jealous of Optimus as it seems like the holy grail of switchable graphics.

Edit: To reply to your edit. That is what I am ultimately hoping for. If you look at my last post Edit2 you can see some interesting new files that are going to pop up in the drivers soon. My guess is these files are part of Optimus.

 

Interestingly this INF (Vaio Z only) should work with the new Z drivers [64bit]. (thanks igorstef)

It seems to give the same issue with the Intel drivers that both namaiki and I have run into in the past. (Black screen etc.) So not so good news really
I posted the INF so others can test em. No driver signing needed. Just drop the INF and install.

Downloading Optimus drivers now btw

EDIT: The Optimus dirvers are indeed standard non-hybrid graphics drivers and do not include Intel drivers in the package.
Couple of interesting registry settings:
HKLM,"System\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvlddmkm",EnableCoproc,%REG_DWORD%,1
HKLM,"System\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvlddmkm", PreferCoprocOverHybrid,%REG_DWORD%,1

Prefer CoProcessing Over Hybrid huh.. hmm

Inital testing: Got them installed and.... "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)"
I may build a set for non Vaio Z Hybrid Graphics users to test.

 

looking forward

 

While I was playing with drivers I think I found how to solve resolution issues.
First I copied Intel 1930 driver from Nautis into Sony's new 188.49_2021 driver and noticed supported resolutions are gone.
Second I copied Intel 1872 driver from Sony's current 187.35_1872 into Nautis 191.66_1930 driver. Now I see 1440x900, 1360x768, 1280x800.

With these trials, I concluded that resolution issue was caused by Intel driver.
I attached inf file that I used.
Copy intel driver files from Sony official 187.35&1872 driver and paste into Nautis's driver along with attached inf file.
This is for those who think nvidia 19x.xx (mainly for cuda & coreavc 2.0?) + resolution support is more valuable than Intel driver.
Tested on Win7 x64, and no garentee for other platforms, ex)vista or x86

BTW I tried to use nvidia 195.62 notebook driver and 196.12 desktop driver to make hybrid driver, but neither of them were sucessful.
After I switch to intel, I cannot switch back to nvidia.
My computer just sits there and do nothing.
I also tried Nautis's proof-of-concept program, but no good...
Any step-by-step guide to build hybrid driver?


After all, now I am tired of restarting my computer



Edit1: This driver is no good!!!
Somehow DirectX and 3D stuffs does not work on Intel side...
Switching works well, so just try to checkout the resolution support (at your own risk?).

Edit2: Changed, works well (at least for me now)

 

Difficult to do a step by step since there are various changes in Nvidias driver series. If you give me a Nvidia version you want to make into a Hybrid Graphics driver I can do a step by step for it.

 

Does anyone know how to disable the STAMINA/SPEED physical switch? Maybe not "physically" disable the switch but disable the software from reading the position of the switch?

The reason I'm asking is because I suddenly have the urge to try out all these Registry value changes again about 2 & 1/2 hours ago. I discovered that I've overlooked something previously & I sincerely apologize for my BAD. I found that for the most part, the auto graphics mode does work when setting the desired graphics card selection in the Power Plans' advanced settings. Even the taskbar icons work. I use the following values in the registry:

DisableUI - DWORD - 0
HybridPlatformRole - DWORD - 0
AllowAdditionalDisplays - DWORD - 0

Note that I'm using the stock Sony graphics drivers.

Unfortunately, whenever the notebook starts up Windows, it will always run a check for the value (position) of the physical graphics (STAMINA/SPEED) switch & try to move the graphics selection to what the position of the switch is indicating, which is annoying. The 2nd annoyance is that every 2 or 3 selection changes (when it had done the graphics changes) for the Power Plan options, my system seems to do a check of the position of the physical switch & activate the graphics card that corresponds to the physical switch.

My guess is that if we're able to disable the system (maybe it is the Nvidia driver/registry or maybe it is more likely those necessary Sony system utilities we installed to get the Fn functions to work & so on) from checking the position of the physical graphics switch, we'll have a "fully" functioning software graphics switch that is able to perform correct auto hybrid graphics that changes according to the power plans' selections.

 

You can disable it in the advanced menu of the BIOS.
(you must flash a bios with enabled advanced menu to get this option)

 

Got the Optimus 189.07 somewhat working in Hybrid Graphics mode. No go on Optimus mode though so far. Nothing new or interesting found.

EDIT:

Ahh crap.. I forgot to mention that about the switch position. My apologies. I will look to see if there is a registry value to ignore the switch when I get home.

Glad to see others tackling various areas of these drivers. Hopefully we will discover other hidden potentials or fixes for various issues that keep popping up. I will try to post up more info that may help everyone. It has become rather difficult to explain certain areas because both Nvidia and Intel are starting to change things.

 

Hello

I'm considering which driver set to install on my Z1 with win7 32bit right now, and after some sniffing around notebookreview, laptopvideo2go and russian ixbt forums, I discovered a plenty of graphic driver packs! Custom packs come from Nautis, some from Sorg, couple from Dox, official packs come from Asus, Benq, Sony.. Sony have plenty of driver sets on their USA and Europe sites, and guess lots of undiscovered stuff on their corresponding ftp's. I got lost in all this mess and all I want is just latest working driver for win7 32bit.. Things get more complicated with all available BIOS versions, cuz it seems that any latest (2xxx, 4xxx and 5xxx) versions work on all Z's starting from Z1. Plus I've got to know more about a thing called 'SLIC' to figure out which version of BIOS with which version of SLIC do I need.

Could you help me with these:

1. From what I've read, R2170M3, R2171M3, R4043M3, R5031M3 all work on VAIO Z1x. Is there any difference for Z1 user?

2. Can't find 32bit version of 187.35, so guess 186.84 is my choise, right?

3. What's the version of Intel driver in latest Dox 195.62 package?

Thanks.

 

R5031 and R4044 are the exact same, except R4044 doesn't have SLIC 2.1. The R5xxx series BIOS run SLIC 2.1 (Win7 and previous factory installs) while all previous use 2.0 (Vista and XP factory installs). If Win7 was factory installed download the R5031M3A file I posted here and you'll be fine.