Slow graphics on Sony Z117

Hi all

I've really tried to research this issue before posting but I'm stumped.

I'm the proud (?) owner of a new Sony Z117 bought in Australia. Not sure if it's the same specs as elsewhere in the world so: i7 M620, 2.67Ghz, 8GBram, GeForce GT 330M, 250GB SSD, 1080 HD screen.

My main question is why is this machine so slow at playing 3D games? Not that I have much time for games these days, but when you buy the most expensive laptop on the market you expect to be able to play a game on FULL 3D settings!

I have Just Cause 2 running on my HP DV7-2111x running very smoothly - admittedly not on high 3d settings and at 1600x900 resolution.

But the Sony z117 with an i7 only manages 15FPS on medium settings. On full settings it runs about 10FPS - using the inbuilt benchmark.

I've done a bit of research and found that the graphics card is really second rate in this machine. But then I looked into it further and found that the sony ships with very old drivers, with NVIDIA offering much improved drivers (with countless performance improvements and bug fixes), BUT NOT TO SONY USERS.

Sony it seems does not want us using the newest drivers from NVIDIA, but do not offer their own update.

Anyway, after hours more research I realised that with some modification of the .inf file on the driver you can use the NVIDIA drivers. This improved the benchmark FPS to about 20 on medium settings.

I have seen on several forums people averaging 30-60 FPS on JC2. Are their graphics cards really that much better than the Sony's?

I really don't see the point of an i7 with 1080 screen if you're going to team it up with an average video card!? What is i7 for if not for intensive graphical applications?

Please help! I'm happy to run any other benchmarks - Windows Experience gives a "gaming graphics" score of 6.4.

Jamie

 

Are you sure you're using the nvidia card and not the integrated intel graphics? If you're old hp dv7-2111 can run whatever game you're playing smoothly than the vaio z should be more than capable of running it even better since it has a gt 330m gpu vs the intel 4500MHD on the dv7-2111

edit: just looked up the game you were talking and it seems like it's a fairly gpu intensive game. And as mfpreach mentioned, the 330M GT cannot run games at high resolutions like 1920x1080 with all settings on high... I hope you didn't specifically buy the laptop to play games at 1080p because you will be disappointed.

 

Stop playing games in the Native resolution.
Notebooks have slower graphics cards because they can't deal with the heat. Have you seen the coolers on desktop cards?

 

The problem is that the 330M can't handle 1080p gaming due to its 128 bit bus. That's why I got a 1600x900 screen. There's not much difference in terms of looks but the performance is much better.

 

Well thanks for the input.

All the reviews for the Z117 rave about what a high end machine it is but the graphics card which really seems to let it down is barely mentioned.

Am I just being unrealistic? Looking at NVIDIAs line up there are definitely better laptop cards available.

I would have expected Sony to chuck in a better graphics card when the rest of the machine is so high-spec - it seems a waste.

 

Look at the last generation Z. Lowend Graphics.

This time we get midrange. It's an incredible solution for the size and weight. If you need highend graphics you are going to need to get more of a tank. The sony can't manage the thermals with all they built in.

Check out the alienware m11x. Smaller screen, no optical drive, way slower cpu....but higher end graphics and the unit turns out heavier and bigger than your Z.

The Z is definitely NOT a gaming machine, but it will at least get by.

 

Does anyone know a good benchmark that I can run a test on, then perhaps I could post the results? Just to make sure that I'm running things as optimised as I can.

I really thought I was on to something when I upgraded to the latest NVIDIA drivers.

 

yes you are being unrealistic. This is a professional thin and light laptop with a pretty nice vid card if you factor in the size and weight of the thing. Like others have said, this is NOT a gaming rig. Go get an Asus w/the ati 5870 or an Envy 15 if gaming is your priority. Have fun carrying them around too.

If you're playing at native 1080p resolution then you're crazy along w/unrealistic.

 

Agreed. It boggles my mind some of the comments on these forums. People really expect desktop performance from a 13" laptop that weighs 3 lbs. I think the size/weight/performance ratio is tremendously awesome on the new Z. It is waaay better to go for the 1600x900 screen if gaming is a primary concern and you want the advantage of the sharpness of running the games at their native resolution.

 

Z isn't built for peformance. It is built for ultra portability. If you buy it to play games, especially new games at high setting, you bought the wrong notebook. In fact, you bought the wrong brand. Alienware and their competitors are the one to buy.

If you want a gaming notebook, you have to sacrifice portability. You have to deal with 10 or 12-pound notebook that is so thick and heavy, you probably don't want to carry it around every day like your Z.

In the future, please check the video card of the notebook you buy and compare their performance from this site http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Graphic-Cards.130.0.html

 

I dare anyone to find a notebook close to the size and weight of the Z that has the same level of CPU and GPU power. It doesn't exist. So complaining that it's not enough is kind of silly.

 

That's the only reason why anyone would buy the Z... especially in that 13.1" factor

 

It is built for performance just not High graphics settings @ 1080p.
Get a desktop, u can build one for around $500 that will do high end graphics.

 

^^ Can't exactly tug the desktop around... for gamining i'd head over to alienware for thier m11x... I don't like the design of it and it weighs like a brick but it sure excels in portable gaming needs.

 

I appreciate your comments. I just need to point out I didn't buy the machine for games: I bought it for the form factor, but I'm just interested in what kind of performance you can get from it, and games are the only software I can think of to test a machine's limits.

When I get home tonight I want to run the Just Cause 2 Benchmark on my DV7-2111X and the Z117 both at 1600x900.

The 2111X has got Core 2 Quad Q900, 4Gb ram and an ATI Mobility Raedon HD 4650. Surely the Z117 should trounce this 1 year old $AU2000 dollar machine, but I don't think it will. I realise its twice the size and 3 times as heavy but the specs are ways less, correct?

 

They should be about equal, actually. The specs are similar, though the Q9000 is weaker for games due to slower clock speeds.
The Z is an ultraportable, and that's mostly what you're paying for. If you want a step up in gaming performance, the m11x is a little better, though not much; then there's some newer machines with Core i5/HD 5650 or GT 335M that are out (Lenovo Y460) or will be in the near future (Acer TimelineX, ASUS N82Jv) - though the only advantage those have over the m11x is CPU power. Pass that point and you're off to high-end cards like the Mobility HD 58xx cards; the Envy 15, for example, is a little like a 15" analogue to the Sony Z - light and thin for a 15", but a big step up in graphics power.

Once you step into the area of full-fledged gaming laptops, the MSI GX640 is probably the most portable; the weight is average for a 15" laptop, but significantly lighter than other gaming laptops.

 

What's with these games that aren't happy with an i7, 8GB of ram and an admittedly middle of the road graphics card?? What other applications come close to needing such power? Can you use the power of an i7 word processing, surfing word, editing photos/video? Or is it all for show??

 

You can do more than gaming and use those specs. What everyone is trying to say is this is not a gaming PC, not that the power is not useable. Anyone doing photo or video editing would love the power in the Z. Programmers also can use the power of this machine. I know I can't wait to get all of my work stuff up and running because my programs for work can really use this kind of power, it will make my job go much faster.

What was nice of Sony is to put a better graphics card in than they did for the older Z, why? Because a lot of the same people who want this PC for all the above reasons, also want to play games. So now one is able to play most games. Not all, but most and still get to do everything else while being a very portable PC.

 

I wouldn't say they "aren't happy"; you just have to turn those settings down.
As for the CPU, most people don't need that kind of CPU power, and games tend to be bottlenecked by the GPU rather than the CPU - it's all about the video card. It's tasks like media editing and encoding, 3D rendering, archive packing/unpacking, and large Excel spreadsheets where CPU power will really show - though I'll admit some of those tasks are starting to get GPU acceleration which is better still.

Ultimately, you have to accept that high-end laptop video cards are just too power-hungry for a 13.3" form factor; you'll have to deal with ~15" and >2kg in weight if you want that level of performance.

 

How about video editing/encoding and other processor intensive operations?

 

Well, for video editing/encoding and the like the i7-620M is one of the fastest mobile processors there is, and you'll definitely notice the speed if you're waiting for the task to complete.
The mobile quad-cores are a little faster for encoding, because it's easy to split the work between four cores - each core encodes a quarter of the video - but there's no integrated graphics and power consumption is greater.

 

I was just making the point to the op that just because you can't play games @ 1080 on very high doesn't mean there is nothing else you can do with the computer that is processor intensive.

 

Gotcha. Without a quote, it wasn't clear what your post was directed at.

In any case, there's definitely plenty of processor-intensive tasks out there, though how much you do them is a matter for each individual.
As a general rule, gaming is not such a task, because it's much more likely that performance will be limited by the video card. However, some dodgy, unoptimized console ports like GTA IV may be CPU bottlenecked.

 

Okay I ran the benchmark from Just Cause 2 on both computers at 1600x900 all settings the same - middle of the road settings.

Sony z117 i7, 8GB ram, GT 330M - Avg FPS 6.05, Time 238.40sec - unplayable
DV7 2111x Cor2 Quad Q900, 4GB ram, ATI M 4650 - Avg FPS 13.47, Time 121.50 - Playable

Also some benchmarks from FurMark:
DV7 - 1269 points, 21FPS avg
Z117 - 539 points, 9FPS avg

I realise the Sony is not a "gaming machine" but do you think something is wrong with the GPU? It is terrible performance against a 1 year old machine.

I really appreciate any help you can give me.

Perhaps another z117 owner could post their FurMark score at 1024x768 resolution?

 

What resolution did your run furmark at?

 

1024x768 - so I could run it on the HP.

 

I would have expected the 330M to be pretty close to the 4650 overall, so this is surprising. Perhaps it's a driver issue?

 

Well I just ran the furmark benchmark and got a score of 888 (15fps avg)

 

Well that's interesting, I thought it was pretty poor performance.

As you know Sony don't let you download the latest NVIDIA drivers so it is running the driver it came with - 188.80. or 8.16.11.8880 (I'm not sure which is the right number to use)

Any ideas for what else I should think about?

 

Thanks for testing! Yours is much better but still not that good (is it??).

Are you running the factory NVIDIA drivers 188.80?

Just noticed I'm using Direct X 10.0 - is that the latest and would it make a difference?

 

Yes i'm using the 188.80 (stock sony drivers). I just quickly overclocked the 330m gt and got a higher score of 1133 (19fps avg)

Are you sure you're using the 330M GT and not the intel gma hd? Cause I get a score of 540 (9fps avg), which is roughly what you got if I run the test with the intel graphics card. When you run the test, look where it says Renderer and see what it says there. It should display the nvidia card.

 

I thought that - Renderer says NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M and my switch is switched to speed, running in High Performance power setting.

GPU-Z says GPU-Z data not available. Not sure what that means.

Ran FurMark after machine sitting idle for a while and got 538 points.

 

There is definitely something wrong than. Did you do a clean install after you got your laptop? Try uninstalling the sony drivers and than reinstalling it again.

 

Ran FurMark with Intel graphics and got a score of 439! Almost the same!

Interestingly the fury spotted torus which spins as part of the benchmark was only visible as dots rather than the fury texture with the 330M.

 

A clean install? I was hoping no one would say that!

 

I mean't did you do a clean install since you received your laptop? Just try uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers sony provides and see if that fixes the problem.

 

When I reinstalled the old stock drivers I get 888 points on FurMark

With the newest NVIDIA drivers with hacked INF I get 1321 points! Major improvement! Pity the drivers only work once and then fail to load after a restart. Also the hybrid graphics switch doesn't work.

Bloody Sony and their slow driver releases. Disgraceful!

Looks like I'll have to wait for Nautis to do his magic!

 

Nice! Yea, the drivers sony provides are so outdated it's not even funny...

 

I'm happy to hear it, drj55. It's surprising that there's such a huge difference just due to drivers, but it's a lot better than broken hardware.

 

hey guys.
ive read this thread an am curious what my score will be.
got a i5-540, 4gb ram and 1080p and did a clean install because of my intel x25 ssd. in what resolution did you ran futuremark? i will try out my score later that day and post it. but am sad to hear that you could get almost 1300 with newest drivers why can`t we just install the newest drivers from nvidia? what would happen? and do we have to use the sony ones, which seem to be pretty old?

 

FurMark at 1024x768.

Why specifically did you do a clean install for the ssd? I don't really want to do one myself but if you think it will help performance then I will. It took me absolutely ages to uninstall all the Sony bloat ware which will be time wasted!!

 

ok ok will run it at 1024x768. what about the quality settings?? everything at performance like it is by default?
Please post one full config so we can compare our score.

just finished the futuremark vantage but with the default resolution of 1280x768 and got a total of 2249. it gave me a cpu-score of 7800 and gpu-score of 1800.

seem to be too high, you guys get around 800 right??

and regarding the clean install. i had to do a clean instal because i got the hdd no optical drive version. so swapping to the ssd you get a emtpy drive. therefore i installed everything new. seems fine, trim is working with new intel rapid storage drivers and now i wantedd to test my graphics.

...will run it again at your resolution now.

 

oh i meant futuremark....and you are talking about furmark....my fault

how long do you test the gpu?? 60 seconds?

 

now im n the right train^^
so my score is 887, everything seems right here but i want that 1300 with the hacked drivers!!!
all my hopes are now on the nautis drivers
lets wait and hope they will work fine and arrive soon

 

why does the drivers from laptopvideo2go.com not work? anyone tested?

 

Im running Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company2 on 1080p witht the GT330M, and it runs smothly. So the 330M is fullcapable of running games on 1080.

 

Those two aren't particularly demanding games, though.

 

Just cause 2 plays great on new Z with 1600x900 res. If you turn off the shadows, it's very smooth with high settings.

 

Enough demandig to always be mentioned in benchmarks regarding video cards.
Playing medium, and in some cases high settings, it can handle most of the games smoothly on 1080p.
My point was that it can handle games to be playable at 1080p. And remember, it is severe underclocked by Sony.

Of course its not a graphic card that you can play all games on 1080p with highest settings and full AA, but it can handle any game out there.

 

What FPS do you get at 1600x900 on the Concrete Jungle Benchmark?

I'm getting about 6-8 on medium type settings. Not sure if I had shadows on or off.