Sony SA Series Discussion Sony's next new 13.3 laptop

No, as far as I understood, that is the charger for the "sheet battery." This charger is required to charge the sheet battery, and is included with the battery purchase.

 

Yeah...that is for charging the sheet battery separately.

 

The only thing i am waiting for before ordering SB is to know about its temperature management skills.Hope it wont heat up that much.

 

already posted this on page 135

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...nys-next-new-13-3-laptop-135.html#post7229531

 

this appears to be the case, carbon fiber is much lighter than magnesium

 

just checked now and the sheet battery cost 150$ not 100$ they rise the price again

 

Returning my MBP and think the SA / Upgraded SB is the route for me, would like to find out more about the Vaio Display Plus used (only 720p, but higher up than their basic Vaio) and actual performance at that resolution with 6630m.

 

Perfomance is probably ok for a laptop graphics card, Should be possible to run medium/low on most games.
I think the vaio display has pretty ok viewing angles, if im looking at the running laptop in video's. the screen is 768p.
Do you like using 13 inch more than 15 inch ? It kind of depends what you are going to do with the laptop to decide what you want.

 

Hi, Sony fans, here is one more review of SB, a bit more extended, enjoy!

Sony Vaio VPC-SB1S1E im Test Besser gut kopiert auf notebookjournal.de

Frankly, I don't like the way the silver model looks - hello, my lovely plastic kitschy Acer! )

 

I'm playing Dragon Age 2 @ 1600x900 with a 330M in my Z. The 6630 is a tier above (since it's reportedly a bit faster tan the 5650).

Low looks great and runs fine.

 

From This Review, referring to the 6630M:

"It did a good job at auto-switching in our tests: when we launched 3DMark06, it used the Radeon graphics to attain a score of 6446"

I'm fairly certain that Sony is underclocking the 6630M, the 6630M is supposed to be the successor to the HD 5650 and the 5650 can go much higher.

 

Yeah, 6630m at 1366x768 should run full high settings on most modern games. (The link says medium-high for an older iteration of the card with fewer shaders, running on pre sandy bridge cpus). The cheaper card option (the 6470m) would be able to run modern games on low settings, as nutral suggests.

 

that is quite low, it should score much higher, whats wrong?

 

Could be the bloatware that is delivered with a lot of sony laptops ?

 

I wouldn't look at those results cuz in hwbot they use optimezed OS which doesn't correspond to benchmark from reviews.
Looking at notebookcheck we see that in 3Dmark06 those 5650 which have 550/600mhz go from 6600 to 7000 .. HD6650 which have 600mhz it's around 7400 ... so it's possible that 3dmark06 prefers higher frequencies then an upgrade of only 80 pipelines.. by the way it's only a supposition.. it's always possible that is underclocked

By the way, there's something odd. HD6470M would score 4300-4500 ..but on Sony SB goes to 5100-5200.. ... this is odd!

 

It's probably underclocked.. He just said that.

 

that review is for the cb series, i wouldn't be surprised if that was underclocked. case could be different for the sb/sa series, and it should be since there is such a price disparity between the two series.

 

Don't forget that Serie Z has a downclocked GT330M which goes like a 325..

But, in your way, your explanation comes right thinking that a normal 6470 scores 4300/4500 and that on SB scores 5100/5200..

In addition, remember that tha 6490 (has only higher clock) scores 5600... even if it has 320 unit less... this means that 3dmark06 likes higher frequency... I don't think 3D mark 06 is a good point to analyze..

 

"a pop-up box appears asking you which adapter you would like to associate with a just-launched application. It did a good job at auto-switching in our tests."

Good to know that there's an option for automatic graphics switching. Although, manual is the BEST!

 

Just an FYI to us Canadian's. I recieved an E-mail from Sony Canada today confirming the Vaio SB for Canadian release at the end of March. I know I have been waiting and waiting for a date so others might be as well.
R

 

I hope they don't force the i7 with the 6630M again, I was going to go with the i5/6630M/smallest HD possible then manually upgrade to the 1TB 2.5" 9mm standard height HD that Samsung's going to be releasing soon, that's going to be awesome. I feel like I have been waiting for this laptop with these specs for this price range for years.

 

Here's a review of the new MBP. Considering the specs are very similar to Sony's S, we can guesstimate Sony SB's performances in game.

MBP 15": Quadcore @ 2.0ghz.
Sony SB: Dualcore @ 2.7ghz. The higher clock speed should allow Sony to be faster on most games.

6750m vs 6630m: 115mhz clock speed and 100mhz memory speed advantage for 6750m, but the performance differences should not be much.


The MacBook Pro Review (13 & 15-inch): 2011 Brings Sandy Bridge - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

I would say the performance of the Sony SB should exceed whatever MBP 15" achieves in Anandtech's charts, considering Sony S will be running on the superior WIN7 for games (Apple's OS/Bootcamp causes performance penalty). Portable gaming at this level of performance & battery life has never been done before.

 

What's the turbo freq of the Quad-core. Usually games don't utilize all the cores and some even just one core (meaning turboboost for the procs) In any case, the bottleneck has always been traditionally the GPU, not the CPU.

You say the performance differences should not be much, but considering that the core and shader clocks of the 6750m is about 24% faster and the memory speed is about 12.5% faster than the 6630m which should produce much higher fps's (HL2 is not a good benchmark as gaming at 60 fps compared to 100 fps is no different)

What you should compare to the other GPUs out there... it's faster than the 330m of the Vaio Z, 335m of the Alienware MX11. It is however comparable to the 5650m of the EB series or the 3820TG. I would say any i5 + 5650m is a good comparison to the gaming prowess of the SA/SB's 6630m

 

except that the 6700 series is equipped only with GDDR5, and that is a huge difference in terms of bandwidth. And taking as example the 4600 and the 5600/5700 the memory is the bottleneck.

 

would this include the CTO as well?

 

Hey guys, just saw this: Massive 8.9 quake, tsunamis hit Japan - CNN.com

I hope the best for the victims out there (there's a video on that link that shows a tsunami flowing inland... intense stuff). I'm sure this will affect everything coming from Japan for the next few months if not a year... 8.9 magnitude... scary stuff...

 

Depressing indeed; never saw this coming. One of my friends supposedly lives near Miyagi too... hope he's ok.

 

It's not just people near the tsunami who have to worry.

 

My sis-in-law is currently there in Japan (mil base). They're badly shaken but ok.

My thoughts go out to all the people in Japan. Hope everyone can recover quickly.

 

Sony closed its 6 production facilities in Japan. News agencies say that the death toll goes closer to 100 people...

 

I'm very sorry for all the people in Japan affected by this. It's a very bad situation there

And about the SB: they removed the CTO options for most EU online stores (I checked DE, FR, ES, UK). I suppose there's gonna be some shortages.

 

Yeah but it's only precaution cuz yes, there's a failure in cooling system of one reactor but the reactor is shut down and at the moment has not been registered any radioactive leak

BBC News - Japan earthquake triggers nuclear shutdown

Stay optimistic for this at the moment, as it seems, even if the cooling system in this singular reactor has malfunction, the reactor seems really robust.

 

Things maybe be delayed a bit? Sony, Toyota Among Japanese Companies Closing Factories After Earthquake - Bloomberg

 

You're right, of course. The indications are that the reactors are safe. The US flew emergency shipments of coolant to make sure they stay that way. There are, as always, news reports trying to make things look bad. Japan Earthquake: Damaged Japanese Nuclear Power Plants Stoke Nuclear Fears - ABC News

As for staying optimistic, you're also right about that. It's good (and important) advice.

 

Sorry I know this is serious stuff but I did have to lol at that.

 

Yeah, at the moment there's no kind of fallout. It will be possible in these days that the core will fuse if there's no cooling system online. But even if the cooling system is offline, it's very difficult a fallout of radioactive gases and none, cuz there a big containing structure of cement with rebars and other components around the reactor (there wasn't in Cernobyl)..In addition, US has already shipped those components that are required to get back to work the system so, I'm optimistic.

And the fact that there's no fallout (and this is the oldest reactor that they have I think) it's very good. They work well in Japan.

 

hmm... probably still shaking there from what the news is saying. The phones here were ringing since 4 a.m. (from the other in-laws here). The dad-in-law (grandpa) nearby here was in tears all night and thought the worst happen. But all relieved after we found the message that they're ok there in Japan. bye.

 

I hope everyone involved with this is alright. Major delays on the Vaio I'm assuming.

 

That's about the least important matter I can think of.

 

Interesting to see if my custom order SB will arrive next week as scheduled. If it is made in china then current events shouldnt affect a laptop that went into production last wednesday.

Not that i mind if its late, i mean its pretty understandable

 

I read that things like batteries are made in japan, i guess they are already making laptops in china but if there aren't any more batteries coming in from japan then the can't make more then the have in stock. That could also be the reason the CTO parts of the european sony websites are taken off.

 

dont worry jsmills, i'm sure that sony would have notified you if it were going to be late

 

Sony's 6 lithium ion plants were affected. Also some or all of these plants were in the area of the radiation contamination and in the area of the nuclear power plant explosion. Buying equipment produced in a nuclear fallout area is a bad idea.

If I recall Sony did have another plant located in Singapore for lithium ion production and hopefully Sony can at least provide limited capability at this plant for production although production capability if Sony will even have some for these batteries will be in quite short supply for a long time till they rebuild their plants.

Fear of Radiation exposure on Japanese goods is real and the USA and other nations need to strengthen import/export controls with radiation testing.

 

according to these 2 articles, radiation level after the blast decreased, but radiation level before the blast was elevated

so if this is true, then we should be less worried now of radiation contamination as long as the people there are keeping a close eye on the state of the nuclear plants and the radiation levels there

Japan's radiation leak: Shades of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl? - CSMonitor.com
Japan earthquake: Radiation leaks, and the threat to U.S. | OregonLive.com

edit: nevermind, i didnt factor in the fact that there is more than 1 plant in trouble.. the info above pertains only to the "#1 nuclear power plant"

 

I wouldn't be buying any items in these affected areas and a full long term study needs to be conducted before plants can reopen. It will take awhile and its unclear right now as to what will happen.

Singapore is likely unaffected however from the looks of it (unclear how far radiation has spread).

Assuming Singapore is A Okay, they have a plant there which hopefully will allow for limited production capability which hopefully they can ramp up. But with the main plants out, it will take a long time before factories will be rebuilt. Same thing happened when the memory chip plant had an epoxy resin explosion which forced memory chip prices through the roof and supplies couldn't be found. From that crisis, it took months for supplies to be back to normal and I expect the same here.

With Japan in crisis, other asian pacific nations will need to pull up their bootstraps and get cracking. Nations like Singapore and other Asian nations are likely to benefit with plant expansions.

Singapore, South Korea, even Malaysia, Vietnam, China (including Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau, etc...)

Sony could include temporary batteries with these notebooks or provide them without batteries for sale, then ship the batteries when they come in or something. I don't know how they will play it.

But it doesn't look like a full scale Sony VAIO S series notebook with full battery will be in any normal degree of stock if at all by April.

My UPS battery replacement was made in Vietnam but it likely was a basic lead acid battery and was not a complicated Lithium Ion design.

I do expect Sony will put an issue on this soon for its customers and they themselves don't know how they are playing it right now since its going to be in flux for a little while.

Preorders could be cancelled or they have enough limited production capability at the plants like at Singapore but upon final release of these there will definitely be problems with battery supply.

 

another thing that I should be afraid? Are they making glow in the dark terrorists too?

So no news about the S series?

 

The S Series seems nuclear right now :-(

 

S series CTO on Sonystyle US is gone! donimo effect.

 

Not surprised on this. I don't even know what other components if any were japanese.

Sony engineering and design teams were top notch even if the assembly was made elsewhere. It will take a long time to recover from this for every firm based in Japan. Japan's whole economy will need to be rebuilt from the ground up.

I bet a lot of people will wind up moving and taking up shop in other markets in the Asian Pacific after this crisis.

 

On the french Sony site (sony.fr), it is still possible to buy CTO Vaio Z...
And also CTO Vaio C, X, E, F or Y...
But not the S (I don't know if it was possible before...).