Sony SZ780 slow with external display at 1920x1200, advice?

Hi everyone,

I read a bunch of threads but I could find an answer, so this will be my first post:

Can I do anything to speed up my laptop in order to work properly on the external monitor at 1920x1200 resolution(Samsung 275t, with that native resolution).

I am using Vista Buss+SP1, and until now I tried the followings:
-decreasing to 16b color doesn't help, so I keep the 32b color
-decreased to Vista Basic Theme (small improvement over full Vista Aero Theme), but won't do any good going even lower to Basic/Classic Window(the old 98/x style)
-all proper drivers are installed (including the monitor drivers which didn't do anything, as expected)
-tried various setting for the mouse and mouse cursor (like no shadow) with no improvements
-didn't try clean XP install, I would like to stay with Vista (did a clean install here, didn't help), but let me know if anyone has XP with a 1920x1200 ext res and works fine, I might consider.


The laptop is really fast in anything I do except MOVING the mouse on the extended display. And that is the problem. It's a small delay really easy to feel(which doesn't happen on the laptop display).

The only things I can think of is changing to some better drivers (but can't find any, nvidia won't install over sony) and overclocking the video card, but I don't think that will help much since 8400m gs is not something strong anyway, plus I'm scared I will eventually burn it out (in the long run).

Other than that, I can wait for the next Sony if it's in the next 1-2 months - like the Z I saw in some other thread (read all 50 or so pages and still no details on the Sony Z video card - and I think that's my main issue with this problem).

I spent about 2x$1000 on this monitors (I got 2, one for home, one for office) plus another bunch on the laptop just to see Sony didn't do good enough, not even for a mouse cursor in my case. I am not trying to play any games whatsoever, just plain/empty desktop with a static background! I only need to use a web browser and office documents, business stuff, as I said everything runs fast except the mouse. Actually one more thing: trying to play a DVD at full screen will get the player to stop (black screen) but it will play in a window close to full screen - this happens only on the external display, of course. But DVD playback doesn't matter on the full screen, I am in the office at that time, no need for DVDs.

Anyway, if you guys have any ideea, I would really appreciate it. Drivers, setting, switching to another laptop (but in the same 13" 4lbs category), anything !

Edit: sony vaio sz780, 2.5GHz, 4GB RAM, 250HDD,
internal display 1280x800 (standard),
external display 1920x1200 (standard), DVI connection via Sony docking station for SZ.

 

I don't think 1900*1200 should be a problem, even for the 8400m gs. I'd even think the integrated X3100 could pull it off.

Have you set it to only display on the external display? That is important.

3 ideas:
-Like you said switching to Windows XP may solve your problem. XP has less latency than Vista.
-Trying the latest Nvidia drivers of http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/
-Trying the Intel Integrated Graphics with the latest Intel drivers straight from Intel.com. Maybe that works even better because X3100 may allocate more memory than the Nvida GPU.

 

Thanks for your quick answer Phil, but after trying all steps (but downgrading to XP) nothing helped. Any other ideeas?

Downloaded and installed Forceware ver 167.45, no improvements whatsoever. Driver properly installed, shows a total of available graphics of 1343 MB, video bios ver 60.86.57.00.18, dedicated video mem 64MB. I don't remember what was before though at those numbers.

I also tried going stamina way, had some issues with intel drivers first but then, after everything was installed, I was not able to use the external display via DVI at all. And over VGA it worked but with a bigger delay.

The only way I can make it work smooth (regular!) is by using the CLONE multi-display option. But that will keep the same resolution on the ext display as on the laptop, distorting everything, with huge text fonts .. you know ... crapy resolution.

Using only the external display or using both internal and external in the same time makes no difference on my laptop.

I didn't try XP yet ... I really wanna find another way

Am I doing something wrong?
Does anyone use a SZ with an ext. display at 1920x1200 or more?

 

Well if that did not work I only see 2 explanations:
-Either the nVidia GPU does not have the power for 1900*1200 which I find unlikely.
-Or something in the combination of SZ & Vista causes a slow down at 1900*1200. Which may be solved by installing XP SP3.

Unfortunately I no longer have an SZ so can't test it. good luck with working it out.

 

after searching like crazy for 20 hours I ended up understanting it won't work because I need a laptop with a dual-DVI port (not 2 DVI ports), to support the higher resolution.

so, it's not about the video card (nor drivers) it's about the output from the laptop to the external monitor.

 

If it was lack of vRAM (which it sounds like), it should've gone away completly when you turned off Aero. Aero needs more vram to run at the same resolution. The needed memory for aero is:
– 64 MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor at 1,310,720 or less
– 128 MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor at resolutions 2,304,000 pixels or less
– 256 MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor at resolutions higher than 2,304,000 pixels

If you don't Use Aero, those requirements are much lower.

Otherwise, I've used weaker cards to drive a 1920x1200 display (like the go FX5200 in my PB, with all of OS X's eyecandy)

Dual-link DVI is only necessary for resolutions higher than 1920x1200 (i.e. 2560x1536). Otherwise, there should be no problem.