Sony VAIO CW Gaming

I'm close to getting my wife one of the Best Buy Sony VAIO CW series laptops...and am curious what she can expect as far as gaming performance. Her main interest involves Warcraft, Dawn of Discovery, Sims 3 types of games. Anybody here with experience on what to expect out of the Nvidia 210 video card that is in these things?

All info appreciated. Thanks.

 

should be able to run those games with relative eaze at high rez.

Those games you stated are pretty old

 

Sims 3 and Dawn of Discovery came out this year. Just curious if anyone has real-world experience with this laptop series. Thanks.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=427692

Thread filled with CW owners.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-G-210M.17638.0.html

G210M is okay ( I can not find any exact specs). Based apon the class range it is in, and its position, I would imagine it would do okay. My friend is holding on buying a CW until we know how good the g210m is vs g230m.

 

Thanks for both links. Had already visited the notebookcheck site. In the past (to me anyway), they always seem to undervalue some of the mobile chipsets. I realize they have some game benchmarks...but nothing really tangible that I can compare to what my wife plays.

I went through a lot of the CW owners lounge...only problem there is it seems many have the g230m chipset instead of the g210m.

Thanks for the info, though. Appreciate your time.

 

A response to my own post in hopes that this will helps someone else thinking of gaming on the VAIO CW from Best Buy.

In short, the story is this laptop is VERY capable of modern gaming. I installed Dragon Age and it's running at very high detail at the native res of the laptop...smooth as can be. I'm not one that cares about measuring exact frame rates, but it's very slick.

I realize the CW's that are equipped with the 230 instead of the 210 that is in my wife's laptop would be a better performer...but don't be afraid of taking the plunge if you get a good price on the Best Buy model. Personally, we couldn't be happier with the thing.

 

I have the exact BBY VPCCW17FX model with the G210m and can say that it is quite capable of gaming, and at quite cool temperatures also. I usually play "Borderlands" at 1280x720 with all options on high, ambient occlusion, bloom, and "depth of field" on with quite respectable frame rates. After exiting borderlands and looking at gpuz, it's stressed temperature is about 52c. Idle is about 38-39c. And that's with overclocks in place.

EDIT: I've upgraded my CPU though and I don't know how well the C2D performs with the games. I went with a Penryn C2Q Q9100 quad core. Works like a charm, you just have to get the right model.

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but are you saying you opened up the laptop, popped out the t6600 and dropped in a quad core cpu?

 

Si senior! It's just a socket p processor. It kinda stretches the battery a little bit because it consumes 10 more watts but, it works beautifully. But I do advise if you do this to your own DON'T FORGET some NEW thermal paste.

 

haha this is a bit late, but how about the battery length?

I'm trying to find a gaming computer that I can also use at college, so I'm kinda worried about that. As far as I'm concerned, actual information about battery length can only be obtained by people who actually own the laptops

And, as I've never tried, is 14" enough for gaming? thanks

 

eh, well... gaming on battery I wouldn't recommend. Mine drinks battery when gaming. And I believe the CW with the GT230m has a 54Whr battery whereas the G210m models have a 49Whr.

But otherwise with bluetooth and iLINK off, I get about 3hrs. This is also at 50% screen brightness, with Onenote open.

 

oh right, i won't be gaming on battery.
I wanted a gaming computer (connected), that I could use in college classes on battery adequately.

 

Well, with the GT230m model it's way more than adequate for the screen resolution. And on battery it will last you around 3 hrs.

Here's a video of what The Saboteur looks like on the G210m model.

 

Oh that's great then.
The CW (GT230m) is good enough for gaming right? Based on everyone's experiences? Cause people want me to switch to the GTX 260m (something like that), which I realize is better, but is it really necessary?

I wanted to spend just under $2000 on a notebook, so it seems like I can max out my options. Which leads me to my question - how important is ram? I can afford the 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3 one, but is this overkill, considering the graphics card?

And finally, a 500GB harddrive won't make the laptop really slow would it?


Grar I don't know, the only thing holding me back on buying the CW is the screen size and graphics card, since I can afford better than the GT230m. But then, I can't find a laptop with the same value and good enough battery life

 

Okay, among many things, CW owner here, but...before delving into some specific questions, I'd like to introduce myself to this board by saying it's a pleasure to read your fora and that, despite my user name being what it is, my friends call me Jim (but for those who wonder at its origins, Blade Runner is my all time fave film while blues is the kind of guitar I've played all my life - it all started with James Marshall Hendrix!). Coincidentally, my day job happens to be working as a PC repair technician (just a lowly tech, I'm afraid)...but these things make me happy enough I suppose. Okay! Down to business...

My good Karliath, what you just saw was the CW model equipped with the lesser 210 video card, rather than the 230 model. I'm sure I don't need to sell you on how good it looked!

As for your question pertaining to gaming on battery power...ill-advised. Sure, on some extreme pieces of hardware you might get respectable life measures, but on most machines (I don't care how impressive their graphics capacities), gaming guzzles battery juice like a '67 Shelby does gas. Why play games on battery power anyway? Most of any areas you go to in today's world provide electrical outlets in one way or another.

In answer to this question, RAM is only as relevant as its accompanied "weaponry". 4 GB of DDR3 mem is (I don't care what anybody says, DDR3 outshines its predecessor nobly) quite adequate when coupled with a more than acceptable, advanced (the more the better) processor. Your question on RAM becoming, after a certain point, redundant is both a relevant and realistic one (mainly for the reason I already cited). There's more to it than that, but that'll do for now. Unless ALL your specs are maxed out, there's no reason for you to have MAXED out RAM; a good grade above average quantity will do nicely.

No.

You have to ask yourself a question: Do you want to spend double the price on a PC whose performance would virtually mirror the less expensive one, but feel better about owning superior (on paper anyway) graphics specs? Also, you may be different, but for me, playing any game at all on a 14 in screen is going to become identical to playing on an 18 in after an hour or so.

I have the CWFX13; 4 GB DDR3 RAM, P7450 CPU, NVIDIA's 210 instead of 230 GPU...and the games I've been playing? Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Bioshock, to name a few. On all these, I set the graphics features for highest quality available and have experienced NO lag or difficulty whatsoever. Granted, I don't use "ultra" on every game, but IMO everything I'm playing rocks! So I have my fun, and lots of it, to say the least. Would I have opted for the 230 if it had been available? Yes. And it was. SonyStyle was offering it for the same price as the 210, as well as offering models equipped with Blu-Ray Playback for the same as those without for their Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday sales. I was a tad too late. By the time I learned they'd been offering 'configure as you like' CWs for essentially base price, I was just a few days late and they'd already run out of those options. And since, prices on all configurations mentioned thus far have gone up substantially.

If I were you, I'd buy the CW w/210 along with a more than capable dual core processor and enjoy ALL the modern, dynamically superior games. Of course, the overall result isn't going to be the same as an Alienware with all the superfluous trimmings, but the quality and enjoyability is going to be there. In this case, the difference between spending $980 vs. $1600 would, gaming-wise, prove negligible.

Look to up your DDR3 RAM from 4 to 6 or even 8 if you can afford it in the earliest possible future. The GPU you're stuck with, but if you add double the already formidable stack of DDR3 memory to a model equipped with an already very capable CPU for which you have the likelihood of upgrading even further (be careful though, have a professional do the latter), then I say your course of action is clear:

Pay $850-950 now for a laptop that'll play just about any modern game you throw at it well enough to make even the most scrupulous gamer cede a nod of surprised respect, while saving enough to afford the upgrading changes that a laptop renders possible. If it were a desktop PC, you could of course upgrade everything, but with notebooks, you're pretty much stuck with most of what you bought it with. That's why it makes sense to boost wherever the boosting is possible...but in the case of the Vaio CW 13FX (my machine), I'm more than happy enough to take my sweet time making any additional performance changes to it. I have two laptops (one primarily for work and the other primarily personal). The personal one is the Vaio, and it's a neat machine I've been most pleased with in every way.

Good luck whatever you choose.

Cheers,
Jim

 

Very well said!

 

Hi, my model is vpccw1s1e/b(i live finland) and parts are: 4 GB DDR3 RAM, P7450 CPU, 230 GPU and i want to upgrade prosessor too. My friend have sager 8662 and he upgrade own laptop to better prosessor and her old prosessor is core 2 quad q9000 (manual says socket is p478), can i put that prosessor to my laptop? Sorry my bad language.

 

You do know that quads eat more power than dual cores and give off more heat?

 

From my experience, the only one I've tried is the one that's in it now. But sony laptops can be very picky about eSpec numbers. Mine is SLB5G but I'm not for sure that the Q9000 would work. But you could always try, and post back what you find! I'm very interested to know! By all means, if mine will accept a Q9100, then you should be ok, technically.

 

Not all that much more heat, actually. Just more battery. It consumes actually 20 more watts than whats in his since it's a P-series, but mine was a T-series with a TDP of 35w, so I know this can handle the thermal output of 10 more watts fine. Even when gaming it only gets maybe 4-5c hotter.

 

Thanks for answers and what about dual cores like t9600? it has 35w and my p7450 is 25w. now prosessor speed is 2.13 and l2 3mb, t9600 has 2.8 and l2 is 6mb or p9700(it has same specs than t9600 but 25w). P9700 is much powerful than my weak p7450. If i put my laptop P9700 is not take too much power/less heat.

 

It's all just a difference of die size there. The processor designation is according to which form factor it's supposedly going into. You have penryn medium, low, and ultra-low voltage. SP/SU is ultra-low, P7/8 is low, and P/T 8/9 is the medium voltage. Sorry for that, that's the best way I know how to explain. Rule of thumb though is that the higher the wattage, the bigger the laptop, because it has to be able to dissipate the heat given off by the processor.

A P9700 wouldn't be any different heat and power wise than the P7450, just faster.

 

HI , i want to change my t6600 to t9550 i hope that everything will be ok? by the way i'm not sure yet about t9550 and t9800, t 9550 is twice cheaper. difference is 2.66ghz to 2.8ghz. By the way maybe some one have link how to open and change processor for cw