Sony Vaio Ultrabook by Christmas

I hope they were just using the SA screen with the concept, if that screen makes it into the production model then Sony have another lemon on their hands.

 

I pray they don't name it T as it is currently called, even though they may want this to capture the market that T series used to own. This really sounds like a C or Y.

 

Ugh, please, not again.....

 

The T is dead to me since the TT

I want an actually usable X - i.e. at least an i5-2467M. Pretty please, Sony?

 

Mmmm. The X was really nice. Though the Z2 has taken several design cues from the X.

 

Do you know by any chance if Sony plans to use Kepler mobile GPUs this year instead of ATI trash in the refreshed Z/S alongside the IB?

 

I'd rather the overpriced and underspecced nVidia junk is kept out


Though nVidia pricing does get a bit ridiculous at the high end. So if it wern't for Optimus, I'd never even bother At any rate, most reports indicate nVidia has already won most of the design bids for initial Ivy Bridge designs by the big TW ODMs.

 

Do you know if Sony plans to have Kepler mobile for their IB refreshes? Looks like Samsung is sticking to ati and sony tends to monkey their moves when it comes to hardware

 

I'm fine with AMD, ONLY if Sony actually moves to the AMD BACON (Bus Alive, Chip Or Not) switching. AMD has indicated it will move to fully support in 12.xx mobile drivers, like nVidia does with Optimus + Verde. Otherwise, I'm not up for the silly hard switch, especially if the power savings is limited by the miniscule battery sizes Sony seems to enjoy utilizing.

 

AMD drivers are what gets me scared... So a Kepler in the new IB line would be a welcomed change. Besides it seems to be more battery-friendly than the AMD's mobile options this year, maybe because they are not true SI chips, but re-brands from yesteryear.

 

AFAIK, most of nVidia's mobile offerings for this gen are also rebrands of the 500... 400 series. Probably shows neither company actually used 28nm for power savings, merely to give more headroom to push the performance limit.

AMD drivers should be much better for the 12.x family, mostly due to the avalibility of custom user generated profiles

Still, I'm fine either way. If push comes to shove (and it better be a damn hard shove), I'd still go nVidia, out of really old habit.

 

AMD drivers are actually fine. and the catalyst control has made some welcome changes last year.

Regarding the rebranding, there were only 2 cards that nvidia launched in the 500 series, the 570m and the gt 520xm. All the other cards where rebrands.

AMD rebranded in the 6000 series the 5600/5700m, 5500m and the 5800m.

All released cards in this year are rebrands from both companies. Sincerely only the low end and the high have any real chance of being 28nm.

Regarding sony and automatic switching, its their choice, and I prefer manual switching, although a hack is usually needed for some laptops to get some decent periodic driver update.

 

Agree. No creative approach - that makes one believe that Sony is not enthusiastic about early prospects of the ultrabook market. In general, T is a more cheaper version of SA bandwagon, as I feel. With a price tag around 899.

The screen on the prototype you played with was glossy?

 

I'm talking about those that are not released yet. I assumed they will indeed be 28nm, otherwise why so many orders from OEMs (best year ever, according to the Nvidia's CEO)?

 

As I said only the low end and high from AMD have a real chance of being 28nm, being the 7700m series also a possible candidate.

In the nvidia camp, only the high end will be there, with the possibility of the gt 650 gt 655 being 28nm.

The rest of the line up is already filled with the rebrands.

I dont really care about what the crazy korean says. Nvidia is losing market share for AMD in the mobile segment since the 4000m series, and the trend is still strong. Being AMD cheaper and with the same performance in the mainstream segment. And for the high end with a good difference price and a not so much difference in performance, if you exempt the alienware prices in the US.

For example:

Sony has mostly gone for AMD

HP is also in the AMD field, with the exception of their workstation line

Asus is a mixed bag with a high level predominance of nvidia cards

Dell is mostly nvidia as well

Apple is AMD

Toshiba is mostly AMD, with the gaming options being with nvidia

Acer is a mixed bag, although the past year there was a great tendency regarding nvidia

Samsung is also AMD basically

It was indeed a year that nvidia probably sold more gpus, however there is a clear trend where nvidia dont dominate as it used to, its actually in the 3rd position in the mobile gpu segment.

I do hope that there is a strong competition, and good gains in performance in this series of gpus

 

For what it's worth, the Vaio F and Vaio L both use nvidia, as does the Dell XPS lineup and most Alienwares (all M11x, all M14x, some M17x and M18x configs). EDIT: I misread your post and thought you said Dell was mostly AMD. My bad.

 

The only dells that come with AMD are their workstation lines, and dell includes alienware, which is up to you to chose from both in their GAMING notebooks, unless you go with the m11x and the m14x, which are pure waste of money and nvidia only


btw thats why I said that SONY is mostly amd, I knew that the vaio F was nvidia, however didnt knew that there were another model that came with it.

 

The Vaio L is a big all in one desktop.

 

They showed the refresh at CES: 2 models one with X-Reality and Bravia Engine, USB3, Windows 8, etc. Not sure if they still use Nvidia, but the 2011 model indeed utilized it. More pics here http://www.clubic.com/pc-portable/actualite-468928-ces-sony-prototype-vaio-all-one-ultrabook.html (kinda the only place that bothered to post high-res pics)

Finally Sony pulled its head out of its.... you know... and made it 100% monolithic design