Sony Vaio Z - What is Wrong???

Hi,

I use EVGA Precision to monitor my gpu temps. I notice in any game I play that the memory usage never goes above 200-300mbs... I thought I bought a laptop that has a 1gb gpu? My Z is in Speed mode, running Z13 gpu drivers.

Anyone else notice this? Rather ask here first then call Sony and have them give me the run around, driver reinstall, waste my time routine. Thanks.

 

Can anyone confirm their GT330m using more than 250mb of memory usage under 3D load? PLEASE?

 

I doubt much of what you do would use a lot of video memory, even benchmarking/gaming on my laptop or desktop only uses a few hundred MB. If you are really anxious to run a test to show that you have more than 250MB to work with download OCCT and run the GPU Memtest, bumps my 330m up to 1017MB usage.

 

What caldoer says is correct, the 1GB video memory is mainly just buffer memory, meaning, if you're not connecting 2+ monitors, you probably wont need more than 512 or even 256MB video memory for that. That being said, i'd prefer the 1GB memory of my 330m vs the 256MB on the 330M of the 15"/17" 2010 MacBook Pros just in case of a rainy day (I hook up an external monitor and use extend mode anyways on my Z)

 

I appreciate the responses. I just ran OCCT for GPU at full screen, no error check, shader complexity at 0 then did another test at 3. My gpu memory usage never went above 70mb for the test... I was getting 30fps toppping out at 70C on a 10 minute test. I ran this test outputting to a 1360x768 monitor with the Vaio Z's LCD turned off (only outputting to display 2).

This does not seem right. I compare this to my desktop GeForce card that will run at it's max memory usage under 3D load. Is there any other way to confirm my 330M is ok?

 

To me it sounds like everything is probably working exactly like it should. Gaming or benchmarking stresses the GPU because it uses it, this is not the same as making it use its memory. Textures and geometry are loaded into VRAM, if you are using higher resolution textures you will use more memory etc... It seems to me that you are under the impression if all of your video memory is not being used then it is being wasted, this is not the case. On my desktop I have a GTX 260 with 896MB of vram, I have dual 1080p displays and if I load up Left4Dead2 on high settings at fullscreen, my vram useage only goes up to 550mb, because that is all that it needs to use. That doesnt mean that 38% of my video memory is being wasted. If I run DeadSpace on my Z, fullscreen on high settings- it uses 278MB of vram. If I change to low settings it decreases to 215MB. Running Dragon Age: Origins @ 1080p, with all the highest settings (textures/AA/Effects) causes my Z to use over 500MB of vram. A side note, running dragon age with max settings only causes my Z to use 2.5GB of system RAM, even though I have 8GB to work with, this is not abnormal, why would it be different with video memory?

Also for OCCT I said the GPU: Memtest (not the GPU stress test), to test the memory. Testing your memory is an easy way to ensure it is used and to prove you can actually use it to its full capacity. I cannot make the video cards in either my Vaio or desktop peak their memory usage even by running any of my games at the maximum setting or running a benchmark with all of the extreme bells and whistles maxed out.

I assume your desktop card that peaks either has 256MB or 512MB of ram? If you install a game that requires enough resources on your Z, you can easily make it use over 512. If not, congratulate the company that made the game in making it efficient!

 

Hi there guys,

I don't actually use any monitoring tool, but all I can say is that I've got the same G330M that is still used by Sony in the newer Z models in my Z11.
Now the problem is: From what Windows 7 says, the GPU is the bottleneck of my system! (Obviously, as of Core i7 and 8GB of RAM!)

I wouldn't mind that much, but I wonder a bit about your descriptions. Do run all these games fluently under max. settings on your Vaio?
I'm only on medium settings in both SC2 and Dead Space 2 and it's still sluggish from my feeling (will check now with fraps!).
(I actually didn't yet try DragonAge:Origins, even though I own a copy...)

Also because of some annoying bug that comes back whatever I do, the Sony does only start and run in "Stamina" mode unless I use my special button, as the SLIDER does NOT (!) work!! Even if I put it on Auto.
The slider either shows only the blue auto light and the stamina light or NO light! -.- Really frustrating. I couldn't get the newer GPU drivers running, which I found here one month ago, but I'll try again these days.

If you've got any feedback meanwhile on how to get the maximum out of my Vaio Z11X, I'd be happy to hear it!

PS: Hope Sony will upgrade their GPU's soon? As it's the bottleneck, right? As far as I know there is a G45x already available?...

 

I believe a good indicator of how high powered a GPU card actually is, is the second digit in its name, IE 4-5 would be midrange, the cards with the 8 are high end. If you look at some benchmarks you would find while not bad, the 330m is actually a fairly low end card, the 9800m from 2 years previous showing better performance in many areas.

I have a read a few posts that may indicate that cooling system in the z13 may be better than the previous z11, but cannot verify. I have my GPU overclocked and while it may sound like a rocket at sometimes and spit out incredibly hot air, the Z itself does't heat up too bad at all. I don't have the second Dead Space, but the original and DA: Origins run well at high graphics, there is a post on the forums about people getting mid-high settings running smooth with SC2 as well. DA:O at max graphics was playable for a few minutes, but I was mostly trying to see how much VRAM I could stuff down my Zs throat so I didn't test it for the long haul.

Have you tried using more recent drivers from
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/342947-my-discoveries-vaio-z-s-hybrid-graphics.html
? The 260 one didn't work out for me but the 263 worked just right. All in all, the 330m is definitely the main thing holding my Z back, but I love it to pieces anyway.

 

I'm curious as to what you are using to determine that your gpu is the bottleneck of your windows system. Are you looking at the Windows Experience Index (WEI)?

If so what values are you seeing?

 

That sounds weird... maybe you have leftover files/registry values/etc from your failed graphics driver swap? What is the problem with the new gpu drivers? I thought they didnt work until i realized you had to install the new drivers, reboot (and get a really freaky 1024x800 screen) AND THEN apply the driver signing instructions under the driver downloads.

In any case, you should OC the 330m it's VERY overclockable. you should get at least a 10% OC easy and possibly even 25+% (I can run my 330m at 615mhz core clock stable from stock 475mhz which is ~30% OC). Tools to do that: EVGA Precision, NVidia System Tools, MSI Afterburner (they all run RivaTuner in the background so... just the interface matters)

my specs are in my sig, but for most with the same config they'll get these scores:
proc: 6.9
ram: 6.9
graphics(Aero): 6.4
gaming graphics: 6.4
hard drive: 7.6

But yes the 330m is a mid to low range card now... back about a year ago according to this chart:

Mobile Graphics Cards - Benchmark List - Notebookcheck.net Tech

the 330m was rank about 60 (note the first few "cards" are actually SLI) today it's rank 94... so things have changed

 

I remember GTA IV had an in-game benchmark mode, and in the Settings menu it would display how much VRAM is being currently used.

 

Yes, I agree that those are generally the WEI values that all VPC-Z owners would expect to see. My question was more to whether Knowledge_Worker was getting the numbers we all get or some other numbers. He was indicating that the gpu was the 'bottleneck' in his general Windows performance when in fact even without the gpu enabled, one would not expect Windows performance to be limited by graphics on this machine. For any given game yes, but not just general Windows performance.

Another way of saying it I guess I was trying to determine whether he is simply saying that the graphics number is the lower of the WEI scores (which doesn't actually mean it's a bottleneck) or whether he really was experiencing a general Windows slowdown caused by the GPU (a true bottleneck)