VAIO F13 available on USA official website

hello guys,
VAIO F Series PC | Sony | SonyStyle USA

but it seems that discount for students is unavailable on F13 . I can get about $60 discount on F12 yesterday.
If I want to upgrade GPU from 310m to 425m, I have to pay for another $100 for screen upgrade(425m can not applied on 1600*900 display)， I hope the upgrade worth the price

 

Strange that there is no SSD option listed yet.

 

i think u can call sonystyle and have them applied the student discount to F13.

 

No SSD option and no core i5 option that was supposed to be available, like on the Canadian and Asia pages that were linked to in the owner's lounge the last few weeks. Some in the F series owner's lounge even thought the US would see the Adobe RGB 1080p screen option and not just the standard 1080p screen again.

 

Disappointing about the EU 1080p screen not being available Stateside. The lack of core i5 options I can understand what with Optimus and all that. I can understand them not wanting to steal the thunder away from their switchable graphics wunderkind, the Z series (which is more expensive too).

I wouldn't be too bothered about SSD options either because its incredibly easy to get this kind of upgrade aftermarket and it will be cheaper and faster and more current that what Sony will offer as an upgrade. Its very quick and easy to install too.

 

is the core i5 just as good as the quad core for light gaming and multimedia hd streaming?

 

how long do you guys reckon till the f13 goes north of the border, ie shows up on sonystyle.ca, coz you cant even configure an f12 anymore.

 

Actually my understanding is that Dual Core outperforms quad cores in gaming because games don't fully take advantage of all 4 cores. That will likely change soon though. But I can tell you for sure that if you play World of Warcraft, your better off with a dual core. Personally i the dual core for my notebook option for the battery life, and heat. With an SSD drive I am not too worried about my non-gaming performance with the i5 option.

 

Generally speaking yeah, the dual cores will outperform equivalent quad cores in applications that are not heavily threaded. I wouldn't describe many games as being heavily threaded. The dual cores have a much much higher base clock rate per core even though the turbo boost range is not very high. For instance the i5 540M has a base clock rate of 2.53ghz which can turbo up to 3.06ghz if only 1 core is being heavily loaded.

The quad cores have a comparatively low base clock rate per core but their turbo boost range is huge. For example, the i7 740QM has a base clock rate of 1.73ghz per core, but a single core can turbo up to 2.93ghz if only 1 core is being heavily loaded. The i5 540M turbos higher so for applications where you are only loading down 1 or 2 cores, the i5 will beat the i7.

If you run lots of heavily threaded applications that can load down all 4 cores then the i7 takes the lead since 4 fully loaded cores at the base clock rate of 1.73ghz gives you more processing power in parallel than 2 fully loaded cores at the base clock rate of 2.53ghz. For everything else (including light gaming and multimedia streaming) you are better off with the i5.

The i5 Arrandales also have the distinct benefit of running cooler, having vastly lower power consumption at load and idle, having integrated graphics on die (for graphics switching!) plus they are cheaper. For the reasons mentioned above, they are also faster under most common conditions. Overall, I think of Arrandale as being pound for pound the top dog of laptop mobile cpus at the moment with the i5 450M and i5 520M being the price/performance sweetspot. The i5 Arrandales just feel like cpus designed for notebooks whereas the i7 Clarksfields feel like gimped desktop cpus. The integrated graphics alone just says 'notebook battery life saver'.

I kind of think of the i7 620M (ninja Arrandale) as being a trap upgrade. Its generates about 10% more heat than an i5 540M, has about 10% higher power consumption and under most common conditions it doesn't give you anywhere near 10% more speed. That wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't priced as a $150+ upgrade over a 540M. If you can get it as a free upgrade (deal of the week sort of thing) or at a significant price reduction then go for it. Otherwise avoid unless your wallet is deep.

 

Good post Hayte. Agreed.

 

yes, quite exactly Hayte. now I am kind of worried about the i7 processor cool system on laptop. coz I hear about i7 processor on macbook pro, sometimes temperature is even higher than 100 celsius degrade.

 

You won't need to worry about the cooling system so much. Thats something for the folks that build laptops to worry about. However if you want an i7 quad core in a laptop you have to accept that its going to run hotter, the cpu fan is going to spin faster and louder and its going to draw more power than any of the i5s and thats just the way it is. If you aren't running heavily threaded applications regularly, I doubt very much that that the i7s are worth it. The Arrandale i5s are very well designed laptop cpus imo.

 

The F13 is now configurable on Sony Canada's site. Here's what I don't get:

Canada gets the i5 option, the Adobe RGB screen and SSD options and the US gets... none of it.

How is that possible? Someone please explain this to me.

Only strange thing on Sony.ca is that the F13's GPU is not specified. Very odd.

 

You guys should relax and not pay too much attention to the pricing/options until the official launch date (9/26).

 

9/26? How do you know this?

 

^does it matter?

 

Not really - just curious

Are you saying these missing options will likely be available on the 26th?

 

Likely. That's the official launch date. I would expect normal pricing, more options, etc.

 

it's easily crossing $2k right now on sonystyle.ca, for what seems to be just usb3 and a slightly better graphic card than the f12.

 

yeah the pricing is funky right now.

I CTO'ed the same specs as my uk F12 a few days ago when Sony.ca were still offering custom F12s and the equivalent sterling value came to ~£850. I remember making a point on this forum that UK folks pay £400 more for the same thing though tax and shipping weren't added yet.

Now I customized an F13 with the closest specs to my F12 and the price on Sony.ca is £1254.48 sterling equivalent.

 

Did Sony update the 1080p screen for the VPCF1390X in the US??
Because the main complain for the F12 was the bad quality of its screen especially its brightness.

Anyone know if they change the screen??

 

I think they updated the screen for the F13 in the US too.

Now the SonyStyle.com refer to the 1080p screen as Full HD Premium.
If I am not mistaken Premium HD = Adobe RGB

 

Both the F11 and the F12 HD screens were listed as Premium displays in the US, so there's no reason to think the screen on the F13 is any different. Of course I would be thrilled if someone gets one next week and says differently, but what I'm saying is that just based on what's on the Sony US website, there's no reason to expect it.

I've been holding off on buying an F to see if we were going to get a better screen so I've been paying attention to that detail on the website. Now, I'm thinking I may just get an F12 at a lower price and save some money, but I'm going to wait until someone actually has the F13 with HD screen in their hands to make sure it's not an upgraded screen first.