Vaio Z's 9300M GS Driver...

So yea... I checked the driver version and ugh... it's rather ancient.

Is it possible to update the video driver without losing Stamina/Speed switch? I noticed DOX has a tweaked 180.70 driver that's pretty ideal for notebooks, and was wondering if that could be installed over the old driver that's stock from Sony.

Anyone? Help? Please.

 

...I'm going to guess that based on the number of views and lack of responses... that no one has ever updated their Z's NVIDIA video driver...? >_<

Argh... I really want to update my driver... but... argh... switchable. :S

 

do the update, it wont do anything to the switchable thingy. that s controlled by another software

 

you can always update it. If the switchable doesn't work, there is an option on device manager that lets you go back to the old drivers. Hope this help.

 

I'll take your word for it. I didn't really want to try it until I got some sort of confirmation, but the ancient version of driver I'm using right now just kills me inside.

I'll give it a shot tonight (my Z is almost out of power right now because I forgot I schedueled CHKDISK >_>, I'm at work without my AC adapter, and just finished minor Vista tweaks.) since I don't think I have enough battery left to handle switching to speed + installing.

 

Let us know how you get on, I'm intrigued

 

I read a while ago in a thread on here that you can't update the driver without losing the hot switch ability. It seems Sony have somehow customised the driver to include an Intel driver too, or something. I hope it works out for you but just wanted to voice that caveat...

 

...That seems completely plausible.

That and further reading into the driver's issues present people's screens going all fuzzy as if one just entered a random battle in an RPG and losing the ability to wake up from sleep mode without freezing.

...I think I'll just stick with these... though I wish Sony would release a 180.XX driver for us... I mean... one of the huge selling points of an NVIDIA card is the updates... T_T

 

any update?

 

Why is it that notebook manufacturers are so lazy about making new GPU drivers available? grr.... At least on my Vaio with an ATI chip, I was able to download the third-party Catalyst drivers (official ATI drivers that someone had hacked to work on ATI-equipped laptops). I hope someone does the same thing with nVidia drivers.

 

They do that with NVIDIA drivers.

Check the gaming forum for more details.

It's just that for the Z, part of the speed/stamina switch is embedded into the NVIDIA driver, so unless Sony updates the NVIDIA driver, Z owners won't be able to update the driver until someone can patch up NVIDIA's driver the way Sony did to keep the speed/stamina switch.

 

Can you not even update the driver if you are willing to sacrifice hot-switch (i.e. you're happy to reboot between Speed/Stamina switching)?

In XP, hot switching doesn't work anyway so it would be no real loss.

 

From the other topic, it sounds like if you don't give a crap about the hotswitch, it might work.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=303565

However, I seem to be having... issues. (I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's something in my hardware that is totally nerfing my gaming ability...) as I can't seem to exceed 30 FPS on any HL2 engine game.

EDIT:
I can't afford to lose the hotswitch. It's the reason I love the Z so much. I need that on the go battery and being able to on the fly switch to something decent. :S
Anyone else care to try?

 

Is it possible to update the intel part of that driver? And if its possible, which driver do i need?

 

www.intel.com > drivers > search X4500

 

I updated to the latest intel driver a while back and lost the hot switch functionality, so keep the customized driver if that is an important feature for you.

 

So the only thing we can do is hoping that sony will release an official cuda supported driver...i think this will never happen, cause the driver updates from sony are very unsatisfied!

 

well, this blows... anymore updates?

also, does anyone have problems whereby the hot switch will not work? if i just start up my z, it will always work, but if i've been sleeping it alot, eventually the hot switch will not work and i'll have to restart it.

when it doesn't work, it appears that the top line of the prompt box will appear, but nothing else....

 

I don't think you can expect much more. The 9300M GS isn't a gaming card -- it's great for HD video, but mediocre for gaming.

As for the speed/stamina switch and flipping between using the nVidia card and Intel GMA, I feel it's a gimmick more than anything. If you look at the power saving settings under "Stamina" and set them manually to the same when using the nVidia card, there's almost no difference in battery life. Really.

The big savings come from throttling the CPU, dimming the display, turning off unused devices and spinning down the HD more often. Yes, the 9300M GS uses a lot of power when it is busy. But not when it's mostly idle. And when the graphics card is busy, like when playing a 3D game, you have almost certainly switched to "Speed" anyhow, so it won't matter what the "Stamina" settings are.

 

So this whole thing about the switch thing is a gimmic. I see!

Isnt Microsoft not going to support this hybrid crab in their new upcoming Windows?

 

vista doesn't support it either...3rd party software is needed for things like SLI

 

Maybe sony will give us a new driver with cuda as christmas present this days... i hope