Vaio Z: Poor graphics performance

Hi there, this is my first post on this forum although I have been reading it in the past!

I have owned my Vaio Z21WN/B since april.

Over the last few months the graphics seem to have deteriorated dramatically, particularly when using the 'speed' mode. The laptop will not play any high definition videos (even with a resolution of just 720p as well!) remotely smoothly, videos which play without a hitch on my 7 year old Pentium 4 with 1gb of ram and 256mb graphics!! In fact, graphics and the whole PC itself seem to run much more smoothly when using the 'stamina' setting. This really makes no sense in my mind. It's quite irritating and disappointing since I wanted to be able to attach this laptop to the 42inch plasmascreen with the HDMI cable and watch films!

Has anyone else had similar problems?

I upgraded to a new driver to see if it would help (using one of the driver packs made by nautis/dox in the 'discoveries on Vaio Z hybrid graphics' thread) but it has not helped at all, just made the 'stamina' setting even slower!

Will I get around a complete re-instal to factory settings?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated...

 

im using stock driver and do not have such problem. im able to play HD video clip of SNSD using Intel (stamina) with no lag while having firefox at 10+tabs, few documents open. as for codec, im using CCCP codec, playing it via Media Player Classic.

as for custom made driver (DOX for instance), somehow i get a lil. lag in nfs (im comparing using stamina mode) and the stocks driver run better.
just what i dont like about the driver is the powermizer. i have no idea whether it comes with this features or not , but i notice the clock still doesnt change even not using demanded gpu software.

for complete re-install factory setting, just use the recovery dvds.

 

Are you runing in Silence mode? Try balance or performance...

 

Get rid of Vista and use XP. All your problems will be solved and everything will work like a charm. It was the solution for all the endless problems I had originally with my Z.

 

server 2008 enterprise with vista stock drivers here, no problem at all

 

It was in balance, trying performance now but not helping much.

 

I must say that I have been hugely tempted to try this for a while now...I might do this. Thanks for the ideas guys!

 

For reduced values of "everything".
Or do you mean that switching back and forth between Intel and nVidia cards is now possible in XP?
Or using HDMI output?
Or that XP now has gained features like DX10, native IPv6 or HD audio?

 

Sorry but Window XP is no longer the savior of windows. Window Vista is actually very stable and owns XP.

my 2cent. =D

 

Wow, really? Great advice there buddy, gonna tell him he should have just bought a mac next?


Sound like you need to clean out your Z, it might be overheating, or the hardware is failing, might have to send it in for repairs. Install ubuntu on a usb drive or something and do some tests on the graphics card.