What exactly does "Silent Mode" do on Z Series and Power Saver Battery Plan in Windows?

1. What does Silent Mode do? It certainly makes the fan more quiet. Which components are limited and by how much?

2. What does the Power Saver Battery Plan do in Windows? I remember reading something about it underclocking the cpu, fsb, ram frequency, and perhaps gpu memory, but would like to know which components it underclocks and by how much.

Thanks!

 

If you are talking about the fan control under advanced power setting, it basically restricts fan noise at the expense of performance.

CPU is definately throttled not sure how much tho if u ran a CPU clock in background u could see

 

I know that Silent Mode will throttle either the GPU or CPU. My vote tends to go to the CPU, I don't have a good feel for it. When I play Oblivion, there's a significant amount of stuttering in Silent Mode. I suspect that the Sony engineers do not have fine control over the GPU, and given the big hammer they have (CPU throttling), they use that to indirectly impact the GPU. Hence, the solution feels rather inelegant at load.

 

There is no need to throttle the GPU, since they simply turn it off and use the Intel-GPU and lower the CPU-Clock.

I don't think they mess around with FSB.

 

The following is provided you are talking about the VGN-Z as the OP's sig states... Though I'm sure a similar behaviour will surface with the VPC variants...

1. SILENT MODE is a BIOS soft-switch; it will throttle down the CPU. The degree of throttling; I have a P8600 (2.4GHz / CPU) which goes down to 900MHz when idle, but only on battery. When on AC it stays on 2.4GHz. Regardless of being on AC or battery, the fan is alot more reluctant to speed up than it would with, say, PERFORMANCE. The fan speeds-up only when a certain temperature is sensed by the motherboard (I remember it kicking into high gear when the CPU reaches 81'C during some personal tests). You would notice 1080p videos lagging on SILENT MODE; SILENT MODE prevents the fan entering the high-gear speed by preventing the CPU from running at full speed (so that it doesn't surpass the 81'C mark).

If you are using W7 and the VGN-Z with the factory W7 graphics drivers, the GPU will throttle down when your machine is idle, regardless of being on AC or battery (there was a small app here somewhere on the forums that controls the throttling of the GPU when you are either on battery or AC). Graphics like Windows Aero Flip would lag alot with nVidia, and would pick up proper fluidity after several attempts as the GPU is made aware that its power is required. The Vista drivers don't suffer from the GPU throttling issue.

That said, I cannot confirm on whether SILENT MODE slows the GPU as well; it stays at the same speed for me while on AC and SILENT MODE (and slows itself down on battery as mentioned above; I've set my GPU to slow itself when on battery using the app).


2. Power Saver PLAN is slightly different. It's not really hardware downclocking (ie, NOT a BIOS switch), rather forcing the software demand less of the hardware (ie, the OS will demand 16bit graphics from the GPU, thus less power for displaying)


Both the fan mode and power plans are closely related, but note that they are seperate things.
...And...
When the GPU is throttled, its clock speeds are reduced only; memory remains the same. When the CPU is throttled, the CORE clock is decreased; FSB remains the same.

TIP. I set the fan settings under my S2 button. I can toggle between the speeds quickly without opening up CONTROL CENTER and clicking this and that... My S1 button is for an internet browser ^_^