Z3 "coming soon" says sony rep??

Wait, really? I read on the Sony site that it had 1 USB 3.0 and 1 USB 2.0. I guess I was reading an outdated page? And when you say USB3+Lightpeak, is that a Thunderbolt port?

So does this mean that next year's model will basically only improve the processor in terms of features we can predict?

 

great...thank you.

 

On the main Z page, the specs are still for the Z2, but if you check the specs of any specific SVZ13 model (e.g. here), then it says USB 3.0 : 1 + 1 (Charge).

Unfortunately it's not a Thunderbolt port, at least not the one found on other laptops. The one on the Z uses optical cable and obviously the port itself is different (USB vs. Mini DisplayPort). The only thing that can make use of it is the PMD.
There were long discussions about it here in the forum when the Z2 came out.

Next year's model will probably be a complete redesign, but there is no information available about it yet.

 

Seems like even the ULV Ivy Bridge i5 is beating the Z2's Sandy Bridge i7. Makes the base config Z3 i5 look like the better choice compared to a similarly priced outlet Z2 i7.

 

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Wow, nice long review. 32 minutes, heh... very thorough. She mentions that the fans in the Z3 have been toned down from the high-pitched "vacuum cleaner" that lives in the Z2. Great to know that's been addressed.

 

That's a weird way to interpret the results. PCMark Computation scores seem very weird (just compare the Z2 with and without the PMD), so I'd not trust those. Cinebench single- and multi-threaded times, and x264 encoding times give a better outlook of the CPU performance when going head-to-head.

Of course, differences between i5 and i7 have always been neglible, and one should care about i7 only if they are after a few technologies that they sport and i5 doesn't.

 

In Denmark we now have the choice between 2 processers for the new z:

Intel®Core(TM)i5-3210M, 2,5GHz
med Intel® Turbo Boost Technology op til 3.10 GHz og 3 MB L3-cache
Antal kerner: 2


and

Intel®Core(TM)i7-3612QM,2,1GHz [+ 1435.0 DKK] [ 1435.0 DKK
med Intel® Turbo Boost Technology op til 3.10 GHz og 6 MB L3-cache
Antal kerner: 4

there is a free upgrade to the quadcore but only 2.1 ghz so the price is the same.

Which is the fastest and which would run hottest?

im a bit concerned with the heatissue since I usually have my laptop on my lap (or chest when lying on the couch ).

 

Protip: Don't buy this to lay it on your chest.

 

I think Haswell will be a major improvement. However, please note what Steve says below. Most users do not need and will never notice the extra horsepower.

 

Could one of you guys owning one of the new Z check what's the true maximum resolution of the HDMI port on the Z? The specs say it's 1920x1200, but I don't know whether that's true. Maybe someone has access to a 2560x1600 screen and could check? Thanks a lot!

 

no, it is ONLY 1080p output... HDMI is NOT 1.4 version so it does not support more than 1080p

 

I wonder what they plan to do for next year's redesign... 3 USB 3.0? 3D screen? Thunderbolt? The return of the built-in BR/DVD drive? The return of the Express Card slot? I wonder if they'll bring back things they've taken out.

My Z1 is on its last breaths. Hopefully by some miracle it'll live until next... April? That's when they would probably be releasing the next Z redesign, right?

 

Sony has the first "glassesless 3D" screens
Maybe they will implement that...

 

Thanks! Do you know if the dock supports more?

 

What about the VGA port? It's analog, but it should be able to support 1920x1200, right?

Any chance to drive higher resolutions with 2xHDMI in conjunction with the PMD?

 

I know for a fact that my HP Folio-13 can drive a 24" 1920x1200 Dell Ultrasharp monitor via it's HDMI port (I'm using an adapter to connect the HDMI port on the Folio-13 to the DVI port on the Dell Ultrasharp, the adapter plugs into the HDMI port and allows a standard DVI cable to be plugged into the adapter, got it off NewEgg super cheap, like $5).

Although, in practice now, I'd probably recommend doing it the other way around though, as in, an adapter that plugs into the DVI port on the monitor and allows a standard HDMI cable to be plugged into the adapter. The difference being, the DVI port is very wide, so the adapter being plugged into the HDMI port on the laptop causes it to block adjacent ports.

 

In general, resolutions higher than 1920x1200 require dual-link DVI output. Or Thunderbolt port (for Apple). The Z, like most laptops, only supports HDMI. They can't be combined for higher resolution but you can have multiple 1920x1200 monitors -- I use two myself.

Since we do have a docking station and the video card spec does support dual-link DVI, it's a shame they opted for HDMI only on the PMD.

Only large laptops like Alienware have DVI ports on them.

 

Dosnt anybody know wich of these processors is fastest and run hottest?

Those are the two choices of processors for the new z at the moment and they cost the same.

 

Newer HDMI protocol versions are very well capable of high-res. See HDMI - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 1.4a even supports 2k resolutions over a single-link.

So, my question remains, is the HDMI in the PMD capable of higher resolutions? (i.e. is it a newer HDMI protocol version?)

 

My understanding is that, while the quality won't be as good, VGA can cope even with higher resolutions like 2560x1600 so it should be fine with 1920x1200.

 

Can you buy a separate PMD anywhere for cheap?

 

I wonder, if theres going to be an updated PMD soon. Thunderbolt technology should be able to provide bandwith much greater GPUs than HD6650 is.
Anyone heared anything about update incoming? Im supriced that they havent done it yet.
HD7850M PMD with HDMI,DP,VGA outputs would be awesome for example. (H)

 

Not sure if it will be the same everywhere else, but the new Z series update was announced along with the 2 new S series here in Japan (product code SVZ13119FJB).

PMD has a AMD Radeon HD 7670M, HDMI, VGA, LAN, 3xUSB (1 x 3.0).

 

Its physically same as old dock. Only firmware changed the GPU to 7670M.
Im hoping for 28nm AMD GPUs, starting from 77xx and 78xx .

 

Yep, which is essentially just a 6650 anyway as far as I know. But then I have no idea why they would change it in the first place - unless they don't intend to upgrade the dock for awhile...

 

Hmm.... I've been getting quite tempted by a Z, but the extortionate price of the 128->256Gb SSD upgrade is putting me off... £410 for that upgrade... and they won't sell you an 8Gb model unless you pay for the larger SSD!...

(Annoyingly, I've got a nice 256Gb SSD in the machine I'd be upgrading from, but it's 2.5" so wouldn't fit)

Also a little concerned by the tiny size of the right shift key, not sure if I could adapt to that...

Oh well, waiting to see what Apple announce tomorrow, but all indications are that the 13" MBP could still be extremely underwhelming, and I'll be looking at the Vaio again...

 

It does look like the new PAD has higher standard clock rates. 725/900. I'm not positive because I don't have my Z2 to verify anymore but i think these are slightly higher.

 

The PMD in the Z2 is clocked at 725/900.

 

Just wanted to point out that even though Sony seems to have dropped the ball on Displayport, things like this do exist if you really need it:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/displaylink-powers-world-first-usb-165800212.html

 

My SVZ arrived today, really light compared to the old Z1 but I was surprised to see that the screen is a bit thicker. Or perhaps it's not thicker in mm, but it feels more steady.

I was also pleased to note that the SD card slot is also USB3. The 45MB/s SDXC card I have now reaches that speed, instead of only 12 on the Z1.

Also have a BD burner PMD, but haven't tried it much, took a good hour or more to make the an initial backup. The device says 7670M and the driver is 2012-04-14 v 8.961.1.0

 

Thanks very much for the info, I'm looking to getting either a 128GB sd card, or 2 64GB micro sd converted into a memory duo adaptor for file and media storage.

Can you please post some writing speed of the sd card? Or some benchmark would also be very much appreciated.

Also did the laptop shipped ahead of the estimated shipping date for you? I'm hoping I don't have to wait for 2 more weeks for mine to be shipped.

 

what color is the backlight for the kb? did they move away from that green /

 

Wait, wasn't this the keyboard with the piiss-yellow tint to the backlight?

 

Yes, the Z2 has the "off-white" keyboard backlight.

 

yellow or off white?

 

It doesn't look yellow to me. But one person's off-white is another person's (light) yellow I suppose.

 

Wait a minute.

A sales Rep. told me the new Vaio-Z has only ONE SSD drive inside.
A you sure you got a 2 x 256 GB ????????

 

Viao Z have RAID 0 ssd setup. This means there are two ssds combined into one partition, so the 512GB ssd is made up of 2 256GB ssds.

The main advantage is improvement in read and write speed. However, it also increase disk failing rate, as all data are lost if one dive fails.

 

There is 1 module inside but that single module houses 2x 256SSD and controller just like the VPCZ2 had before with the generation3 SSD's.

 

The card is a 128GB SanDisk Extreme SDXC class 10 rated at 45MB/s.
See attached benchmark run.

Yes, I ordered 15/5 and it arrived 11/6, so just shy of 4 weeks instead of 5-6 as promised when I ordered.

More benchmarks below, some notes:

The program states that the video driver is the Intel 4000 HD when I had the PMD attached, but that's probably just the program showing the info of the first video driver it finds instead of actually checking which one is used. There's only one in most PCs I guess.

Also, some 2D and 3D benchmarks are really strange when you compare AC<->PMD runs. Only one of he 2D tests are (very marginally) better in the PDM run. Looks better in the 3D tests, but one of them is twice as fast on the internal card. So either the GPU in the PMD is pretty lame, or there's some problem here. Perhaps there's a newer driver, I haven't read that thread here. Not a deal-breaker for me, I ordered the PMD for the BD burner mostly, but still pretty strange.

Power saver mode: PassMark(TM) PerformanceTest 7.0 Evaluation Version (PassMark Software - PC Benchmark and Test Software) Results generated on: den 12 juni 2012 Benchmark Results Test Name: This Computer CPU - Integer Math: 1250.7 CPU - Floating Point Math: 2547.2 CPU - Find Prime Numbers: 578.5 CPU - SSE: 18.8 CPU - Compression: 5820.5 CPU - Encryption: 15.4 CPU - Physics: 287.4 CPU - String Sorting: 3446.3 Graphics 2D - Solid Vectors: 0.9 Graphics 2D - Transparent Vectors: 0.9 Graphics 2D - Complex Vectors: 86.9 Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text: 145.9 Graphics 2D - Windows Interface: 82.2 Graphics 2D - Image Filters: 359.8 Graphics 2D - Image Rendering: 594.8 Graphics 3D - Simple: 365.5 Graphics 3D - Medium: 102.7 Graphics 3D - Complex: 28.1 Graphics 3D - DirectX 10: 3.9 Memory - Allocate Small Block: 3116.7 Memory - Read Cached: 1221.2 Memory - Read Uncached: 1107.6 Memory - Write: 1508.9 Memory - Large RAM: 4436.5 Disk - Sequential Read: 845.6 Disk - Sequential Write: 764.5 Disk - Random Seek + RW: 596.3 CPU Mark: 4648.4 2D Graphics Mark: 292.1 Memory Mark: 1544.2 Disk Mark: 7979.5 3D Graphics Mark: 300.8 PassMark Rating: 1514.6 System information: This Computer CPU Manufacturer: GenuineIntel Number of CPU: 1 Cores per CPU: 4 CPU Type: Intel Core i7-3612QM @ 2.10GHz CPU Speed: 2096.0 MHz Cache size: 256KB O/S: Windows 7 (64-bit) Total RAM: 8089.3 MB. Available RAM: 5617.8 MB. Video settings: 1920x1080x32 Video driver: DESCRIPTION: Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 MANUFACTURER: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. BIOS: Intel Video BIOS DATE: 4-14-2012 Drive Letter: C Total Disk Space: 445.6 GBytes Cluster Size: 4.0 KBytes File system: NTFS

Balanced with AC connected PassMark(TM) PerformanceTest 7.0 Evaluation Version (PassMark Software - PC Benchmark and Test Software) Results generated on: den 12 juni 2012 Benchmark Results Test Name: This Computer CPU - Integer Math: 2223.6 CPU - Floating Point Math: 4233.4 CPU - Find Prime Numbers: 999.0 CPU - SSE: 34.5 CPU - Compression: 9789.5 CPU - Encryption: 26.5 CPU - Physics: 465.8 CPU - String Sorting: 5232.9 Graphics 2D - Solid Vectors: 1.3 Graphics 2D - Transparent Vectors: 1.5 Graphics 2D - Complex Vectors: 135.9 Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text: 214.3 Graphics 2D - Windows Interface: 101.2 Graphics 2D - Image Filters: 383.9 Graphics 2D - Image Rendering: 613.4 Graphics 3D - Simple: 572.2 Graphics 3D - Medium: 161.7 Graphics 3D - Complex: 52.7 Graphics 3D - DirectX 10: 7.3 Memory - Allocate Small Block: 5944.4 Memory - Read Cached: 2472.1 Memory - Read Uncached: 2368.3 Memory - Write: 2276.4 Memory - Large RAM: 4914.4 Disk - Sequential Read: 801.8 Disk - Sequential Write: 760.6 Disk - Random Seek + RW: 598.0 CPU Mark: 8048.9 2D Graphics Mark: 384.3 Memory Mark: 2022.9 Disk Mark: 7813.2 3D Graphics Mark: 516.5 PassMark Rating: 2239.3 System information: This Computer CPU Manufacturer: GenuineIntel Number of CPU: 1 Cores per CPU: 4 CPU Type: Intel Core i7-3612QM @ 2.10GHz CPU Speed: 2096.0 MHz Cache size: 256KB O/S: Windows 7 (64-bit) Total RAM: 8089.3 MB. Available RAM: 6105.9 MB. Video settings: 1920x1080x32 Video driver: DESCRIPTION: Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 MANUFACTURER: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. BIOS: Intel Video BIOS DATE: 4-14-2012 Drive Letter: C Total Disk Space: 445.6 GBytes Cluster Size: 4.0 KBytes File system: NTFS

PMD attached: PassMark(TM) PerformanceTest 7.0 Evaluation Version (PassMark Software - PC Benchmark and Test Software) Results generated on: den 12 juni 2012 Benchmark Results Test Name: This Computer CPU - Integer Math: 2234.5 CPU - Floating Point Math: 4240.3 CPU - Find Prime Numbers: 1012.4 CPU - SSE: 34.5 CPU - Compression: 9784.6 CPU - Encryption: 26.5 CPU - Physics: 457.0 CPU - String Sorting: 5200.3 Graphics 2D - Solid Vectors: 0.7 Graphics 2D - Transparent Vectors: 0.7 Graphics 2D - Complex Vectors: 137.5 Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text: 169.8 Graphics 2D - Windows Interface: 73.2 Graphics 2D - Image Filters: 319.3 Graphics 2D - Image Rendering: 606.3 Graphics 3D - Simple: 870.2 Graphics 3D - Medium: 228.7 Graphics 3D - Complex: 21.5 Graphics 3D - DirectX 10: 10.1 Memory - Allocate Small Block: 5959.7 Memory - Read Cached: 2466.6 Memory - Read Uncached: 2338.2 Memory - Write: 2290.1 Memory - Large RAM: 4863.0 Disk - Sequential Read: 801.0 Disk - Sequential Write: 761.1 Disk - Random Seek + RW: 583.9 CPU Mark: 8049.8 2D Graphics Mark: 295.0 Memory Mark: 2009.2 Disk Mark: 7760.8 3D Graphics Mark: 618.3 PassMark Rating: 2063.1 System information: This Computer CPU Manufacturer: GenuineIntel Number of CPU: 1 Cores per CPU: 4 CPU Type: Intel Core i7-3612QM @ 2.10GHz CPU Speed: 2095.7 MHz Cache size: 256KB O/S: Windows 7 (64-bit) Total RAM: 8089.3 MB. Available RAM: 6139.0 MB. Video settings: 1920x1080x32 Video driver: DESCRIPTION: Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 MANUFACTURER: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. BIOS: Intel Video BIOS DATE: 4-14-2012 Drive Letter: C Total Disk Space: 445.6 GBytes Cluster Size: 4.0 KBytes File system: NTFS

 

PMD 3D results are sadly pathetic.

 

Here's a pic comparing the SVZ with the Z1's keyboard backlight. It's clearly a yellowish hue, and a bit less bright. I haven't tried it in the dark yet, but I'd guess I will lower the screen brightness if I do, or my eyes will probably get strained by the higher contrast screen/keyboard.

 

Finally i will become a member of the Z series club.

Just ordered mine last night, now comes the 2-3 week wait.

 

OK, I can see why people would call that yellow. I don't have another lit keyboard to compare to.

 

Can anyone with the new Vaio Z3 confirm if they can drive 2 external monitors in extended mode off the laptop... NOT using the PMD dock?

My understanding is that the Ivy Bridge can drive 2 independent displays if the laptop has enough display ports (Z3 has 1 HDMI + 1 VGA onboard):
https://plus.google.com/101377053267560854462/posts/841ytsSWWmK

So has anyone successfully driven 1 monitor off HDMI and a 2nd monitor off VGA?

 

I know you need a Z3 answer but I'll note that on the Z2, the onboard HDMI and VGA ports are not active at the same time. The three active ports are onboard HDMI, PMD HDMI, and PMD VGA.

 

^ this is kind of relevant, but in VAIO SA (the 2011 model), you can drive two external monitors using the HDMI and VGA ports in Linux, but not in Windows. so maybe it is the same in VAIO Z as well? idk.

 

faat boot is cool - shaves a few seconds off boot. by the time the lcd powers on windows is already loading.

that said i dont believe you can access the bios...so my question is if my windows install gets corrupted, how do i disable fast boot? is there a reset bios key? eg hold down esc during power on etc?

 

I read in this thread 2560x1600 video output from notebook - Overclockers Australia Forums that supposedly the new PMD can support two 30" monitors at full resolution and 60hz. Can anyone with the latest PMD confirm this?