i7 gone on Vaio Z?

Hi!

So I have been mulling over a Z for a couple weeks now. And was checking out the CTO options again and saw only an i5 available.

Did they remove the i7 option for any specific reason?

Do you get much performance benefit from the i7 over the i5? Or is it any hotter, noisier, or power hungrier than the i5?

Thanks!

 

theres an i7 shortage, but should be back in about 2 weeks.
there isnt much a didfference between the i5 and i7, with just a bit of performance gain.

 

but go for the i7 though.

 

In light of what you wrote...why?

 

was told here in New Zealand the i7 versions wouldn't be available again for a while, possibly even until the next refresh of the Z's mid year. This from the Vaio product manager himself. Not a complete given but that is what they are advising their retailers to avoid customer disappointment. We are in NZ though so take form that what you will.

 

Darn, should have ordered one last week

I probably don't need i7, not sure if the difference is noticeable, but since I will be using it for 3-4 years, figured it would be worth the upgrade!

 

I doubt the difference is noticeable in light day-to-day usage like email or browsing, but I think the slight performance gain will be beneficial in games and video encoding/decoding and other CPU intensive tasks like heavy multi-tasking, SETI@HOME etc etc.

It should also help if and when you're selling your Z. Having an an i7, will help with a higher asking price rather than having an i5.

If you also care for that sort of thing, it might help with bragging rights. The Z is like the Macbook pro, the smart super model of the laptop world, basically the type of machine to be seen with. Having an i7 on such small machine is icing on the cake.

 

if i7 is phased out, SONY should put the HD screens on i5...

 

+1 on blue13x. i've called the tech line a couple times and asked about when they are getting more in but i've been getting answers from a few weeks (to months??) to later this week...it's up in the air. i called the local sonystyle store as well and from what i know they're getting in two of the i7 $4500 configs but i just want an i7 CTO

 

Im pretty sure the i7 is not being phased out and I agree that Full HD should be a CTO option.
but remember that 1600x900 is also HD, in the sense that its 720p+.


But the question is if you make the FullHD available, what will make this distinguisable from the signature Z?

 

the price .

 

What I meant was: if you add FullHD in the CTO, what would be the differentiation of a fully loaded CTO and a "special" signature Z.

Currently the only diff is the Glossy Premium carbon and FULLHD.

if you give CTO fullhd, there would be nothing special about the signature Z, other than the lid.

 

i mean 1080p on i5

 

Spoke to a Sony rep in Sydney Australia yesterday and he said the i7s won't be due out for quite awhile. I would be inclined to wait for the refresh, which should happen around mid to late May.

 

Smart move on Sony's part. The i7-620 has issues with power consumption that are not worth the performance. The i5-540M is the best chip.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-Core-i3-i5-i7-Processors-Arrandale.25085.0.html

This can even reduce performance - the GPU is forced to throttle down in some situations resulting in reduced performance even compared to the i3-330M.

 

there has been some discussion about that particular review in these forums. AFAIK the review was using a bad machine or something along those lines as those results are not consistent with the results of users who have the system.

sony has not pulled i7 for any other reason than supply in the US. they still offer it internationally and they've told me to check back later when they get stocks of i7s in for the option to be available.

 

Wow, I can't believe that... that ARTICLE is being cited ONCE AGAIN.

I'm not going to say my true feelings on that piece of work because there would be small children crying within a one mile radius. Search through the owner's forum where I detailed WHY, as well as someone who posted a response from Intel.

 

Fair enough. (relax, man. have a cigarette before posting. )

I did some searching around. All I could find were a few anecdotal reports on i7-620M... like "My battery life seems as good as it should be." etc. Now, I agree that notebookcheck's results should be double checked, but their results for the other i5 proc's were pretty darn consistant and the stark contrast the i7 presented was compelling.

Now, it could have been an ES chip. It could have been a bad apple. It could have been a bad test. But you're going to have to do another test at least to the detail of notebookcheck's to bunk it. I did find one post of yours interesting... somthing about double blind assertions, etc. You make a point, but the research I found here was much less rigorous then notebookchecks's tests. And I've learned in my 15 years of computer geekdom, that nothing is more powerful then the observer bias effect in a cornered computer geek who presents evidence about hardware he owns. (hence why I thought your double blind comment was interesting )

Personally, I questioned and questioned that article myself over and over, and did alot of searching. I ended up buying a i5-540M chip instead of an i7-620M at the same cost (ebay) because of it.
Based on the tone and confidence of your post, I expected to find some better evidence then what I found... Like a direct swap test i5 vs i7 on the same system doing the same task with exact power measurments. If I missed something... have a link?

Given the cheap cost of the i7-620M chips, I'd be happy to do a scientific test of i5-430M (mine's currently FS on ebay) vs i5-540M (on the way) vs i7-620M if I could get some sponsors

 

Is there any difference in heat produced, noise, or battery life between the i5-540m and the i7-620m in people's experiences thus far?

 

FYI i am assuming the i7's will be available for order hopefully by the end of the week. if you guys check the site you'll notice the signature version with the i7 is back in stock so hopefully that means they got in their little shipment and are fulfilling current orders and will re-enable the i7 option soon . can't wait!!

 

Does anyone know how much the i7 option cost as a CTO upgrade?

 

$150. steep increase since the price difference between the 540m and 620m is IIRC closer to $75 ($332 vs 257) when bought in bulk groups of 1000 units.

 

If you are in Canada, than the upgrade costs around $50.

 

But we get ripped off on most other upgrade pricing (ie the larger SSDs).

 

I'm in the USA, so I suppose $150 it is...

Do you guys have an impression of whether the i7 presents any heat/battery life issues. Some have speculated that it throws off a lot of heat...

EDIT: It seems like more people are recommending the i5 than I would have expected. Someone said they got 5 hours of battery life on a large battery and the i7...that sounds shockingly low...

 

I've had the base model z and now my current cto model and both are around the same in terms of battery life. I can easily get 5-6 hours of regular web surfing, IM, takings notes, etc.. with the standard battery so I would expect around 7+ hours with the high capacity battery.

 

i7 has been re-enabled for ordering as of around 5 this morning. wrote a script that scraped the sony site every few minutes and sent me a text when the option was finally back . was only able to get the 15% after adding 1 accessory though on top of the 3 yr warranty

 

Any significant advantage to going with the i7 for $150? now that it is available again? Or is it essentially the same as the i5?

I also was looking to upgrade the SSD since it is proprietary, but the upgrade pricing seems somewhat steep.

Do you think I may need more than 128gb? (I will mainly be working with documents, storing some music [i have 2gb at the moment], and playing games occasionally)

I have to think that 128 gb would be sufficient, but that it is proprietary makes me nervous lol.

 

the i7 is about 5-10% (don't quote me..check benchmarks though) more powerful than the i5. i went with it both for the performance (i would like to save some time when rendering videos) and for the moniker. yes, it's just a moniker but if the need ever comes to sell this laptop, if it's labelled with an i7 sticker i believe it would be much more appealing to someone than if it were labelled as an i5.

we're going top of the line anyway, may as well spend a little more $$ on the processor if you're going to juice it.

well the 128g is probably closer to 119g, keep in mind that there's probably some space reserved for a restore partition, and win 7 takes up around 7(?) gigs and see if you can deal with having your documents and apps in the rest of the space. i personally went for the 256 gig option but if youre on the fence you could just go for the 192 and know that you're getting tri-ssd performance versus the dual ssd performance of the 128 and 256 configurations.

 

So 192 Gb (3xSSD) is faster then 256 Gb (2xSSD)..?
I thought the 256 Gb was 4x64 Gb and therefore faster

 

I don't understand, how does the total storage size relate to speed?

What is the difference between dual, tri, and quad SSD performance?
Sorry, I am a computer newb

 

"RAID 0 (striped disks) distributes data across multiple disks in ways that gives improved speed at any given instant"

So the more drives, the faster the performance.

It just happens that the biggest drive requires more SSDs to reach that capacity and for that reasons is also faster
The 512GB has 4 drives: 4x128= quad
the 382 has 3: 128x2+128=triple
256= 2X128=dual
192= 2x64+64= triple

The 512GB has more drives and is because of that faster,.

 

Gotcha, so the 192 should be slightly faster then than the 128 or 256 because it is split into 3x64gb drives.
That could be worth the upgrade then if it gives more storage space and performance.

Thanks!

 

But our base cto model with the i5 is $100 more expensive than the US! So it basically works out to be the same in both countries.

 

There's also a 4x64GB (256GB) version.

 

The glossy carbon fiber finish? Just kidding.

 

lol ya i know that. I was simply just saying how much upgrade to an core i7 was.