sony vaio fw cpu

Hi,

Im thinking of buying a sony fw but i cant decide between the 2.4 and 2.66 processors. I will be doing some light gaming and lots of internet browsing, but wont be using any demanding software. The 2.66 is £75 more and i was wondering whether in the tasks listed above will i notice a speed difference over the 2.4. Will the 2.66 decrease my battery time much and will it increase the temperature of the laptop much, as i dont want to have something really warm on my lap.

Also how do you think the performance on the 2.4 in the sony with 4gb ddr2 ram and 7200rpm hdd comapres to the 2.4 macbook pro with 4gb ddr3 ram and 7200rpm, as i think the mac software is faster than vista 64bit.

Thanks

 

no point paying £75 extra, well i didnt anyway.

im guessing your talking about the fw35v right? i just received mine last tuesday.

unless you play lots of games, theres no point. i didnt get it either as all i wanted to play was startcraft 2 on decent settings.
anyway, in gaming the 3650 will slow you before the cpu.

temps will be higher on the 2.66ghz as its the T9550 which is T series meaning it uses 35W instead of the 25W the 2.4ghz will use. so it will make more heat and reduce battery life.

ddr2 and ddr3 ram makes hardly ant difference at this time. as ddr3 is newish and works as fast as ddr2. i think the oly benefit is slightly longer battery life.
ddr2 ram is cheaper and a wider range is availible. so later on you can get 8gb if you want...

although if you got the money, the macbook pro i like more, as it looks so great. although the macbook pro might not run some programs which you might want.

 

Thanks for the info, i think i will save the £75 and invest it in a faster hard drive.

Do you know if windows flight simulator x plays on the macbook pro? as that is the game i am most interested in.

With the spec I want it is £993.99 from sonystyle
2.4ghz
3gb ram (cheaper to upgrade to 4gb after purchase)
320gb 5400rpm hdd (will ugrade to 7200rpm after purchase)
ati 3650 card
1920x1080 screen
bluray read/write
vista home premium 64bit

to get a comparatively speccd macbook pro it is £1200 for a refurbished one from apple,and as it has a poorer screen(important to me) and no bluray or hdmi out so i dont think it is worth it.

Does anyone know what the lid of the fw is made of, i looked at one today and it felt different to the main body of the laptop.

thanks

 

Yep, save your £75.

The difference in CPU from 2.4>2.66 GHz would be negligable (10%), which you wouldn't notice unless you are doing heavy mathematical processing a lot (unrelated to games, as games are mainly processed via the graphics card as opposed to the CPU). A faster hard-drive would give you a higher difference/response for your money. That said, a faster HD will drain your battery quicker than a lower speed one, though, and run slightly hotter.

I believe the lid of the FW is magnesium alloy, and that the rest is silver plastic.

Macbooks... They look nice, but you don't get much for your money compared with a PC laptop. The Sony FWs look very similar to the Macbook anyway! (one of the reasons I chose the FW).

 

thanks for that, have you got a 7200rpm in yours? is it uncomfortably hot or jus a bit warmer?the battery life isnt too crucial as it will be at home most of the time.

has anyone played flight simulator x on the fw with the 3650 gpu? what is it like as i know fsx is a very demanding game for the computer.

thanks

 

dont get the blu ray rewriter, get the standard blu ray instead.
the BR RW is slow, region locked and has problems. so you cant play fake dvds or ones from other countries.


also get the 4gb, the FW has 2 ram slots so your going to need to buy a 2gb stick. and a 2gb DDR2 800mhz ram stick is about £25. no point trying to save that money and causeing hassle. you know that your vaio ram is going to work and come sorted.

stick with the 5400rpm for a while. get a SSD when its cheaper. they are always bringer larger HDD's out. just get a 250gb when its cheaper. it will also give you better battery life and have the laptop run cooler.

the lid is magnesium i think ans the rest is hard plastic unlike acers and stuff. build quality is very nice i i like the touchpad and keyboard a lot. the touchpad is very smooth and easy to use. although you cant beat apple new giant touch anywhere thing.

the HDD is located next to the right of the touchpad. where your hand is when typeing. It does get a little warm sometimes and you can feel it a bit, its not hot by any means. i have a 5400rpm one as i cant get the 7200rpm in the uk.

 

ok i didnt know that about the blu ray write drive, i had no real intention of writing to bluray discs at the moment, i thought it would just be useful to have, but if it is slow then ill give it a miss.

On this screen can u notice the difference between a dvd film and a bluray one, as im wondering about buying just blurays discs from now on.

Ye hopefully ssds will get cheaper soon, as i would love one of them,i only have a small music collection (4gb) and very little media/word files so do you know how much space the normal sony software and vista takes up on the hdd as im wondering about a 128gb one.

What ind of battery life are people getting under regular use(internet browsing, word processing) not dvd watching. As ive heard reports of 4 hrs and 1.5 hrs the latter being a little to short.

Thanks

 

its so easy to tell the difference between SD and 720p HD, and 1080p is great .
but i got a ps3, plus i dont buy blu rays, i have other means.

on any mode at about mid brightness, il get about 2H 30min watching films, internet or word processing.