SL - Vistsa - Sony Vaio - Geforce 7400 very, very slow

Hi there,
I bought a nice Sony Viao laptop to I can SL at home rather than spending too much time in world when I'm at work

Problem is, the graphics are terrible! I know that SL doesn't support Vista, but I turned off all the Vista effects like the see through windows and stuff, but SL is very, very, very slow.

The Sony laptop is a 1.66ghz, with a Geforce 7400 graphics card, which I thought should be fine.

When I tried to adjust the settings in preferences, in the tab where you can set the options for the graphics card, the highest I can choose is 64 meg, but the graphics card in the laptop is 256 meg.

I'm pretty good with SL and know all the usual ways to reduce lag in my Preferences.

Does anyone know how I can fix this as it's useless with SL how it is now?

Thank you very much for any suggestions.

Clara

Hi Clara,

Im in exactly the same position actually - just got a Vaio with the same specs as yours, but Ive been pretty disappointed with SLs perfromance so far. I wasnt even expecting it to be great as its a laptop etc... Also find it annoying that the GeForce 7400 is supposed to emulate 256meg, but i can only select up to 64 in SLs settings.

All Vista settings have been minimized and the SL settings are as low as they can go - but it still crawls !

Does anyone any tips here that might help???

Thanks,

Sarra

Have you heard about Vista, yup being dumped for Windows 7. It was a flop, no one wants, businesses are not installing it, and several government departments have banned it; security issues. So I personal would recommend getting a copy of XP till windows 7 is released in 2010. This is no joke.


Quote:
by Paul Thurrott, [email]thurrott@windowsitpro.com[/email]

Windows 7 Now Due in 2010, Microsoft Says

Windows 7--the successor to Windows Vista and whose codename was first
revealed here in WinInfo back in January--is now on the docket for
2010, Microsoft says. Contrary to prior reports, Windows 7, previously
code-named Vienna, will be a major Windows release and will ship in
both 32-bit and 64-bit variants for both consumers and businesses.
This suggests that Microsoft's intention to move entirely to the 64- bit x64 codebase is proceeding slower than hoped.

At a partner conference earlier this month, Microsoft hinted that it
would put the Windows client on the same type of release schedule as
Windows Server, with a major release every four years interspersed by
minor updates at the two-year point between each major release. Given
Vista's 2006 release date, a 2010 nod for Windows 7 makes sense, since
it's now considered a major release. But Microsoft won't say whether
we can expect a minor Windows update first, in 2008. The company does
say that Vista SP1 will ship in that year, however.

The few new details we have about Windows 7 came during Microsoft's
annual sales conference late last week in Orlando. The company is
apparently researching whether it can offer Windows 7 to customers on
a subscription basis as well as the more typical enterprise licensing,
retail, and PC bundle options. Windows 7 is the internal codename for
the next major release of Windows, Microsoft notes, and the name is
subject to change. The Windows 7 codename reflects the fact that this
release is indeed Windows 7.0 (Vista was Windows 6.0).

Oh I know that Vista has it problems but I REALLY dont want to have to roll everything back to XP (Vaio doesnt even support it).

Would love if there were some less drastic solutions???

Sarra

Allow me to provide some real help to you here rather than just bash MS and LL and Vista.

One important thing to know about vista with geforce cards on a laptop is that Nvidia hasn't yet released laptop video drivers, so the drivers MUST come from Sony. In that case, depending on how Sony wrote those drivers, and what they support, will determine your experience in SL. So, first, make sure you have the absolute latest drivers from Sony for your video card, AND for your chipset. This is the reason for your card not showing the correct amount of memory in SL.

Second thing to note: Turning OFF windows vista graphical features is only going to make your SL experience worse. Because Vista uses the graphics card to render windows (if the card supports windows aero, which the nvidia 6 and 7 series cards do), everything is offloaded from the CPU to the GPU, which really makes a huge difference. The amount of GPU required to draw a 2D window, is minimal, so it won't really affect SL when you're in SL becaus eit's not really doing much other windows drawing. Also, windows will detect when it needs to turn off Aero because the video card and the application can't work together on the same video card. I have a brand new machine I built over the weekend, and even Flight Simulator X which is designed for vista, turns off Aero when it starts. Here at work I have a crappy ATI x300 card, and SL turns off Aero when I start it.

Also, seriously, don't listen to the people who bash Vista. No OS is perfect, and that includes the POS OS that Apple just put on that iPhone that lacks an amazing amount of features because they focused on it working right. Vista may not be perfect, but I've been using it non-stop since beta days, and as soon as video drivers were more stable (about January) I went 100% vista. I get better performance in Vista on ALL of my computers, and that includes my Dell XPS laptop, which is a hardcore gaming machine. It ran great on my old POS 1.8GHz P4 that is nearly 6 years old (although has an nvidia 6800). People who bash Vista, haven't taken the time to get it to work right, or are just going based off the fact that it's a new MS OS. I'm even running the 64bit version on my new machine, and SL has never run better. Notice how the bashing post here in this thread is an email/article from someone else? Yes, that's right someone else's opinion passed on without even doing any research. Tsk tsk, Manstan.

So, update your drivers from Sony, and if your laptop isn't a truly vista supported laptop, then you might be SOL for SL in Vista on that laptop.

yes installing windows is a pita, and yea if you have to send the bugger back you would have to put the restore cd back on it and SL should run without the speed issues

about your video are you shure its actually using 256 megs, it may be able to use that but it could be set in bios to 64 mb ... most ppl are not using a laptop for intense gaming and odds are its just a setting they figured noone would notice

How much system memory does the laptop have? 512MB? 1 gig?

A lot of laptops may have an advertised 256MB video but one set to "shared" memory -- it will use part of the system memory and only have a much smaller amount, dedicated on the card itself. Sometimes called Turbo Cache or HyperCache or something. This is especially common on graphics with a lower designation number as the last three digits, ie 100-400 series cards. A GeForce 6200 for instance not always but very commonly uses "shared memory", but a 6800 card never would. It's part of how they drop the price on economy/budget models, by having them piggyback off main system ram (which is usually MUCH cheaper, on a desktop you can now get a gig of memory for $25, but on a videocard that much memory would cost a small fortune). I'd have to check whether the Vaio GeForce 7400 cards use shared memory.

To save on battery life, some laptops *also* are set to use a certain amount in desktop mode, then to "dynamically allocate" more as an application needs it, so gamers are sometimes confused why their game only recognizes 32MB or 64MB in desktop mode. I am not sure how SL and other applications handle dynamically allocated graphical memory.

Some laptops *also* need you to manually toggle between graphic uses so that the battery is conserved when you don't need full graphical power. They sometimes have both an inbuilt integrated video, which may be only 32-64MB, plus a dedicated card with 128-256MB+. I don't know on the Vaio models if there is a switch or toggle like that, that you have to actually push or switch, to tell it not to conserve battery power using integrated graphics but give you full power from the GeForce card.

But certainly if it IS sharing with system memory, and you only have 512MB system memory to begin with .. you are going to have severe performance issues.

** EDIT: I did some reading thru the Sony Vaio literature, apparently on those laptops that use BOTH integrated + dedicated graphics mode, there is a STAMINA setting to conserve battery life, and this uses the integrated Intel onboard video. There is a SPEED mode that uses up battery life much faster, but accesses the dedicated GeForce cards.

You might want to double check that your notebook is set to SPEED and not STAMINA mode, be aware this will greatly reduce battery time, maybe to a half hour or an hour or so, versus the slower integrated graphics that will let you run off a battery much longer. In most cases it also requires you to reboot the computer to switch modes.