#Sony vaio s series ram upgrade#
#Sony vaio s series ram portable#

IanCutress: I'm referring to the global semiconductor workforce and associated adjacencies in this context, givenвЂ¦.

Sony was only willing to lend us the VAIO for two weeks, and about a day into my battery testing I began to feel.a little rushed. In exchange, you get basically double the battery capacity, a development that gets all the more impressive later on when you see our battery life results.

#Sony vaio s series ram upgrade#

You can upgrade to a 7200RPM drive (or even an SSD in the premium model) and I can't stress this enough: pay for the upgrade.ДЇinally, our review unit also included the extra sheet battery which plugs snugly into the bottom of the notebook and adds a little more than a pound of heft, bumping the VAIO S up to a still reasonable five pounds. Unfortunately, where things get pretty dire is the hard drive: it's not a bottom rung Toshiba or Fujitsu, but as you'll see later the 5400RPM Hitachi Travelstar really bogs this system down. Sony does offer an upgrade to the AMD Radeon HD 6630M with 1GB of DDR3, though I have concerns about just how well a chassis this thin can handle a GPU like that. Given what we already know of the 6470M's performance, it really bears asking.what's the point? Intel's HD 3000 graphics are roughly 70% as fast in most games, and we're at the entry level anyhow. Sony also doesn't use AMD's troubled dynamic switchable graphics technology (we'll have a look at that in the near future), opting instead to use what seems to be a mux-based hardware switch to toggle the dedicated graphics on and off. The 800MHz core clock and 1.8GHz effective memory clock help even things out a little, but this is still one of AMD's weakest GPUs.

Even 1GB of video memory would be excessive for this GPU, with just a 64-bit memory bus and 160 shaders. Where things get a little perplexing is the AMD Radeon HD 6470M with 512MB of DDR3. This means that our review unit is running at a slight disadvantage, with only a single memory channel populated instead of running dual-channel. In fact, you can actually see the RAM chips right below the open slot. The other memory channel is occupied by 4GB of DDR3-1333 soldered to the motherboard. Alongside it is one of the more interesting parts of the VAIO S' design: there's only one DIMM slot in the notebook, and it's open. That's certainly more than adequate for most tasks. The configuration for the Sony VAIO S that Sony sent us is actually pretty close to their entry level only the processor and hard drive have been upgraded (barely), and they opted to include the sheet battery for us to test as well.Д«y now Sandy Bridge processors should be pretty familiar to you our VAIO includes the lowest i5 chip, the Intel Core i5-2410M, but it's still a beefy processor, sporting two Hyper-Threaded cores running at 2.3GHz and capable of turbo'ing up to 2.6GHz on both or 2.9GHz on a single core. Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B 500GB 5400RPM HDDДЇlash reader (SD/Mini SD, MS/Duo/Pro/Pro Duo) (160 stream processors, 800MHz/1.8GHz core/memory clocks, 64-bit memory bus) (2x2.3GHz + HTT, 32nm, 3MB е…ѓ, Turbo to 2.9GHz, 35W)Д¤GB DDR3-1333 soldered to motherboard, one empty DIMM slotДЄMD Radeon HD 6470M 512MB DDR3 (switchable with Intel HD 3000) Here's how our specific test sample came equipped. To top it all off, you can even get the VAIO S with a matte screen.

The svelte 13.3' chassis boasts an internal battery (user-replaceable), new Sandy Bridge graphics, and Sony continues to employ switchable graphics, this time with an AMD Radeon HD 6470M.

This may not be the Z series you were hoping for (we're working hard to get one of those in), but the S series has an awful lot to recommend it in and of itself.

#Sony vaio s series ram portable#

Say what you will, I've always been a fan of Sony's styling and it's a rare pleasure to get one of their more portable VAIO notebooks in house for review.

There are lower end models (usually SB) and higher end offerings (SA), so bear in mind that what we're reviewing may have the same shell as other VAIO S laptops, but the LCD and other components (and thus performance) can vary. The actual laptop we're reviewing is technically theВ Sony VAIO VPCSB190X CTO (CTO = Configure To Order), but it's part of the VAIO S line and so we'll simply call it the VAIO S. But did Sony cut any corners to get the VAIO S' price down, or should it be on any traveller's short list?Д«efore we get to the meat of the review, first a word about naming conventions. From the outside, at least, the Sony VAIO S looks like a winner at nearly any level. It's light, has a matte screen, switchable graphics, a mainstream Sandy Bridge processor, and the potential to last all day (and then some) on the battery. You asked for it, you got it: in house, a review of Sony's longstanding 13.3' road warrior S series.