Upgrading a Sony Vaio FS500 (the SCREEN is SO NICE)

[miston]

I think I've finally found my laptop! I basically just am going to use it for surfing, emailing, and playing around with pics I take on my camera, but I want something thin and light, and with a NICE screen. Though I am gonna get the NVIDIA® GeForce? Go 6200 128MB TurboCache! Is this a good accelerator?

I was waiting for the Fujitsu S7000 to update with the Sonoma, but I went into Circuit City the other day and the Sony XBrite LCD looks so f'in good that I just have to have one! Plus its SO thin!

The negatives:
1) the hardrive's are 4200 RPM! This should be fine for now, but will I be able to upgrade these at a later date to a 5400 or 7200 100G RPM? Are laptop hardrive's pretty standard size?

2) The memory is DDR333....I'm gonna save money and go with 2 DIMMS so at a later date I can upgrade to a gig or so, but the question is can I upgrade it to DDR533?

3) If I choose not to get a DVD burner now, can I buy one from a 3rd party or do I have to pay a premium and go with Sony?

THANKS IN ADVANCE for any comments, help!

 

[EnDaRi]

most laptop hard drives are standard 2.5" hard drives. Unless the computer you bought specifically said it is compatible with DDR533, then its not compatible and only compatible with DDR333. I know some are compatible with DDR400. A DVD burner from a third party company should be fine if the drive bay is standard to most laptops. If you need anything else, feel free to private message me or instant message me on aim at endari2003, if im on. K later

-Alex

 

[mdahc]

Are you talking about the FS500? If you're not going to be playing current 3D games, the Geforce Go 6200 TC is great (especially b/c of its PureVideo support...hardware DVD decoding). You should be able to upgrade the HDD (most Windows laptops allow accessibility). I think the memory spec'd at 333MHz is a real skimp. Since the FS series uses the Intel 915PM chipset, which supports single channel DDR333 and dual channel DDR2 400 & 533, you'll be able to upgrade to DDR2 533 later. As for the DVD burner, that's really up to you. You could just save the money now and get a slim external DVD burner later (i.e. the Lacie F.A. Porsche series are pretty sweet).

 

[miston]

1) I'm getting conflicting advice on whether or not the laptop will support DDR2-400 & 533. I though the same as mdahc....since the 915PM chipset supports 400 and 533 RAM, then it shouldn't be a problem? does the bios have to support it for it to work properly?

2) so the Geforce Go 6200 TC is NOT good for 3D games? The other option would be the Intel GMA 900 128 Dynamic Video Memory. The Geforce is the better choice overall right? Is the Intel better at 3D games? Are they're any pros/cons to either choice?

thanks again!

 

[ND40oz]

1. I think you may find just because the chipset supports the DDR2 spec, the laptop may not. If it has DDR slots, it's probably not going to have DDR2 slots, unless they use the same slot on laptop memory. I know with desktop memory, it's quite different and they aren't interchangable. Just food for thought.

2. The geforce is a better choice then the integrated intel graphics.

 

[mdahc]

Umm, DDR1 and DDR2 SODIMM's are both 200 pin. Thus, they're the same size slot (the slot on a 915PM motherboard should fit and support either memory). But now that I think about it and after looking at DDR2 SODIMM offerings, I don't know if you'd even want to bother with DDR2 since the latencies are like 4 (for 400 or 533MHz) whereas you can get DDR1 333 with a CAS latency of 2.5 at worst (in other words, the latency restricts any theoretical performance/bandwidth increase with DDR2...until you see DDR2 400 or 533 with CAS latency 2.5 or less, then I wouldn't bother with DDR2).

As for the Geforce Go 6200 TC, it's far superior to the Intel GMA 900. The Intel GPU strictly uses system memory for graphics whereas the Geforce Go 6200 TC at least has its own discrete memory, which it uses in conjunction with system memory (much more efficiently, mind you), to use as a frame buffer. In addition, it supports nVIDIA PureVideo, which provides hardware decoding of DVD's and other video processing functions like 3:2 pulldown. And no, it's NOT good for CURRENT 3D games like FarCry, Doom3, HL2, etc. at resolutions > 800x600. Only the Geforce Go 6600 and 6800 and Radeon X700 and X800 would be appropriate for those types of games. I thought you'll just be using it for email, surfing, photos, etc.? If you end up getting a notebook with a 6600, 6800, X700, or X800, it won't be so thin and light any more (especially notebooks with 6800's or X800's, they're like > 10 lbs.)

 

[3sgte]

DDR 333 will be fine.

I believe the confusion may be stemming from the type of ram (DDR333) vs the fsb of the processor(533 = 4x133)

This assumes that this : http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSH...0&Dept=cpu_VAIONotebookComputers#specs
is the notebook you were looking at.

The biggest drag will be the 4200 rpm hdd. Will swapping it out be an issue? Does the XP restore reside on the hard drive, or is it on optical media?
How thin is the notebook?

There is a note(number 4)beside the HDD specs listed

: 30GB (4200rpm), 40GB (4200rpm), 60GB (4200rpm), 80GB (4200rpm), 100GB (4200rpm)4

but no explanation of what the note indicates.

 

[miston]

mdahc:
Well, I wouldn't probably upgrade to a gig of 533 DDR-2 until later this year, or since you pointed out, until the latencies come down to 2.5 or less.

Oh, that's what I needed to know! Yes, I'm basically just looking for a thin and light laptop with a nice sized bright screen to pretty much do email, type, and surf. Sony laptops may not be the fastest, but they have the nicest screens, so I'm going with them! And though I would like to have the option to play some games, I wouldn't want to sacrifice thin and light for game playing!! THANKS!!!

3sgte: Well, DDR 333 will be okay, but I should see a pretty good performance increase from DDR 333 to DDR-2 533. I've been waiting patiently for a few months for Sonoma to come out, and I want to see the benefits of my patience.....at least in having the option to upgrade at a later date to fully take advanate of Sonoma.


The hardrive note was just the following:

Hard Drive Capacity
GB means one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity. Accessible capacity may vary.

 

[miston]

From Tom's Hardware, an article on the Sonoma chipset:

Upgrade Problems: Coexistence Of DDR And DDR2

The user should take a closer look when purchasing and especially when upgrading a notebook in the future. In conjunction with the two chipsets (Mobile 915GM and 915PM) and in addition to the DDR2 and dual-channel notebook designs, there's also a variety of DDR memory designs (915GM) and DDR2 single-channel designs available from producers. From the outside, however, you can't tell which design and which memory type the producer installed. Even if you open up the notebook, the difference between a DDR and DDR2 slot or a single- or dual-channel design is not immediately recognizable. If a producer installs DDR memory, then upgrading to DDR2 is not possible for mechanical reasons alone. Likewise, if the system is designed only for single-channel DDR2 operation, then an upgrade to dual-channel operation is not possible.

 

[mdahc]

I guess I stand corrected.

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: miston
I was waiting for the Fujitsu S7000 to update with the Sonoma, but I went into Circuit City the other day and the Sony XBrite LCD looks so f'in good that I just have to have one! Plus its SO thin!

The negatives:
1) the hardrive's are 4200 RPM! This should be fine for now, but will I be able to upgrade these at a later date to a 5400 or 7200 100G RPM? Are laptop hardrive's pretty standard size?

2) The memory is DDR333....I'm gonna save money and go with 2 DIMMS so at a later date I can upgrade to a gig or so, but the question is can I upgrade it to DDR533?

3) If I choose not to get a DVD burner now, can I buy one from a 3rd party or do I have to pay a premium and go with Sony?

THANKS IN ADVANCE for any comments, help!

You don't know the meaning of "thin"

The hard drive will not be a problem...even the laptop above used a standard size laptop hard drive (upgraded from a ~10GB 4200 to a 40GB 5400)

Laptops tend to be finicky with memory...so it's usually a good idea to replace it with EXACTLY the memory called for.

And *usually* optical drives tend to be specific to certain models or at least manufacturers. you might have some luck on ebay, but optical drives aren't nearly as standard as memory, hard drives, or processors.