S380p Initial Thoughts

Hi,
My s380p arrived today.
1gb ram
100gb hd
bluetooth
wifi abg card
winxp pro

Set up was ok, 100gb hd is pretty speedy compared to the 4200 rpm in my t150p. Xbrite screen had no defects.

Had to uninstall all the misc Sony add ons like AOL etc.


Machine is the 2.13 ghz model.

Charged the battery to full. With no power managment, wifi and bluetooth on, the predicted battery life is 3:46. This is a standard battery. Not bad, better than I expected!


Ran a couple of benchmarks

Super Pi to 2 million 1 min 33 sec
Super Pi to 1 million 37 sec

Photoshop speed test
A4 RGB 300dpi document
add 15% gaussian noise
then do a radial blur best at 20% took about 2 min 7 sec.

My dual opteron 250 machine does this test in 1 min 2 sec, my colleagues dual 2.5 G5 mac does this test in 48 sec.

Aquamark 3D: GFX: 2, 277 CPU: 9,972 Total rating:20,445


Mobmeter states that cpu temp is 63C.

Right side of notebook palmrest is warm.

Things I like,
The screen is sharp.
Wifi is good.
Keys are a good size

Things I do not like:
Keyboard is a little soft to type on
Power hdd access and other leds are all clustered with tiny faint green symbols on right front of notebook. Hard to see

Usb ports are inside a plastic door on the right side, so every time you need to use a pen drive you have to pry this door open. It is flimsy feeling. Now if you choose to use the sony memory stick you get immediate access to a front slot.

Fan noise is so so. Under full processor power you can hear it,whirring away but it is not disturbing in my office. I will let you know when I take it to a quiet room.

Bluetooth was a bit buggy, the icon kept disappearing and it had a conflict showing up in device manager. Uninstalling the driver and reinstalling it seemed to fix it.

One significant change is that the AC adapter (19 volt) is a brick, literally. I have had four notebooks and transformer portion of this adapter is nearly twice as big as any I have ever seen. I am stunned by this. Here you order a 4.2lb notebook and the adapter itself weights 0.92 lbs.

I think all in all loading up a s270 may be the smarter move. I will probably keep the s380 but I honestly think that sony took a step back for their sonoma based machine............or it is that the sonoma is really only hype?
Especially the nvidia card 6200go which is inferior to the ati 9700, I suspect the battery life differences stem from the video card as the ati requires less wattage than the nvidia, particularly when you are swapping in and out of the system memory.





Scott

63C is under load. I am suspicious that mobmeter may not be working correctly with the sonoma chipset, as the processor speed ratings are very odd, bouncing constantly between strange number like 186mhz to 800mhz to 2.13ghz. This is at idle.
Under no power management, and during the photoshop test, which is very processor intensive temps went up to 73C and the little fan inside was whirring away. I see similar temps on other machines, and I think I read that pentium Ms run a little warm.

s380p 3dmark specs

Hi I have now done 3dmark 03 and 05 at the standard settings

Scores 3dmark03: 2548 3dmark05: 848

Where are the IRQ usages listed? I opened device manager and I do not see a discrete IRQ listing.

Memory installed by sony 2 x 512 mb pc3200 udimm ddr2.
Will check IRQs later today,
I installed Far Cry on this machine and let the software configure itself. It set the s380p up at low to medium for all settings. The game played flawlessly and was quite enjoyable, colors were terrific. The processor really makes heat though, and playing far cry the fan is a constant but not annoying whir. Battery life suffers under full load, giving approximately 2 hours tops with the standard battery. I called sony yesterday and spoke to a level 2 tech guy who said that the processor will run warm and that it is programmed to shut down at 95C!!! I hope I never experience that, as the air coming out under load is already pretty warm.

I tested the memory bandwidth with Sandra (latest free version) and it was interesting, under Vaio optimized performance memory scored only around 865. Under No power management, I received a score around 2900 which is right on for pc3200 ram. So the machine performs as expected so far.

One other annoyance, the programmable buttons, s1 and s2 are sluggish in their response. Several times I pushed the s1 button which I set up as a direct link to vaio power management and I heard the button beep signal and nothing came up, or the menu to program the button came up, but not the power management software. So these are a bit buggy.

Hox

IRQ settings for s380p
System timer 0
Keyboard 1
Cmos 8
Msft ACPI compliant system 9
Sony programmable device 11
Alps pointing device 12
Numeric data processor 13
primary ide 14
Mobile 915 gm/pm express pci root port 16
Nvidia ge force 6200go 16
Intel USB 17
Ultra ATA controller 18
USB 19
High def audio 19
Network card intel pro 20
Texas Inst IEEE1394 20
Generic cardbus 21
USB 21
Intel pro wireless 22
USB 23
Flas media controller23

The standard battery that comes with the s380p also has a slight wiggle to it when locked into the notebook. I have two of these standard batteries and both wiggle. The wiggle is noticeable when you pick the laptop off a desk or when you rest the battery base in your hand then you feel the wiggle. My IBM t41p had a loose battery as well, this was remedied by a small piece of tape.

The s380 has slightly slower 3d performance than the s360, stock performance, not Omega graphics drivers. On math intensive operations, I believe the s380 with 2.13 ghz processor and higher memory bandwidth actually performs very well. I was stunned to see the Super Pi times it turned in (see above). What we need is someone with a S360 2ghz model to do the same tests in photoshop and Super Pi. Then we can really compare.
For some, the separation of the IRQs as afforded by the sonoma chipset will be a strong selling point. As well as the SATA drives. So If its straight out gaming you are interested in, I would say go for the s360, but make sure you purchase an extended life battery as the graphics demands of these games causes the computers to run at full power and full power fan speeds which translate to short battery life.



Hox

I figured out the sluggish s button probelm,
Clicking the Lan icon in the taskbar i noticed that bluetooth, 2.4 ghz wireless and 5 ghz wireless were all checked. This was causing a conflict as the text associated with these devices clearly states not to select all at once. Not sure how they all got checked but removing the 5ghz check fixed the problem.

Hox