Review Sony Vaio SVE1711X1EB Notebook

Our Vaio notebook comes almost entirely in black. The case is made of plastic and has, apart from the glossy display frame and loudspeakers grill above the keyboard, a smooth, matte surface with a relatively pleasant feel. Fingerprints are still visible on this surface.

The stability and workmanship are mostly without a fault. The base unit has excellent torsional rigidity. Only the area above the optical drive gives in under moderate pressure, which is common for many competitors as well. We are also satisfied with the torsional stability of the display lid. In view of the weight of 3.2 kg (7.05 pounds), you would rarely lift the notebook by the corner of the screen, even if twisting is minimal. Overall the display lid could be a bit more solid. Image distortions when the display is turned on, or even creaking, were not observed.

The two tight hinges seem somewhat undersized in view of the size of the housing. The display lid visibly teeters after changing the opening angle. Otherwise, despite the heavy base, both hands are needed in opening the notebook.

Along the front edge we find two card readers: a Memory Stick Duo slot, which also supports Memory Stick PRO without copy protection, and one slot for SD memory cards. The rest of the interfaces are split among the left and right sides. Overall there are 4 USB ports, although only one supports USB 3.0. As usual for such large devices HDMI and VGA are also on board. It is obvious from the interface configuration that the SVE17 is aimed more at the end consumer or home office user, rather than the professionals, as that would require at least a docking port, and also a DisplayPort.

The interface layout is not optimal, due to the placement at the front. On the other hand, all of the USB ports are easily accessible. At least the two video outputs are located at the back of the left side. Left-handed users will have their hand warmed by the exhaust air from the fan when using an external mouse.

Our test notebook has a 17.3-inch screen, model Chi Mei N173HGE-L11. It has a native Full HD resolution of 1920x1080 pixels and a 16:9 format. Due to the low-reflection surface, the display is suitable for both prolonged indoor operation and outdoor use.

Other SVE17 models have coarser screens with WXGA++ resolution (1600x900). These offer less, since most modern computer games are already playable with the AMD Radeon HD 7650M at low/medium setting in Full HD.

The Intel Core i7-3612QM is a fast mobile quad-core processor with a TDP of 35 W, which is manufactured at 22 nm process with 3D transistors. Thanks to the Hyper-threading, the four cores can process up to 8 threads simultaneously. Depending on the work load Turbo Boost can overclock the processor, for example up to 3.1 GHz for one core. In our model the processor is accompanied by 8 GB RAM. You can find more information about the processor in our special article, and here you can find a performance comparison: benchmark list of mobile processors.

In order to determine the performance of the CPU in our test unit, we ran a number of CPU oriented benchmarks. SuperPi uses one processor core to calculate a predefined number of digits of the number Pi. In order to calculate 32 million digits after the decimal, the CPU took 15 minutes and 21 seconds. Here our notebook took significantly longer than other ones with the same CPU, which needed only about 11 minutes. A look at the frequency shows that the Turbo obviously did not come into play. Despite the workload, the clock frequency remained at 2.095 GHz and does not even come close to the Turbo Boost maximum of 3.1 GHz. This problem could be observed in other CPU oriented benchmarks as well. In multi-core programs such as wPrime and CineBench Multi Rendering, the frequency still remains at 2.095 GHz and the Turbo Boost seems deactivated. Therefore it is hardly surprising that all the CPU oriented benchmarks scored below average. Fortunately the CPU performance remains at "full capacity" even on battery power.

With a multimedia laptop, which is also suitable for gaming, not only the synthetic benchmarks are interesting. Therefore, we have selected five more or less modern and demanding 3D games, in order to verify the practical graphics performance.

We begin with Mass Effect 3. The Sci-Fi shooter runs smoothly only at low settings with 44 fps.

Risen 2 takes us into a unique pirate world. In this demanding 3D game we also quickly reach the limits of the AMD 7650M.  Again, the game is smoothly playable only at low settings, running at 37 fps.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim  does not bring any surprises in terms of performance. The game runs fluently with 45 fps only at the lowest settings.

Battlefield 3 focuses on complex multi-player battle and detailed maps, thus it presents the toughest challenge for our test unit so far. Even at low settings, the graphics card is already reaching its limits.

In comparison to the other game in our test, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has satisfyingly low hardware requirements. Even our middle-class graphics card manages 40 fps at high settings.

Verdict: Gaming Performance

The Radeon 7650M graphics card by AMD in the SVE1711X1EB is a middle class chip that works at 500 MHz (core) and 900 MHz (memory). Thus a lot of games are playable at up to medium settings. But at the native Full HD resolution, you will have to lower your expectations of the graphics quality in order to get some games to run fluently.

Noise Level

Our SVE1711X1EB test unit works quietly under low load. Even the hard drive noise of 31.1 dB(A) is only noticeable upon closer inspection. In contrast, the Blu-Ray drive is clearly audible with 39.6 dB(A) when playing movies. Under load, the maximum noise level reaches 44.1 dB(A). No peculiar noises were observed with the fan.

With powerful hardware and relatively quiet operation, a higher heat development can be expected. While under low load the temperatures remain low, our test unit heated up significantly under full load.

With the help of our stress test, in which we used Prime95 and Furmark to simultaneously fully utilize both the processor and the graphics card, we measured the maximum surface temperature. Here mostly the left side of the SVE1711X1EB exceeded the 50 °C (~122 °F) mark, in part on the bottom as well as on the top side. In addition, the left keyboard area is noticeably warmer and the left palm rest exceeds body temperature. Here we should note that our stress test is an extreme scenario, which should not occur in everyday use. Still, you should refrain from playing demanding 3D games on your lap.

We use the stress test, 100% CPU and GPU load with Prime95 and Furmark, to also check for throttling. The good news is that the CPU's frequency does not drop below the base clock 2.1 GHz. The core temperatures reached 90 °C (~194 °F). Notice here that the CPU Turbo is obviously not working, as was mentioned in the Performance section. We can exclude the undersized power supply or the insufficient cooling system as causes, since we could not observe any overclocking even in a cold start. Also, there is no BIOS setting to turn the Turbo on or off. Thus it is likely that Sony has intentionally disabled the Turbo function. The graphics card runs constantly at 500 MHz (core) and 900 MHz (memory). In our stress test it reached temperatures of over 70 °C (~158 °F). Our SVE1711X1EB thus does not need to fight throttling problems.