S3XP LCD display

[xied75]

Hi, Guys,

I've noticed a strange feature of my new S3, when using AC power, with brightest screen, if you leave the laptop idle for a while, LCD turns dark a little bit, then if you click mouse or press keys, the screen turns back to normal brightness, the Question is: it turns back in many small steps, looks like flickering. Compared with pressing Fn+F6, which change the brightness immediately, without any inter-step, this feature probably has 10 steps and uses about 1 second. Is this normal? Anything to do with the video driver or the Nvidia SmartDimmer or some built-in power save stuff?

Thanks a lot.

[kee-lo_]

Yes, it's normal, it's an autobrightness feature Sony have added to their newest models.

[Nico_801]

Hi, i guess you might have a problem with your LCD. But, try using the battery power only (without on AC power) and see whether the LCD flickers.

Good luck!

[xied75]

Hi there,

Now I'm 70% sure that it is a feature of Nvidia Go 6200, the so called SmartDimmer. I did this to prove that: open the clock, and Task Manager, then watch, at exactly 5 minutes (300 seconds), LCD changes its brightness, and when you click mouse or press a key, during the LCD brightness changing period, the process Nvsvc32.exe run at CPU ~30 or ~40. It seems to me that this process is changing the brightness step by step, other than in one go.

Then I've got a new question, why this process doesn't change it in one go? Or why not change it in more steps so that user won't notice the step?

I've found some registry keys under Nvidia/SmartDimmer, but not sure what controls what.

Anyone interested in this topic, please follow up.

[Stephanius]

Interesting!

before you go and edit the registry, have you considered going to the advanced display properties, geforce go 6200 tab, select Smart Dimmer in the menu on the left side and use these options to disable the behaviour you dont want?

[xied75]

Hi,

There isn't much you can do in that control panel, you can only disable/enable, change how bright you want when smartdimmer starts work. But in the registry, you have more key/values to change, e.g. there is one key has value 300, that's exactly 5 mins time that my LCD will begin to change brightness.

[ant1uk]

when i use ac power on this model i find the fan runs all the time, then on battery it dont run as often, the settings are the same for batt and ac power, the thing is the unit gets to hot at the bottom without the fan running as much, does anyone notice this?

[gnomo74]

I checked on the SONY Japan website and they refer to an updated video driver to resolve such symptom (if the Babefish translator is accurate).

The video drive they mention is Nvidia GeForce Go 620 driver 7.0.8.7

Hopefully this one will be available on www.vaio-link.com

So click and wait

[gnomo74]

A new video driver addressing this problem was just released on www.vaio-link.com!

NVIDIA GeForce Go 6200 Graphics Driver Version 7.0.8.7 for Windows XP

This update resolves the following problems:
- Screen goes black when playing M2T file with DVgate Plus
- Colour noise appears when playing M2T file with Windows Media Player
- LCD brightness flashes when it is dimmed (by pressing Fn+F5 or unplugging AC adapte

Should check it out

[kee-lo_]

Thanks for the info