Acer 8371/3810 Owners Thread

Definitely. Don't get me wrong, it is not as if I am using it for heavy work - I have a decent i5 desktop for that - but I used to find the netbook frustrated more often than not with simple tasks, especially when doing more than one thing at a time. The CULV in the 8371 is a decent chip, built on a strong architecture - it happily runs all everyday stuff, and has never disappointed.

kevpuk said:

Definitely. Don't get me wrong, it is not as if I am using it for heavy work - I have a decent i5 desktop for that - but I used to find the netbook frustrated more often than not with simple tasks, especially when doing more than one thing at a time. The CULV in the 8371 is a decent chip, built on a strong architecture - it happily runs all everyday stuff, and has never disappointed.

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I am very tempted, just need to see if I can sell my netbook and find some cash! Whats the build quality like?

chrismscotland said:

Yeah its the N270 CPU that its got, so you find the 8371 much faster?

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Had a NC10 (N270), now a UL30A (SU2300). there's just no comparisons. It's a lot more at ease with everything. It's just great for doing light work (word processing, browsing, watching videos), even coding and gaming.

Basically, you don't notice the processor, it just does its things, and doesn't get in the way, whereas on the Atom, you would notice significant slow downs and limitations, with multitasking, or even simple browsing. I can multi-task just fine on the notebook.

People complaining about their laptop performance and having P8000 processors and such are really looking in the wrong place. If your computer is slow, then you should probably be looking at the hard drive rather than the processor itself. For general tasks and such, my notebook is as fast and snappy as my desktop with a SSD. That's where the bottleneck usually is.

For a netbook, the Atom is just too weak in itself, and no amount of SSD will make it multitask and play videos.

tbz_ck said:

......if you pull your finger out and tell us how you made that overclock stick

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I really wish I could remember what I did. I was just on the laptop before and chose profile 1 (the oc settings) and clicked apply, and it was done. I do remember however watching this video before I did anything, so watch and follow and see if it helps:

kevpuk said:

Yep yep - mailed

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Drop me an email as well please

to all those asking for mail......just Google for it

Search for Acer 8371, click shopping then click the first link for £350 new from 35 sellers. Then it's just the top link (24 hours a day, 7 days a week)

What i did to OC the graphics and get 3200 3dmark 06 score
1.
download afterburner from http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/
2.
Run the MSIAfterburnerSetup200.exe
3.
Edit the following file
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner\MSIAfterburner.cfg
EnableUnofficialOverclocking = 1
4.
Restart, run afterburner (when the ATI graphics card is enabled) (also make sure you have admin rights).
Slide the GPU clock and mem hz up, make sure to select apply settings after doing this. Open up gpuz to make sure clock settings have taken effect.
Hope that clears it up.

I am still concerned with my battery life.
Win7 - power saving settings, getting about 4-5hours internet surfing on wifi.
Does any one get more then this?
I have read that modern batterys have a "memory" type controller, on board, where the 6 cells of the battery are used inteligently and only 1 cell is used up at a time, and only cells that then need charging would get a charge when you pluged in.

Therefore after a lot of use the first cell might become dead but the next 5 have hardly been used and have full life.
What this would mean is you don't have to worry about running the battery down 100% and giving it full charges.
Does anyone know about this with our li-ion 00 battery?
The battery is made by simplc as09d70

Whilst googling and trying to find the answers myself i found only the following.
A extra battery can be brought for £35
"Using advanced cell technology and quality parts"
Ratings: 4400mAh, 11.1V
A lithium-ion battery pack loses only about 5 percent of its charge per month
They have no memory effect, which means that you do not have to completely discharge them before recharging, as with some other battery chemistries.
Lithium-ion batteries can handle hundreds of charge/discharge cycles. - how many?
They start degrading as soon as they leave the factory. They will only last two or three years from the date of manufacture whether you use them or not. - acording to howstuffworks.

So what i get from this is that it will hold its charge if we don't use the laptop for months (god forbid!) It doesn't matter if we keep using a few % then we charging it back up. It will only last about 3 years anyway no matter what we do. Correct?

are you checking the battery life while plugged in? ^^
as it wont run the onboard gpu and use acer powersmart tech while its on mains power, only when its running battery will it run 7+hours with wifi. also make sure you put windows 7 to power saver not high performance and that the powersmart button on the laptop is on.

No i am checking battery life whilst running on the battery.
Yes i am using power saving settings and the intel gpu is running. (green acer light on) only 4-5hours

A Post on CPU/GPU overclocking and WOW performance increase.

To all asking about wow performance earlier.
I have decided to measure the rise in wow fps after overclocking.

As stated prevously i am using 1366*768 res, on fair settings with texture on high liquid and particles set to good.

Now in indoor areas you will get 60fps, however outdoor questing areas its 30fps.
I stood my char standing still in a quite zone (no other players around) and pressed ctrl+R to get a fps reading.
36fps
Alt tab and measure cpu usage over the next 1 min, average only 45% usage, overclocking the cpu is not going to get us any more FPS we are GPU limited, but i overclocked it to 1.7 anyway to make sure, alt tabed back into wow and sure enough FPS was not changed.

Time for the gpu overclocking.
GPU from 450 to 500mhz = 39fps a incease of 3fps
GPU mem from 600 to 700 = 38fps a increase of 2fps

What the above shows is that we are no fillrate limited at this res but GPU limited still.

GPU 500 and MEM 700 = 42FPS, a increase of 8fps

A 50mhz GPU overclock (11% oc) and
a 100mhz memory overclock (16%)
goes from 36fps to 42fps a 22% performance gain.

(someone check my percentages math heh think its right).

Who decided to stop at 650/700mhz?
Might try going up a bit more! However i did destory my 8800 my overclocking so might ask someone else to

Seems like the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4550 is the same as the HD 4330 but clocked at 550/700

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 450/600
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4550 550/700
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 680/800

Now i don't think there is much difference between the 4330 and the 4570, The Mobility HD 4330 is based on the RV710 chip as is the 4570.

GL to the person that trys 680/800 first

user100monkey said:

GL to the person that trys 680/800 first

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Yes GL to that person - I don't think my slider went as far as that on mine lol.

I got to around 575/780 but moved it to 550/750 (saved as profile 1) for safe usage when playing games. Not bad considering its slightly above a default ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4550 550/700.

Can anyone tell me if the mobility Radeon is integrated into the motherboard or a separate card?

Modded Bios & Tips and Tricks Including 3G and 2nd HDD

I will share my Tips and Tricks Including installing a 3G modem and a 2nd HDD and my modded quiet bios.

Alright I've just found this thread and see a lot of people have this laptop now.
I'm dragonuk from notebookreview.

CPU OVERCLOCK

First thing is the cpu overclock does seem to give a great boost and not effect battery life or have any side effects at all. So most people should use it fine

When using CPU-Z my cpu sometimes shows a x7.5 or x8 multiplier. Don't know why this is as the cpu is only meant to have a x7 multiplier. Anyone else seen this ?

If you want it to run everytime windows starts, open task scheduler and click Create Task. Set it to trigger on startup and on workstation unlock . That means when you return from sleep or power on your laptop it will automatically run the cpu overclock.

GPU INFO

Now the GPU. The GPU does seem to run really hot when playing games 80C etc. One problem here is the fan on the laptop is set to come on at different speeds depending on the CPU Temp. So if the cpu temp is really low and the gpu is really high the fan won't turn on. There is not much you can do here except modify the cooling in the laptop internally.

INSTALLING A 2ND HDD (SSD)

Some people mentioned on this forum about wanting to install a 2nd hdd and gave a negative point to this laptop because you couldn't. Well actually you can. If you open up the laptop (you have to remove the keyboard etc) there is a space inside the laptop for a half slim ssd. Check the picture below (Now this picture is from a 3810. Now our laptop is pretty much the same inside just a few things different.)



In the middle right of the picture there is a space with nothing in it. To the right of the blue board. You can connect an SSD in to that space using the connection from the blue board and then you have a SSD and the original internal hdd in your laptop (2 HDD's ) On our laptop the space is in the bottom right corner instead but same thing applies.

This is how it fits:



So if anyone wants a 2nd hdd there you go .

INSTALLING A 3G MODEM

Also the laptop is ready for a 3g modem. It all ready has a sim card slot in the case. If you remove the battery and then look to the left of the battery connection on the laptop you will see a black sticker covering something. If you remove this black sticker it will reveal a fully functional sim card slot. You can insert a sim and remove. Now this doesnt give you 3g. All you need to add a 3g modem into the laptop is purchase a 3g wwan pcie card like this :



And plug it in to the slot in the top right (you can see the slot in the first picture I posted. Top right of picture). They cost ab

Modded 1.28 Acer 8371 Bios.

Now if people have installed the latest bios 1.28 (which you should as it has a lot of good changes) you will see that the fan speed is quite loud and the fan is always on when connected to AC power.

I have modified this latest bios to change the Fan Settings on AC and Battery and also added additional settings in the bios menu as well as SLIC2.1 . In the bios menu, you just need to set the User access level to FULL to show all options. You can now choose ATI Only and Intel ONLY as well as switchable graphics. This means you can install the latest drivers for each graphics adapter and change in the bios when needed.

If anyone is using my old modified bios please upgrade to this new bios as my old bios has a few issues.

MODDED BIOS DOWNLOAD - http://www.mediafire.com/?qsn4aoovoba2kuo
ALTERNATIVE DOWNLOAD LINK - http://www.2shared.com/file/arRt9weV/BIOS_Acer_8371_128_Modified_Qu.html

Only use this bios on 8371 laptop.

These are the temperatures set for the bios:

(CPU TEMP)
Min Max FanSpeed
45C 50C 20% (You can't hear 20% fan speed)
55C 60C 40%
62C 70C 50%
72C 80C 70%

(Thanks to advan20092 from notebookreview and IXBT Forum for help with modifying fan table)

Let me know how people get on with the bios. You will notice a big difference in the fan noise on battery and it also doesnt turn on all the time when you insert AC adapter.

Dragonuk, welcome!

I have to say I am very impressed that the 8371 does hold 2 hdds. Very much appreciate you signing up and giving us all this info mate. I am on my phone atm but am gonna have a proper read and look at the pics later.

Do you also have the 8371?
Have you fitted 2 hdds? If so, I'm guessing one SSD and the second the 320gb storage drive?
Have you oc'ed the ATI 4330 and if so, what clock speeds you getting?

Will these be the kind of SSD's that I'd need to buy to fit?

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid-state-drives/sata-ii/1-8--sata-ii.html

e36Adz said:

Dragonuk, welcome!

I have to say I am very impressed that the 8371 does hold 2 hdds. Very much appreciate you signing up and giving us all this info mate. I am on my phone atm but am gonna have a proper read and look at the pics later.

Do you also have the 8371?
Have you fitted 2 hdds? If so, I'm guessing one SSD and the second the 320gb storage drive?
Have you oc'ed the ATI 4330 and if so, what clock speeds you getting?

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Yes I have the 8371 laptop . Its good with its battery life. After overclocking the CPU to 250fsb it is pretty fast for tasks.

I haven't tried overclocking the GPU yet because the gpu allready gets quite hot. 80C under load etc. However maybe overclocking the GPU won't increase temperatures further though it might decrease battery life. Anyone who has overclocked GPU did it increase temperatures under load ?

I haven't fitted a SSD but my friend has in this laptop. I am thinking of fitting one. Yes you would have 2 hard drives appear in windows. The SSD and the normal HDD 320gb Drive.

MasterPlan1 said:

Will these be the kind of SSD's that I'd need to buy to fit?

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid-state-drives/sata-ii/1-8--sata-ii.html

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The drive needs to be a half slim SSD and you remove the case.

For example this SSD is compatible (maybe others too) they sell it here - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-011-KS . You have to open the case and then you get the half slim ssd.

Look at the picture below. This is what its like when you open the kingston ssd that is sold above and remove the case. The ssd you buy has to be this size when you open it to fit.

You just unplug the board and plug it in directly to the laptop inside.

WOW !

Welcome and thanks for the above - really useful and now I feel the need to go buy a SSD !