Acer 8371/3810 Owners Thread

[e36Adz]

Welcome aboard tmten!

Post back when you receive/test/upgrade/overclock yours and let us know how you get on with it.

I was playing streetfighter III third strike last night with my Sega USB pad connected, runs brilliantly!

 

[tbz_ck]

Hi all. I'm new here, and have a travelmate 3871 on order after scouring the web for over week for the best laptop for around £300-£350. I believe I've found it! £330 delivered for one with a core 2 su9400, 320gb hd, 4gb ram and a hd 4330 is amazing.
By all accounts the screen doesn't have the best viewing angles in the world but it's matte, which was what really stopped me from paying about £100-£150 more and getting a lot more processing power. Whoever decided it was a good idea to put a glossy screen on a laptop should be shot. "Fantastic. We've got a portable pc that can be used anywhere, but there's something mssing. I know, we'll stick a glossy screen on it, so, um, movies'll look a bit richer, although, er... you won't be able to use it outside. Or near a window. Or a bright light. And you'll often sit watching your reflection typing. How does that sound?"

I'll definitely be overclocking both the cpu and the gpu - I've always overclocked every pc that I've ever owned, as it's 100% safe provided you keep voltages and temps within spec and stress test adequately for stability. In this case the only drawback will probably be slightly reduced battery life, which is exceptional in the first place so isn't really an issue for me. It'll be used for some light gaming, web browsing, office stuff and if it's sufficient maybe a little bit of audio production when I'm away from the desktop.

Anyway, enough waffling from me. I'll be sure to post some gaming and performance results when I get both the laptop and enough time to play with it (in the middle of moving house. aarrgghh!)

@tbz_ck

If the 3810 that you are referring to has a 1.3ghz cpu, then it'll run at 1625mhz. The overclock is of the fsb, which increases from 200 to 250. The clock multiplier would be 6.5 (6.5x200 = 1300), so the overclock would be 6.5x250 = 1625.

Welcome TMTEN and a great first post.

I'l give this overclocking lark a shot at the weekend and report back.

Anyone given the battery a good stressing following the overclock to compare run times (which are of utmost importance to me )

 

[tmten]

thanks for the warm welcome people.

as for the battery life when overclocked, hopefully it won't make a huge difference, but it will be interesting to find out.
by the way, has anyone dabbled with gpu overclocking, or do you not think it's worth it? there's a guy on notebookreview with a 3810, with his hd 4330 at 540mhz core and 770mhz mem, or ~10%, which doesn't really seem worth it. if you could get to something like 600mhz and 800mhz (desktop 4550) then that would really be something. higher than that and i'd start to get palpitations (ahh, the life of a geek!)

@e36Adz

streetfighter III third strike? nice! i've got that myself, although i still haven't got a sega style pad to play it. i've considered getting a proper (and expensive) arcade stick for that authentic arcade feel, but i was always a pad man at heart and those japanese saturn style pads are fantastic. i might have to get one soon. and i can't wait to do some mobile gaming on this laptop!

 

[e36Adz]

thanks for the warm welcome people.

as for the battery life when overclocked, hopefully it won't make a huge difference, but it will be interesting to find out.
by the way, has anyone dabbled with gpu overclocking, or do you not think it's worth it? there's a guy on notebookreview with a 3810, with his hd 4330 at 540mhz core and 770mhz mem, or ~10%, which doesn't really seem worth it. if you could get to something like 600mhz and 800mhz (desktop 4550) then that would really be something. higher than that and i'd start to get palpitations (ahh, the life of a geek!)

@e36Adz

streetfighter III third strike? nice! i've got that myself, although i still haven't got a sega style pad to play it. i've considered getting a proper (and expensive) arcade stick for that authentic arcade feel, but i was always a pad man at heart and those japanese saturn style pads are fantastic. i might have to get one soon. and i can't wait to do some mobile gaming on this laptop!

I'll probably be tempted just to push it up very very slowly to see where it starts to get artifacts and then budge it down a notch. What tool is best to use when ocing the card?

As for third strike, well it runs perfectly on this machine. I've got a TE arcade stick myself but thats by the 360 for the occasional sf4 session but the saturn style USB pads are indeed fantastic for beat em ups. They are dirt cheap, I think I paid about £7-8 each (I've got 2). The d-pad is bang on for sf, and they are quite small and light so perfect if you take your laptop around with you in a small bag, it should slide in neatly, unlike a huge arcade stick. Plus its perfect for all those snes9x and dgen games.

 

[tmten]

for overclocking the hd 4330 apparently msi afterburner should work. i have used this before to overclock desktop cards and found quite good. this'll be my first laptop in a couple of years and i'm looking forward to getting hands on with it. i'm used to gaming on desktop cards and, while i don't expect to play everything on high, i wanna push the hd 4330 as far as possible to hopefully keep a detailed and smooth experience. i've watched a few videos on youtube of the hd4330 and it's variants (4530/4570/etc) and have been pleasantly surprised by what it's capable of, but overclocking is free and you can never have too much performance!

btw glad to hear you confirm that those cheap saturn style pads are nice. definitely gonna have to pick one up. and i definitely wasn't intending to lug 'round an arcade stick - it would probably weigh more than the laptop!

 

[Loque]

im interested in an 8371, but i first need to sell my Inspiron 1370. Wheres the best place to get one? the auction site?

 

[e36Adz]

im interested in an 8371, but i first need to sell my Inspiron 1370. Wheres the best place to get one? the auction site?

No, you can get them brand new for under £350 online, plenty in stock. I think there is still a 2.5% discount code floating around - if anyone has it can you email Loque with it.

Gonna dl and try msi afterburner in awhile, will report back.

 

[e36Adz]

Ok, I ran msi afterburner and managed to overclock the gpu almost as high as the settings would let me go, without touching the voltage! I managed to get it to 575/780 and furmark runs without any glitches, but to be safe I moved it down a touch.

ATI 4330 450/600 @ 550/750

I tested stability by running furmark which really stresses the gpu, and as expected the gpu runs hot, it was in the high 80s. For safe everyday usage I have set it to 550/750 with no increase to voltage and results are below:

3d mark 2006 scores:
default - 2600
oc'ed - 3200

 

[tbz_ck]

That is brilliant.

This set of machines get better and better. I'm sure we'll open the lid to find a tea making facility that needs just a pipe fitting for instant tea goodness

 

[haz_pro]

Any chance anyone could email me the overclock file, cant download it at university unfortunately!

 

[cokecan]

Ok, I ran msi afterburner and managed to overclock the gpu almost as high as the settings would let me go, without touching the voltage! I managed to get it to 575/780 and furmark runs without any glitches, but to be safe I moved it down a touch.

ATI 4330 450/600 @ 550/750

I tested stability by running furmark which really stresses the gpu, and as expected the gpu runs hot, it was in the high 80s. For safe everyday usage I have set it to 550/750 with no increase to voltage and results are below:

3d mark 2006 scores:
default - 2600
oc'ed - 3200

That really is an impressive performance boost! very tempting indeed!

 

[e36Adz]

I'm sure we'll open the lid to find a tea making facility that needs just a pipe fitting for instant tea goodness

Seriously though, if the 8371 model had a spare hdd slot (like the 3935) and HDMI (like the 3810) and was still under £350, I would rate it at 100%. As it is though, it scores a meagre 95%.

Any chance anyone could email me the overclock file, cant download it at university unfortunately!

Sure thing mate, will email it you in a few mins.

 

[tmten]

fantastic work e36Adz. first off I didn't realise that the hd4330 in this machine ran at 450mhz. i knew that that is the official speed, but i'd read somewhere that the version in this ran at 500mhz, which i foolishly believed (looking back now i should've realised that it would've made it a hd 4530!
anyway, glad to see such a nice improvement. those wei scores are amazing (yeah i know it's only wei but still!) and a >20% improvement from the overclock means that for me it is definitely worth doing. hopefully i'll i get it before the weekend

 

[roger_37]

fantastic work e36Adz, been very interesting.

 

[haz_pro]

Sure thing mate, will email it you in a few mins.

Thank you fella!

 

[e36Adz]

fantastic work e36Adz. first off I didn't realise that the hd4330 in this machine ran at 450mhz. i knew that that is the official speed, but i'd read somewhere that the version in this ran at 500mhz, which i foolishly believed (looking back now i should've realised that it would've made it a hd 4530!
anyway, glad to see such a nice improvement. those wei scores are amazing (yeah i know it's only wei but still!) and a >20% improvement from the overclock means that for me it is definitely worth doing. hopefully i'll i get it before the weekend

The memory will probably go beyond 780 but thats as far as msi afterburner would let me push it. I have set it to 550/750 which is a fair bit below what I had it running at glitch free, and with no increase in voltage I would say thats a 'safe' oc. Just tested by playing UT3 for 20 mins and then half hr playing SFIII and both ran fine, I even upped the settings in UT3 from low to medium detail, with about 10 bots in the map and it was perfectly playable.

OC Temps - Idle / Load
CPU - 30s / 60s
GPU - 50s / 80s

No games or programs I will be using on here will stress the cpu as much as prime95 or the gpu as much as furmark, so the load temps above will rarely if ever be reached again.

 

[tmten]

yeah, those temps seem very reasonable. the cpu temp is never gonna be an issue and as you rightly say that gpu's never gonna get as hot as in furmark, nevermind the fact that the 80's is perfectly safe for a modern gpu. they happily run in the 90's all day long so again it shouldn't be an issue.
the only 'problem' as i can see it would be battery life, but again, as there's no voltage increase i wouldn't be too worried. there'll definitely be a few more watts consumed but it's not as if anyone's gonna be gaming all the time away from a socket. with a mixed workload, with the gpu @ idle clocks for a lot of the time and the cpu speed fluctuating, i reckon we'd see only a negligible decrease in battery life.

 

[emtoucan]

Just order mine, early Xmas present for me and the wife

Managed to find it £340 next day delivered so well chuffed. Also added an external DVD drive to install Win 7 and now tempted to fork out for an SSD. My original budget was £450 - £500 for a decent lappy, so another £95 still within the target price.

Looking forward to OC'ing it too.

 

[kevpuk]

Great news, excellent test feedback e36Adz

Gonna give this a crack myself.....

 

[e36Adz]

Just order mine, early Xmas present for me and the wife

Managed to find it £340 next day delivered so well chuffed. Also added an external DVD drive to install Win 7 and now tempted to fork out for an SSD. My original budget was £450 - £500 for a decent lappy, so another £95 still within the target price.

Looking forward to OC'ing it too.

I paid just under £110 for a 64GB Crucial C300 SSD only 2-3 weeks ago - and I think it can be had for around £90 now, I was browsing the HDD section of the forum earlier and a few ppl have mentioned it in there.

HDD > SSD
CPU oc'ed
GPU oc'ed

= WIN