Acer 8371/3810 Owners Thread

e36Adz

e36Adz

e36Adz

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This thread is for information solely about these 2 model Acer laptops which now quite a few of us own. :)

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Acer TravelMate 8371:

Intel® ULV Core 2 Duo 1.4Ghz (ULV SU9400, 3 MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB)
13.3" (Acer CineCrystal, 1366x768 HD, High Brightness, LED Backlit)
Win Vista Business 32 bit
4GB (DDR3 1066MHZ)
320GB Western Digitial Scorpio Blue 5400rpm
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 with 512MB Dedicated RAM
5-in-1 card reader (SD//MS/MS-Pro/MMC/xD-Picture card™)
3x USB 2.0 ports
Webcam
Bluetooth
Fingerprint Reader
8 Hrs+ Battery Life
1.7Kg

I installed Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit and fitted a 64GB Crucial C300 SSD.

I came across this laptop when searching for a 13.3" machine, and found the Asus UL30 was out of stock. I have owned it now for a few weeks and apart from the rather poor viewing angles and not so good speakers, it is a great laptop which can be had for just under £350.

Pros
Build Quality
Spec
Battery Life
Price
Size (Slim)

Cons
Speakers
Lack of HDMI

Use this thread to post any benchmarks/games you have run to give an idea of performance, and also a general review on how you are finding the laptop, and possibly any comparisons you can make to other models.
 
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HDD Upgrade:

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As the pic above shows, you simply unscrew the bottom right lid on the underside of the laptop, to reveal the HDD. There are 2 small clips holding it in place (far right of the HDD). Takes a few mins to pop it out and replace with a SSD if anyone is thinking about doing so.

Ram Upgrade:

The other compartment, top left in the pic is hiding the Ram. The laptop I think supports upto 8GB DDR3 although personally I have no intention of upgrading this. If anyone does though, let us know how you find it.

Performance:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4330.13973.0.html

3dmark 2006 score: ~2600

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Overclocking CPU and Ram:

Faction said:
Hi all.

I also purchased an 8371 recently, and I've found an overclocking tool and a customised bios update that you might be interested in. As with any overclocking tool or modded bios, use at your own risk.

First, the overclocking tool increases the FSB from 200 to 250 MHz, yielding a 25% OC for both CPU and RAM. It seems to have originated on a Chinese forum and the author seems to be anonymous. Simply click OC_RTM875T_250.exe (the other exe will take your fsb down to 167). The OC occurs instantly and remains until the CPU is turned off (either by shutdown or standby; however, the OC will remain if you 'restart'). Here is the link:
http://uploaded.to/file/4hlia5
With the OC my SuperPi 1M comes down to 25.3s and my Win7 experience increases to 5.1/5.7/4.4/5.9/5.5
I've tested the functionality in both Vista 32-bit and Win7 64-bit. I've read it also works for the 3810. If it's stable on your machine, you can set it to run at start-up for a nice boost.
Link to Chinese forum:
http://ideapad.it168.com/viewthread.php?tid=580039&extra=page=1&ordertype=1&page=1


Second, I found a modded bios with advanced options unlocked (inc Hardware Virtualization), lower fan speed when on battery, the ability to select "intel only" graphics options as well as ATI only and switchable, and SLIC2.1. It comes courtesy of dragonuk on notebookreview.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ace...n-settings-advanced-options-graphics-fix.html
direct link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sdi1sv88b60ieuj
Click to expand...

I have downloaded and tested the OC tool Faction has linked us to above and can confirm it works perfectly!!! It is probably the easiest overclock I have ever done, you simply download the file and double click it. It overclocks the cpu from 1.4Ghz to 1.75Ghz, and cpu temps seem to stay around the same in general usage. I tested stability by running prime95 torture test for almost half an hour, and it ran fine with cpu temps hitting a max of around 63C. Some indication of performance at 1.75Ghz for comparison:

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I will be leaving it set to 1.75Ghz permanently and will post back in due course if I find battery life or anything else has been affected.

Overclocking GPU:

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. I managed to hit 575/780 but 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

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:)
 
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Yayyyyy - Our own thread :D

Very happy 8371 owner here - stock machine, even including Vista (:eek:) Business still, and with a rather fetching pink Poundland neoprene sleeve (which is actually for 15" laptop, but meh !)
 
I'll probably be putting W7 64bit onto mine once I get it, depending on how Vista is. No doubt there is a ton of Acer rubbish pre-installed.
 
Im in!

My CPU speed according to my windows 7 gadget seems to fluctuate, sometimes its "1190" and sometimes its "1401", why would this be? The laptop is running on battery but it is on high power mode :S
 
haz_pro said:
Im in!

My CPU speed according to my windows 7 gadget seems to fluctuate, sometimes its "1190" and sometimes its "1401", why would this be? The laptop is running on battery but it is on high power mode :S
Click to expand...

That is normal, the cpu runs slightly lower to conserve battery when cpu power is not required. As soon as the cpu is being used it will automatically increase the clockspeed to 1.4Ghz.
 
Proud owner of the 8371 here too :)

Have been using it for a couple of weeks now with W7 x64, I'm currently away on training for work and I'm very pleased with how its working. Battery life is amazing, gaming performance is keeping me more than happy with the games I currently play and the weight/portability of it is a winrar!

Build quality is great, it generally feels very sturdy and after having it in pieces to fit the new wifi card, third antenna and SSD I've seen why it feels so sturdy and why it was originally £800!

Acer have definitely gone up the ranks in my opinion. Well done sir's!

Haz_pro....I believe it's a bios setting that controls the throttling of the cpu (though the windows settings will also lol)
 
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I've played UT3 on mine, I'll make a note of the settings I used and the framerate I got. If anyone else tries any games or benchmarks, post the results so we can see how capable the HD4330 is.
 
Yep yep - let's see the case recommendations come in here :)
I snagged a pound shop (pink !) neoprene slip case (guess how much I paid !!!) which is for a 15" laptop....better than nowt, but keen to pick up something a little more suitable.
 
Struggling to get the ATI drivers to work with win 7 64bit.

Done a fresh install, updated windows, installed the Acer ATI drivers but it doesn't seem to work. I have no option to switch between display modes, and cannot access the Catalyst Control panel.

Also there is an explanation mark on the radeon 4330 in device manager. The intel graphics seems to work fine.

How do you switch between the 2 and what drivers are people using?
 
Bones said:
Struggling to get the ATI drivers to work with win 7 64bit.
Click to expand...

You did download from the Acer support site, then ? I have heard that the Acer drivers include the specifics needed for switching etc., but not the ones from ATi (AMD) themselves.....
Perhaps next thing to do would be to try again - remove the drivers, run a sweeper program to clean out reg entries etc., then re-install (using Run As Administrator) ?
 
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