Acer 8371/3810 Owners Thread

Nice info dragonuk!

Are there two variations of this motherboard - i.e one with just the GMA and one with the Radeon? I'm looking around the net and the 94432GN model has some listed as just the intel integrated GPU and others listed as the 4330HD despite having the same model number! It doesn't look like the 4330HD card is an optional card on this laptop so I'm assuming it would be integrated on the motherboard?
 
AmDaMan said:
Nice info dragonuk!

Are there two variations of this motherboard - i.e one with just the GMA and one with the Radeon? I'm looking around the net and the 94432GN model has some listed as just the intel integrated GPU and others listed as the 4330HD despite having the same model number! It doesn't look like the 4330HD card is an optional card on this laptop so I'm assuming it would be integrated on the motherboard?
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You can get the 8371 with just GMA graphics or with GMA graphics and the ATI graphics. So watch what you buy.

If you want to buy the 8371 with ati and intel graphics, cheapest place is search google product search for acer 8371

And 2.5% off with this voucher - MYVWIN25
 
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DragonUK, I'd remove the link to the competitor mate - forum rules, don't want you getting banned! We have been subtley trying to hint to people that it is available from the 24 hours a day 7 days a week shop... :p
 
e36Adz said:
DragonUK, I'd remove the link to the competitor mate - forum rules, don't want you getting banned! We have been subtley trying to hint to people that it is available from the 24 hours a day 7 days a week shop... :p
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Ok I have removed it. OverclockersUK don't seem to sell this laptop anyway so its not like you have the option to buy from them anyway :P
 
temptation of an SSD is bigger then ever now with this laptop, one of my main reasons besides price was the size of storage which would be enough for me, but now you can have 2 hard drives that is great.

I probably wont bother with the 3g as i would never use it, but still good to know.

I think i will install that bios as the fan drives me mad as you may have read further up the page.

EDIT: Could someone possibly download the modded bios for me and email it [email protected].

My university wont let me download it! :(
 
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haz_pro said:
temptation of an SSD is bigger then ever now with this laptop, one of my main reasons besides price was the size of storage which would be enough for me, but now you can have 2 hard drives that is great.

I probably wont bother with the 3g as i would never use it, but still good to know.

I think i will install that bios as the fan drives me mad as you may have read further up the page.
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Let me know how you get on with the bios. It really does help, as the fan can get annoying.

Its really easy to upgrade the bios to. You just extract the folder and run the exe inside and thats it really. It does it all and restarts automatically.

I tried to send it to you email but it wouldn't let me. I have uploaded it here too. Can you download from here - http://www.2shared.com/file/arRt9weV/BIOS_Acer_8371_128_Modified_Qu.html

Just go down to the bottom and click next to Save file to your PC
 
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I am already running a SLIC'd 1.28 bios, will it still let me flash the bios with the same version number?

I cant download from that website either, i am trying to get my proxy to work atm, hopefully download it that way!

Thanks for trying to email, ZIP usually sends to hotmail fine, only reason i keep that account open hah.

EDIT: Proxy is failing miserably, damn university internet!

EDIT2: Proxy kicked into life, going to try bios flash now.
 
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Just flashed, worked great thanks a lot.

CPU is running hotter (around 40 ish), how ever it has been on for a while, my flat is hot, and obviously the fan is on a lower setting!

What sorts of CPU temps are you getting web browsing or idle dragon?

I had a look at the full user access, but most of it is over my head so i turned the feature off haha.

Thanks again!
 
After flashing a new bios I found the temps were quite high. You just have to wait a little bit and the temps will settle.

Mine stays around 40 C which is fine. Anything below 60 C for a CPU is fine to be honest.

The fan is totally off and only turns on when you get to 45C then the fan will start at 20% speed . You can't even hear it though :P

The old bios versions used to go up to 50C before the fan started
 
Okay sounds good to me, the last 1.28 bios i was using seemed to turn the fan on at 30C when it was running on battery or plugged in, was so annoying!

So glad have the fan sorted now, i was whinging about it quite a lot in this thread as it annoyed me when i was in the university in the library.
 
dragonuk: Having used your last modified 1.28 bios, I did find that there were a few bugs...a major one being that the first time i selected 'Intel only', the notebook no longer detected my HDD. Had to pull the battery to sort it, resetting settings in the bios wasn't enough.

Other things that bugged me were that some settings, like the Ethernet selector, was set to disabled, yet Ethernet was clearly enabled and working. There was probably some other things but I couldn't live with the HDD losing issue so SLIC'ed my own copy of 1.28

I trust that your new version doesn't show broken settings in the bios now? It looked like last time a lot of settings weren't applicable to the hardware it was installed on!
 
A very warm welcome to you DragonUK, i am very tempted to run your modded bios (i didn't even know you could mod a BIOS) but the fan speed settings just don't seem to suit me).

Its a big ask but would it be possible for you to mod it again with different fan speed settings? Or point in the direction of getting started to mod a BIOS?

i wish to OC the GPU and as such wouldn't want to do this whilst the fan is not set to be on. Esp as the cpu runs pretty cool for me whilst the gpu screams at 80 odd.

regards
 
LadFromWales said:
dragonuk: Having used your last modified 1.28 bios, I did find that there were a few bugs...a major one being that the first time i selected 'Intel only', the notebook no longer detected my HDD. Had to pull the battery to sort it, resetting settings in the bios wasn't enough.

Other things that bugged me were that some settings, like the Ethernet selector, was set to disabled, yet Ethernet was clearly enabled and working. There was probably some other things but I couldn't live with the HDD losing issue so SLIC'ed my own copy of 1.28

I trust that your new version doesn't show broken settings in the bios now? It looked like last time a lot of settings weren't applicable to the hardware it was installed on!
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The last bios did have a few bugs due to various things.
The new bios is the original 1.28 from Acer only with changed fan settings, added bios settings and SLIC'ed .

It should cause no side effects.

You will notice a big difference in fan noise if you try the bios.

About the bios options. You can either have all the options or the standard options. You can't have inbetween.

So some of the options won't do anything and won't be applicable to the hardware. Its best to just leave most of them or just keep the user access level on Limited if you dont want to mess with them.

The main options are Intel Only, ATI Only, settings these work perfectly as I have tested them. They don't cause any effect with the HDD. There is also a few other things like changing the internal graphics memory amount , changing ram bus speed, and cpu throttle options.

For most people I recommend you just change the graphics settings to what you want. Thats all you need really.
 
user100monkey said:
A very warm welcome to you DragonUK, i am very tempted to run your modded bios (i didn't even know you could mod a BIOS) but the fan speed settings just don't seem to suit me).

Its a big ask but would it be possible for you to mod it again with different fan speed settings? Or point in the direction of getting started to mod a BIOS?

i wish to OC the GPU and as such wouldn't want to do this whilst the fan is not set to be on. Esp as the cpu runs pretty cool for me whilst the gpu screams at 80 odd.

regards
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The problem is the fan speed isn't controlled by the GPU Temperature. This is a fault with Acer and how they made the laptop. It is only controlled by the CPU Temperature. So you would have to set a high fan speed for a low cpu temp if you wanted the fan to turn on for the GPU temp :S

What fan speed settings would you be thinking?

For reference the standard 1.28 from Acer turns the fan on at around 30C from battery or AC and the fan runs at around 45% speed.
So the loudness you hear when your temps are around 30-40C etc is 45% fan speed.

100% fan speed happens when you are flashing an updated bios. So thats what it sounds like at 100%. Its pretty loud :P
 
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Will give your new version a go.
iirc a reflash needs to be done using the DOS version as the Windows flasher is unhappy to flash as the version number is the same.
The fan noise personally doesn't bother me, I only want the ability to select Intel only, to uncomplicate my Linux setup, being that I am happy to reboot to switch :)
 
LadFromWales said:
Will give your new version a go.
iirc a reflash needs to be done using the DOS version as the Windows flasher is unhappy to flash as the version number is the same.
The fan noise personally doesn't bother me, I only want the ability to select Intel only, to uncomplicate my Linux setup, being that I am happy to reboot to switch :)
Click to expand...

If you download my modded bios you can flash it using the Windows Flasher and it will work even if you have the same version number as I removed the check. Try it and you will see.

I haven't tried flashing it from dos I have only flashed it using windows.

Let me know if it solves that hdd problem you had.
 
Just to clarify you can flash it even though the bios version is the same, as i done it earlier.

How did you remove the check though? So i can do it to the other 1.28 bios if i decide i dont like this bios?
 
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