Acer 8371/3810 Owners Thread

chrismscotland · 12 Dec 2010 at 10:03

user100monkey said:
Hi all,
Whilst i fined the graphics power of the hd 4330 is acceptable whilst overclocked, i am starting to wonder if it could be upgraded?

I can't take the machine apart until monday, and was wondering if any one knows if the HD4330 (RV770) is on a expansion slot (pcie) or solded onto the motherboard.

My current understanding is that if its a pci-e slot graphics card this can be replaced. Perhaps by this

I would imagine that its soldered onto the motherboard to be honest but don't quote me on it!

Azza · 12 Dec 2010 at 10:23

user100monkey said:
Hi all,
Whilst i fined the graphics power of the hd 4330 is acceptable whilst overclocked, i am starting to wonder if it could be upgraded?

I can't take the machine apart until monday, and was wondering if any one knows if the HD4330 (RV770) is on a expansion slot (pcie) or solded onto the motherboard.

My current understanding is that if its a pci-e slot graphics card this can be replaced. Perhaps by this

Few problems with that idea, that card would need a lot more power compared to the HD4330 so it will produce a ton of extra heat. I doubt you'd be able to cool it properly with this laptops shell. The other thing is that the card would cost a fair bit if you could even find a place that would sell you one because mobile GPUs are not sold on their own like other components are. So you're not going to be able to do it I'm afraid.

haz_pro · 12 Dec 2010 at 17:11

Anyone know how i can stop the laptop from automatically turning wifi on when it starts up?

Could i just stop a service in the startup menu or something :S

chrismscotland · 12 Dec 2010 at 17:44

Has anyone been getting occasional crackles in the sounds? I've been listening to Spotify and playing games via my earphones but get the odd crackles now and again, almost like an electric spark!

haz_pro · 12 Dec 2010 at 18:31

Cant say i have used the line-out much but i dont think i had any problems.

May be interference though, my old HP had really bad interference all the time even if the sound was at like 5% volume.

Ended up buying an external sound card, sounds so much better now, was only 20 quid too.

Faction · 12 Dec 2010 at 18:36

chrismscotland said:
Has anyone been getting occasional crackles in the sounds? I've been listening to Spotify and playing games via my earphones but get the odd crackles now and again, almost like an electric spark!

Check there are no dpc latency spikes.

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
http://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe

Mine is all green.

"This machine should be able to handle real-time streaming of audio and/or video data without drop-outs."

Red spikes will often cause audio crackle, and if you get them you'll need to check your drivers.

badcompany · 12 Dec 2010 at 20:48

It's not without its niggles, though. These are primarily ergonomic: we persevered with the keyboard as long as we could but never quite got used to the wide-spread keys and lack of travel. The way the fan continually kicked in for a few seconds started out as annoying and ended up a real cause of teeth-grinding.

is it really an issue?

chrismscotland · 12 Dec 2010 at 21:35

Bit puzzled about battery life, was seeing excellent life with the standard install (Vista Business and all the Acer gubbins) but now I've installed Windows 7 battery life seems quite poor, just wondering if the Acer Powersmart software did anything re battery life?

olivier renault · 12 Dec 2010 at 21:38

user100monkey said:
Hi all,
Whilst i fined the graphics power of the hd 4330 is acceptable whilst overclocked, i am starting to wonder if it could be upgraded?

I wouldn't bother. First, it may not be able to work with it or even power it properly, on batteries or mains, and second, it's a hell of a gamble. Not sure if the switchable graphics drivers would work. Plus the extra heat dissipation required, and the CPU being the next bottleneck.

computronik · 13 Dec 2010 at 10:34

I've just noticed a light mark in the middle of the screen that is only visible on the white background.

I'm not happy with it considering the laptop is only few days old.

I think I'll be returning it for a replacement/refund.

e36Adz · 13 Dec 2010 at 12:17

computronik said:
I've just noticed a light mark in the middle of the screen that is only visible on the white background.

I'm not happy with it considering the laptop is only few days old.

I think I'll be returning it for a replacement/refund.

Don't think anyone else has noticed anything with their screen, so yeah definately get it swapped.

haz_pro · 13 Dec 2010 at 15:09

Yeah try and swap it, my first one was faulty although not a screen issue.

So annoying when you have to RMA

Bones · 13 Dec 2010 at 15:20

chrismscotland said:
Bit puzzled about battery life, was seeing excellent life with the standard install (Vista Business and all the Acer gubbins) but now I've installed Windows 7 battery life seems quite poor, just wondering if the Acer Powersmart software did anything re battery life?

same thing here, battery remaining on the full charge is showing at roughly 3 hours in windows 7.

chrismscotland · 13 Dec 2010 at 15:45

Bones said:
same thing here, battery remaining on the full charge is showing at roughly 3 hours in windows 7.

Yeah I'm quite dissapointed if Windows 7 is going to kill the battery life, I've managed to download the Powersmart Setup Application from the Acer site, will install it and see if it makes any difference, if not Vista Business might be going back on,

haz_pro · 13 Dec 2010 at 16:42

Really wierd, what are you doing?

Obviously your only see 8 hours if you are using notepad with the backlight on 1 haha.

How ever i have had 5/6 hours with backlit on 1 below full, whilst web browsing, programming on eclipse, and running android virtual device.

chrismscotland · 13 Dec 2010 at 16:45

haz_pro said:
Really wierd, what are you doing?

Obviously your only see 8 hours if you are using notepad with the backlight on 1 haha.

How ever i have had 5/6 hours with backlit on 1 below full, whilst web browsing, programming on eclipse, and running android virtual device.

I've set my laptop to Intel GPU, minimum backlight, wifi off everything and just sat it and all the battery timer ever goes to is 4 hours, yet on Vista I it sitting downloading from a Wifi network for 7 hours no problem and it still said it had 1.5 hours battery life left,

chris10230 · 13 Dec 2010 at 17:04

chrismscotland said:
I've set my laptop to Intel GPU, minimum backlight, wifi off everything and just sat it and all the battery timer ever goes to is 4 hours, yet on Vista I it sitting downloading from a Wifi network for 7 hours no problem and it still said it had 1.5 hours battery life left,

interesting... I never ran it on vista and was never impressed with the battery life so far, what bios are people running could that be a factor? im still on the stock one that it shipped with...

Meaker · 13 Dec 2010 at 17:08

no 13" acer machines have MXM.

haz_pro · 13 Dec 2010 at 17:30

chrismscotland said:
I've set my laptop to Intel GPU, minimum backlight, wifi off everything and just sat it and all the battery timer ever goes to is 4 hours, yet on Vista I it sitting downloading from a Wifi network for 7 hours no problem and it still said it had 1.5 hours battery life left,

That is really wierd.

I get the 5-6 hours with the overclock on aswell, which should in theory reduce battery life any way? hmm...

I am running bios however im pretty sure i was still getting the 5-6 with the older bios!

cokecan · 13 Dec 2010 at 18:25

chrismscotland said:
I've set my laptop to Intel GPU, minimum backlight, wifi off everything and just sat it and all the battery timer ever goes to is 4 hours, yet on Vista I it sitting downloading from a Wifi network for 7 hours no problem and it still said it had 1.5 hours battery life left,

is it possible Vista (or indeed W7) is/was miss-reporting the battery life?

On W7 I do regularly see 5-6 hours and upwards depending on what I'm doing (I'm also talking about actual usage as well as reported figures)