Acer Aspire 8930G

veggiemanuk

veggiemanuk

veggiemanuk

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Just bought one of these for the wife, realy impressed with it so far, the model no. is AS8930G-644G32 which is pretty much the basic model but for that you get 4GB DDR3 ram, 1GB NVidia 9600M GT, T6400 CPU @ 2.13Ghz.

Shame its a T6400 but for the price (Got them down to £709, im not complaining as we couldent afford the better models.

BluRay playback is outstanding from what I can see with the demo disc and the 5.1 sound is more than adequate from a laptop.
 
Nogimmix said:
Is the screen full 1080p HD?
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It is indeed full 1080p and I can tell you that its outstanding, its so good its wrong ;) as it makes my 22" monitor feel inadequate.

It looks gorgous, the keyboard is top notch being full sized and the media controls leaves the competition dead in the water. Just wished i'd seen these before buying my new rig as it would have seriously tempted me into moving to a laptop as my main PC.

My only frustration was in checking out the specs to the various models as they seem to change so fast. Intel seems to throw new mobile chips out faster than desktop ones, the T6400 was apparently released in Jan 2009 and the model I bought seems to have replaced a similar speced one with a CPU less than 12 months old.

At 4.1Kg its a bit weighty but I doubt these things are ment to be all that mobile in reality, battery time is 2.5 hours but again, I doubt youd be taking this thing on a train (Although it would be cool to do so ;) ).

Now I just need to buy my first Bluray disc. Any suggestions? ;)
 
veggiemanuk said:
It is indeed full 1080p and I can tell you that its outstanding, its so good its wrong ;) as it makes my 22" monitor feel inadequate.

It looks gorgous, the keyboard is top notch being full sized and the media controls leaves the competition dead in the water. Just wished i'd seen these before buying my new rig as it would have seriously tempted me into moving to a laptop as my main PC.

My only frustration was in checking out the specs to the various models as they seem to change so fast. Intel seems to throw new mobile chips out faster than desktop ones, the T6400 was apparently released in Jan 2009 and the model I bought seems to have replaced a similar speced one with a CPU less than 12 months old.

At 4.1Kg its a bit weighty but I doubt these things are ment to be all that mobile in reality, battery time is 2.5 hours but again, I doubt youd be taking this thing on a train (Although it would be cool to do so ;) ).

Now I just need to buy my first Bluray disc. Any suggestions? ;)
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Was looking at this in store the other day, assuming its the same place.

Whats it like for gaming?
 
Begbie said:
Was looking at this in store the other day, assuming its the same place.

Whats it like for gaming?
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Well, it plays EVE Online in full with no problems but I doubt thats saying much, need to install latest NVidia drivers and install something that will test it, BoiShock should do the trick, nice DX10 game. Could always try Fallout 3 aswell.

I'll let you know once I've done it later tonight.

If it is the same place, you know where to come ;) haggle then down a bit, we got £20 off, 20 quid is 20 quid.
 
Are you sure its a 1gb 9600gt mate? Can't see any on the acer website? What do games look like running non-native resolution?

Another thing. Did it come with vista 64bit or 32bit?

Cheers.
 
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warren_1979 said:
Are you sure its a 1gb 9600gt mate? Can't see any on the acer website? What do games look like running non-native resolution?

Another thing. Did it come with vista 64bit or 32bit?

Cheers.
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For some reason this model isnt listed on the Acer website. I can guarantee its 1GB 9600GT as thats the label it has next to the Bluray, Intel and Vista ones, its what it also says in system. its is Vista 32bit aswell.

It playes Burnout Paradise on default setting of 1280x1024 no problems, looking damn fine too, not much diference between this and my desktop. If you whack it up to 1920x1080 and high detail + 2xAA it still works but theres the usualy response issues.

I might get around to installing Fallout 3 later tonight, didnt manage it last night.
 
OK, ive installed Bioshock. Its playable which is good enough for me.

At 800x600 it runs at 30fps, at 1024x768 at 20fps, at anything above this its 15fps or lower, this is with all settings at full btw, with settings set to medium theres not much difference.. Compare that to a solid 60fps on my Desktop (Phenom 9950BE and an ATI 4850).

I guess for serious gaming, one of the higher models would be a better option but for general gaming and watching films its perfect.
 
I have an Acer 5920G and for the money it's a great machine, enough power for the sort of games you'd typically play on a laptop (Civilization 4, etc). The styling isn't to everyone's taste but personally I like it. Only issue I have had is the mouse buttons are a bit clunky and after 2 years the power supply gave up the ghost.

For the cash Acer laptops are always a very good spec and depsite the issues above, the build quality is pretty solid (certainly no worse than Toshiba, Sony and HP laptops that I have also had/have).
 
Hi all,

I recently bought an Acer Aspire 8920G (reburbished) for ~500.00GBP for my sister as a wedding gift. It is a similar spec. to the 8930G but is last years model.

It came with a 512Mb 9500M GPU (a 9600M model was available as well I think). This card can play Deus Ex 1, Doom 3, Half Life 2 and Far Cry at full HD was max. settings. These all look gorgeous in full widescreen HD!! :cool: I tried running Left4Dead but it was a bit heavy for the card (need to run with black borders @1024x768 I think - I don't like interpolated resolutions - plus drop some shader settings, etc.). Have yet to try the new Nvidia drivers with occlusion for older games.

Overall I am really impressed with the laptop. Got it setup with a triple OS boot (all 64-bit since it has 4Gb RAM). The keyboard is a bit shonky - but OK. Luv'in the digital SPDIF output (sounds great) - also works in stereo in Ubuntu. The display (1920x1080) has no dead pixels - but is far to bright (by default) and does suffer from a lot of backlight bleed at the bottom. Minor niggles really...

It can playback full HD x264 (1080p) flawlessly - sweet!! Also has the BD-ROM drive for blu-ray disks.

It is relatively light for an 18" laptop.

Would recommend an Acer laptop to anyone after this purchase... :D

Bob
 
While the full 1080P Res gives you more real estate it's not ideal for video playback or gaming as it will show signs of noise/pixelation in video and bring most games to a crawl at that res, I went for the 6935G, P7350 2.0GHZ and 1366*768 Res, 512MB 9600GT, got it for £550, bluray, 4gb ddr3 ram, built in I reciever for MCE remote.

Great laptop plays bioshock with everything on High, and left for dead on high, 2xaa, 4x af

The media controls are very handy, the validity sensor otherwise known as the fingerprint sensor is pretty usless, I give it 20% accuracy, the fingerprint reader in the Vaio TZ whipes the floor with it, 75% accuracy I give that.

Also the sound is great, built in sub in the hinge, while the 6935g has only two speakers and sub the 8930 series has 5 speakers and some, wuld love ot hear that in action.

Anyway thing these acer's are very underated, very fast machines, I swapped my 320GB scorpio with a 500GB seagate 5400.6 the Vista score jumped from 5.4 to 5.7 for the Hard Drive and yes I can feel the difference, more responsive than my desktop which has a 2.73GHZ C2D

Does not get loud to.. and has dedicated buttons next to keyboard for Wifi/BT with status lights instead of useless slide switches very handy.

Only complaint I have is the keyboard, looks and feels cheap, should have gone for matte finish on keys instead of gloss

Webcam is the best I have seen, native 1280*720 res, and it can see in the dark
 
Op

Don't forget that Acer are bringing out the 8935G and 5935G with LED backlighting and otherwise similar specifications. Details released but no firm launch date. Interesting to see if these laptops will get a GPU upgrade - but can't find any details of this yet!! Backlight bleed on the 8920G was an issue (can't speak for the 8930G) - might LED backlighting help with this??

Bob
 
mehuk said:
Ive just seen this deal - i like the look of it, but do you need a 64Bit OS to get the full 4GB of RAM to work?
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@mehuk

The 8920G I got comes as standard with Vista Premium 32-bit version. I dumped that ASAP and installed: Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit, Windows XP 64-bit, and Ubuntu 9.04 beta 64-bit; as triple boot option. Well heck it is a wedding present to my sister!! Also a great learning experience about the Vista virus-boot-loader!! :cool:

In my case the 32-bit version of Vista would have lost 512Mb of address space to the GPU, plus various I/O pages. Probably looking at around 3Gb of useable RAM for a 32-bit OS. Doesn't really matter for Windows XP but it does for Windows Vista. The compatibility issues were all pretty minor BTW...

Bob
 
Bob Wya Jnr said:
@mehuk

The 8920G I got comes as standard with Vista Premium 32-bit version. I dumped that ASAP and installed: Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit, Windows XP 64-bit, and Ubuntu 9.04 beta 64-bit; as triple boot option. Well heck it is a wedding present to my sister!! Also a great learning experience about the Vista virus-boot-loader!! :cool:

In my case the 32-bit version of Vista would have lost 512Mb of address space to the GPU, plus various I/O pages. Probably looking at around 3Gb of useable RAM for a 32-bit OS. Doesn't really matter for Windows XP but it does for Windows Vista. The compatibility issues were all pretty minor BTW...

Bob
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Cheers, ill stay away and get a machine with a 64Bit install already then :)
 
mehuk said:
Cheers, ill stay away and get a machine with a 64Bit install already then :)
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Uhmm I don't think you'll find that many (laptops w/ 64bit install)!! You can get away with 3Gb of RAM with Vista... I personally just don't like having RAM going to waste!!

Some concrete proof of this fact - I read this article on THG recently (they tested a desktop rig, you can apply the same reasoning with laptops of course):
Do You Really Need More Than 6 GB Of RAM?

Bob
 
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Yeah I think with Dell I can change what OS comes with it. I mean I could format and do it myself, but ive not got a copy of Vista 64Bit, so either way its £££s out of my pocket, so im best having it pre-loaded for me :)

Cheers for the tips though.... the laptop market is a bit of a minefield... im searching for something with a T9400 processor.
 
Got the baby version, 6930G - having nothing but problems with graphics errors supposidly incompatible with vista. Taking it back on Monday to try a replacement.
 
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