Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
Bottom line, I love my Acer 5920-6313.
And for those that don't know, the 5920-6313 (aka Gemstone) is the Best Buy - US specific build with a 1.5Ghz Santa Rosa based Centrino Duo with 2gb of ram, 256mb 8600gt, 160gb 5400rpm drive, and HD-DVD / ML DVD writer. Notably, it doesn't have the ready-boost cache or bluetooth.
Originally, I set out to get a new laptop to replace my dying Toshiba Satellite 3005-S307. I wanted something that could game and had one of the new LED backlit screens. I priced out a Dell M1330 and a Mac Book Pro. They were both ~$2700 US (which is way out of my price range). So, I decided to just get something cheap that could hold me over till I could afford something better. I knew nothing in the $500-$700 price range would be able to game but I had to have a new laptop for work. While looking around my local Best Buy, I came across the 5920-6313 on final clearance for $1150. I was shocked. A laptop with an Nvidia 8600GT for under $1200?? I nearly bought it. But, I decided to wait and check online to make sure there was nothing wrong with the model before I spent the money. And I'm glad I did. I found Best Buy's Outlet store on Ebay that was auctioning off a bunch of 5920-6313's that had been returned during the 30-day return period. I bid on one and won it for around $500-600.
When I got the laptop. It was like new. It was clean and still had all of its stickers. I did find a minor surface scratch on the bottom where someone may have set it on a pen or something. But otherwise, it was new. They included an Vista anytime upgrade disc, which I installed from, since the HD was wiped clean. I actually prefer the laptop this way, without all the manufacturer supplied trial/offers garbage.
I've had my 5920 for a month or two and I still love it.
The other 5920 reviews have covered the pro and cons of this laptop pretty well. Here's my thoughts on them.
Pros:
The Gemstone design. - I love that it doesn't look like every thing else.
The Nvidia 8600GT - It plays Unreal 3 Beta, Company of Heroes OF, Half-Life 2 Orange Box, etc.,.. great.
HD-DVD with HDMI out - nice extras I haven't really played with yet.
The speakers - Are surprisingly good for a laptop.
Wireless 802.11 range - Is excellent and really puts my old Toshiba with Linksys card to shame.
CHEAP and very upgradeable. - It benches and games similar to laptops that cost two or three times more. Even after my upgrades, I'm still under the $1100 mark.
Cons:
Touchpad - Is mounted flush with palm rest. I frequently bump it while typing. I wish they had inset it a little bit, but this a minor gripe.
Bluetooth - The module is cheap and trivial to install at build time. They should never have not included it.
Optical Drive Noise - The drive is noisier than I like on spin up. It's fine once it's spinning and reading, but the spin up noise is still loud enough that I try to make sure it's empty unless I need it.
Acer utilities - It was a pain to check all the worldwide support sites to find them and figure out what each did. I especially disliked the animated icon one of the utilities introduced to my desktop. The movement of the rotating icon was distracting and annoyed me. I did not reinstall these after I upgraded my drive and reinstalled Vista.
On to my Upgrades (Benchmarks below): I did upgrade the CPU (socket P Merom) with an T7500 2.2ghz Core Duo from NewEgg for ($250). The 1.5Ghz was fine but I wanted the extra power for gaming and divx/xvid transcoding. I used the 5920 Service Guide that was posted in another thread. If you can upgrade the CPU and Heatsink on a desktop, then you can do this.
Video BIOS / Driver - Kudos to Bigspin for the guide on how to do this. Worked great!
Hard Drive: I followed the Hitachi 7200rpm thread in the Deals forum. I went to best buy and they had the External USB Hitachi Drives for $130. I matched up the serial numbers and bought one. When I got home and opened it, the drive was indeed an 200gb 7200rpm Hitachi 7K200. I installed it and installed Vista on it. I put the old drive in the external enclosure and now use it for backups. And, by the way, upgrading the hard drive is very easy.
Bluetooth: Haven't decided if I'm going to do this one. Has anyone done this yet? The pin header is there but it looks like I would need to do an entire disassemble of the 5920 to get to it and route the wires. It's just too easy to plug in a bluetooth dongle when I need it, instead.
Media Card Remote: Normally, I wouldn't care about this one. But considering that the laptop has an HD-DVD player and an HDMI output, this would be worthwhile to use the laptop with my LCD panel. Anyone know where to get a compatible ExpressCard remote?
Benchmarks..
First, the video BIOS upgrade/overclock:
My original Nvidia 163.67 GPU 513/ Mem 400 / Shader 1026 benched:
3dmark 05 score of 5520
3dmark 06 score of 3174
with idle temp of 61c
I was kinda conservative on over clocking the 8600gt, but,
Overclocked Nvidia 163.67 GPU 572 / Mem 472 / Shader 1144 benched:
3dmark 05 score of 6538
3dmark 06 score of 3729
with idle temp 64c
I'm gonna try the new beta Nvidia 169.12 drivers pretty soon, but I'm still happy with my OC at the moment.
Vista Experience Scores at this point were:
Overall 4.5 / Proc 4.6 / RAM 4.5 / Graphics 4.9 / Gaming Graphics 5.3 / HD 4.8
I ran HDtune on the stock drive:
Hitachi HTS541616J
Min 22.0 MB
Max 45.8 MB
Avg 36.1 MB
Access 16.7ms
Burst 80.0MB
CPU 3.3%
Temp 42C
Then upgraded the CPU and HD.
HDTune on new drive:
Hitachi HTS722020K
Min 29.0 MB
Max 59.0 MB
Avg 48.0 MB
Access 14.6ms
Burst 75.3MB
CPU 3.4%
Temp 43C
New Vista Experience Scores:
Overall 4.8 / Proc 5.1 / RAM 4.8 / Graphics 4.9 / Gaming Graphics 5.3 / HD 5.3
Keep in mind that the "overall" vista is always equal to the lowest subcategory score. In this case, RAM.
New 3dmark scores:
3dmark 05 score of 6705
3dmark 06 score of 3923
I'll be back to update once I finish benching the 169 drivers and higher overclock. And I can't recommend the HD upgrade enough. It made a very noticeable improvement to Vista boot speed and application/game load time.
But for now, Hopefully this will help someone.
And again, thanks to everyone here. These forums have saved me a lot of time and money.
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Wow!!! Congrats!!
That's a very nice review btw. Interesting and informative.
Repped.
There was a thread about bluetooth upgrade for 5920G somewhere...
Anyway, assumed you meant intel turbo memory when you mentioned readyboost. -
Thanks for the rep Patrick. I'm looking for the bluetooth thread.
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5920-6313 Quick Review and Upgrade Benchmarks
Discussion in 'Acer' started by thorny, Nov 28, 2007.
