A few Ferrari questions

I finally caved and ordered the Ferrari 4005. As I await its delivery (which will be its own battle because zipzoomfly has the most asinine verification procedures ever; do companies not realize that most people who buy $2K notebooks might actually work for a living and therefore not be at home to receive a shipment?), I've been thinking about how I will create an optimal setup. The first thing to do is wipe the hard drive with a fresh install of WinXP Sp2 on one single NTFS partition. However, I have a few questions about what else you can do with the Ferrari:

1) What options can you change in the BIOS? Can you undervolt the cpu, change DRAM clocks, memory options, and/or any other options?

2) Is it possible to preserve that cool desktop wallpaper which comes with the Ferrari? The reason I ask is because in the photos I've seen, that wallpaper appears to have a built-in calendar which is something I've never encountered and am curious as to how it works, and more importantly, how it can be preserved and transferred.

3) I've heard that the Ferrari will not accept ATI Mobility drivers downloaded from ATI's website. Is this also the case if you wipe the hard drive and install your own full copy of WinXP (meaning it's Acer's version of Windows which prohibits installing the drivers? If so, how do most users go about ensuring their notebook has the latest catalyst drivers? I somehow doubt Acer keeps current with what's on their download page.

4) If you wipe the hard drive, does the Ferrari still show that neat Boot screen image of the real Ferrari Formula 1 car?

5) I've noticed that the Ferrari does not come with Acer's ePowerManagement. And we all know that Windows's power management is a piece of crap. Are any programs available to tweak all of the standard settings normally tweakable by ePowerManagement? What program can you use to scale the CPU clock to preserve power? Any other cool utilities to have for power management?

6) Can the Ferrari play DVD movies without booting up into the OS like some of the HPs can?

Thank you in advance.

 

Congratulations! I'm about to cave on the Ferrari 4005WLMi myself. I got pretty much the same questions as you do. Lately I'm leaning towars leaving everything stock! Just updating BIOS, GPU drivers and see if there is a way to get ePowermanagement on it. I'm concidering 2GB RAM aswell. But I don't think I will wipe to OS and partitions etc... It's to well thought out by Acer with recovery partition, drivers etc, I just don't want to mess with it.

 

No, I dont think so mainly just administrative options. Not an expert so might not be correct here.

It is actually a program, that runs on start up and has a built in calendar, with backgrounds changing every month (goes up to sometime in august 2006). I made it so it doesnt run at startup (I dont really like the look), but im sure it would be easy to do whatever with.

Not out of the box. I've heard you can get linux partitions that do this, but I havent tried. The ferrari's media controls overall suck, and having this owuld have been VERY cool.

 

i couldnt use the mobility dirvers but the desktop 5.7 drivers work pretty well havnt tried the omega drivers though

 

I used the omega drivers on my Acer, and, with a 40MHz core overclock and a 30MHz RAM overclock, I got a 20% better score in 3Dmark05!!

I'm sure that using the recovery disks, you can restore the ferrari sounds and wallpapers

No, it doesn't have the pre-boot DVD player like HP's do, that's a shame.

You can't use the ATI Mobility Catalyst drivers from ATi, many people have already tried. Only certain manufacturers support them.

The AMD 64 Processor automatically scales the processor speed to what you are doing, its called AMD PowerNOW! technology. I found that it works quite well. The processor scales to 800MHz battery, and dynamically adjusts the clock speed based on what you are doing. If you do something CPU intensive, it spools up to max. speed right away.

I am not sure what you can change in the BIOS, but considering that the Ferrari 4000 is a notebook, I am sure it is not much . That is not necessairly a bad thing because it is a lot easier to screw up a notebook than a desktop.

Oh, and BTW, you don't have to wipe the hard drive when you get it. I got Partition Magic, and combined the two partitions, and then used a simple program in the command prompt to convert the FAT32 filing system to NTFS. It took about 5 min. to convert.

Good luck with your computer!

 

Did you do any overclocking to achive those 3DMark05 scores with you Acer
Aspire? What's the default clock settings on the GPU in the Acer Aspire 5024WLMi?

 

Nice going!

And what is the default clocks on the GPU in the Acer TM4402WLMi? And what was your 3DMark05 score and what is it now overclocked?

 

The default clocks are 357 core: 331 memory. ATi rates the X700 Mobility at 350:350. I put the memory where it should be at 350, and the clock at 369, and with the omega drivers, I got 1211 as a 3dmark score, vs 911 previous. That is a BIG difference!

Interesting, I thought it would be around 1700-1800 with an X700. I have no problems in my games though, so I'm not complaining.

 

I think the lower 3DMark05 score on this notebook is due to 64MB VRAM. However this seams to play less role in actuall gaming depending on resolution and detail settings used. 3DMark05 probably simulates 128MB or higer VRAM usage and high detail.

 

A 3DMark05 of 1211 on an ATI MR x700 is poor and that's overclocked too! I have an ATI MR x600 w/128MB and it pulled in a score of 1578 using the Catalyst 5.5 drivers from the ATI site (not overclocked). Using the 5.6 drivers got a faster score of approx 1611. I haven't tried the 5.7 yet, but I'm sure it'll go even faster.

-Vb-

 

Yes this is why I stayed away from getting the 4402WLMi so far. The 64MB VRAM in a gaming notebook is not what I had in mind. But then again most games are not on the same level as 3DMark05 demands, yet...

The Ferrari 4000 gets ~2500 with the same GPU... However, it's about $2000

 

Well, I haven't had any problems with the 64MB vram, so I don't mind it. Benchmarks are benchmarks, nothing more. Strange, I got the same frame rate as the ferrari in the game tests. I get the same frame rates as the acer 4000 in games as well, I read a bunch of reviews on it and compared them to mine.

I really can't complain about my notebook. I got it for 1269USD, that is a tremendous deal! I'm not rich, so spending 2k for a ferrari is way out of my price range. If you only had 1300 to spend like me , I trust you would be content with a mobility x700 and a turion.