Acer Aspire 5740G Owners Lounge

I have found this schema http://laptop-schematics.com/userfiles/schm/102-2.png so our clock generator is ICS9LPRS365B?

 

I don't think so. A lot of things are untrue about this schematic.
Audio codec is not ALC888S but ALC272. This notebook has no fingerprint reader not does it use Realtek RTS5159 card reader (it uses Alcor)
GPU is not N10M-GE-1 which is codename for GeForce G 105M. LAN on 5740G is Broadcom NetLink BCM57780 not BCM5764.
Cantiga chipset is Intel Mobile 45 Express not the Intel Mobile Express Series 5 chipset that 5740G uses. Southbridge is also wrong- it's not ICH9M. Penryn is C2D not Core i5 and so on.
It's not a schematic for 5740G so there's no reason to believe that clock gens is the same on our notebooks.

 

I know but if someone can disassemble this nb and take some photos

 

Hey. I formatted my computador with windows 7 ultimate 64 bits, without the 12gb 3 dvd system recovery... Will that have some negative impact on the gameplay, even though I installed all the drivers in post 2??

 

No. Not at all.

 

Hi,
can we use the integrated GPU in i5? Or still no?

 

No and we're most likely ain't gonna be. Acer's not gonna enable it and we still don't have Phoenix BIOS editor new enough to be capable of editing 5740's BIOS.
Even if we did- anyone willing to risk his machine to test it?

 

Hi downloads. I have same laptop as yours (i5, hd 5650, 4gb), only my hdd is 640 gb, but it is as fast as 500 gb. I have problems with overclocking my hd 5650. Max stable values i get is about 620 and 800. Drivers are catalyst 10-7 from first page. Other drivers are mostly from first page too, I installed win7 ultimate x64 yesterday and all drivers are up to date (i think). So where could be the problem of OC? I turned off PowerPlay in catalyst center, maybe I have to do somthing more? Playing stalker call of pripyat I get crash, same in need for speed shift, using 650 and 900 ((

 

Hello everyone, I bought an Aspire 5470G recently and I have a little problem with my external hard drive which I use to backup my data.

My external HDD is a one year old Lacie Rugged XL 1TB which can be connected via USB or eSata (but I'm not using eSata) and has 3 partitions: MBR FAT32 (32GB), MBR NTFS (~650GB), Logical/Extended (~250GB) [1 sub partition NTFS].

When I plug the disk to my laptop, it is not recognized at all. I've tried looking for it in the Device Manager and in Disk Management (sorry I have a french computer, so I'm not quite sure of the name of that thingy, all I know is that it lists all the drives along with their partitions), but it isn't listed there. Windows 7 doesn't even say it didn't recognize the new hardware, it acts as if I never plugged the harddrive to the laptop!

I've even booted on my laptop from a LiveDVD with Ubuntu, and it isn't recognized there either. Also that external HDD is working fine on two other computers running Win XP SP3 (32bit), even when booted from Ubuntu.

I also have an old WD MyBook 250GB external HDD that is working perfectly with my laptop.

So yeah, any help would be greatly appreciated...

 

Hey its me again. I don't know if this has been asked yet, I didn't get any results from the search thread feature, but is the cpu in this laptop soldered to the board? Or is it socketed to allow a replacement/upgrade?

 

wanted to ask if there is an option to replace CPU on this laptop? If yes then with which ones i could? Maybe anyone replaced already?

 

need drivers for acer aspire 3100

 

asking the same question i JUST asked in the previous post lol.

 

Hello, maybe somebody have DMI Tools for Acer Aspire 5740G?

 

Sorry for posting late guys, actually my Internet wasn't working...

I called my friend, who also owns 5740G, at my place... CPU and GPU temperates of his 5740G were pretty normal... max temp was 83C... So I gave my notebook at the service center for 2 days... they have cleaned up the vents and all the inside parts but STill my temperatures goes touch 100C while playing games... will visited the service center again in 2-3 days... lets see what are gonna do now...

 

Ok, to everyone who have game stutters (and not the one that make your comp freeze for 4-5 seconds, but minor ones).
I pretty much figured it out that the reason for it is Vertical Synchronization.
Tried WoW, a location where i could ascend and descend with my mount. Here is what's happening:
If i have Vsync, no matter what Multisampling I use, on approach or ascend, every 2-3 seconds i get this minor stutter- the effect is the same as if i press the Forward key two times.
Tried the same thing without VSync-just ascending and descending- No stutters Found. Tried it with 8xMultisampling-again,everything is ok.
I got at certain Height,where still most textures could be located and started to rotate-360o Nonstop. With VSync ON i again pretty much see the stutter at about the end of every 360o turning ( maybe every 380, because the places were not exactly the same).
Tried it without VSync. No stutters BUT on rotation I see Lines going on the screen (when i rotate that is).

All in all it seems that VSync removes these lines which appear during rotation,BUT at the cost of these chokes-again, the effect is the same as if I tap the Forward Key 2 times. Now I can't explain all this-perhaps Downloads can. But I am peculiar as to know What exactly does Vsync remove and fix. Also, Is Vsync in newer Games Improved? It seems that Vsync is a pain only on old graphics games?

 

Soooooooo...following the logic VSync acts as some sort of AntiAlising...Which means that higher AA would have the same effect??

 

And V-SYNC is to remove those lines you see on rotation. Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation of what it is and why it's being used so I'm not gonna write the same thing. Anyway- whether V-Sync causes trouble or not depends on a game engine. If I'm not mistaken there's an option in CCC that leaves V-Sync off unless an application wants it on. That's the one I use and then I disable v-sync in certain games or I don't depending on how it all works out. Sometimes V-sync causes problems sometimes not- there's no rule but for me it's one of the usual suspects when something is not working properly

No. What he meant was that with v-sync on performance is worse than with AA on- to show how bad it is. There's no quality improvement that can be seen on a screenshot with V-sync on compared to v-sync off. It's just there to stop screen "tearing" when you move- if you know what I mean (and if you don't you don't need v-sync anyway )

 

Recently I also started having stuttering problems... but also experience it while listening music or watching movies :-s

 

My batter wear level was ~10%, about week ago... Now it is 1% -LOL

 

Yeah it happens both way- calibrating battery is in fact making the "counter" show the real battery level so it can go both ways but it depends on what type of chip is in the battery.
Mine doesn't decrease the wear even though it should- it shows 9% but the battery works about 8 minutes while showing 1% loaded and constant number of mW left. So it surely should recalibrate the wear level down but it doesn't. I'll recalibrate again later- maybe it just had a bad day

 

By Calibrating you mean leave it on battery untill it shutsdown/Hibernate or whatever the setting is for critical battery level right?

 

make sure your firmware's been updated, or you'll be unable to charge the battery back up.

sorry i've been busy lately and i did promise downloads i would help so my apologies, and props to downloads for doing so much great work! I am happy to see the large community of 5740g (and variants) users here and active....we all know what a great catch we found in this powerful notebook with such a low price point!

at the guys having wow issues send me a pm and let me know what the issue is, i'll try to help you by replying directly into this thread I want everyone to be able to do 25 man raids with some ease(it'll save me the trouble of going through the old pages i missed.)

 

So true! I've just started installing a few 'old' games (UT2004, Jericho, X3: Reunion) on it the other day and they work flawlessly!

By the way, I found a rather simple workaround for my external HDD problem with this model. I simply plugged my harddrive onto another computer, shared it via network and transfered the data I needed from and to my laptop. It's so easy I should have thought about it earlier!

That said, I still need help to make this model recognize the external harddrive because my brother's laptop is slowly dying of old age (it's a 5 years old Acer, I don't know the model). Since he has the same external harddrive as me and can't connect to a network so easily, I simply can't recommend this model to him if it doesn't work on it :/

 

Well... I visited today Acer Service Center to get the heating problem of my notebook fixed and it didn't go as I thought... When I showed Service Engineer the temperatures of my CPU and GPU, he said he don't believe in any third party softwares. Then I said use your own software to measure the temperatures and his reply was they don't have any. He said that there is no heating problems with my notebook and we argued for the around 20 minutes. Then he said use it the way it is and if there would be any damage to CPU, GPU or anything, they would replace it as long as my notebook is in warranty. Now I have to wait until something burns in notebook...WoW!

Now few minutes earlier, I was playing Gears of War and GPU of my 5740G touched 107C while my friend's 5740G didn't even cross 85C. Thanks to Acer Service Engineer X-(

 

wow talk about laziness..........
sounds like it may be a poorly applied thermal paste/pad....you could always do it yourself to get better results....there's a teardown guide floating around here and mx-2 or 3 is less than 10 bucks.

though IMO run furmark or any other high load test software and "burn it" out and get a new one, prove that lazy engineer right

 

anyone knows?

 

@rahul.never2far
why don't you go to that engineer alongwith yours and your friend's notebook and make him see the temps. That might open his lazy eyes.
This notebook is pretty much lost now from the market. You might not even get a new one as a replacement from the warranty.

 

ASFAIK, in order for acer to be cost efficient the cpu's are soldered onto the mainboard......i haven't taken mine apart to check but for the price/performance i expect this to be the case. and is the case in most if not all notebooks in the segment(it's so end-users buy the companies' newer laptops[but not necessarily better])

he might not get a new 5740g, but he would be getting the closest newest variation of

 

Acer has enough of spare mobos to replace it and any other components that might have failed. I wouldn't insist on replacing the whole notebook if they exchange the mobo and the fan. You may end up with something slower than 5740G. Just in case insist on 5820TG- it's very close both price and performance -wise so they should be easily persuaded. Don't accept anything with nVidia GT330 though- it's slower than 5650.

 

^^That's true but here in India in some cases I have seen Acer replacing the notebook (that too an 5740G) under warranty with an older or used one 5740G. I am not directly blaming the Acer's A.S.S. but there might be some people in the service center staff that might be manipulating things to their advantage.
By the way, want to ask a question. If I am not wrong, the 5820TG comes with switchable graphics and ATI Catalyst's release notes always says that this update does not applies to the notebooks with switchable graphics. Does this mean that 5820TG ATI Catalyst drivers can't be updated to a newer one?

 

They can. You have to disable switchable graphics in BIOS (set it to ATI only), update driver, go to BIOS again and enable switchable graphics.
It's just an installer that refuses to continue if it detects switchable graphics, nothing more.

 

Usually the notebook CPU can be replaced or upgraded. I haven't found any notebook computer which it's CPU is soldered. I don't know about Atom processor though. Which CPU that can be put in notebook computer are depend on which chipset & IO controller it have. I don't know which chipset 5740G have but it is possible to upgrade to i7 processor.

 

Hello all, I found this forum accidentaly and I just saw that ya'll are 5740g owners.. nice
Well I've ordered the 5740G-333G32Mn model ( the only one avaible in my country in my budget) anyways are the drivers on the first page the latest and compatible with my model too? ( I observed that download has the i5 model, mine is i3).
Also is there any risk in updating the BIOS? ( I downloaded the 3 bios updates from the acer site for the 5740G models ) and I guess I have to install them in this order 1.10-->1.16--->1.22 is this correct? ( I'm new to upgrading bios .. also I can install the bios as I install normal apps or I have to do it in a specific way? ) any risk tho?

tnx for your time .. can't w8 to get the new piece (arriving 2morrow )

edit:also 1 more question..in the future when I "has" the $, can I upgrade the procesor to something like i5/i7 ?

 

About BIOS: First you should check the version you have. Most likely you already have the latest version 1.22. You only update to the latest version...skip all the others.

 

Oh, so basically if I upgrade to the version 1.22 than the others are included so I don't have to take each one to install...
Also it's relatively safe? and what about the other questions about my model's compatibility with the software on the front page and others?

 

All or almost all drivers are OK to install- the only difference may be Wi-Fi.
Drivers I provided in the update post are for Atheros Wi-Fi and there's a chance that your 5740G may use Broadcom chipset. Verify this in device manager before updating.
Check your BIOS version when you get it- your notebook will most likely come with 1.22 already on it.

 

I have bad news about switchable graphics (integrated + discrete GPU) on Aspire 5740G. Can anybody confirmed again that whether the "Graphic Mode" menu is visible or not in BIOS Setup Menu?


Based on the screenshots above, in Aspire 5740G BIOS, Graphic Mode already set to Switchable by default. This means, whether the menu is visible or not, it already set to Switchable. Now it only up to the hardware, whether such feature is supported or not. Also the only reason why such menu is not visible in BIOS Setup Menu (but visible in Phoenix BIOS Editor), such feature actually not available or not supported by the computer hardware. I'm afraid the integrated graphic card is disabled (or not implemented) on hardware level.

To cheer you up, it is not strange the switchable graphic mode is controlled by more than one token. Like a counter measure implemented by the manufacturer to disabled it (Token A already enabled (1) it but Token B disabled (0) it back). Just need to find other token which controlled it. However, it is not easy to track the offset/register of the other token.

 

It is not visible on mine...

I noticed you run on IDE Mode...Did you make fresh installation?

 

Thanks for taking interest in it. This option is invisible in BIOS. As for the hardware- the second GPU is on the CPU chip so it cannot be disabled.
I really doubt that they would change anything in hardware to disable it in 5740G especially that 5740 non-G uses on-chip GPU.
That said 5740 and 5740G use the very same BIOS by the looks of it and the former uses integrated GPU.
Is it normal that the value/setting is not displayed in BIOS? I'm used to seeing values that cannot be changed grayed-out.

--------------------------------

kizwan I just noticed that screenshot you provided has an additional tab labeled "Intel" (between security and boot) in BIOS which we cannot see.
What's there?

 

I was thinking about the same but that friend of mine is out of town for some days... as soon as he comes Iback 'm gonna go to Acer Service Center and try convincing him one more time...

Yeah, probably thats the only way to open his lazy eyes... but I'm gonna try convincing him one more time... why to punish my i5 for his laziness

I highly doubt they are gonna offer to replace the notebook just because of heating issues unless we file a case in consumer court saying that they refused to see my product while it is in warranty or something like they gave me a faulty notebook because its 3rd major issue I came across in 4 months, first and second were related to LCD which were eventually resolved by replacing the LCD both the times... anyways I'm also gonna stress on fixing it because I just love 5740G


And guys, can you tell me what could cause 5740G heat that much...
1. Poor thermal paste/padding
2. Dysfunctional fan
what else?

One more thing, I have recently started experiencing stuttering problem when hard disk is under heavy use (like listening music with an anti-virus scan running or copying files), so should I get that replaced as well or QuiteHDD is gonna fix that? I have Hitachi 500GB 5400rpm hard drive...

 

It actually an emulated BIOS Setup Menu generated in Phoenix BIOS Editor (PBE). It is BIOS image ver1.22.

 

Yes it is normal. There is a built-in control in BIOS that control the menu behavior. This depend on how the manufacturer implemented it.

According to notebookcheck website, it seems ATI GPU is built-in to motherboard. So, despite 5740 share the same BIOS version, it may have different motherboard than 5740G.
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A lot advanced menu there. CPU Control Sub-Menu, ACPI Control Sub-Menu, etc. In CPU Control Sub-Menu, there are Hyper Trading, Turbo Mode, SpeedStep, Virtualization, etc. You even can set how many core you want.

 

I wonder guyz if my version 5740G-333G32Mn with i3 procesor can be upgraded to i5 in the future ? or at this model the procesor is solded on the motherboard?
last: ATM I have 1 year warrany and I can extend it to 3 years, it is viable to extend it or no need to extend it( acer laptops are FTW ) ?

 

I need help with my temps. I think it's overheating. I'm running Prime95, and it's maxing the cores, and the temps are nearing 90. Any help on this? Should I open the laptop up and reapply paste or something?

 

@kizwan.
Have you taken a look at the 5820TG's bios? I think it might give some clue about how to enable switchable gfx in our 5740G, may be that token thing you were talking about. Sorry if it sounds noobish.

 

It's most likely OK- mine reached 82*C but it was in March so considering ambient temps it's reasonable. In another review Furmark and Prime run for an hour simultaneously got the CPU up to 92*C or sth.
So don't open the notebook- Prime is a synthetic test meant to do what it does- temps like these are not really achievable under normal use.

 

Alright.

And does anyone know a good notebook sleeve for this laptop? Or a good backpack for laptops? I'm planning to transport this laptop not in a laptop messenger bag, but in a backpack.

 

No. BIOS image is a binary file, you just can't compare it like that.

 

So to change the subject a bit and make use of the GPU that actually works I've downloaded Mafia II demo and run included benchmark.

Settings set to default High which includes 16xAF and 0xAA and 1366x768
Catalyst 10.7 (8.753.2.0)
Core i5 430M
Mobility Radeon HD5650 OC @ 670MHz core & 900MHz memory

Average framerate: 42.3 fps

Notebookcheck tested this on TravelMate 7740G-434G50Mnss that is Core i5 430M and Mobility Radeon HD5650 @ core 550MHz & memory 800MHz with the same settings and resolution they achieved the average framerate of 36.8 fps with 8.712.0.0 driver

The benchmark looks good but it clearly shows that someone from nVidia dropped by with a "spare" briefcase of $$$ that they forgot to take with them when saying good bye to the developers.
It's either that or every single shooter in the game simply loves shooting at cars, walls, pillars and so on no one is aiming at opponents. PhysiX anyone...
The benchmark is in close quarters so I'm gonna see if I can confirm how is the framerate outdoors.

On an unrelated note: Lost Planet 2 benchmark is out- and supposedly doesn't work on ATI with DX11. I'll see if it's true or not and post later.
Also Catalyst 10.8 is due in the middle of next week and may change Mafia II score and may be able to make Lost Planet to actually work.

---------------------------------------
EDIT:


This one is more than funny.
All tests on OCed card 670/900 and in native resolution (almost as the game supports 1360x768)

DX 11 settings high
Test 1: 14.6 fps
Test 2: 11.7 fps

DX 11 settings medium
Test 1: 28,5 fps
Test 2: 13.7 fps

DX 11 settings medium with DX11 effects turned off (whatever that means)
Test 1: 42.4 fps
Test 2: 35.9 fps

Now the funny part- the game looks best with DX11 effects turned off. If you leave them on it's out of focus, kinda blurry (even with motion blur disabled) So switching off DX11 effects gives you additional 14 fps in test 1 and 22 fps in test 2 and makes the game look better. With DX11 effects on it looks like you had one too many on Friday night or forgot your glasses/contact lenses.
Another thing- if you wanted to buy this game- download the benchmark and see how it looks and what the gameplay is. In my opinion not worth a penny...