Acer Aspire 5740G Owners Lounge

I think we are all in agreement here, our 5650 equipped Acers offer excellent value for money in a budget gaming form factor, especially since the GPU ocs like buggery. It's one of these weird laptops where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Macbooks can run really hot, but they are engineered to work at those temperatures. The metal ones use the case as a big heat sink so you will notice the heat more, it's common for all metal body laptops, my Dell was the same. If your macbook is having kernel panics (the reboots) there's either a problem with the install (try repairing permissions in Disk Utility first) or you have a manufacturing defect that will be covered by AppleCare.

All manufacturers will have defective units, Acer has a tendency to have a somewhat higher rate. If your machine is showing issues I would recommend getting onto Acer support ASAP, they tend to be very slow and look for any excuse to weasel out of covering your unit. This is the experience in New Zealand anyway.

Now a serious question, my GF has a white angora cat, the keyboard seems to be a magnet for the long, very fine, white hair that the stupid moggy produces. Has anyone got a good way of cleaning these semi-chiclet keyboards? Vacuuming works up to a point, but you end up with hair that won't budge; wrapped around the keys' base. And yes, shaving the cat is not an option, even if I'd love to.

 

What the h*ll is the cat doing around the keyboard anyway? Does he like to search for cat gifs or something?

 

I got a cat too. He doesn't get near the laptop but i still find cat hair on my laptop. Well, atleast hair doesn't get on keyboard because i have TPU Keyboard skin cover .

 

Since we're talking about cats...it looks like there's a new cat released from ATI...a CATalyst software version 10.10

driver version 8.78 (Windows® XP) and 8.782 (WindowsVista® and
Windows® 7)

supposedly...Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5600 Series on some games..

Any pre-existing graphic drivers must be first uninstalled, to prevent any errors that may occur when installing the latest ATI Catalyst™ drivers.

 

Yes- I updated the "update post" and tested them- no performance difference in 3DMark06 nor STALKER Call of Pripyat that I can see.
There are new features though- like video acceleration for WMV HD and several others that we won't probably use (stereo 3D anyone?)

 

Hi guys,

one question, If I install the latest Intel RST (10. something I think) drivers, do I need to install the chipset ones as well? Do they come bundled with the RST ones?

Cheers

 

You don't have to install anything else but isn't the 10.x still beta?

 

I think they are...

 

WOW! I just did a full test scan on PCPitstop....I scored TOP 3% on world portable rank! I'm happy with my lappy...

 

Anyone else tried to record a video in Acer Crystal Eye Webcam and had the avi file be unplayable? I recorded one today and the thumbnail shows the first frame with a lock in the lower lefthand corner. Windows Media Player says "Problem encountered while playing the file". Quicktime says it needs to download something but doesn't narrow it down.

I have reformatted previously with a diff version of win7 x64 and so redownloaded acer crystal eye webcam.

 

I've just tested it. Apart from the fact that I felt like an idiot recording myself I had no problems- played OK in Windows Media Player.
I don't think it's a driver issue (it's Win generic driver anyway) it may be a problem with codecs that you use to encode the video that later causes problems for medial player when attempting to play it.

BTW- it's only 15 fps :/

 

I would agree except that I don't even know how to get into the settings on Crystal webcam, and I haven't done that. But you may be right. I have been doing some encoding and I did download some codecs that may have overwritten the one it used. Thanks!

 

I've tested it too...no problems here. I had to look for the file first though...I didn't know it gets saved in the video folder. I could not find a setting that let's you choose where to save the video.

Like downloads said...it's just 15fps...but i'm surprised it takes a lot of space anyways...a 40 sec video 240MB and the quality is not that great.

 

I had to look for the file too- somehow I didn't feel like leaving such a silly video lying somewhere
The file is so large because it's completely uncompressed AVI with PCM sound. You could use 3rd party app that allows you to encode to a format chosen by you but Acer decided raw AVI is the best for a reason.
The very same app is used on netbooks and rather weak(low on MHz) ULV CPUs that couldn't encode it on the fly to i.e. xvid and MP3.

 

The digital jack on my notebook (5740-6395) passes 5.1 sound. I thought it did when I bought it, but gathered on here it did not (have not looked into it lately). Usually, I use the hdmi to pass dolby/truehd/dts/dts-hd, etc, but I have another setup without a receiver that has hdmi.

Steps:

Buy a Toslink Female to Toslink Mini Male Adapter. I use this one For only $0.58 each when QTY 50+ purchased - Toslink Female to Toslink Mini Male Adapter | Toslink Adapters

Stick it in your headphone jack and plug in a toslink cable. Hook the toslink cable to a receiver that does dts (or dolby). I use a onkyo hts-3100 htib.

Go to Playback Devices and enable Realtek Digital Output. Then select properties and go to the advanced tab. Select 2 channel , 24bit 192000hz (studio quality) from the default format drop down box.

Then go to supported formats and select dts audio and dolby digital under encoded formats. Select all 4 sample rates too.

For my test, I used Bourne Ultimatum BD rip with dts audio. My video drivers are sharky007 using ffdshow. On ffdshow audio options, I have Output configured Pass through - dts checked.

Output format for uncompressed is 16bit and 24bit.

I know I selected 2 channel, but when I play the movie, the receiver lights up dts and it sounds like it too. Talking comes out of the center channel and surround sound noises come out of the other ones.

edit: I just checked each channel using http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1SFAEOK0 and it worked right.

 

i always update video drivers whenever there is one.. i was thinking of updating sound drivers .. what changes should i expect from the previous version..??

 

"Customizations"
That's the only word Realtek have been using used in their change logs for years.
That means some kind of small changes, bug-fixes etc- exactly what drivers are all about but they do not bother to specify.
I always update though- never did the new version cause any problems and I'd rather had the current set of "customizations" than not

 

hello, can i oc my 5650 ati cardo to 600/850 and dont restore to 550/750 forever? Can i play games etc. with 600/850 clocks always and not bad gonna happen? or i must change this values before i play game and restore after ?

 

It resets itself at every boot so you can't help it if you use AMD GPU clock tool. I've heard/read that it's possible to use MSI utility to OC HD 5650 and set it in Windows startup so you'd get OCed card at every boot but by doing this you are disabling powerplay and making your notebook hotter than it would be while downclocking to 100/150 so I wouldn't recommend it.

 

thanks!
next question: when i oc my card first i turn off Ati power play bacause when its on i have in amd gpu clock tool: engine:99,99 and memory 149,97. can i off this function (ati power play)? nothing bad gonna hapend?

 

You don't need to actually. If it's at 100/150 and you manually type in 600/850 it does it no problem at all. And when you use "reset to default clock" it returns to 100/150 (with PowerPlay on) instead of 550/750 (with PowerPlay off) thus making the notebook cooler in the long run.

 

So no one has had any problems with locked videos / unwatchable videos using Acer Crystal Eye Webcam? I still haven't been able to open my recorded videos with it and they still showed a lock on the thumbnail even though they aren't read-only in properties.

 

hey guys, i know people asked this a lot but, i recently downloaded the 1.16 bios version, and so I was wondering if there is some sort of tutorial on how to flash the 1.16 bios properly as I dont rly know what to do... cheers.

 

Battery in and fully charged, computer connected to the power source, Wi-Fi, LAN, anti-virus and firewall all off, no USB devices connected and that's it.
Just unpack the BIOS rar/zip and run flash.bat (logged in as an admin)

Apart from that- if you are going to update BIOS update straight to 1.22
What's your current BIOS- are you sure that you even need to update?

 

Hi I have a question about the WLAN card in our 5740G.

I have an airport extreme base station and it is setup so that N is on 5GHz only and the 2.4GHz radio is for b/g.
I have WPA/WPA2 enabled on the router.

I found that the Atheros AR5B93 wifi card in my 5740G has a very low Signal to Noise ratio compared to all my other connected devices (both N @ 5GHz and b/g @2.4GHz). This was shown in online gaming, where I would get frequent ping spikes and lag

I was wondering where the antenna of our laptops is located, and what is a better replacement Wifi card?

Thanks

 

what temp is max for 5650hd? i have 70max with 600/850-too much? mayby i must buy fan desk?

 

Wireless antenna will be in the LCD casing. It is hard to recommend better wireless card since I only have 2.5GHz AP but maybe AR9285 or broadcom wireless.

 

See here on how to do it.

AR5B93 is 2.4GHz only right? So it runs with b/g devices on your setup in a compatibility mode. Have you updated drivers?

Wireless antenna will be in the LCD casing. It is hard to recommend better wireless card since I only have 2.5GHz AP but maybe AR9285 or broadcom wireless.

Not this one please We're gonna meet again in networking sub-forum with you being another person complaining about it.

 

Where is the networking sub-forum which discuss the A9285 issues? I'm surprised. I don't have any problem with AR9285.

EDIT: I found it.

 

Anyway- AR9285 doesn't support 5GHz either and on top of it it's only 150mbps capable so the lack of 5GHz would doesn't suit OP's needs.

Top of the line Atheros cards are good but you can never figure it out with their naming scheme.

Intel 5300 and 6200/6300 are pretty good but good luck buying a genuine one (there's a thread about it in networking)

BTW mikey19 go advanced settings of Windows power management and disable power management for Wi-Fi card.

 

i am playing half life 2 at full details and i am getting my gfx to be aroung 80 degrees and my cpu aroung to be 88-92 degrees , is cpu overheaintg or its ok ? coz gfx doesn goes above 84-85 degrees but cpu reaches 90 degrees ..

 

Nice.. same with my CPU.. 90-95

 

is it ok ?

 

Can't say that.. It used to be at 75-80.
95 celsius is kinda hot :/ .

 

I stopped gaming on this laptop. I felt that 80-85 degrees Celsius was too hot for my laptop and I want this thing to last until fourth year at least (that's in 3 years).

And this laptop keeps on BSODing. I recently sent it into Acer who replaced the HDD because it was failing. Now, in 2 day or 3 day intervals, it just BSODs for no reason. The screen shrinks to a small size (black borders all around), and it goes into BSOD. Anyone want to help?

 

what's your error or stop message on your BSOD? you should write it down or take a photo...

 

Is there any software that shows the average cpu/gpu temp?

I use cpuid hardware monitor, but it only shows the max/min/current. I see hwinfo can log temps, but I would like something that shows average.

My gpu hit 128*c after playing mw2 for 30 minutes. I am thinking it was just a glitch in the software, but want to make sure.

 

GPU-Z does once you click on the temperature it shows min/max/avg.

 

Driver update post:

Atheros Wi-Fi driver v 9.1.0.314

Tested and working, second post of the thread also updated.

 

downloads thanks for driver
i have a question: i buy fan mate with 3 coolers and with 670/900 i have max 75C its too much for the 5650?
2 days ago i do horrible thing, i put 850/900mhz in gpu. effect- red screen and restart manualy. it seems to be working ok but, do everything be ok in laptop?

 

The temperature is OK. As for the restart- it happens. That's how most of us got to know where's the limit of oveclocking for our individual units. Nothing bad has happened and it's not gonna affect your notebook- just don't do it again

 

There is a new Realtek audio driver (2.53). And I really like the "customizations" they've done this time. Everything sounds better to my personal liking and the mic works quite well. I highly recommend the update. In all fairness the pop during boot is still there, but that's the only bug I've been able to think of.

 

Yet another driver update post:

Synaptics touchpad driver 15.1.9.0 (from station-drivers)

Tested and working, second post of the thread also updated.

 

YES! I don't understand thats happening but my laptop(mainly CPU) also started to overheat reaching like 95C... My first guess was that smth wrong with the OS or drivers and I found out that I'm missing Turbo Boost drivers, so now it seems it's handling better with a heat, but STILL I see now ~90C... or maybe this laptop gets very dirty inside ? Needs some compressed air

 

when i oc my 5650 i put 650/900mhz; but Voltage? what number put in this form? 1.00 or 0.900? downloads what number you do?

 

hi
just have a little prob with the two volume buttons on the right of the keyboard on my 5740g,they have stoped working,so its harder to change the volume,is there any way to enable them again,and to see the volum change on screen ?
thanks....kev

 

Don't change it. It would be useful to overvolt above 1.0V but it's impossible.

Try to uninstall and reinstall Launch Manager- it's the app responsible for all those volume, Wi-Fi, touchpad-disable etc. buttons. Maybe something got messed up with the app itself or in the registry.

 

anyone knows how to enable MLAA (morphological antialiasing) on ati 5650 ?? i was trying to install catalyst 10.10a , there is a way to enable it on desktop 5xxx series cards but on mobile no luck

 

First of all thanks for this guide.

I've been reading here to learn more about my computer and some things have helped me. Now to my problem:

I have the problem with WOW because the game freezes 1-3 seconds almost once every minute. And I have downloaded the queithdd and disabled the APM, the first night I used it everything worked just fine, no freezes at all in a few hours of consistant gaming. But the day after and up until now it still does this and Im so frustrated, Any ideas? (And no I havn't forgotten to start it up everytime)

I have updated the hdd driver, the catalyst driver shown in the second post, other than that the computer is in its original state.

 

hi guys
i have some troubles with ad-hoc networks ....

i connected tha lan adapter(router--->lanadapter(internet)) with the w-lan atheros card to start a adhoc network to get w-lan in my house for my samsung omnia phone.when i connect the phone to the laptops w-lan i mostly get the error message "gateway doesn't react"... no internet connection is possible to the phone. can somebody help me? thanxxx