Acer Aspire 5740G Owners Lounge

Hi!
I made a post some weeks ago about an overheating problem I was having with my 5740DG. Now I just want to share the conclusion to that story: I brought the laptop to the Acer service center (fortunately is just down the road where I live) and brought with me some decent thermal paste (CFIII).
So, once with the laptop opened, the culprit of the unusually high temperatures was dust buildup on the fan, which was cleaned up there (at a price, that issue is out of guarantee). Besides, I managed to convince the guy at helpdesk to take out the existing thermal paste and apply the new one (btw, he kept insisting that paste do not make a difference, which I refuse to believe).

End result: I am now in a stable 55C on idle and no more than 67-68 on full charge for the GPU, even with a slight OC of 650/850.

And happy as a bunny.

Thanks, downloads, for the help.

 

I'm glad it's sorted out Ikkyu.
I just bought another can of gas duster last week and cleaned the vents.
It costs some $7 and lasts for a few months but if you use it on regular bases it gets rid of before it settles there for good.

 

Hey Downloads...i just updated d graphic drivers to catalyst 11.1 (from 10.11) from the amd website (11-1_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl.exe) ..........but in the Information tab...it shows catalyst version 10.11.....even GPU-Z says it is 10.11.......Is only the interface of the Catalyst Control Center changed in the 11.1 release ad not the display driver....?

 

Its just a cosmetic error I think. Look for the driver date & ver. in the Device Manager. If its 4-11-2011 & 8.812 then everything is fine.

 

anyone tried the ccc 11.1 hotfix version???
coz my black ops fps have reduced in the 11.1 original version

 

just tried the 11.1a hotfix fer ccc....its aweome...its got tessellation controls too...

 

so the 11.1 drivers that are for download on the first page are not enough?should we download the 11.1a hotfix??

 

No need for 11.1a. I'm using them because I was too lazy to install WHQL again.
11.1a doesn't have MLAA either and Tessellation is pretty useless anyway- rarely any game uses it and "AMD optimized" setting requires special profiles from AMD which will come in future but at this point it's does nothing (which I proved with Heaven benchmark few posts back)

 

Indeed, or uninstall the ATI driver, download and install "Driver Sweeper", clean the ATI driver with Driver Sweeper, reboot, install the new ATI driver v11.1 and done.

Enjoy the new driver with new bugs (ahem, features)

 

Recently I've found out that in linux there's some kind of script called "vgaswitcheroo" which can switch graphic cards on laptops. So I'm asking do you think there's a chance that I can use this script on my 5740G and switch my graphic cards?

 

No. Its disabled in BIOS & unfortunately theres no way to enable it yet.

 

Hello i have a Acer Aspire 5740G with Core i3 330m, Ati HD5470 and 4GB DDR3
ok so my question is how can i disable Hyper Threading? I got no option in the bios (where its supposed to be) for doing that. I would appreciate your help.

 

the 11.1a ccc have improved black ops and shattered dimensions....it does have a morphological filter option but when i check it i get a bigger performance hit than normal aa...dunno why....

And one question...i use a umts dial up connection, but lately the isp has given new settings which now have a proxy server address. i use that proxy address and proxy port in IE and idm..it works ffine....but when i use it in torrents it says the trackers are working and also shows number of seeds but connected seeds are zero...is der some setting which need to be changed??? i opened the setup guide to test and it says "port is not open, but u can download".so i googled this and read about port forwarding, but when i use ipconfig it says my default gateway is 0.0.0.0... so how do i get my utrrent to wrk???? Help

 

Have you managed to find xp drivers at all for this laptop? Even 32 bit? Can anyone help me find these drivers (especially network drivers etc so I can connect to net if I need to!)

 

I have collected almost ALL drivers for XP x64. But I haven't tested them yet coz I am still about to format my HDD. Also, I am waiting for Win 7 SP1 to arrive so that I can have a fresh install with it alongwith XP x64.

 

Hi, Dont install windows XP x64 because it's based on Windows server and not in windows XP itself, it kinda sucks.

 

I know its kernel 5.2. But my experience with it was better than xp x86. Its actually with Sp2 integrated. Also, I will not be using it as my primary OS. Just want to have a light weight secondary OS for troubleshooting purposes. I will not be booting into it much.

 

XP 64 might do better in a virtual machine if you don't need to test hardware compatibility.

 

^ Well as I said I just needed a second OS to boot into in time of trouble. I am planning to install Bitdefender in 7 & KAV in XP x64 so that these two can complement each other. The antivirus are relatively cheap here in India. BD 2011 single license is $4.44 & 3 user KAV is for $11.10 only. Another reason for me to use XP x64 is that I have got a legitimate VL copy of it.

 

I've had a bit of trouble trying to dualboot with xp on this laptop... even though I've done it before! Have you slipstreamed in the SATA drivers yet and tried to go through the installation? the last time I tried, the xp setup kept on crashing.

 

^ I have slipstreamed in the SATA drivers (5 series 4 port) but haven't tried the installation yet. I am waiting for Win 7 sp1 to release officially, only after that I'll try.
You said your XP setup keeps on crashing. Does it give any message or BSOD.

 

No errors or anything. It generally crashed during the install of xp, after all the selecting of hd, formatting etc. has been done, and that screen comes up saying "39 minutes left of installation" with the changing splash screen extolling the virtues of xp. Once one of the popups I managed to catch before the laptop shutdown was something relating to the SAM file, but I couldn't understand why this would be preventing the installation.

This message popped up once or twice, but sometimes didn't, and then the laptop would just turn off. I was forced to do alt+f10 and re-install to factory defaults to get the laptop working again (wasn't booting into windows 7).

Tried some troubleshooting, didn't help. Then I tried getting pre-modified xp installation (with SATA already incorporated) but that didn't work - same errors. Tried changing from AHCI to IDE in BIOS, but that didn't help either. Eventually gave up, unfortunately. I tried my slipstreamed cd in another laptop (toshiba satellite m200) with vista 32, and xp installed fine... not sure if new acer 1.22 bios is causing the problem, or acer in general.

 

Try dualbooting ubuntu, then.

I'm tri-booting at the moment without any issues here.

 

I have tasted Linux before in the flavor of Mandrake on my desktop (Pentium 3) before. It was all over my head. Installing rpm packages, configuring, understanding apps and programs' name, mounting, demounting etc. was like a pain for me. May be I am not that expert or not used to all these. I was quadbooting then with 'Win ME, 2000, XP & Mandrake'.
I might like to taste Mac OS on this laptop but theres no legal to do this I think.

 

why dosent anybody answer to my post? i want to disable Hyperthreading and i have no option in the bios (phoenix bios). ok so i found this thread: ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/480992-acer-laptop-phoenix-bios-bios-mod-request.html), which describes the procedure to unlock "hidden" options in phoenix bios like "intel" tab. So i follow the procedure (create a bootable usb flash put symcmos.exe on the flash drive boot and enter command (symcmos -v2 -1Default.txt) to dump bios settings from nvrm to the flash drive) but all i got on the flash drive is BOOTLOG.txt with nothing in it ok so what did i do wrong can somebody help?

 

The " symcmos -v2 -1Default.txt" is wrong. It is not number one (underline). It is L in small letter.

 

Why would you want to disable Hyperthreading???This will decrease the performance of your CPU you know!!

 

Not necessarily- I have thought about disabling HT too.
First of all it there's minimal performance improvement- not even close to 10%.
Second- many applications still don't use multiple cores or don't use four cores.
Examples:
NOD32 can use multiple cores but can't migrate one task across cores. So if you run multiple virus scans at once it will use multiple cores but if you run one task you'll never get more than 25% CPU usage (one core).
Had the HT been disabled one core would mean 50% load.
Same thing goes for Acrobat Professional (both 9 and X)- no more than one core meaning no more than 25% CPU load (which matters if you run OCR on long documents etc.)

Fallout 3- the game crashes on 4 core CPUs and since Core i5 is seen as such the game crashes immediately. The only way around it is to edit an ini file so that the game would use only two cores. In essence it means 50% CPU load.

 

I am thinking of buying a dell inspiron for my college purposes with a core i5 480m processor. I was wondering whether i can swap the 430m in my acer with the 480m of dell for better gaming performance of my acer? Is it possible? More important, is all the pain worth it?

 

Yes, I'm sure things haven't changed a bit in the decade since Pentium IIIs roamed the land. Download a live Ubuntu disk and give it a try. It can't be harder than trying to get 64bit XP (i.e. Win2kserver in workstation clothing) running.

 

Well..I think I will give it a shot then....been hearing a lot about Ubuntu these these days.

 

Cuz some programs dont work well with HT on, like for example i tryd running a wii emulator (dolphin) on my pc and the program is using only 2 cores, so when i use it even on cpu intensive games i wont go over 50-60% CPU load and laggs in some games (its basicaly using 50% of each core) so i must set afinnity and check the best combination of my 4 threads to get the best speed.

damn what a stupid mistake, ok thx for the reply, ill try to make this work. if it wont i will try 1 of your modded bioses.

 

Sorry for the previous sarcasm with no smilie, it was supposed to be there. Anyway, it's great to see how good the community support can be for Ubuntu. when I started using linux on servers it ran on Pentium 90s with 32 Megs of ram, and recompiling your kernel was a near weekly experience.

Now I just install my ubuntu 10.04 servers or workstations, and I'm pretty much done. Everything i need is in packages and the modern package management systems automagically figure out dependencies and download what you need to make package 'x' work.

I have computer non-tech savvy friends now running it on netbooks that I provide support for. I told them I'd support Ubuntu -free, but if they had a Windows problem they were cooking a nice four course meal, and listening to me complain the whole time. They both chose -free technical support.

My one recommendation is to not try to run too new of hardware on it. With Linux in general there's a shaking out period after new stuff comes out before it's all properly integrated. for instance, switchable gfx with ATI and Nvidia. There's NO support for Nvidia's Optimus switching. If your BIOS can' pick a card, it just won't work at all, not video. ATI OTOH is more primitive, so it sorta works with package called vga_switcheroo. If you're willing to experiment on your own system and ask for help, and do trial and error and look for a howto. This time next year, it'll just work.

 

That's like saying WindowsME was buggy and Win3.1 was ugly... Windows 7 is EONS ahead. Same for Linux now a days. Download a Kubuntu 10.10 or Ubuntu 10.10, install and enable the ATI driver, then you will see some pretty stuff. It's FAR from complicated now a days. I don't do ANY manual mounting.

As far as the hyperthreading, I find it useful when compiling. It actually does help a bit.

 

Ivanmmj, you are wrong. WindowsME was not buggy, it was the bug itself. It was really a Mistake Edition.

I am currently downloading this file ubuntu-10.10-desktop-amd64.iso. Is this the right one for this laptop? I am very impressed with its reviews and support. Would like to keep it. Would I be able to TRI-BOOT?

 

That's the one. You can tri boot. Just installed ubuntu after all your windows stuff. It'll see the other OSes and set you up pretty close to automagically.

Or install it to a flash drive so you can play without mucking with your windows boot setup.

 

Hey people, i need help with my Acer
(just copied text from other forum and edited little(could not get help there :S )

"Hey, i got a big problem with my fps. Sometimes it goes down to 40-60 and stays for ~10-15 seconds. Normaly it jumps from 100 to 300.
I have tryed to change my graphics options, but nothing hapened.(high or low - no diference on fps)

My monster:
Acer Aspire 5740G
Intel Core i5-430M
4GB DDR3 RAM
ATI Radeon 5650HD 1GB

Even not in my internet conncection i just changed it today(yesterday it was about 4mb/s) now 10-11mb/s but fps problem still exists.
Internet speed: http://www.speedtest.net/result/1137615549.png

Some screens without problem(fps normal).

Low graphics:
http://i51.tinypic.com/2mq9kt4.jpg
http://i53.tinypic.com/34g9el4.jpg

High graphics:
http://i51.tinypic.com/2je70jt.jpg
http://i52.tinypic.com/2wdn0pc.jpg
[fps on right, bottom corner]

As you can see no matter i use low or high graphics it doesnt affect my fps, so there is no problem with video card or CPU.
Another thing you can see my awp(gun) scope is not transperent(as it should be) i guess it's my video card problem. Or something else?

Please, maybie you can help here?

Please help ppl."

Waiting or any answers...

 

What drivers you using?
What powerplan u using?
Is the energy cable plugged in?

 

I have downloaded AMD catalyst(the newest version) from ofc site.
Using balanced pp.
Cable is plugged in(always)

 

Wierd. That normaly doesnt happen. Are you sure you dont have some background software messing your computer? Like an antivirus or something like that? Try disabling ATI powerplay on driver pannel, or try playing with high performance powerplan.
It's just to clear that's not from the drivers/energy management

 

Guys, I think my dvd-writer has failed. I was burning ubuntu iso to my Maxell DVD-RAM disc using Nero but Nero gave an illegal disc error. So I used windows' in-built image burner to burn the ubuntu iso and it started the burning process. But when it was about to finalize the disc an error occured saying that it cannot finalize the disc. Just after this moment its not reading any disc.
I have even tried booting through a bootable disc thinking that there might be some problem with windows but even that didn't help. I think that Maxell DVD-RAM disc might have screwed up my dvd writer. Is it under 6 months warranty or 1 year?

 

Same warranty as the rest of the laptop (minus the battery which us 6 months)- I don't know how long in your country though.

 

hi subro,
Step 1: Run theWindows Media Player DVD troubleshooter and check if that makes any difference



Open theWindows Media Player DVD troubleshooter

Open the Windows Media Player DVD troubleshooter



Step 2: Run the Playing and Burning CDs, DVDs, and Blu‑ray Discs troubleshooter and check



Open the Playing and Burning CDs, DVDs, and Blu‑ray Discs troubleshooter

Open the Playing and Burning CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs troubleshooter

 

Are you running something like hwmonitor so you can see your CPU and GPU temps and make sure neither are throttling? Since the CPU works about as hard for high or low gfx settings, I'd suspect that might be thermally throttling. don't guess, measure.

 

thanks lacienega and downloads for your help. My dvd-writer seems to be fine now. I am 100% sure that it didn't detected any of my new, blank, bootable dvds after that DVD-RAM media error showed up. I think it was stressed a lot in burning to that Maxell dvd-ram disc. I don't know what make it work after 10 hours rest but these are the usual signs of a dvd-writer which is failing or is about to fail. But for the time-being I am happy.
I will never ever run that DVD-RAM disc into my writer again.

 

Unfortunetally nothing happened :'-( disabled antivirus and spyware protection, but still... Changed pp to high performance but still...
Wt*. Before 9months i sold my Dell Vostro 1500( Intel Core 2 Duo T8100, Ge force 8400GS M, 4GB ram, 250HDD) it was bought in 2008, and with cs: s it was dealing just fine, but my new monster fails on fps...

 

Try the lastest bios, i dunno. Probably its game related?

 

Hi mates. I have a problem with my 5740G. When i write a DVD i cannot read it on my laptop. When i put the DVDs in other older laptop it reads them all. If i put older DVDs in my 5740G it reads them all. So where to search for my issue ? Is it possible to be a problem with the Windows ? I use Win 7 Ultimate x64.

 

Which burner Software are you using? Its a common problem & has happened with me a lot of times. Sometimes the media is the problem & sometimes its the speed at which you burn your dvds. I remember that my second recovery disc (out of four) that I made using 5740G doesn't read fine in this laptop but read fine in my desktop's LG writer.
Try using lower burning speed, like 8x for 16x dvds. I have burned over 100 verbatim (MCC) dvds using this laptop & none of them has failed on me so far.

 

I try with Philips, Creation and Maxell +R and -R at 8x speed and 4 x speed and all of them failed to play on my laptop. Some of them run on the old laptop. I try with Nero few versions, Clone CD and default windows 7 writer... I used to have the same problem with my old laptop and after reinstall of the windows it was ok, so I'll try tonight or tomorow with new Win.