Acer Aspire 5740G Owners Lounge

@ scud_svk - I use Arctic Cooling MX-4.

@ downloads - Why you don't show me this review before 2 weeks

I'll put back my old i5 and put the i7 for selling.

 

Hello friends.

First time here, owner of this laptop too. I'd like to share a thing with you and see what's wrong with this hardware.

I have set my laptop with windows 7 and ubuntu: boot partition, windows, ext4 ubuntu and a backup partition in ntfs. Anyway, I started to have boot problems inside windows in the login area, then some errors about disk writing... so i went in ubuntu and checked disk errors in SMART tests with disk utility. It has some errors and sent it to warranty. They replaced the disk, but I'm starting to have errors again in this test, but it's still healthy.

Here's a piece of the report.

Code:

http://i54.tinypic.com/e7f0xy.jpg

Does anyone has disk problems with this laptop? I don't get it. I don't do crazy stuff in it, I just partitioned and have dualboot. Occasionally I reinstall ubuntu but that's it.. Also, what do usually cause disk errors in laptop handling?

Thanks.

 

What errors exactly? Can you screen cap the part with errors?

 

some "!" messages after login on windows (I think it was like starting services and stuff), and the login took ages to happen too, with the cpu usage light on and intermittent repeated loop blinks. Took it to warranty and they replaced the disk, since even in the store i bought the hardisk regen software found errors and crashed the system. When I got the laptop back, i checked no errors in ubuntu's disk utility, so everything is running perfectly now, but lately I went check again and I saw the same kind of errors in the report. However, no red errors showed up like in the replaced disk... yet, i guess.

I'm just wondering what could I be doing wrong that caused these problems... i had an hp laptop and so does still my brother too with years and none of this happened even though we gave them the same usage.

 

@jamesensor

Please post a full SMART report. It's hard to judge from just a few attributes that are visible (although those look OK at first glance).

 

Sure, here it is:

Code:

http://i55.tinypic.com/inwsv6.jpg

and here's the disk partitioning config:

Code:

http://i52.tinypic.com/s45llh.jpg

as I said, the laptop is running fine since I got it back from warranty and when it came the test showed no errors. Then lately I went check again just to see how it was doing and it showed all these errors.

Regards

 

Two things that don't look good- RAW read error rate and load/unload cycle count. It's WD drive which tend to part their heads way too often- 214921 times in 70.4 days (which is almost 1700h) means roughly every 30 seconds.
That will not help HDD's longevity.

G-sense error is hard to understand at the moment- I don't know which way it should go.

Can you verify that data with another application i.e. HDTune (Windows only)?

 

here's the hdtune report

 

how is the performance of the witcher 2 on the 5740g with i5 430m and 1gb 5650m?
anyone tried to play it on this laptop??

 

@jamesensor

I wasn't able to figure out which way G-sense error should go. I found values both closer to 100 which would indicate that current value should go down while data up and but also found drives which seem to suggest it's the other way around, so I bravely gave up on this one

What happens in my opinion is your Linux installation tends to write a log files (probably to /var/log/*) which as I understand it happens every 30 seconds.
This increases load/unload count shortening HDD's lifespan hence RAW read error rate increasing. RAW read error rate going up is a sign of a HDD that's gonna fail mechanically.
Your HDD parks its heads every 28 seconds meaning 127 events an hour.
As mentioned here this value should be near 15 or lower to be considered reasonable.
To sum it up- you shouldn't use WD drives which are known for very aggressive power management or use software that disables APM (both in Windows and Linux)

 

So it was ubuntu all along??

I went to that page you mentioned but looks rather complicated to find anything to fix this.. do you have any suggestion? What can I really do? What software, fix can I get? Thanks ahead for clearing the issue's nature, now it's just a matter of correcting it.

"To sum it up- you shouldn't use WD drives which are known for very aggressive power management or use software that disables APM (both in Windows and Linux)"

I have the same laptop you have with this WD disk. Windows is installed with drivers from Acer site too specifically for this hardware. Did Acer put a wrong hd in this laptop or should I not use ubuntu? Sorry for the many questions but I'm like a fool in the middle of a bridge, I feel I have a hd bound to fail every 6 months or so :S

 

It's not really ubuntu, it's WD's overly aggressive APM modes. you can adjust them with:

sudo hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

See this page: Hard_drive_spin_down_problem for more info.

 

castro@castro-Aspire-5740:~$ sudo hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda
[sudo] password for castro:

/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
APM_level = 254
castro@castro-Aspire-5740:~$

Like this in terminal? This was the feedback. And so, Windows isn't to be blamed, right?

Today I powered on my laptop and those load/unload cycles added one more point. Last night I also tweaked the power management to keep everything on even on battery in hopes it would help. I'll keep monitoring this value in SMART reports. I bet these errors happen often when I'm with battery power.. and I'm usually with AC supply.

 

Sxooter is right- it's not really Ubuntu's fault. WD came up with a brilliant (read: dumb) idea and if if wasn't for their APM settings there would be no problem with Linux or Windows.
That said this issue is more pronounced on Linux distros than on Windows for some reason.
While those settings you're discussing will probably help with Linux, you should use QuietHDD with Windows (disable APM).

Your HDD will die/may die anyway so I would recommend buying a new one when you have a chance- this time definitely not from WD (although some drivers made by other manufacturers have the same feature/issue)

 

Well, I have to say I'm very appreciated for both your help. I learned much. Very friendly ^^

Concerning the disk, it came with the laptop when I bought, so I'll keep it for now till it dies and send it back to warranty, and after that I'll buy a new one.

Strange those guys at warranty support didn't tell me anything... seems to me they're just drones identifying a problem, replacing parts and ship it back to costumer. I'll use also the QuietHDD too for windows. Last time I booted with ubuntu and saved my data, so It was easy. I've also been monitoring the cycle count in smart, on ubuntu, and everytime I turn the laptop on it goes up one unit in that value, so I think things are now normalized... haven't tried yet with battery power but I rarely use it.
About the QuiteHDD I've read it's mainly to stop the hd clicks but I don't hear those in my laptop, still I'll download it. Also, I have put my configs in windows to full power mode (no disk off for example).

If there's any progresses in these matters I'll post for you guys to follow, since it's a shame acer putting paranoid disks in their laptops.. and it's my first acer, when i bought it i was confident I had made a good choice.

Regards friends

 

Note that there's also a verion of hdparm for windows if you'd rather use that than quiethd

 

quietHDD was mainly used to stop the stuttering/freezing in games that occuried for several seconds of every few minutes. It can be pretty irritating in games. It happened on the 5740G that I used to own.

 

QuietHDD may have been used for that but what it does is stop heads from unloading and that's what you want (and what stops stuttering which occurs when heads are not above the dirks ready to read when read operation is needed)

 

Very well, I'll remember that.

 

I have a i5 520m, same gpu. Frankly, it's bad, to put it succinctly. I have it installed with the patches, which supposedly increased framerate a bit. On lowest settings, using Catalyst graphic program overrides, using custom Witcher 2 settings (i.e. everything disabled/lowest selectable gfx settings) the opening cinematic bit is nearly invisible; the clip plane/draw distance is essentially less than a meter before it becomes distance fog and I still only get 19 fps average. With 0 visibility. It's preposterous. Using more normalized settings, with still a few Catalyst overrides, but less than full min, and with custom settings (still set very low), I can manage around 22-24 gameplay fps, with occasional slowdowns in frame rates. Still not good enough.

I played Crysis 2 with custom settings (a few things ultra, a few things High, max MSAA, max Anisotropic filtering, etc.) and I was able to have a constant 24 fps (I usually set my fps limit to 24 if I want to play graphic intensive games), and it's my opinion that Crysis 2 has better graphics than The Witcher 2, so it's annoying that The Witcher 2 doesn't deliver. As well, Dragon Age 2 is also too gpu intensive for the results you get, especially when using DX11. I'm thinking it's similar to early PC video games, where they weren't framerate limited and by default used 100% of the CPU. My computer warms up more playing Rollercoaster Tycoon 1, from 1999, than from playing any other current game, or even stress tests like Prime95. It's silly.

TL;DR

Point being, most games on i5s and ATI 1gb 5650s are able to be played on MINIMUM settings at MAX fps (e.g. 60/30, whatever the cap happens to be), and unfortunately The Witcher 2 isn't one of those games.

 

Specs in the sig ... I have a 5740g Packardbell clone ... with the overclock in the sig & extremeG's 10.10m driver I never dip below 35 fps outdoors & hit up to 50 fps indoors on medium preset without changing any options in the preset + using resolution of 1280*720 ... the game looks amazing and play flawlessly smooth

 

Acer TimelineX 3820TG with HD 5650 also can play The Witcher 2 smoothly. Ermm...I don't know min & max FPS they got. I'll get back to you on that.

 

hey!

i got a problem,
its not that big but i would like it to get fixed
and its more of a windows 7 question,so here it goes,
i dont get the windows 7 'firefly' animation,instead i get 8 blue dots in the top left corner,the guys at sevenforums said to do a system restore,but i wanna hear ur opinion

plz reply,thx!

 

And this is interesting, something I wanted to tell you when discussing Battlefield BC2 performance problems. Others have better performance than my 5740G despite the same hardware. What's going on? I have installed newest drivers, almost fresh Windows instal, redundant services are turned off, no bloatware. So it's not software related.

I am so desperate that when I saw Kizwan's sig I started to search for eGPU options for 5740G

BTW: Nobody had run any DPC Latency checks when I asked...

 

WEll i've never had any problems with any games so far (xcept fifa which got fixed by running as administrator).
assassins creed brotherhood and ac 2 works at 60 fps flawless.
darksiders runs at 60 fps(except in few areas)
da origins 60 fps
da 2 60 fps (dx 9 rendering)
bbfbc2 40 - 60 fps (dx 9 rendering)
cod black ops(with 4x aa -35-50 fps)
i play all these games at 550\ 750 mhz default clock forcing vsync and triple buffering on via d3doverrider. keeping in mind i keep aa in most games off (coz i dont see much of a difference in this small laptop screen)
i get much better performance running the games as administrator and tweaking radeon pro to force triple buffering and high prioritize the game.

 

@*Yawn*...God?
DRM has caused performance issues and have been removed by CD Projekt (new patch) but I'm not sure if it's already available for all language versions. They may have started with Polish version. Check that out.

@stogiwit5740g

It's not really an issue. I've had to repair Win 7 once (using Windows retail DVD to repair startup) and this animation didn't show afterwards. Just ignore it.

@Sir Ferdek

I did a print screen of the worst moment. Other than this one it was always OK. Wi-Fi was enabled.

 

When the problem is in just one game it is usually has nothing to do with the hardware ... maybe drivers or anything else but not hardware (since some people reported that the hardware is capable) ... as for latency check ... I never get spikes even with bluetooth & wireless on as long as the laptop is idle ... when there is activity sometime I get latency spikes which is quite normal

 

Apparently the DRM was removed with patch 1.1, which I happen to have installed (along with 1.2). That performance was with the patches.

I must test this out then. Would playing 1280X720 really improve fps by such a margin over 1366X768? Interesting.

On a different note, how safe is overclocking a laptop? I finally learned how to manually control my fan, and I can get my computer to idle with max fan speed at around 28º C, so would it be safe to overclock? And what temperature would be the target? If the cpu temp, on system controlled fan, tends to top out at around 70º, if I overclock until I get an average temp of 70º, in the event of fan failure or something I don't want to blow my comp. I suppose it would even be more risky to overclock a gpu, since they tend to cool slower and stay warmer than the cpu. Any personal tips?

EDIT:

I learned that the 5650 gpu and the 5730 gpu are the same gpu, only the 5730 is factory overclocked. I assume then it would be at least safe to overclock the gpu to 5730 specifications?

 

Your CPU has an automatic thermal shutdown temp of around 130C (if it's a first gen core i) First gen core i5 has a max operating temp of 105C but most laptops will throttle it at around 90 to 95C. Operating in the 90C range is pretty safe, but that much heat might slowly degrade other components on the motherboard (specifically capacitors) over time. That said I run my core i5/5650GPU Acer 4820TG at 90C CPU temp all the time when gaming and haven't had any problems yet.

Max safe operating temp of the 5650 is 85C. As long as yours is running in the 70 to 80C range I wouldn't worry. The biggest gains will come from overclocking the GPU most of the time. And the 5650 is insanely overclockable, with many folks getting 3DMark06 scores of 9500 to 10000 with overclocked 5650s in laptops with a stock clocked core i5 CPU. Getting a 3DMark06 score of 8500 to 8800 is achievable with just about all 5650/i5 machines I've seen, which puts you well over a stock GT540M. The overclocked 5650 will still be producing less heat than a stock GT540M too!

 

This is very interesting. I didn't know this. I usually start to panic (mildly, of course) when I see my CPU temps reach 80+ (which only happened once), or GPU temps when they reach 72+.

Because I'm on a budget, and I bought a 5740 because it was the best value-for-hardware laptop on the market at the time, I want it to last at least 4 years in prime condition, and another 4 years in sub-prime condition. I'm very much aware that the build quality of Acer computers is considered very poor in relation to other manufacturers, as such I wonder by how much will running at temps of 90º shorten the life of the computer? Do you have any estimate?

Or are my hopes and expectations for the 5740 insanely high?

If the computer is very sensitive to high heat and components break down, as you supposed, it would be better to only overclock the GPU over the CPU, for an overall performance boost without compromising the computer too much, correct?

 

I have no idea how much of an impact running the CPU at 90C+ plus is gonna have on the long run on your or my machine. It's funny, I hear a lot of folks talk smack about Acers, but I also have a LOT of friend with 5+ year old Acers that just plain work, and work well. My main problem with Acer is the mediocre parts they use for things like screens or keyboard and such.

My guess is that by the time your 5470G wears out from running the CPU or GPU hotter it'll be replaceable with a $250 cheapie that'll kick it's butt around the block.

 

well for me I didn't really reach the 90c zone yet ... I have this baby overclocked since like forever & the max I saw on the GPU was 72 (stress tested) 68c playing The Witcher 2 58~62c playing everything else

As for the CPU which is on stock clocks & an i3 with Tjunction of 90c ... The max I saw while stress testing the GPu & CPU was 86 and that was for like 3 seconds then the fan went on a rampage and it droped back to 75c for the rest of the test "thank god"

My card can run up to 650 on the core and 1000 on the memory but in order to stay safe I use clocks of 600 & 900 ... so find out what the max clocks you can get and stay 1- error free 2- Artifacts free 3- within safe thermal zone & reduce that by some margin just to stay a bit more safe and I don't think that there is any sort of damage you can do to the hardware

I have an 8 years old Acer Travelmate 4003 LCI (Single Core Centrino & 1 gigs of ram) with windows 7 on it ... & still working like charm

 

Very, very interesting stuff.

After familiarizing myself more with overclocking this gpu, including reading some threads in these forums regarding the matter, I seem to have a questions that I'm not sure were answered.

The limiting factor to what one can overclock to tends to be heat, however, because I manually control my fan when I play games and I set it to max fan speed (which is faster than system controlled fan speeds usually are), playing The Witcher 2 at max settings (except for motion blur, I hate motion blur) my GPU stays at a pretty constant 60º C, which is crazy low (at 650hz/900hz overclocked). Two questions arise from this:

1) How high can I overclock before bad things happen, and what are those bad things, excluding heat? I say excluding heat because I reckon that I could set the GPU clocks for 800hz/1200hz and still be below 80º C, yet I feel doing this could have very negative effects. Would that be artifacts and the like, or do artifacts only happen when the GPU is overheated?

2) Is running the fan at max speed harmful? I don't always run it at max speed, it's a laptop after all and I generally try to be economical when using the machine for web browsing, etc. Or is max fan speed not harmful at all and more persons should be doing it to preserve their hardware components from excess heat? (e.g. atm I left my fan on max after playing TW2 to post this, and I'm idling now between 28º C and 32º C. Should everyone be doing what I'm doing and using max fan settings when not wanting to conserve power/battery life, or am I doing something terribly wrong?)

 

how do you adjust the fan speed manually?? i can't find a compatible software

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/468091-acer-aspire-5740g-owners-lounge-341.html#post7385742

The power to control fan speed is ing amazing, I tell you. I was looking for almost a year for ways to control it until I found this gem.

A few of his notes are slightly incorrect: there are far more fan speed settings than just 90, 80, 70, 60, <60, but it's an excellent beginners guide to how it works. For me, either I have it at max speed (90,03=14, 90,04=0) or I just leave it system controlled.

 

The only real long term damage from running your fan at full throttle is that your fan might wear out a little sooner. In the grand scheme of things, fans are cheap and easy to replace, motherboards and GPUs are not, so I see no real downsides to running the fan full throttle other than increased noise.

As for the GPU, while there might be some theoretical damage possible from overclocking it without overheating it, I think it's highly unlikely. It's far more likely you're going to just start getting artifacts as you boost speed.

 

thanks. brilliant.
edit: temperature down by 12 degrees both gpu and cpu while playing assassin creed brotherhood. earlier max temp was 86 degree for gpu now its 74 degree

 

humm.... i play the witcher 2, whit very high settings to 1366x768.only huber sampling and ssao off, whit patch 1.2 i have average 35-30 fps o.c 650/900

 

I wrote that before I overclocked my own GPU; that was written with 550/750. However, after overclocking it to 650/900, same as you, with all settings maxed with the exception of motionblurs and ubersampling, my fps outdoors (specifically in the prologue starting areas) was still ~19 fps. A stunningly clear and sharp 19 fps, but still 19 fps.

How do all you guys have better performance with the same hardware? Or are you all just slightly overstating your performance values? I tend to be a pessimist regarding performance.

 

What version of the ATI drivers are you two guys running?

 

Driver Packaging Version 8.85-110419a-118909C-ATI
Catalyst Version 11.5
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 8.01.01.1152
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0000

Direct3D Version 7.14.10.0833
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.10750
Catalyst Control Center Version 2011.0419.2218.38209

 

Driver Packaging Version 8.861-110524a-119608C-ATI
Catalyst Version 11.6
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 2D 8.01.01.1162
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0000

Direct3D Version 7.14.10.0841
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.10834
Catalyst Control Center Version 2011.0524.2352.41027

Although I have latest drivers, I experience similar symptons as *Yawn*...God?: In many games my system's performance is worse than people report. Even on OC'ed GPU. No overheating, no antivirus, no firewall etc. etc. ...

@Downloads:
I would be grateful If you could try installing the modified drivers I mentioned a few pages ago. They seem to reduce the red spikes, however there will be yellow spikes left.

 

there is no way on earth that an HD 5650 can reach that fps with very high settings preset ... unless u mean u have a couple of settings on very high then u are extremely overestimating ur fps

 

I guess it's like what MahmoudDewy is stating, and many persons just overstate their performance to make themselves feel better.

 

The Witcher 2

3820TG with HD5650 can get 25-30 FPS with default clock. After overclock can get 30-40 FPS. About the graphic settings, other than AA, should disable the UberSampling, Shadow Quality and SSAO. Resolution 1366x768.

 

It's stuff like this that's so frustrating. I can get 25-30 fps indoors, with overclock 650/900, at those settings, but not 30-40. Are you calling frame jumps when you enter a small room with nearly zero draw distance as your normal playable fps? I almost don't believe these fps results. You guys have to start proving these astronomical numbers you're getting. Did I get the odd defective GPU or something?

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e347/Yawn_God/witcher22011-07-1717-14-53-00.jpg

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e347/Yawn_God/witcher22011-07-1717-18-38-77.jpg

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e347/Yawn_God/witcher22011-07-1717-20-04-37.jpg

You need to show your numbers.

 

*Yawn*...God?, Sir Ferdek I actually have similiar problem : people are reporting sky-high framerates, but mine tends to be quite lower. Also it seems in many games (recently Assassin's Creed 2 for example) I have same FPS no matter what settings I use: Low settings? 20 FPS. Very high? 20 FPS. Overclocked GPU? 20 FPS. Even games I met recommended specs tends to drop FPS. What is even more frustrating are people with less powerfull HW running games better.

Pretty much as yours in Witcher 2.

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, a lot of settings are disabled:-

What is your settings?

EDIT: Sources
http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopic=1888568&view=findpost&p=43885026
http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopic=1888568&view=findpost&p=42686412
cowithgun able to overclock his HD5650 to 774/1113:-
http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopic=1888568&view=findpost&p=42705886

 

UPDATE:

After installing the latest Catalyst drivers, (11.5 to 11.6), My minimum framerate went up slightly (1-2 frames), but noticeable during gameplay, since 20 fps to 22 fps is a 10% increase.

Settings are everything is default Ultra settings, with exceptions being Ubersampling, Motion Blur, Blur Effects, SSAO, all disabled, and Shadow Quality/Number of Shadows Low.

I don't doubt that the game could peak at 40 fps here or there, but I myself wouldn't call it "playing at 40 fps".

 

Good to know that we are not alone and it's more common (which on the other hand is bad ). Maybe together we will find solution, sooner or later.

Can it be that the problem's source is in the OS's edition (64bit vs 32bit)?