Acer Aspire 5740G Owners Lounge

Someone tried to put 8gb ram in 5740 with i5-430m?

 

guys , the next time you disassemble it just record it using your video camera ??
so that we cam learn a bit

 

While I can't compare them with Cats 11.6 (I was busy working) I can say that 11.7 work flawlessly. I've run quite a few benchmarks to test new CPU and I've managed to play games a bit this week- no issues.

There's gonna be no issues with that. Whether you'll see any improvements or not depends on your usage patterns but it will work fine.

It was pretty normal for me- easy to disassemble and equally easy to assemble. The only issue I had was with disconnecting microphone, touchpad and right speaker. As James May said while reviewing an Aston "you need fingers like cocktail sticks to operate anything in here"- I have normal fingers (unfortunately it seems)

 

cat 11.8 is out download from Guru3D.com

 

but it's full of gray hairs as you could see in the report because of their APM.
I'm still trying to add the hdparm entry to startup but without luck yet (there's a file in /etc called rc.local.sh and in it can be inserted the terminal command to run on startup but didn't work, so for now I have to do it manually).

About the hitachi disk I have, it's fine for me because I prefer to have more backup space than laptop disk space. It's safer, I think, and I don't use as much disk in it to work or have fun. I'd probably split it and put win 7 and ubuntu side by side with grub.

I still don't know if this disk, the hitachi one, is ok and more lasting with ubuntu on our laptop. Where can I check that? I mean, when you put yours how did you knew It was ok for linux?

Regards

 

You don't need Linux to test it- since it's drive's own power management that causes the problem- that's why it can be seen in any system.
I didn't even know that there was such a problem with WD drives when I bought this notebook- I just got lucky and got Hitachi.

I can guarantee that 250GB one will not cause problems although I assume it wouldn't as long as it's the same family- probably 250GB, 320GB and 500GB mine being the biggest.

 

Ok downloads, so I'ts safe to assume these hitachi won't give as much errors as the WD ones. Mine is the 250gb as I mentioned (I bought a Lacie disk case containing this hitachi inside). I'll switch it and give it a go, since everything else in this laptop has been working fine.

Thanks for the advice.

 

Hi, I have an Aspire 5740g-6395 and everytime i try to overclock the ati 5650 it would freeze. Its default clocks are 550/750 and if i set it higher than 580/780 my laptop would freeze...580/780 works fine but it seems like it can't go higher than that. I am using amd gpu clock tool for overclocking and i have ccc 11.7, i have maximum performance enable...any advice is accepted

 

Such is the nature of overclocking. Everyone's GPU has its own individual max settings, and yours seem to be, unfortunately, just a bit higher than stock.

You should also explain *when* it freezes. Does it freeze during benchmarking? Does it freeze during gaming? Does it freeze on desktop?

You should also make sure your fan is running at max speed when you overclock.

 

It freezes like two seconds later after i click on "Set Clocks" I can still move my mouse around for an extra 5 seconds, then after that the mouse freezes too...No option but to hold the power button. Sometimes when its clocked to 580/780 it freezes ingame for 5-7 seconds and responds again which i believe to be "the display driver stopped responding and has successfully recovered." Again setting it higher than 580/780 would just totally freeze about 2 seconds after i press set clocks =(...how do i manage to make sure my fan is running at max speed?

 

Is that some kind of beta?

downloads, I swapped my disk for the hitachi one, I'll monitor the disk behavior in the next days and come back reporting on how it go. Currently it's at 1152 cycles.

Take care all

 

I'm asking that too

 

is a 5740 similiar to model 5750-6677? how is the build quality.

 

AMD Catalyst 11.8 Preview Driver, read title in future

 

No- 5740 and 5750 have nothing in common.

 

My 5740G came with the Hitachi HTS545032B9A300 (it's a 320GB - it was either the 500GB with a i5-430m or a 320GB with a i5-520m. I chose the latter.)
I run Ubuntu 11.04 (sans Unity...lol) as my primary OS and I've never had any issues with it. In fact, even in windows, I've never had the "stutter" some people have had because of their hard drives.

 

I'm kind of curious if an SSD could make that big of a difference coming from my Hitachi 5400RPM drive? (I mean, I know it'd be faster, but I wonder how much of a difference I'd feel...) Also, would it help with battery life at all? I've seen benchmarks showing that it doesn't affect battery life at all but I've also seen benchmarks claiming that this very laptop got an extra hour of battery life with the SSD.
(Mind you, when on battery, I only use the laptop for web surfing and watching tv shows online. All compiling and the occasional gaming when I boot into windows is done hooked to the power.)


My gripes about this laptop are:
Slow hard drive (but it's a standard 5400RPM laptop drive... so that's not really a fault per say.)
AMD drivers for Linux don't support KMS and aren't always compatible with the newest kernels.
The battery could be better (if only Acer had added the switchable graphics...)

 

SSDs do not help battery nearly as much as people would want to- there's absolutely no chance of an additional hour.
I could do the maths but I'm too lazy- let's just say 5740G uses at least 12-13W when idle and HDD uses up to 2.5W when writing/reading (and lot less when idle) but even those number show that there's no chance that HDD uses one third of the whole energy consumed by laptop.
That's even before we start to analyze SSD's power usage.

There are nice extended batteries that can give you almost twice the battery time and raise the back of the laptop a bit (which I like- typing is more comfortable and cooling is a bit better). There batteries seem to be well made- price is right (not too cheap) and these even have rubber feet as what used to touch the desk doesn't anymore when you put the battery in.

 

Do you have a link to said batteries? I wouldn't mind a larger battery.

 

This is the battery in question.

 

Hello, all!

I have a BIOS update question. I'm with the base version - I've done an update yet, and I was wondering if I should install each update, or just go with the last one (I've seen that the fix different things, and I doubting a bit about how to proceed).

thanks in advance!

 

Just the last one- it contains all the previous fixes.

 

Hey Downloads, nice to read good news from you
Did you try to torture both the gpu and CPU at the same time? What thermal compound did you use? I'm little worried about my temperatures during such extreme conditions.

Hardware accelerated AES? Hm, nice extra feature

 

MSI Kombustor uses older FurMark technology to heat up GPU. I've tested both MSI Kombustor and most recent FurMark and switched to FurMark eventually as it results in higher temperatures.
All in all I've managed 93*C on CPU and some far more acceptable temperature on GPU (81 or 83*C) when testing with FurMark @670/900 and Prime95 simultaneously.

I admit 93*C looks bad but no throttling occurred- what's more TurboBoost wasn't even switched off so while it looks ugly I consider it a test passed.
Even under most extreme conditions for both CPU and overclocked GPU in the middle of summer with no cooling pad or anything computer remained stable and no throttling or reduced performance occurred.

I've just finished Assassin's Creed Brotherhood with temps far lower and framerate basically stuck @ 40fps.

I did those tests with fresh thermal compound (Arctic Silver 5) but I don't expect it to go down significantly when it settles.

As for AES- I did some initial testing on an external HDD and in the end decided to use it. As of now my data partition which includes documents photos and desktop is a TrueCrypt AES volume. It's a bit annoying that I have to type in a ridiculously long passphrase after I've logged in but I don't have to re-type it when computer is woken up from stand-by or hibernation.
There's no performance hit at all- it doesn't even register as CPU usage. Anyway- next step is new NAS that also gets encrypted.

 

Thank you very much, since your temperatures looks exactly as mine I'm much more calm now. I also used Arctic Silver 5 as you recommended it some time ago. ATM my CPU idles at 46-50C and it's really nice that fan is off most of the time

So, in a nutshell - we can congratulate each other great deal. Especially for the feature we didn't expected. Now our 5740G's are running the best price/perfromance ratio hardware and can still effectively compete with the latops sold today for the price we bought ours.

Best regards.

 

I -finally- got to update the driver post, so fer two new things:

Atheros Wi-Fi v9.2.0.419
Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology 10.6.0.1022 (thanks to lacienga)

---------------------------------------
@Sir Ferdek

We can congratulate you for that. I would have never expected to find such a deal, so I wasn't even looking. This CPU has been launched in October 2010 for over $220 (mind you that's price for 1K units) with new ones are available on e-bay these days for over $240 and used ones for over $140. We bought ours for roughly $45.


Next step to consider- 7200rpm drive with linear read speed of some ~80MB/s compared to 62-65MB/s of 500GB 5400rpm ones. That would probably be the last upgrade. My HDD has some 7000 hours of operation on the clock although I'll probably spend more money on NAS and 2TB HDD than I'd like to, so this upgrade won't be happening anytime soon.

 

Best method for newbies is using a camera and take pics of all screw location so we can mount it back again. I've done this with 2 more persons to be sure there wouldn't be screws left ^^

P.S. I don't like unity in ubuntu too

 

Unity as well as new gnome, on which I guess it's based, frankly speaking sucks. It's a pseudo improvement in GUI - it takes more time to find things you need and do what you want to do. Also IMHO new KDE is far less flexible and user-friendly than it was 3 years ago. They have ideas but don't know how to implement them.

If you want to have fully customized, lightweight DE with some graphical tools for system configuration I would reccomend learning the way Arch linux works and installing XFCE or LXDE. It needs some effort but the results are impressive - your own tailor made GUI to dominate the work and play

BTW: Nice off-topic

 

I have a friend that works on arch linux but I'm still far behind to make that work. I tried, but jumping from boot to cmd mode it's frightening, I don't know how to install a desktop from it, or how to turn on my wireless without a gui, and deb packages are all around and I'm not sure if arch deals with them. (I don't know how to compile to other package system like rpm and etc..)

Hehe I was just commenting downloads thoughts about it in a previous reply he wrote.. off topic out.

 

Hi there, its been a while that i was absent so forgive me if this has been asked again....

1) i had replaced the stock drive when i first got the laptop with a corsair SSD (force 60) and the max i can get from battery is 2hours exactly is this normal? i can not remember max time with the rotational drive (battery waer level is 5,4%)

2) i am going to go back to a rotational drive soon and i wanted your opinions... I was thinking WD 500gb (any opinions are welcome) but the real question is ADVANCED formatting or NOT (bekt vs bpvt)?

Regards

 

I haven't really investigated this that much but from what I gather- go for advanced formating one. The only drawback so far is that drivers like that can't work inside a NAS for some reason (based on WD's response to D-Link) but that's kind of irrelevant in case of 2.5" HDDs.

 

Thx dexter, do you have any idea about the battery life i am experiencing?

 

No idea- I'm not an expert on SSDs. I've decided to ignore them until drives of least lest 256GB capacity get affordable which means 5740G won't get an SSD in its lifetime.

 

No imean what is the lifetime with the rotational drive?

 

My battery wear has became quite significant by now and since it's Sony crap it doesn't even show the real value (laptop works for over 10 min after the battery supposedly reached 0 mA yet battery chip refuses to recalculate the battery wear and lower it) but I can pull of 2h 30min on power-saving with no heavy usage.

 

Thank you againDexter, i am far from 2hours and i believe it is the ssd that is responsible...sooon enough i would know...My wear level is pretty low so far and i believe thta a 3h battery life would be resonable...
Thanx again

 

2 hours of battery life is normal for this laptop. (TIP: check if PowerPlay is enabled, set advanced power management to your liking, the most power-eating device in your lappy is it's screen - remember that) ;]

 

what max. memory can i put in 5740g? now i have 2x2gb ram (samsung ddr3 sdram 1066 (533),
Kingston HyperX DDR3 2X 4GB 1866MHz Non-ECC CL9 SODIMM Plug and Play - Notebooki, komputery, laptopy, monitory, karty graficzne - Komputronik internetowy sklep komputerowy
mayby this:
http://www.komputronik.pl/product/9...ston_4GB_1333MHz_DDR3_Non_ECC_CL9_SODIMM.html
?
gonna works?
8gb is max? what mhz is max?

 

8GB DDR3-1066 (533MHz) with stock processor. If you upgraded the processor to at least i7-720QM, you'll be able to use DDR3-1333 (667MHz).

BTW, if you have stock processor, you can use DDR3-1333 but it will work in backward compatibility mode, DDR3-1066.

 

thanks kizwan,
with this: Kingston 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL9 SODIMM - Notebooki, komputery, laptopy, monitory, karty graficzne - Komputronik internetowy sklep komputerowy can i have mutch better performance than now (my old memory)? games/photoshop...

ps. when i want clean gpu i must unscrew hard disk too?

 

You won't see increase in the performance. 4GB RAM already more than enough for gaming. However, if you use software like Photoshop & 3ds Max, 8GB RAM will be very helpful.

Most likely you'll need to disassemble your laptop if you want to access the GPU.

 

Hey,
I was wondering if it is possible somehow to have USB 3.0 in this laptop? Because there is no ExpressCard slot...

 

There is no ExpressCard slot BUT there is one unused mini PCI-e slot near the HDD bay... If it isn't blocked in some way in BIOS, you could be able to install there mPCI-E card with USB3 controller on it. I guess...

 

The miniPCIe slot is definitely NOT blocked via BIOS (I'm running a card in it, see below).

Not sure about USB3.0 since it is supposed to supply an additional 5V, 0.9A, which the miniPCIe does not supply (e.g. MPX7202 needs additional 5V via a separate cable; but I'm not sure how this one USB3.0 Half Mini Card--USB3.0 Host & Peripheral manages the 5V issue).
However, you can definitely install a SATA-2 miniPCIe card (MPX3132) and thus at least have eSATA via a SATA->eSATA adapter. Which by the way I did. However, you than have the cables dangling out. I hid them with some kind of cord/cable cover (similar to Data's finger trap [for those of you who're Trekkies]). Much faster than USB2.0 (and not just in theory)

As for DDR3-1600: I got Kingston HyperX KHX1600C9S3K2/8G. 8GB was worth it for me, since I'm using Photoshop and Illustrator a lot. However in terms of performance there's not much of an increase:
With Aida64 cache and memory benchmark, there is no difference for write and read, however copy increased by ~600MB/s.
Using SetSFB, I can increase the clock rate by 20MHz only (idle), compared to the RAM sticks, that came with the laptop (giving me a max of 2602 MHz on load so far - more and I get a freeze - these HyperX are still amazing, work like a charm in a different machine with an i7-2630QM).

Cheers

PS:
Aspire 5740G, i5-430M, ATI HD5650, 8GB Kingston HyperX 1600, eSATA-II via Commell MPX3132

 

And that's THE IDEA! Looks like much simpler and more useful mod than trying to provide additional 5 Volts for USB3.0 (I wonder whether it is possible to draw it from existing USB2 port by solde... ekhm... xD too risky).

Anyway: IMHO USB3.0 novadays is welcome in new laptops/PC's as it's upcoming standard, but not necessary in older computers - as long as it's not so common and you can live without it there is no point in upgrading your PC.

 

Should be possible, I guess, but I personally decided against it. I read in a review, that, currently USB3.0 would be slower than eSATA with external harddrives (both HDD & SSD), but I'm not sure whether or not this is true for data over the PCIe 1x line too? Don't know if I can take that review seriously, though.

 

One line of PCI-Express v2.0 is capable of transfering data with rate of 500MB/s in both directions (1GB/s in total). Maximum eSata's (SATAII) transfer rate is 300MB/s and USB 3.0 devices can in theory work with maximum speed of 640MB/s (dunno if it's two-way communication transfer rate or one way only).
The point of eSATA is that HDD connected to eSata port has the same performance as if it was connected internally as main HDD.

 

New Catalyst 11.8 drivers are available.
Direct links are in second post of the thread.

 

I am only getting around 90minutes from my battery. Screen is set at darkest setting. Passive cooling and 0% low 50% high processor management.

This is just browsing and the internet. No videos or games. Hardware monitor shows 25% battery wear.

Fan runs pretty much all the time (60c+ idle, can't open it up to fix it because it voids my extended warranty), not sure if that uses that much power.

 

i buy this memory: Kingston 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL9 SODIMM - Notebooki, komputery, laptopy, monitory, karty graficzne - Komputronik internetowy sklep komputerowy

and install in my acer 5740G.
now i have in cpu-z this:


and



is everythink ok?
kizwan says that i will have only 1066 but is 1333 right?
in windows7 performance i have 6,7 in memory (5,9 after)