Acer Aspire 8920G Gemstone Blue Review

use the suyin drivers, they do work on my 64bit vista.

 

hi i was just wondering i put my order in for a 8920-6030. was just wondering what people thought of this model of who have it and also acer mentions it comes with bluetooth but i read posts saying there wasnt any in the 8920 laptop. can anyone who have the model that i ordered confirm that there is bluetooth in it? im upgrading from a travelmate 2303LcI

 

Help me please.
I returned my first 8920 with a big problem in the screen, now with the new one I made a clean Vista Ultimate 64x, SP1 and original drivers instaltion, also a clean XP SP3 one (some problemes with the video drivers but I fixed with the beta 175.63 drivers), the big problem is that in both SO my machine freezes for up to 1 minute, then get back ok and all app continue running, and from time to time a get a blue screen in vista...
Someone with the same problem?

 

Do you have the latest BIOS and the latest drivers?

 

its weird.

after install the suyin utility - it places a shortcut on my desktop for the cam.

double clicking on it to fire up the cam returns an error "device not found"

but the cam works fine in MSN etc etc.

Also i have one last device i cannot identify - possibly the modem but the install keeps reporting device not found.

in device manager under properties - this device is called HIGH DEFINITION AUDIO BUS....

no idea what is going on as the Acer Audio is already installed and works.....

can someone check the modem on their 8920G and report back on the Hardware ID, Location etc etc...

 

Has anyone managed to overclock the GPU?. I've tried the 177.70 drivers, doing the cleaning with drivercleaner and such, but no luck, still locked at standard clocks.

And please, don't talk me about flashing the bios, I don't want to risk bricking the laptop.

 

I have 2 8920 models with me...One with a HD+ (1680x945) screen and the other with a WUXGA (1980x1000) which I bought from the richmond branch yesterday. The WUXGA one is supposed to be brighter and better than the HD+ one, but from the moment that I turned it on, I immediately noticed the much inferior quality on the WUXGA one. It was dimmer, yellower (my whites look very yellow) and had such a narrow viewing angle such thtat even when i stared straight into the centre on the LCD screen, you can noticeably see that the corners are dimmer and there is distortion/a dimmer band across the horizontal plane of the Screen, this horizontal band moves as you move your head. I purposely bought this better model for the supposed better screen but it was much worse than the lower resolution screen on the model which I bought from another store.

Maybe you could comment on this? Did i get a defective model?

 

Well, I have flashed the BIOS of my Radeon 9700, GF 6800GT and Radeon x1950 pro, no problems there. I have also flashed all the mobo's I have had (like 5 or 6), the PSP, the 360 DVD, some DVD firmwares, and I have never had a problem, no bricks.


However, I'm somewhat relunctant to flash the laptop.

Anyway, do I need to flash the GPU BIOS in order to overclock?.

 

Well I just purchased a AS8920-6952 from BestBuy and the maximum graphics resolution available from video card (Nvidia 9500M GS) is 1680 x 945. It can't drive the screen at native resolution (1920 x 1080 ). Anyone know if there's a graphics driver fix out from Acer ?

 

Valrond, I agree with you on the whole wariness of BIOS flashing on a laptop. The last thing I need is a $1100 paperweight with a dedicated graphics card.

But you shouldn't need to flash the GPU BIOS to overclock - all you need is the right kind of video driver. If your current one isn't letting you, head over to laptopvideo2go.com and see what other people are using.

Oh, and remember: regardless of what you do, the slowest component of any computer is always the person who's using it.

 

Well, I finally found a driver that can OC, the 169.04. However, they are slower than the 177.70 I was using, and the Bluray player doesn't work with them (I think I need WHQL drivers for it to work). The other series 17x drivers I tried, from 171 to 177, neither worked. So I'm not sure it's BIOS issue.

PS: My GPU is the 9500m GS, there are no 8920G with 9650m GS in Spain.

 

There are more threads about the 8920G and the 9500m GS than at laptopvideo2go. I have visited the forums there for a month and I found almost nothing. I got all my drivers there, but not only I need drivers that can overclock, but drivers that allow the playback of the bluray, which isn't easy, as only the 177.70 of all the beta drivers I tried work with bluray.

 

I have a 8920G and a problem with vista64 and audio playback. It just stops every 20 sec. for 1 sec when i playback mp3 files.
I flashed to the latest bios version before inst. vista 64 ultimate and installed all the drivers from the acer ftp.
Anybody who has 64bit vista fully working?

 

just had a quick question i had an old acer travelmate that cracked my desk cuz of the heat (didnt realize at the time that it had 2 b elevated) so i used a towel under it (bad idea i know) with this notebook im using a hard cover dictionary to elevate it (not a good idea?) whats the best option to use?

 

can anyone help me with this?

 

try a small piece of wood or anything under each side, that will raise the laptop up enough to let air flow freely..... even a pencil under each side would work but might roll...

just use common sense and small long objects on the left and right sides to lift the laptop say 1/2 inch (should be more than enough)

 

ok thanks for the help

 

I hope it is ok to bump this thread up, I have a question about this laptop I feel best fits in here.

How hot does this laptop run while gaming? I am looking to purchase this model: here.

Also, does speedfan or any other program allow you to change the fan speed on this acer?

 

Hi newbie here.

Sorry i havent read all the thread but i really need help with my 8920G!
Can anyone tell me why when i plug in my hdmi cable and plug it into my panny 1080i that it is not picking it up? I pluged it in when i first bought it and i could see me desktop on the screen but when i tryed to play a blueray it said driver error. I thought this was a issue caused by the tv being 1080i and the 8920G being a 1080p output. But now nothing!

Is there anyway i can check that my hdmi port could be faulty or is there any setting in the 8920G i have over looked.

Also when i try to get sound from hdmi through my onkyo HD22 nothing happens either any thoughts?

Can this laptop produce Dolby TrueHD?
Please Help.

 

It doesn't get much hot. Its much colder than my older inspiron 1525 when playing wow, so temperature is not a problem. The air from the vents gets really hot tho but that's supposed to be that way

You can't control fan speed at least with any software that i know.

 

You can with RivaTuner.

The highest temps I have ever seen are 83C, ad thats with some mighty overclocking. While playing COD4.

My CPU idles around 6C. I know, thats pretty low

 

My Acer 8920G dosn't want to play with my Visitron 42" HD telly through the Hdmi cable. Any ideas anyone please!!!

 

hi all just paid £995 formy 8920 and it will not play blu ray discs.real pd.off.
no help or support from acer all you get from them we will charge you if its a software fault.emmm its all there own software im using that was installed in it when i got it .think the guy from tech was called HOMER.

 

Hi, when you say it won't play bue-ray what exactly happens, are you playing it through Arcade and the laptop's LCD. Have you changed any settings as mine worked fine out the box, however to play it on my LCD TV I had to disable the laptop screen with 'Fn F5'...
Chris

 

Great review of a great laptop!
I just bought a refurbished Acer Aspire 8920-6961 off Ebay for $800.
Been doing some video encoding and would like to speed up gaming and the video encoding a bit...is it possible to install a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 775 Quad-Core Processor in this laptop? I guess what I am trying to figure out is what reasonably priced CPU I could install to get more power without melting the thing down to goo...
THx much,
--Scott