Aspire 6935G : Performances, Benchmark, Heat, Drivers

I've decided to concentrate here everything I have about this Notebook.
For now I'm quite satisfied with it. It is capable of running everything I need.
Just a bit disappointed for Cuda Performances.

THE PERFORMANCES OF ASPIRE 6935G
Model : 1366x768, CPU Centrino2 P8600 2.4GHz, nVidia 9600MGT 512Mo, DDR3 RAM 2GB, HDD 320GB, Windows Vista Ultimate 64Bits:

PERFORMANCES OF 9600M GT

GPU-Z:



3D MARK 06 Score at native resolution 1366x768 is 5690

3D MARK 06 Score at resolution 1024x768 is 6390

Cinebench 10 score is 5472.




I'm not so much into gaming, but I like games like Left 4 Dead and I was able to play it with this 9600M GT with nice graphics and anti-aliasing (2x).

NEW 12-01-2009 COD 5 Bench
I've made a bench of COD5 and that was quite good. I've let all the default settings but use native resolution (1366x768) Vertical Sync and AA2x. I've used FRAPS to get the frame rate and the average was around 30-35fps, the lower rates was about 18fps during multiple explosions close to 4 tanks. We still can get more fps by lowering the resolution to 1280x720, but I wanted to test with the native resolution.


The Call of Duty 5 is well playable on 9600M GT


ACER 6935G CUDA EXPERIENCE

I was waiting for decent driver to use Cuda on Vista 64 bits with TMPGEnc Xpress. The last nVidia Driver for 9600M GT has been released 2 -3 days ago... finally on nVidia website... none of notebook driver were really available before on nVidia website

Well, I was quite happy to get compatible driver at first. But after some tests, the encoding performance hasn't improved at all. Sometimes it gets much slower ... It makes run hot your GPU for nothing.

Understand that I was quite disappointed with this kind of result. Well, I will only deactivate the CUDA function to use TMPGEnc, as it runs faster without it.

But nVidia recommends to use CUDA requires a 9600 GT at least (much faster card than 9600M GT), so don't expect to get any improvement with the 9600M GT.

I will run a test later with the late version of Badaboom to see if it's worth of it. But I'm not sure we will get any improvement



BATTERY LIFE

The 6935G got a 8 Cell battery, it gives a good battery life value

With common use as Internet Wifi and some Photoshop use I get almost 3h30mn Battery Life in Balanced Mode.

PLAYING MOVIE

x264 HD720P Movie
I've made a test lately by running an HD720P movie in MKV with VLC Player. The file was played from the HDD. I was able to watch completely the movie : Batman Dark Night, which was about approximatively 160 mn. I don't know if VLC can use nVidia Pure HD.

DVD MOVIE
I've played the Lord The Rings "The Return of The King" (Theatrical Version), with the DVD PLAYER, which was long enough to estimate the battery life.

I've played it with PowerDVD 8 with the nVidia Pure Video acceleration Hardware activated.
I use the "Power Saver" profile to reduce the CPU at its lower speed (enough to play DVD).

I've set the brightness monitor to 30%

The battery wasn't able to run the 200mn of the movie. Anyway, it ran for 165 mn.



HEAT OF ASPIRE 6935G

I've made the test in my room which is about 27°C environment temperature. With Notpad Cooler and without it.

HARD DRIVE TEST
Idle : 46°C (50°C without cooler)
Hard Drive intensive run with virus scan.
Full : 52°C (58°C without cooler)


CPU TEST
IDLE : 39°C (43°C without cooler)

Test with TMPGEnc Xpress, Full : 55°C (58°C without cooler)

The Notebook cooler is very cheap over here (200 bahts = ~4 Euros), good value I think.



ABOUT THE SCREEN QUALITY
It's a TN 8ms monitor, the view angle are ok but not the best. But who cares, generally, when you use a notebook, you are always in front of it

The screen quality is quite good for a notebook, it still far from a graphic monitor but the colors seem correct when I compare with my Graphic Monitor.
The gloss screen is nice but can become a mirror . The screen is quite bright too, so I recommend to low the brightness to 60-70% for a comfortable and natural use

ACER 6935G DRIVERS & EMPOWERING TECHNOLOGY TOOLS FOR VISTA 64 BITS

Most of Entry Model 6935G are with pre-installed Widows Vista 32Bits.

I've installed the Ultimate 64Bits but to get the drivers is often difficult.

DRIVERS WINDOWS VISTA 64 BITS
The common drivers can be found HERE on ACER website.

EMPOWERING TECHNOLOGY TOOLS
For the Empowering Technology I've made a RAR folder which contains the following tools :
- Empowering Technology Framework (to install first)
- eAudio Management
- ePower Management
- eSettings Management
The other eTools wasn't really usefull
- LaunchManager_Dritek_Kilimanjaro2_v2.0.0.2 (to configure the eButton) Once installed, launch the program for configuration and target to Empowering Technology ".exe" in the program directory

Click HERE to download the ACER Empowering Technology RAR FOLDER (32Mb)



The top model of 6935G got Higher Resolution (1920x1080) higher CPU (T9400 2.5GHz) and more memory (4GB), if anyone owns this model, thanks to communicate us your bench and thoughts.

UPDATE 25/01/2009 NEW ACER BIOS 1.10 FIXES MEMORY SPEED
I've updated the BIOS wich was 1.04 to the new bios 1.10.
The new bios fixes the memory speed wich was ~433MHz (866MHz) to 533MHz (1066MHz)
My Vista Memory rating score has increased from 5.3 to 5.9

UPDATE 26/02/2009 ACER WIRELESS DRIVER x64 UNSTABLE - GET THE LAST DRIVER ON INTEL WEBSITE
I would like to say that I used to have some problems with the Wifi with Vista 64Bits.

It was like there was a malfunction and unable to make it work after some time of use, the light of the wifi button wouldn't work, so wifi too, even when I pushed the button.
The problem was the driver provided on ACER website way too old!
I've been to the INTEL website to get the last version of the 64Bits driver ( Intel® PROSet/Wireless WiFi Connection Utility for Windows Vista* 64-Bit) for my Intel Wireless 5300, and guess what ? Everything is working much better, no problem issue anymore.

I've waited about almost 2 weeks of test before submitting this problem. Hope it will be useful for 6935G owners who have met or will meet this problem.

Note : You must uninstall completely your old driver until your wireless network hardware is shown as unknown hardware before installing the new driver.


UPDATE 15/03/2009 CONSOLE MEDIA PAD MALFUNCTION BUG

The problem is about the console media pad. You can't interact with it by touching, looks like it's blocked, but stll be animated by windows itself.

WHAT TO DO?
Unplug the power supply and remove the battery for about 5mn.

This bug exist since the 6920G model. Not a really big problem, but I was almost ready to bring my notebook to the service support. If you meet this bug, you know now you won't need to bring your notebook to the service support.

I hope this will be useful for all 6935G owners or those who were thinking to get one.

 

PERFORMANCES OF 9600M GT

I'm not so much into gaming, but I like games like Left 4 Dead and I was able to play it with this 9600M GT with nice graphics and anti-aliasing (2x).

 

Awesome review
Im maybe gonna buy 6935g with "better" speccs than yours:

Acer Aspire 6935G-944G32BN - Core 2 Duo T9400 - 16" TFT
2.5Ghz, 6 MB - L2-cache
4 GB (installerad) / 4 GB (max) - DDR3 SDRAM ( 2 x 2 GB )
320 GB - Serial ATA-150 - 7200 rpm
DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM / BD-ROM
16" TFT 1920 x 1080 ( WUXGA ) - 24 bitar (16,7 Million colours - CineCrystal
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT - 512 MB
etc

What do you think about it?
Prolly better laptops are incoming in 2009 and hopefully Acer keeps on making monster laptops

 

Yes, this one is the top end I wanted to buy this one before, but it was too expensive for me. The only think I regret in this model, they still use the 9600M GT. At 1366x768, this card is ok for playing games but I'm not sure at 1920x1080. They could have use a card more powerful for this kind of model. Anyway, this is the best model you can have as the colors fidelity is better than the 8930G (18")

Once you have it, please submit your performances test, that will be nice to have a comparison.

 

Nice review.

Could you tell me the model of the cooler?

 

Well can't say really what model it is as it a cheap cooler Anyway, here a photo of the box, there was nothing else.

 

Ah ok.

I just asked because with the blue/cyan lights it looked great.

 

btw do you reduce your LCd brightness using power panel or FN button + left/right ?

 

nice review... looking forward to the comparison with the 2.56 model

 

just brought my acer 6920g and id like to watch tv channels,do i need hardware ?....ive no idea what i need. cheers jon

 

FN button + left/right

 

You mean 2.53GHz

 

Yeah this is great stuff. I'm thinking of making a new general index sticky which will include stuff like the BigO's thread(s)(all of them), krazy's thread, TehSuigi driver&upgrade thread(s)(with his permission of coures) and your thread(again, with you permission.). Owners lounges aswell.

 

Sure, I don't mind

 

actually when i just bought it for a first time, i able to reach 6k points with 3dmark06 but after i switched the driver to DOX Forceware 181.22(in hope of getting a higher points) instead it's lower the points to 5.3k after i revert back to acer original driver the points stuck on 5k. i wondering what goes wrong in here~ oh and i test it on 1024 x 768. and i already update my bios that u recommended which is 1.10 but it doesnt help. any idea what goes wrong in here?

 

hi darika.... do u have aspire G launch manager , empowering tech and sound driver for win7? thanks

 

As Win7 hasn't been released officially, there's no driver yet released by ACER.

 

what did u do to get that score darika?
i get a 1000 less points score in 3dmarks with 4GB Ram ddr3 and T9400...with the same 6935G

 

just bought mine about a week ago, bought this mainly for AutoCAD and others designing software use. here the spec of mine:

intel core2 duo processor P8600 (2.4GHz, 1066 MHz FSB, 3MB L2 cache
16" full HD 1080P acer cinecrystal LCD
NVIDIA Geforce 9600M GT turbocache 1024Mb dedicated memory
3GB DDR3
500GB HDD
Blu-ray disc
802.11 a/b/g/Draft-N WLAN
Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
Acer Xpress VoIP phone





for Autocad 2007 user, I want to let all know that ORTHO ON/OF doesnt work with F8 key and I have to on/of ortho command by clicking the icon in the screen

 

9600MGT 1024Mo ? is it GDDR3 or GDDR2 ? If it's GDDR2 can you run a benchmark of 3DMARK06?

 

Hey Darika, how much bloatware does this one come with? How much "cleanup" did you do before running the benchmarks?

 

hi, is this an update from the 6930G ? Can you say what the changes are?

 

Don't know really, I ran with the Vista 32 bits, provided by ACER, only during a few days, after I've installed my own Vista 64bits Ultimate which has more reactivity.

 

...Makes sense, reading your report / review...
Thanks for your reply anyway!

I think I stick with the 32bit version until Windows 7 is officially out.

 

hey hey darika,how much u get a window 7 ultimate 64bit in thailand ?

 

Prices seen on Hardware House Website (Usually all Windows 7 are 32/64Bits excepted Starter edition)

Microsoft Windows 7 Starter 32bit Eng 1pk DSP OEI DVD B.1700
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 32bit Eng 1pk DSP OEI DVD B.3990
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 32bit Eng 1pk DSP OEI DVD B.5290
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit Eng 1pk DSP OEI DVD B.7290

 

gotcha!thx alot darika!i just hope this 6935g is well prepared for window 7...

 

To know if the 6935G is well prepared to Windows 7, just take a look at my review I'm really happy with Windows 7 on it