a few questions about Acer 8930g

iv been thinking about buying out of these.
the model number is
8930G-844G32Bn

specs are:
* Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 / 2.26 GHz ( Dual-Core )
* RAM - 4 GB (installed) / 4 GB (max) - DDR2 SDRAM ( 2 x 2 GB )
* Hard Drive - 320 GB - Serial ATA-150 - 7200 rpm
* Operating System - Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
* Screen - 18.4" TFT 1920 x 1080 ( WUXGA ) - 24-bit (16.7 million colours) - CineCrystal
* Optical Drive - DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM / BD-ROM - integrated
* Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT - 512 MB
* Bluetooth - Yes
* Notebook Camera - Integrated - 1 Megapixel
* Warranty - 1 year warranty


1.does it come with a vista disc, and which i can use to reset the laptopif it messes up?
because some companies like sony dont give you a vista disc, or a recovery disc to reset it with bloatware. and some companies dont give you a vista or recovery disc at all.

2. does it have an actual 1920x1080 screen or is it an upscaled one?

3. will it play games like cod5, cod4 and red alert 3 on high settings?

4. is it a reliable and good laptop, (eg: any problems with the series/model)?

5. if it does come with a vista disc, can i use that same disc to install 64bit on it?
or do i need to cough*torr*cough*ent* it? as they do give me an active vista key that works for 64/32bit.

6. does it have 800mhz ram, and can i install more into it?

7.is the p8400 good for gaming?
because i can get this model for £745 delievered, while the model with p8600 is £1070, and the t9400 is £1270.

 

Acer notebooks come with a recovery partition (one partition is in an EISA configuration), so that you can recover your OS without using any external media. Though, you can burn the recovery discs for yourself.

Don't know about the res., but those games might choke on that notebook when played on high. 9600M GT is a mid-range card on a 128-Bit wide mem. bus. You probably might be able to lower the res., and then pump up the settings.

Never heard any complaints regarding the high-end Acer Gemstones. I am sure you won't face any problems with it as well.

 

i use to have a 8600m gt and a t9300(2.53ghz)
that use to play cod4 on high easily.

as this has 9600m gt, which is better then the old model it should play cod4 on high im guessing, but i dont know about cod5 or red alert 3.

the thing is this p8400 processor is 2.26ghz, while the t9300 was 2.53ghz. so would i still be able to play games like cod4 and RA3 on high settings. as its .3ghz less, would it perform slower?
Although, this one has a higher FSB, its 2.26ghz 1066mhz while the other is 253ghz 800mhz.

so basically will the t9300 perform better then the newer p8400?
are there any comparisions?

 

The T9300 will perform better than the P8400. FSB doesn't help much. It improves bandwidth, and how quick the CPU communicates with the RAM and GPU. But the T9300 will be slightly faster in CPU-intensive tasks, almost identical to the T9400 in performance.

The 128-bit bus won't help you to play games on a very high res....but should perform decently. There are a couple of videos on Youtube of the 5930G w/P8400+9600M GT GDDR3, playing COD4, Assassins Creed, etc. Check 'em out.

There is a WPrime thread in the H/W section, search the CPUs and checkout their scores.
There is also a CPU benchmark list by PassMark....Google it.

 

does it have an actual 1920x1080 screen or is it an upscaled one?
also, it doesnt come with a plain vista disc? but i have to make recovery discs like you have to with sonys?
is it 800mhz ram?

 

anyone answer my questions?

anyway, i just bought it brand new, with next day delivery for £745.
good deal?

 

Is that from laptops direct? I have the same ordered for delivery tomorrow or Tuesday. If it comes its an awesome deal as closest competitor price nearer 1000 gbp. I had some problems last week with my original 8920g order. If it was laptopsdirect you ordered from I suggest googling them for reviews! I was a bit shocked myself to seen the feedback

edit: According to Acer UK website its WUXGA screen which means its 1920 x 1080.....but check when it arrives tomorrow and give feedback on it?

 

yeh, laptops direct
so its not a good site to buy from?

mine is here tuesday aswell, i just ordered today.

sso its 1920x1080 i guess.

pc world site says its got 4gb or ddr3 ram, but laptopsdirect says ddr2?
so which is it, i think it might be 800mhz.

also, did you have to make recovery discs for your old 8920g, and it didnt come with a original/genuine copy of vista? because people like sony do that aswell.

 

Well I oredered an 8920g from them last tuesday. I was going to get this model originally as it had been listed at 749 for a few days but when I went to order it had gone up to 900! I clocked an 8920g with 2ghz and 9500s card for 489 so ordered that as it was slower but a huge bargain considering blu ray and 1080p screen. I ordered with next day deliv but it didnt turn up on weds so I rang them, they said will be here thurs. Cut a long story short I finally decided to get refund as I knew it was out of stock but for some reason they wouldnt tell me. When I went to website yesterday this model was down to 731 so I upgraded order. Its showing dispatched now so fingers crossed. I have been searching for nearly 2 months for this machine and if there are no problems with it its bargain of the year. When I decided to cancel on fri eve I searched every seller in the UK (and even some french ones!) and closest I could get for these specs was 998 from simplyacer. Not sure about the recovery disks so I bought them from laptopsdirect. If mine comes tomorrow I will post feedback on it. I bought a load of blu rays from town yesterday to test on this baby and I cant wait!!

 

Owais I just spotted your current machine in your sig and its the exact same as my current model too!

 

My sister owns an acer she hasnt had problems with it. My friend got the acer with the atom processor and he likes it so far.

They are decent machines for the price range.

 

now that i just read reviews about laptops direct, i just hope i get my laptop on time and working .
they have some very bad reviews.

 

Yeah I feel the same. Even at the price I half considered paying extra at simplyacer as they have much better reviews. My dealings with laptopsdirect customer services are so far pretty bad. A tip for if you do have to contact them ring the sales line, not customer services. I got answered in 10 secs by an efficient (if pretty rude) sales guy who sorted my order immediately.

 

Regarding the Ram it appears its DDR3 1066 Mhz:
http://www.procomparison.info/notebook-laptop+acer+aspire-8930g-as8930g-844g32bn.html

 

owais did your 8930g turn up ok? My delivery arrived and guess what, its an 8920g! And even worse its lower spec than the one I originally ordered. This laptopsdirect firm is the worst I have ever dealt with bar none. I have already rung my cc firm to flag the payments and if I dont get a prompt resolution from shattopsdirect tomorrow I will dispute payment.
And heres me thinking PC World were a waste of time...they are class A compared to this con merchant firm

 

well, mine is here tomorrow, and it sure ing better not be a 8290g.

sorry to hear about that, i would ring trading standards. call them up and say its not right, and they have to sort it out.

i mean, they have to send you what you ask for.

 

When your delivery turns up, make sure you open the box and boot it up to check its the correct machine and spec before you sign for it. I have been reading their terms and conditions and they state that signing for delivery is acceptance that the correct goods have been received. A family member received my delivery and was not asked to sign for it so I should be ok sending back. I checked and the 8930g is now gone from their website so I think I will aiming for refund and buy from elsewhere. It wasnt until I booted up the machine that I noticed it was wrong and when I shut down I received a program not responding error so I dont even trust the quality of goods these guys are selling.

 

what happens if i dont sign for it, do they take it back?

can i get it, and if its incorect, call them up and send it back?

 

I would see if parcelforce request a signature as they didn't on my delivery. If they do I would open and check the model number on the bottom. Write down the model code from the website and have it ready. Not sure about returns. I am on third call to them so far and no closer to resolution. Hope yours turns up and is ok. I am angling for refund of difference and keep the 8920g but that's if they are reasonable about it. If worse comes to worse I will go for the 8930g with 9700gt at simplacer

 

pc world do the 9700m gt model for £1000. i duno its its cheaper then acerdirect.

but you can pick up at store, and if it is messed up, you can go down to your local pc world and make sure things are sorted out.


well, im still waiting for mine
although i called up retardsdirect, and the sales person said, if i get sent the incorrect item, then the would refund and pick it up as long as its in the condition you got it (eg: dont install or register stuff on it, make sure its on the vista install screen thing and so on)

 

well, amazeingly, i got the 8930g that i ordered on time. o im happy about my order.

i just cant see how they gave you a wrong order 2 times??
i stil wont ever use them again considering how many messes iv read this compay does on the internet.

 

Excellent, glad it turned up ok for you in the end. It looks like I have resolved my issue now and they are going to credit me back the difference I paid for the 8930g. I am happy with the 8920g at the price as the 9500s is still a (baby ) step up from my 8600GT.
I ended up having to ring them back with a final offer to resolve the issue. I was asked to send a photo of the serial numbers on the back to prove it was the 8920g that arrived and not the 8930g. I offered to that first thing this morning!! Ah well, put this down to experience and will steer clear of that company in future. On a plus side I tested the machine out with Transformers on Blu Ray and its an amazing screen

 

can you play blurays on anytihng else but acer arcade deluxe or windows media centre?

because things likes vlc and windows midia player cant play my blu rays

 

I dont think you can play blu rays on VLC. Not sure about windows media player. How are you finding acer arcade player?

 

i dont like their media player.

have you tried to play the blu ray discs on anything but acer arcade and windows media centre?

because i seem to hate them both and i wanna use something like divx or vlc which im use to.

anyway, i made the recovery discs, but how do i atually use them?
he i put them into the pc, i cant like lcik on them and get them to work.

do i need to go to the recovery menu and then use them?


also, my 320gb HDD is spilt into partitions. 1 unused 140gb and 1 i am using.
i cant seem to make it work.

as when i shrink the unused partition, their is unused space but i cant allocate it to the first partition and expand the size.

 

Using the disk managment tool within windows, it won't let you extend the partition, shrink yes, but not extend. You can use a 3rd party tool such as gparted and it will do this for you.

I personally have 2 partitions on my harddrive, one for system stuff (C:/) windows, program files etc, and one for data (D:/) pictures, music, video etc. The reason being, if i have to re-install windows for any reason, if i have my personal stuff on a seperate drive it won't get wiped and then have to put it all back on again. Makes re-installing that little bit easier.

 

That sounds like a good idea Bangert. I noticed the split partitions too and was wondering what to do about it but I think I will leave them in there. Also my system states 3 gig of ram but the sticker on the machine states 4 gig. The model is supposed to come with 4 gig. Presume this is due to Vista 32 only being able to use 3 gig and there is 4 gig in the machine? I not had chance to look through device manager yet but thought someone could confirm here

 

well, if its any help about he ram, i called the guy up and he said vista can only use up to 3.25gb ram.

and as far as my knowledge goes, it uses 4gb which includes ram and gpu.

so my 9600m gt is 512. so that leaves 3.5gb, and i guess the other .25gb is used in background stuff as the acer guy said.




also for the hard drive, its best to leave partitions as if you change them you cant restore laptop factory settings which are saved on it.

im just going to store all movies and stuff onto my D drive.

 

If it says it has 4gb RAM then i'm sure it will have, but being a 32bit o/s, it will only recognise between 3-3.5gb.

storing movies and stuff good idea will save you hassle in the long run like i said>

have fun with your machines and enjoy

 

as far as i ccan see, its ddr3 ram, but the laptop is running it at ddr2?

its running at a dram frequency of 400mhz and the fsb:dram is 2:3
so that means its going at 800mhz which is ddr2?

while i also stats in the other tab, that it can go up to 53mhz, which is 1066 ddr3?


also, i just noticed that the p8400 kindda sucks for the rts games im going to play like red alert 3. also even cod4 recomends that you have a dual core 2.4ghz processor. but this is 2.226ghz

 

Thats not good about COD4. I was going to put that on mine but I have no chance if yours wont run it well. I have the T5750 at 2ghz and the 9500s DDR2...
Now my issues have been resolved (touch a big plank of wood!) I put a few games on mine:
Star Trek Legacy - Maxed settings at 1920 x 1080 it runs v smooth
X3 Reunion - Maxed settings at 1920 x 1080 runs slick
Battle For Middle Earth 1 - Maxed settings but max res on game is 1400 x 900. Still looks great on the big screen.
Oblivion - Most settings max but with AA turned off. Runs a lot better than my old 1530 with DDR3 8600GT
World In Conflict - Runs like a dog same as my old Dell

One thing I love on this machine is the keypad. It will make my tank sims miles easier to play without having to plug in a USB keyboard. Looking forward to T34 vs Tiger on here.

Blu Ray thoughts. Looks amazing but I dont like this Acer Arcade software. Slow and clunky. I was searching for my media buttons above the keyboard and getting frustrated with the controls until my Mrs pointed out the HUGE star trek style media controls next to the keyboard. That will take some getting used to I think

 

you know the media touch sensitive buttons on the side. if u press that little man when your laptop is off, is turns your laptop on, via windows xp even tho i dont have it and turns acer arcade on, and which you can only use acer arcade and no other programs or anything till you turn it off and turn on normally.

i Hate that, i want some way to fix it.

tbh, cod4 should run fine. the 9500 might cause you problems but other then that you should be ok.
i should be able to play cod4/5 on like 1200x800 on max settings fine, and you should probably too. FPS games dont need powerful cpu's.


see, i have a ps3 for everything but RTS games. and rts games take a good cpu.
so i probaly wont be able to play red alert 3 on max, but probably mid/near high.
although i play bfme2 which is about 2 years old now, so i can play max on 1440x900 . i played it today, so much fun

 

I have just been watching the freeway chase on Matrix Reloaded blu ray and noticed some frame stuttering. I noticed the wi fi led was flickering at the same time and when it stopped the playback went back to normal. Will do some investigations on that as it may be that vista was downloading updates

I am struggling with the media controller. The volume control is pretty temperamental at best. I miss those 1530 touch keys a lot!

I have a PS3 too and mainly use my PC for sims and RTS too. I will give BFME2 a try tomorrow along with Medieval Total War 2. I am hoping I can up that a bit on this machine, just even a bit of AA would be good as I always had to turn it off on previous machines to keep the FPS up.

One thing I have noticed is this thing is weighs a ton. At first it was nice to have a wider machine on my lap on the sofa due to the fact I could easier rest on my knees but after a couple of hours its hit me! I may have to buy one of those cushtops but I dont think they do them in this size

 

bfme2 is so great, its the only game that i still sometimes play online. all others seem crapy compared to playing on a ps3 with a controller and with mates.

i dont mind it being so big.

i actually wanted a desktop replacement. i heardly ever move it exept when i want to connect it to the tv to watch a film. so i was aiming to get at least a 18.4" because i like to watch movies sometimes.

 

I was after the big screen too but I guess I never put much thought into how I am going to use it. I dont think its a sofa machine with it on lap for any period of time. I dont like sitting at computer desk though so may have to see if there is any kind of cushtop support for this size machine

 

Why do you want to 'fix' this feature ? This is really useful in my opinion. When you press the 'little man' on the CineDash, it boots up the Acer Arcade in only 20 seconds, as opposed to over a minute with Vista.

I use my 8930 as a Blu-ray media centre connected to my hi-fi and 1080p TV. I can access my music/video so much quicker using this feature if I don't need the full Windows interface. It is also impossible to press the 'little man' by mistake.

 

I wish this feature worked on my 8930, when I press the "little man" on mine it just starts the computer and loads Vista.

 

So if I press the little man with my machine off is it supposed to boot up only Arcade for media play but not Vista? Sounds pretty usefull, will try that later. Anyone had problems with region settings on Arcade? Mine is region 2 but I tried to play my region 2 Prince Caspian Blu Ray but it wouldnt play, gave a region error. Only disk I have problem with

 

How can I tell this if? I would like to find out what mine is running at?

 

Let us know if this works for you. The only thing I have done to my system that might have messed this up, is install a second hard drive and deleted the original "D" partition. This is what I am trying to figure out, if what I have changed messed this up.

 

it shows that the ram is actually running at ddr2 800mhz but is cabable of ddr3 1066mhz right?

so why is it not running at 1066mhz when its cabable and faster?



also how quick it your start up, might is just around 1 min.
but if my cinedash it active (all light and stuf on, unactive is when just "Hold" is lit) , it takes like 1 min 30sec.


also is ther a way to get it down from a 1 min start up.

 

it's getting marvelous.. browsing some different acer sites i found out that the top of line (T9400) model vary by country to country, what differs it's the RAM type, DDR2/3, the videocard 9600/9700 and the presence of the TV-tuner.

here are some examples

Italy:
http://www.acer.it/public/page4.do;...ctx3=5&ctx4=Italia&crc=2109823444#inu57_54272

i'd want this italian with the T9400, but it's sucks to get it without DDR3, 9700 and the tvtuner

here is some others countrys offering a more real "Top of the line" configuration

Netherlands:
http://www.acer.nl/public/page4.do?...3=-1&ctx4=Nederland&crc=312911679#inu57_57809

France:
http://www.acer.fr/public/page4.do?...tx3=-1&ctx4=France&crc=2505888772#inu57_57924

Australia:
http://www.acer.com.au/Acer/akc/hom...4CA2574DE000A6089?open&current=8.4&ms=expand&


Waiting a reply from Acer support about the italian underpowered configuration..

 

Here is the one I got from the U.S.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115503

It has the T9400, DDR3, 9700, but no TV tuner.


But it really does seem slow. This is my first ever laptop so maybe I am expecting a little too much from it though.

 

Ok the little man button boots up arcade via xp on my 8920. Pretty handy but took a couple of presses for it to start. Stupid question now. How do I exit and power down?!

 

you go to the x at the top, or u click on the exit buton.

i really wanted atleast a p8600, but at the price i got it, i cant complain tbh.
£750 for the 844G32Bn is really cheap in england considering everyone else sells it for £1000+
i dont mind not having a 9700m gt or tv tuner.

but the ram in my laptop is actually DDR3, because it even says it is, but why is it running at DDR2?


Edit: which will probably bottlecap playing games, th p8400 or something else. as the pu does seem the weakest thing in the laptop.
acer are stupid, thy could have at least added a p8600 inn this sort of laptop where everything else is good.

 

There was no x on mine. Had to go into options thenfind exit in there. Still no idea why Prince Caspian won't play. I will see if it works on ps3.
Well my final price on the 8920 was £483 which was a steal. Even with all the hassle I had I would struggle not to recommend laptops direct on prices. Miles cheaper than anywhere else

 

I get the exact same results as you and I am supposed to have ddr3 also with 1066fsb. I wonder what is going on here?

 

where can i buy a acer 8930g battery from, not that i need it atm.
and do 8920g and 8930g take the same battery?