question regarding acer aspire 7730g 664g100Mn

Hi guys,

Ive come over to this side of NBR to ask a question for a good friend. He has a acer aspire 7730g 664g100Mn and wants to know what upgrades are possible. Can you install SSDs and CPUs in these Acers or even GPUs.

Ive done some searching and have found some interesting stuff but nothing definitive.
I would be really grateful if someone with knowledge of these Acer notebooks could give us some advice.

Regards and thanks,

-Anthony

 

SSDs use the exact same form factor and interface as hard drives - you can replace one with the other easily.

Most Acer laptops have socketed CPUs that can be replaced. It's a delicate operation, but totally doable.

After checking the service guide, the 7730G does have an MXM slot, which means the GPU can be upgraded (just updated the Acer MXM thread with the info).
You should be able to fit an MXM-II card in there, but not anything bigger.

 

thanks you so much TehSuigi. Im very impressed with your knowledge and respect all the effort you have put in this Acer section of NBR. Every section of NBR should have someone like you. I was up late reading a lot of the threads and guides that you have written.
I may return with a few questions when the upgrade path has been established.

Thanks pal.

 

btw...Im sure my friend has the 9600M GT card, so what options does he have on the GPU upgrade?

Ive seen the thread and have seen it is MXM II but cant see what options are available better than the card he already has apart from the HD 3470 which I suspect is a downgrade?(does the BIOS support a swap from NVIDIA to ATI) or am i missing something as usual.

 

HD 4650 DDR2 is similar to the 9600m GT GDDR3 in performance but runs a bit cooler.

 

I would recommend sticking with the GeForce 9600M GT - it's one of - if not the - strongest MXM-II cards on the market. The only ones that are better are the Radeon HD 4670 GDDR3 cards, and those are ridiculously hard to find and make work.

You can always use a place like Notebookcheck.net to figure out which card beats what, but remember to look into the detailed results for a given benchmark. NBCheck averages out its results despite being run at different resolutions and using different memory types.

And tonytoff, it's my pleasure.

 

Thanks for the info guys. I think we will only upgrade the GPU if there is a card significantly better available which seems not to be the case. So thats ok. Im sure a better CPU and SSD would be a good upgrade. The notebook already has 4Gb or standard RAM but i wonder if there is a faster RAM available that would be an improvement?

Cheers.

 

Faster RAM? Good question. The official Acer specs for the Aspire 7730G list the maximum RAM speed at DDR2-667, but the chipset should be capable of DDR2-800. You could give it a try - worst case scenario is that the RAM downclocks to DDR2-667 and you've got two spare sticks of RAM.

The SSD would be the best upgrade, in my opinion. While the CPU and RAM would benefit some tasks, the SSD provides the absolute biggest bang for your buck.
Think about the fastest flash drive you've ever seen. Now multiply that by 10 and think about booting Windows from it. That's an SSD.

 

Yep got to admit....I saw the benefit of an SSD upgrade and agree its the best bang for the buck upgrade. The difference in game load times and windows booting is significant. The whole PC just feels smoother.
I understand what you are saying about the RAM. It could just downclock but as you say....it would not be the end of the world. RAM is fairly inexpensive and always good to have some spare. I think its definitely a risk worth taking.
So the RAM coupled with a new SSD should give him some more juice.

Thanks for you assistance mate!

 

Hey guys, sorry for reviving such an old thread but I figured I'd use this one since it's similar instead of creating my own one.

Basically I'm in the same situation as the original poster, I'm looking to upgrade my acer aspire 7730g.

I've read through the above and well, they kept talking about SSD being the best bet etc. Now here's the catch, I'm quite new to these things and I have no idea what an SSD is

Basically what I want is to NOT have to play games on lowest possible settings for them to run smoothly.

Please help a poor newbie

 

hey mate.....an SSD stands for solid state disk drive. Its a more modern hard drive than the standard hard drives and has no moving parts making it much faster and more responsive.
It replace your existing hard drive and gives good performance boosts on most PCs that can support one.

here is a link;

Solid-state drive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Thanks for the quick reply!

I've read up a bit on wikipedia about it now and I'll definitely look into it more, but I was wondering something else:

I've noticed my laptop getting quite hot after I've been playing for a while, is there anything I can do to keep it cooler short of moving my computer desk into the fridge?

I have cleaned the fans the best I could, is there anything else?

 

No worries about the bump of the thread, Nageek. And welcome to the forums!

Note that the SSD will not improve your framerate - loading times and general responsiveness, yes, but not your gaming performance.

Post your budget and specs here - CPU, GPU, hard drive, and RAM - and we'll figure out your upgrade path.

 

Thank you TehSuigi, I'm glad google led me here!

If the SSD wont improve my gameplay then I'm not very bothered, waiting a while for the computer to boot or a program to start doesn't bother me in the slightest

CPU: Intel, duo T6400 2GHz
GPU: Nvidia 9600M GT turbocache (it says "up to 2303MB" but as far as I know it only uses 1024 ).
Ram: 4GB DDR2 (I have actually no idea about the speed of the ram).

My budget is, well, low! I am actually in-between jobs right now, I can spend about 300 euro tops today, but this will of course change soon as I get myself a job.

 

Do you reckon over-clocking is an option? It currently runs at about 80 degrees Celsius for both CPU and GPU under pressure.

 

Nageek, please edit your previous post instead of double-posting. It helps the readability of the topic.

OK, the CPU seems more or less fine. You've already maxed out your RAM, which is good.
The GeForce 9600M GT you have is pared with 1GB of DDR2 video memory - it's slower than GDDR3, but not enough to really hamper your performance.

You could look to getting a GeForce 9600M GT 512MB GDDR3 MXM-II card and benefit from the increased video memory speed, but that's not much of a gain over your current system for the cost.

Overclocking, on the other hand, is free and can really help your system.
There are tons of guides online and on NBR - just test to ensure stability, and keep an eye on your temperatures.

 

Ah yes, sorry about the double-posting, I should know better considering what a forum lurker I am, just wasn't thinking.

Anyway, I'll give overclocking a try then (after reading up on it properly, if anything goes wrong I'll find myself computer-void until I've managed to dig up a nice person willing to employ me).

Thanks a lot for your help TehSuigi!