Averatec 5400 Series

I recently bought a Averatec 5400 series notebook from Wal-Mart.com. I am fairly happy with the notebook, except when I tried to install XP Service pack 2. I began to have power problems. That's when I discovered that the processor is a 64 bit processor with the 64 bit taken out which makes it a AMD Sempron processor. I contacted tech support and they had no clue. Now, reading the forums and various other info found all over the web it turns out it only has 2 USB 2.0 ports and 2 USB 1.1 ports. I would consider this false advertising and selling under false pretenses on the part of Averatec or Wal-Mart. I am looking into possible legal action, for the charges stated above, if Averatec doesn't get the Service Pack 2 problem resolved soon. Anyone else want to join me in a class action suit?[ ]

CHARLES HULKEJR

 

1. WalMart.com advertises the notebook as a Mobile Athlon XP 2800+, not as a Sempron.

2. If you went to Averatec's website, you would see that they are aware of XP SP2 issues on the 5400 series:

http://www.averatec.com/customercare/testtable.htm

It says that they are currently working on a fix. Given the amount of work that went in to SP2, I'm not suprised that there were a few issues here and there.

3. WalMart.com is advertising the 5400 as having 4 Hi-Speed USB 2.0 ports. There's a very good chance that they didn't read the manual, and the webmaster didn't know. Have you tried contacting Averatec for a clarification before you sue them? Jeez.

 

why u trying to drive such a great company that offers u such good machine at low price, out of business? do you feel morally wrong?

Xin

 

In reguards to the usb 2.0 complaint, I insatlled xp pro over the home it came with and had a problem with the usb slots. I went to a website featured on usbman.com and downloaded their via usb 2.0 driver for xp and now are two 2.0, but all four of them are. I figured you may want to give this a try as well. Here is the link to the driver file.
ftp://ftp.aopen.com.tw/pub/driver/mb/via/usb2.0/2.2.5.exe
Good luck,
Matt the Rat

 

Sorry I just reviewed my post and realized that it may need some clarification. I have a 5400 series laptop and now all four usbs are 2.0. Also, I didn't have any problems with SP2, but like I said I installed XP Pro over the home it came with. Since I couldn't get their drivers from the bundled CD I got them all from their site except for the usb, which I found from the above mentioned link.
Hope this helps,
Matt[ ]

 

i have the same problem as you, i tried to install sp2 and then started to experience power problems. i also found out that my processor in my 5400 series is not an amd athlon xp-m2800+, its tell me i have an amd opteron(tm) processor dublin2800+. whats up with that, seems to me someone did some false avertising like you said. have you yet found the fix for sp2 problem
Jay

 

I got this great notebook on Ebay for $300, and so far as far as I can tell, it's a dream machine. The CPU IS NOT a Sempron, there was a small run of new die CPU's AMD came out with, faster transfer speeds from the cache, basicly the same layout as the Athlon 64-M class, but without the 64 bit capability and less L2 cache. Believe me, it's still an Athlon...in fact if you look at your drivers from the original install, it has the 64 bit driver from AMD. This got me to thinking I may be able to upgrade the CPU and memory, so I threw in an Athlon 64 754 pin 3200+ mobile 2Ghz w/1MB L2 cache (MUST be number ending with BIX5AR, otherwise the current is too high, must be 62 watts), and worked wonderfuly. I then added 2 sticks of DDR400 512MB, also worked great for added performance. I then added an 80GB Toshiba drive from my old 3200 series Averatec....more space now too. Once thing I was successfull on both chips was overclocking it using ClockGen and checking with CPUZ. On the original 2800+ and RAM I was able to overclock the FSB to 240 and stay stable, the 3200+ would only run stable at 225 with the DDR400. For those of you crunching numbers that's running 1.92Ghz on the 2800+ and 2.25Ghz on the 3200+. I did make an attempt at installing a Turion ML-40 with no success, BIOS must not be able to handle that chip and wattage. My next upgrade attempt will be a Athlon 64 3700+ with the Newark core and smaller architecture, I'm nervous to go to the 4000+ since the BIOS only shows support up to 2.5Ghz. As far as the trouble with SP2, simply upgrade to the newest BIOS update on Averatecs website, clears up a lot of problems. I have to say, I've never expected to be able to upgrade a laptop to this extent, much less overclock it (ClockGen doesn't work on the 3200 series chipset). I got the RAM second hand on Ebay for $50, had the hard drive already, and got the 3200+ CPU for $30 on Ebay.....heck of a deal all together. Just for you people who wonder what some benchmarks might be, I ran it on SIS Sandra 2007, and overclocked the 3200+ CPU to 2.25Ghz and DDR400 RAM to basicly DDR450, it came VERY close to my Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4Ghz desktop (which I downclocked for the comparison, usualy have it running around 2.7Ghz with DDR500 running at DDR466 since you can't adjust the HT multiplier on that board). No, it's not a Turion X2 laptop with dual hard drives and 128MB dedicated video card, but it's also not a $5,000 laptop. All-in-all, it's a very good laptop with loads of room to make faster without having to buy a whole new laptop. I'm impressed!

 

Nice work Scoobie .... you obviously know your way around the innards of a laptop.

 

Thanks, I just like playing around and seeing "how fast she'll go". I would have liked to run the 3700+, but still hard to find an affordable CPU on Ebay currently, just don't want to justify paying over $100 for a CPU that will drop in price in a few months. Hard enough to stomach $95 for the ML-40 that didn't work, hoped to get 4-5 hours out of the stock battery and still run 2.2Ghz. I did find a 3400+ with the Newark core for $40 (.090 micron vs. .130 micron for the Clawhammer, supposed to be the same as the SanDiego core on desktop CPU's), so once I get it, I'll post my results. Those Newarks should overclock nicely since the smaller architecture allows for cooler running (not to mention SSE3 support to help out with media ripping), I'm hoping to get the FSB back up to 240 stable for a machine running just over 2.6Ghz. I'll try the 3700+ still once I find an affordable model.

 

Well, the Newark core didn't work out either, looks like the 5400 will only work with 62 watt Clawhammer cores in the Athlon 64-M category, so if the model number doesn't end with BIX5AR, it won't even go into the BIOS. I've now got a 3400 Clawhammer on the way, which is the fastest CPU that will work in this laptop. On a side note, I've also got a 7200 rpm 100GB hard drive on it's way, which will run data twice as fast, for yet another significant bump in performance (the OEM drive runs aprox 21MBps whereas the Seagate 7200.1 runs around 45MBps). With those, I believe I will have maxed this laptop out for performance upgrades possible. I will also post once I get the 3400 clawhammer running and overclocked, I'll even include the Sandra graphs if it will let me. So for a quick overview, I've taken my beloved 5400 from a 1.6Ghz (12k L2 cache) CPU, and gone to 2.25Ghx (with 1MB L2 cache) for a HUGE bump in performance, upgraded from the original 512MB of DDR333 to 1GB of DDR400 and overclocked it to DDR450, and will be changing from a 4200 rpm hard drive to a 7200 rpm hard drive (100GB I might add) with more than twice the throughput. When it comes down to it, the final results should show around 30%-50% increased performance all over the board for relatively little cash output (not including the CPU's that didn't work).

 

scoobiewagon,
Did you get the 3400 put in? Does it work?
Also, what PLL did you use in ClockGen?
I've had a 5400 for about three years now and I love it but I want to upgrade it as much as possible and overclock it if possible.

Anyone else had any luck upgrading and or overclocking this computer?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I am also interested to know how far you took your upgrade beyond this. Have you experienced any problems?

 

I have upgraded the processor to the 3400 Mobile core,and used a numberof the Plls, although i cannot say that any ofthem were stable, I also had 3200 DDr 200 memory 2 gigs. I have not upgraded the hard drive yet,but I supposeit will scream after that.

 

I have an Averatec 5400 (Wal-Mart) , I liked it until SP2 came out. Made it a paperweight. Did the update BIOS - , lost original bios file. Would like to up grade it. Can the bios chip be replaced? Does anyone have a pic of where everything is on the motherboard? Any help will bring smiles and much thanks.

 

WHats wrong with the new bios?

 

Sorry guys, I haven't really looked at this thread in a while and didn't even know there were any more replies. I've found that the 3400+ BIX5R is the fastest CPU the BIOS can handle, and will overclock stable to 2.445Ghz. Anything faster even with the DDR400 is still stable without any hickups, but for some reason it drops the multiplier down, so the best performance is at 2.445Ghz thus getting the fastest CPU and RAM. The PLL that works is ICS 951412. The Seagate 7200.1 worked great as well, this thing overclocked matched my 4000+ desktop even overclocked to 2.7Ghz. I believe the Sanrda benchmarks were around 9,400 MFLOPS on Sandra Whetstone....which is outstanding for a single core CPU destop or laptop. This thing has been a dream, no problems at all in any way, no overheating, just the fan runs higher at full performance and is a little louder. The battery still lasts 3 hours on low performance and 2 hours at full blast. Actually, this laptop is up for sale on Ebay as I type with a day left on the clock. I've removed the RAM and put back in the 512MB of DDR333 and put back in the 80GB hard drive, but still a deal. I've since gone to an Acer 5050 and installed a TL-60 dual core Turion and 2Gb of PC6400 (even Acer, Tiger Direct, and Kingston don't know DDR800 is compatible), and a 160GB SATA HD....too bad there's no code to overclock this chipset like the 5400.

 

I forgot to mention a comparison. The Acer I have came with a Turion MK-38 2.2Ghz, and under Sandra Whetstone, the score was only 6,600....much slower than the 3400+. I'm guessing this is mainly due to the Turion only having half the L2 cache of the 3400+. Even the TL-60 2.0Ghz dual core I have now only comes in at 12,200. The only thing that really helps performance of the Turions is the faster dual channel capable memory controller. So, don't be too quick to move on to a Turion, you'll be dissapointed with the single cores, I would go dual core to see any real gains and go for the fastest memory. Unless you need Vista, I'd say stick with your 5400 for a while longer and go for the 3400+ BIX5R upgrade and DDR400 memory, or even just overclock the 2800+. Keep in mind the K10 CPU's are still new and untill they go 45 micron and quad core (or rumor has it they are developing a triple core on the cheap) for laptops, I'd wait it out a little longer with your K8.

 

Oh yeah....if you do the 3400+ upgrade, remember to clean the OEM thermal pad off and use a high quality thermal paste to keep overheating problems from happening....and clean the heatsink well as lots of debris gets caught in the fins.

 

Ok, I took the laptop off Ebay, but still available. I can let it go for $400 with the OEM 512MB of DDR333 or $450 with the 1GB of DDR400. I'm not letting go of the 100GB hard drive, but will keep the 80GB hard drive in it. I can't take any less, I'd rather keep it myself than sell it for under $400.

 

Scoobie,

What are you utilizing for overclocking clock generator,alone or with Amd Driver , Amd power monitor,Crystal Cpuid? How are you setting the the multipliers?Are you deleting powermonitor ad Amd Driver?Let me know I am locking up but I have Amd Drivers running with power monitor