Acer Aspire 5942G Owners Lounge

[BruBoo]

Some laptops have integrated graphics, usually means a pretty poor graphics part included in the chipset eg GMA4500 etc, or in some core iX CPU's.
May just be enough to play blu ray videos, forget 3D video games

Some laptops have discrete graphics which simply means a separate (discrete) chip is used. Typically the discrete chip is an ATI or nVIdea chip of reasonable to high power and thus the laptop is able to play some up to all current games according to spec.

Recently some laptop makers have put the discrete graphics chip and memory on a small plug in card called a MXM card or similar. This means that at a later stage if the GPU is to be replaced or upgraded you can just unplug it and re-plug another. Just like desktop PC Graphics cards the cards are not exactly cheap for the latest spec though

Some 5942's apparently have removable cards (says the service manual) but users who have looked inside theirs (not me) say they found the chip soldered onto the motherboard. . . a puzzle we will no doubt work out one day

Unless you plan to spend a large proportion of the laptops remaining value on an upgrade at some point there is no important difference between discrete and discrete MXM graphics.

HTH

[Just_Johnny]

thx, that was rly helpful, i hope i can get +100Mhz on both core and memory on the gpu, btw before i was thinking about the 5740g and now at the 5942g, couldn't find any gaming videos on the 5942g but i think it will be like the 5740g as they have the same specs (i5-430m, 4gb ram, HD5650), what will you say? are they the same or close in performance ? thx again.

[BruBoo]

I was also trying to decide between the 5740 and 5942.

My conclusions were
The 5942 seems to run a little cooler based on various reports etc
The 5942g adds eSATA, backlit keyboard, an express card slot and the more questionable cineboost (a picture 'kicker' but for purists it adds too many side effects (can be switched to low/off))
At the time I bought it only the 5942 did Blu-Ray and does it very well . .
I liked the black look of the 5942 compared to the greyer top of the 5740

Quite a cost difference but I wouldn't trade down even if I could


PS
You may already know this but I would just say that some retailers sell their own versions of ACER 5740 and 5942 where typically they have swapped the graphics card for a 4000 series, removed the bluetooth module and made the HDD smaller all to cut their cost price a little. It is therefore worth checking exactly which spec you are buying by looking for the entire reference number e.g. Acer Aspire 5942G-524G64BN (LX.PMT02.018) and cross checking the acer site. Stores that only state the processor, RAM etc may be selling any one of a number of specs!

[Just_Johnny]

yeah i like the look of the 5942g more, looks more "stylish" and "high-end", however, till now i was only looking at the processor, ram and video card (thats the most important thing for me), but from now on i will consider the other specs too, thx

[captnemo]

Yes, the black look of the 5942G looks nicer than the greyer top of the 5740.
And the eSATA also functions as a USB port, so there are actually 4 USB ports not 3 as advertised on many acer websites.
It also has a firewire port, which is also not advertised on many websites.

[captnemo]

Anyway, I can get +100 MHz from the GPU and memory.
In fact the 5650 is advertised as having a clock speed of 450-650 MHz. It only runs on 550 Mhz on the 5942G.

I tried to do increase +100 Mhz from the GPU and memory and get only + 0.1 in the Windows Experience Index from 6.8 to 6.9
But its not very stable, it hangs the system sometimes.

And anyway, if you do the unigine heaven benchmarks (DX 11 with Tesselation), you won't notice the difference (its slowwwww). But you get a really nice picture.
And overclocking it stops the power management of the GPU, it always runs on the overclocked frequency and doesn't vary as usual (100-550 Mhz).

So decided I put it back to the stock frequency.

[BruBoo]

For me the HD5650 at stock is a pretty good compromise between respectable 3D performance, heat and power consumption. It has been totally stable as supplied once I applied ATI mobility 10.3 driver instead of the initial Acer one.

Thanks Captnemo for saving me the time to do this experiment, I might try it as a bios hack or once there is a proper overdrive tweaker that allows the GPU to clock down in 2D but at present it seems not worth it.

[g47]

I am back and happy with my lapy.
As i have written in previous posts, i had trouble with the e-power button when making a fresh install of windows and some times with finding wlans.
My laptop has gone to service to be inspected, and also having my screen inspected for the well known problem of some diagonal lines.

The e-power button and the wlan porblem was fixed after a restoration to the factory state.
I had to wait a week for that because they did not have the restoration cd!!
The original acer service point in Greece did not have a restoration cd!!!
The emailed acer and told the problem and asked for the cd to be sent to them.
Acer replied with some links to download it, which took them 4 days to do so!!
Anyway, they did it eventualy.


Then they tried to fix the screen.
They left that problem last, just in case the problem was fixed with the restore.
The run some tests on the screen and they found it to be faulty.
They also told me that it is a hardware problem.
But their first move was not to change the screen itself, but the mainboard!!!
Which was not in stock and i had to wait even a month for the mainboard to come.
And i was sure that this move would not change anything.
So, i just asked for my laptop back, and everything is ok now.

[g47]

Some problems that are annoying and worth mentioning.
First of all i have a dead black pixel at the upper left corner of my screen.
I try with some programs to unstuck it but no luck until now.
Thank god is not in the middle of my screen.
But the weird thing is that it was not dead until today!!
That makes me nervous in case any more dead pixels appear.
Second is tat the space button makes a skweeck when pressed, like the plastic is not cut properly and it makes this noise.
Last one is that every 5 hours or so, there is a message with the logo of acer saying ''Please upgrade to the last version of flash player''.
I press that message, opens the i.e. and i begin to download the player.
After that the message appears again.
I am starting to get a little disappointed with my new laptop.

[g47]

Two more problems.
First there is a little ''tak'' every once in a while from the speakers.
It was not there before the recovery made by the service so, it is a software thing.
Reinstalled the video and audio drivers but nothing changed.
Second one is that while browsing, if i dont use the wheel of my mouse but the bar at the right of the screen to scroll up/down, i hear a little noise, like the hdd is working but much weaker noise.
This noise does not come from the speakers.
It does the same noise when i magnify a photo and i grab it and move it around.
Can somebody confirm that?

I can say that this laptop was not a good buy.