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Acer Ferrari 3200 review (just a few pics/couple benches) - Page 14

post #261 of 1272
7/3/04 at 2:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by greenlizzard
If you aren't planning to travel with it then go for the 1714smi, else go for the Ferrari.
thanks for the advice, I travel but then stay there for at least a couple of months. I like gaming, so I should go for the 1714smi ?
Tom's hardware review between the radeon mobility 9700 and the nvidia geforce fx go5700 shows that the radeon is much faster than the geforcefx.

Since the ferrari has this radeon, it's hard to choose... can't they put a radeon in the 1714smi ?
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post #262 of 1272
7/3/04 at 2:50pm
I would choose the ferrari, but that's just my choice.
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post #263 of 1272
7/3/04 at 2:57pm
since the graphics cards are made for two different mobos, no, not unless Acer decides to make the 17-whatever with a radeon. it does seem kind of dumb, but then again you could look at Acer's rationale with the ferrari (a 4200rpm hd in a computer named after a sports car? come on! ). just ask some of the Alienware A-51m owners what they think of their geforce5700's, since some of them got that on their comps.
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post #264 of 1272
7/3/04 at 3:31pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Okle
since the graphics cards are made for two different mobos, no, not unless Acer decides to make the 17-whatever with a radeon. it does seem kind of dumb, but then again you could look at Acer's rationale with the ferrari (a 4200rpm hd in a computer named after a sports car? come on! ). just ask some of the Alienware A-51m owners what they think of their geforce5700's, since some of them got that on their comps.
thanks for the advice on the A-51m owners, I've read some posts concerning the 5700go and they're all pretty happy about it. Also thanks for pointing out the slow 4200rpm hd the ferrari has which I didn't really notice before.

thanks for the advice folks, i'll go for the 1714smi !
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post #265 of 1272
7/3/04 at 3:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Okle
since the graphics cards are made for two different mobos, no, not unless Acer decides to make the 17-whatever with a radeon. it does seem kind of dumb, but then again you could look at Acer's rationale with the ferrari (a 4200rpm hd in a computer named after a sports car? come on! ). just ask some of the Alienware A-51m owners what they think of their geforce5700's, since some of them got that on their comps.
The Aspire 1710 series is a bit different than other notebooks there. The graphics is actually on a seperate graphics card, but it's proprietary and made by Acer for the notebook. All they would need to do, is design a new card based on another GPU and offer it for an upgrade/new model. However, I don't really see them doing that for a Mobility 9700, since the Go5700 is so close in performance.

Personally, I'm kind of hoping that the announced (but as yet no specs released) Aspire 1800 is an update of the 1700, huge notebook with a 17" desktop LCD, with PCI-Express, new upgradeable graphics (of couse), SATA desktop drives (74gb Raptor in a notebook?), desktop memory, and all the nifty features that go with those new chipsets.

Now there's a man's notebook! More power! (lots of grunting noises) Not one of those ultra-portable things with integrated graphics and a 4200 rpm hard drive.
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post #266 of 1272
7/3/04 at 4:29pm
lol that would be awesome! but only if you're the Term...i mean, Governator! yes that would be the best sort of notebook EVER, but it would weigh way the hell too much for anybody to reasonable carry with them, eh? now if they could make that kind of system ultraportable...now i'm drooling!
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post #267 of 1272
7/4/04 at 8:50am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Okle
a 4200rpm hd in a computer named after a sports car? come on!
I asked an Acer representative for the reason for this and he said it was because of better reliability of 4200RPM drives when compared to 5400RPM drives, and that their internal tests didn't show much performance improvement or at least not enough to justify the added price tag in their opinion.
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post #268 of 1272
7/4/04 at 10:31am
yup, a whole $50! *gasp!* what tests were THEY running?!!? obviously not ones where you stick your hand on top of the left palmrest because the toshiba 4200rpm drive gets pretty damn hot compared to the HGST 5k80 (5400rpm 80gb) or 7k60 (7200rpm 60gb), contrary to popular belief.
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post #269 of 1272
7/4/04 at 11:15am
hmm what crack are they smoking? an average users can defintely tell in a blind test whether 5400 and 7200 are significantly faster. Maybe they're running their 3seconds vs. 4 seconds to download theri 100kb website or something :P

Quote:
Originally Posted by snorre
I asked an Acer representative for the reason for this and he said it was because of better reliability of 4200RPM drives when compared to 5400RPM drives, and that their internal tests didn't show much performance improvement or at least not enough to justify the added price tag in their opinion.
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post #270 of 1272
7/4/04 at 11:58am
damn the cost-savers!
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post #271 of 1272
7/4/04 at 12:01pm
ender posted this link b4

http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20031031/index.html

notebook hd speed compared, 4200rpm, 5400rpm, 7200rpm
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post #272 of 1272
7/4/04 at 2:56pm

acer ferrari 3200 memory upgrade

Quote:
Originally Posted by shboyles
Yes it is 2x256 PC2700 DDR Memory modules...I put in 2x512 PC3200 modules. Didn't see a performance gain going from 2700 to 3200 though on the memory

-Scotty
Hey, I just got my Ferrari and want to upgrade it to 1GB, however, when I open the memory panel in the back, I only see 1 memory slot. Where's the other?
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post #273 of 1272
7/4/04 at 3:02pm
under the keyboard

u have to take out the faceplate, remove the keyboard, remove the heatshield sealing the ram area, then take out the old 256mb piece and stick in a new 512mb piece
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post #274 of 1272
7/4/04 at 3:11pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by rincewind
under the keyboard

u have to take out the faceplate, remove the keyboard, remove the heatshield sealing the ram area, then take out the old 256mb piece and stick in a new 512mb piece
remove the keyboard? how? the only screws I see are on the bottom of the notebook.
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post #275 of 1272
7/4/04 at 3:28pm
take off faceplate first

that strip
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post #276 of 1272
7/4/04 at 3:59pm
ahh got it, thanks, hehe, going to bump it to 2Gb now instead, the 60Gb 7200rpm is otw already.

Overall, I really like this notebook - I've had the Dell Inspiron XPS and absolutely hate it, it's a gargantuan monstrosity. The Alienware area51m is thicker than the Acer, close to the Dell which is part of the reason why I ruled it out too.

A couple of gripes:

1. No driver cds - only system recovery cds. The drivers on the website appear to be incorrect (especially video).
2. Windows XP Pro comes in FAT32 partitions (um, why?) - can easily convert to NTFS (512k clusters) but there's no reason why it shouldn't be NTFS 4k cluster by default anyways.
3. Separate dedicated partition (8-9 Gigs) just for ACERDATA (of which almost all of it is free space)
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post #277 of 1272
7/4/04 at 4:16pm
i never understood what the benefit was of NTFS. my dell came with FAT32. i never really got this... hehe.
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post #278 of 1272
7/4/04 at 4:59pm
About FAT32 vs NTFS

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=63

http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

XP is NTFS5
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post #279 of 1272
7/5/04 at 1:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by flush
ahh got it, thanks, hehe, going to bump it to 2Gb now instead, the 60Gb 7200rpm is otw already.

Overall, I really like this notebook - I've had the Dell Inspiron XPS and absolutely hate it, it's a gargantuan monstrosity. The Alienware area51m is thicker than the Acer, close to the Dell which is part of the reason why I ruled it out too.

A couple of gripes:

1. No driver cds - only system recovery cds. The drivers on the website appear to be incorrect (especially video).
2. Windows XP Pro comes in FAT32 partitions (um, why?) - can easily convert to NTFS (512k clusters) but there's no reason why it shouldn't be NTFS 4k cluster by default anyways.
3. Separate dedicated partition (8-9 Gigs) just for ACERDATA (of which almost all of it is free space)
The drivers are still accessible on the CD's, just use the explore function instead of running the CD.

You can delete the ACERDATA partition and make whatever partitions you want. It's not needed. What I did was use another copy of Windows to make the partitions then restored from the CD's. It doesn't change the partitions, they stay the way they were before the restore.
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post #280 of 1272
7/5/04 at 2:35am
Quote:
I asked an Acer representative for the reason for this and he said it was because of better reliability of 4200RPM drives when compared to 5400RPM drives, and that their internal tests didn't show much performance improvement or at least not enough to justify the added price tag in their opinion.
You know, I find that rather interesting as there is some truth to that. Also, if the number of platters are the same, then in theory an 80GB drive running at 4200 RPMs will perform faster than a 40GB drive running at 7200. The reason for this is in the math. While a 7200 over 4200 RPM drive yields 171% increase in performance alone; the data density of a 80GB drive to a 40GB should be 200%. Thus, the 80GB 4200RPM drive has a 17% advantage in performance over the 40GB 7200RPM drive. But again, that assuming the two drives have the same number of platters.

So with F3200, I get the added bonus of storage, speed, and durability.
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