Acer Ferrari 3400 Review - Page 6

@Snorre
You are obviously quite familier with this PC. May I ask; are you a service tech or just and avid fan? I have done my homework and this seems like an awesome "everything" machine. With the stock installation of memory and hard drive, what limitations do you feel I might have? It seems to me that with the video memory being seperate from the system memory, this system should do quite well as it comes from the factory. Any commants on that? Thanks!

For at least one 3400 purchased in the U.S.A. in December...

The HD had one hidden partition and two user partitions of 37.7 GB and 37.8 GB formatted in FAT32. But conversion to NTFS took only a few mouse clicks and a few minutes.

The OS was XP Pro sp2 preinstalled.

There was no actual OS disk. Rather there were four CD's (labeled in Farrari red!) with image restore files and various applications mostly related to the DVD burner and touchpad and keyboard.

The links to the memory and how to upgrade it elsewhere in this thread give great answers to the memory question. I just accessed the under-keyboard memory because I needed to replace the keyboard and it was easy. (The keyboard was fine BTW but Acer apparently had a run of bad printing on the keycaps, so they FedExed a new keyboard under warranty.) Just remember that the so-called "middle cover" pries off from right to left given its tab locations.

Happy shopping!

I'm just a fan of this great laptop

It will do very well in its stock configuration, but for power users 512MB memory can be too little and the 4200RPM hard drive too slow. For guys like these I recommend upgrading to 1GB memory with two Corsair XMS3200 512MB SO-DIMM sticks and a Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 7200RPM 60GB hard drive.

is there veeeery much improvement since 3200, besides the processor speed. I have 3200 so is it any of consideration to buy 3300?

I'm considering a new laptop and now doubting between the Acer Travelmate 4601Wlmi (Centrino 1.6 dothan / 512mb / X600 64mb) and this Ferrari 3400. Will the Ferrari be a lot faster for gaming?

Yes, no doubt about it.

just got word from my brother that he can't order this laptop without VAT for me, so my only option left is the 4601WLMi which I ordered today (costs me about 1.250€). hope it's faster then my Travelmate 800LCIb though

Memory Upgrade: Thank you Snorre!

Just a big thanks to you Snorre for your guide. Just upgraded my memory to the 1GB (2xXMS 512) that you recommended. First surgery on Ferrari went well, much easier than I feared. Removing the keyboard sounded tricky, but it was just a bit of fiddling. Next surge is the new Hitachi 7200...after work is done.
Keep posting!

well? is there a much improvement from 3200 to 3400? I pla to sell my 3200 and get the new 3400 instead, since I can´t install xp SP2 anyways on my 3200 and the prize has really dropped on the Acer ferrari.

btw, does anyone know how come the prize has dropped so much?

Don't bother. iprovement is minimal. The only diffrence between the 3400 and 3200 is that the 3400 has the 3000+ AMD64 and can connect to a docking port. That's it.

If you want to upgrade then wait till April 18 when the new AMD64 Turion processors come out. Acer has already confirmed that they will support the new notebook chip. Mostlikely with the next generation Ferrari. Probably called the Ferrari 3600.

suddenly crashing often with BSODs

Hello Fellow Users,

I upgraded my Ferrari 3400 this week following Snorre's suggests--to 1GB RAM by adding 2 512 xms corsair 3200s and the 60GB Toshiba 7200 hard drive.

Well, I don't know what went wrong, but now I'm getting BSODs randomly and often. They never happened before.
The machine sees all the RAM and the drive is fast and works fine.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Matthew

BSOD diagnosis

well,it looks like at least one of the SO-DIMMs is flaky. I swapped out the hard drive and cranked up as many programs as I could get into memory and crashed the system. I put the new hard drive back in (7200)and swapped out one of the DIMMs (the easy one of course). And so far... no crash. I noticed the top half of the serial numbers on the DIMM were faded, maybe, it had been used and returned....I think I'll return both of the DIMMs and get a new pair.

cheers, Matthew

Snorre:

I am planning on purchasing a 3400 in the near future. From what I've read in this thread, I believe that the following memory should work in this lappy. Can you confirm this?

Infineon 1GB PC2700 - 64x8 -16 Chips 200pin SODIMM DDR Memory

1GB, CAS 2.5, DDR333, PC2700 SO-DIMM memory module. This 200-pin DIMM uses gold contact fingers and requires +2.5V. The specifications are as follows:
Non-ECC.
Un-buffered( Non-Registered ).
Non-Parity.
Low Density.

Thanks in advance for any info you are able to provide. Memory-up.com has these at 2x1GB for $251. If it should work, I believe that to be a great price.

Also, what would you think of upgrading to a Seagate 100GB 5400rpm drive instead of the 60GB 7200rpm HD? I would rather gain some performance, but now lose any capacity.

Hi,
Im Still Deciding to buy either The Acer Ferrari 3400 with 512 MB ram
or Asus W1SNA Spek: 1,8 Dothan,512 RAm,80G 4200 rpm,dvdrw,ATI RADEON 9600 64 MB.

The factors that i like about the ferrari is that it uses athlon XP64, so i think it gonna be "more" future proof than the asus's dothan right ??
but I like The Asus more in Designs, SXGA Wide screen, and the cool a;uminium casing.

the price is about the same between those 2, right here in my country.

I'll mainly use it for internet, light gaming (the sims, fifa, Nba live), office works (Word and Excel), light photo and video editing.

so which one is more suitable for me?
can any pros here give me some advice , thank you
and also does the "RED" of the ferrari look ugly , cause basically i;m not a fan of ferrari,
but the Specs and the price is quite tempting :P

thx

BSODs solved with new SO-DIMMS

Title says it all. Newegg sent new ones (pair of corsair 3200 xms 512s) and the machine is stable and snappy.

The memtest-86 on the ultimate boot cd http://www.ultimatebootcd.com is a nice tool.

Happy tweaking.

Now if the Turions will be compatible with the Ferrari, that will be great.

Thanks again to Snorre.

Well, I have just brought this notebook (well our company brought it for me), I must say I am not that impressed. I added 1GB of Ram to take the total to 1.25GB. Converted the partitions to NTFS, and I am just thinking of replacing the HDD with a 7200RPM when an 80GB model comes out. I think the HDD is a major bottleneck for this system, whenever it is slow to react or load something, you can be sure the HDD light is a constant green.

I would be interested to know how you had NFS Underground 2 running at full resolution with Full AA? What settings are you running? When I enable Full Screen AA within the game options, everything goes black!!! I have the latest drivers etc from the acer website.

Also, there is a power management problem, I think with the CPU driver. When on battery the power will randomly just die, sometimes even at 98% battery! If I boot in to the bios, safe mode or linux (live cd) and the battery runs fine until dead. I boot to safe mode, disable the CPU from device manager, then everything works ok in normal mode, except of course with no CPU throttle the battery goes pretty fast. I downloaded the latest driver from teh AMD site, installed it (removing the original first in safe mode), and it seemed ok, until somehow it keeps reverting to an older driver, at which point it all starts again!

Anyone had a similar problem?

hi.. i got my ferrari 3400 yesterday.. i'm a notebook newbie so i need some help..
at 1400*1050 resolution.. the default monitor gives 60 Hertz screen refresh rate.. is this normal ?

"there are 3 default monitors " sais windows xp at device manager.. why default monitor ? does it have any drivers ? if so pls let me know..

whats your opinion about the screen ? i think the colours are not live and general view seems dull.. i really didnt like this screen..

okay i just sold my compaq evo and was about to get a 3400 ....until the price went up by 100 quid ! ffs this is an old tech machine yes ? ie no SATA no PCIE etc etc....much as i like the real cool paint job i kinda wonder if there are better machines about (including acer) for the price ummmm 1279 quid at acer ?

whilst we are here ....if i were to buy the 3400 is it possible to slap a 1 GB stick in and leave the other 256 MB stick in under the k/b ? ....i did this on the compaq and it was fine .....also if i did this on a 3400 and it didnt like it could i just disable the 256 MB slot ?

thx all

if you don't mind more weigh/larget notebook, check out the Dell i9300 or XPS2. great laptops and supreme gaming performance

Windows XP 64bit

Hi. I bought a ferrari 3400 in February. The new version of windows is out and I wondered what you thought about putting it onto the ferrari as it is one of the few computers ready for 64bit OS. Any help/guidance would be cool.
Thanks
Andy