Acer Aspire Revo R3600, £159.95 delivered to Ireland from Ebuyer

Vertakill

smccarrick wrote: »

In my case I simply don't have the time to spend playing with my hardware, as I used to (we've a young child and another on the way). I took the cheaters option- and replaced the wireless card with an Intel 5300..... (note- the 3610 ships with an Atheros card, not the Ralink one). The benefit of the Ralink one in the 3700- is it also has onboard bluetooth on the same chipset.

What speed are you getting from your wireless N on the 3700? (the reason I'm asking is the Atheros on the 3610, while nominally Wireless N, only broadcasts in the 2.2Ghz band, not the 5Ghz band- which is why the usermanual refers to the wireless as 'Draft N', I suppose).

Ahh well congrats.

Well, it was a complete pain in the as$ if I'm honest because I'm not completely au fait with everything that is Ubuntu. If I had the spare money and the hindsight, I'd probably have cheated too.. :P

I'm getting between 135 and 150mb/s now from both 3610 and 3700 and my router is on the 2.2ghz band.
I've another PC (1 wall and 10 feet away from the 3610) with a wireless dongle getting in the region of 175mb/s.

PS. I didn't realise this had bluetooth - interesting! Although, I imagine it's another complete disaster waiting in the midst..

peckerhead

Can I pop in with another few naïve questions for the experts here?

Have just got my R3610 delivered here in work and will hopefully get a chance to connect it to a monitor and do some tweaking here before I bring it home and strap it onto the back of the telly, away from grubby children's (and wife's :pac:) fingers. I'm also expecting an extra 2GB of RAM to arrive in the next day or two, and the media centre remote from HK whenever...

Before I bring it home I want to decrapify it, upgrade the RAM to 4GB and get 64-bit Windows 7 running, and install as many as possible of the necessary drivers/updates. So... is there any logical order I should do these things in? I was thinking:

(a) decrapify straight out of the box
(b) install extra RAM
(c) do a clean install of Win7. Does the backup partition on this contain both 32-bit and 64-bit setups of Home Premium?
[Noob giveaway: does a clean install of Win7 dispense with the need for (a) above?]
(d) then and only then, download any drivers, Windows updates, etc.

Anything else I should do? I'm not worried about the wireless end of things because fortunately this (and the telly) are within wired reach of the UPC router. I'm also gonna connect a 2TB USB/eSata combo external drive which will effectively become the media "mother ship", but am hoping also to stream from the other PCs and external HDDs around the home (all Win7 networked, some wirelessly, one via Homeplugs).

Thanks in advance, guys.

Voodu Child

peckerhead wrote: »

Can I pop in with another few naïve questions for the experts here?

Have just got my R3610 delivered here in work and will hopefully get a chance to connect it to a monitor and do some tweaking here before I bring it home and strap it onto the back of the telly, away from grubby children's (and wife's :pac:) fingers. I'm also expecting an extra 2GB of RAM to arrive in the next day or two, and the media centre remote from HK whenever...

Before I bring it home I want to decrapify it, upgrade the RAM to 4GB and get 64-bit Windows 7 running, and install as many as possible of the necessary drivers/updates. So... is there any logical order I should do these things in? I was thinking:

(a) decrapify straight out of the box
(b) install extra RAM
(c) do a clean install of Win7. Does the backup partition on this contain both 32-bit and 64-bit setups of Home Premium?
[Noob giveaway: does a clean install of Win7 dispense with the need for (a) above?]
(d) then and only then, download any drivers, Windows updates, etc.

Anything else I should do? I'm not worried about the wireless end of things because fortunately this (and the telly) are within wired reach of the UPC router. I'm also gonna connect a 2TB USB/eSata combo external drive which will effectively become the media "mother ship", but am hoping also to stream from the other PCs and external HDDs around the home (all Win7 networked, some wirelessly, one via Homeplugs).

Thanks in advance, guys.

Normally one of the first things I do is to make a system image of the C: drive (save it to external HDD or DVDs); reason being that the restore partition isn't of any use if the HDD fails or somehow becomes corrupted. You can do it in Win7 backup centre. Burn a system repair disc while you are at it, if you have access to a DVD drive.

You can't do a clean install with the restore partition. It will take you back to the factory install which is 64-bit and has all the preinstalled crap. The only way to do a truly clean install is with the actual Win7 discs, and if they are retail discs you'll need to do some tweaking to get it to validate with an OEM key.

You shouldn't install any extra ram until you've got the system up and running and are happy that it is working with no harware problems (because opening it up voids the warranty and might give you problems if you need to send it back).

peckerhead

Cheers Voodu Child.

I don't have a separate DVD drive; is it possible to make a system repair disc for the Revo on another PC, if I copy the system image there via an external hard drive, and store the .ISO for Armageddon scenarios?

As for the clean install, I could use a bootable USB containing another copy of Win7 Pro 64-bit (site licenced from work), no? Or do you reckon something like the PCDecrapifier would do a good enough job on the factory-installed Home Premium?

And cheers for the tip about holding off on the new RAM - I didn't realise a memory upgrade would void the warranty. That's a bit stinky, isn't it?

Voodu Child

peckerhead wrote: »

Cheers Voodu Child.

I don't have a separate DVD drive; is it possible to make a system repair disc for the Revo on another PC, if I copy the system image there via an external hard drive, and store the .ISO for Armageddon scenarios?

Yeah, you can make a sytem repair disk from any Win7 PC. It might have to be the right version (32-bit or 64-bit) though, not 100%. Any Win7 install disc has the same 'restore from system image' functionality also.

As for the clean install, I could use a bootable USB containing another copy of Win7 Pro 64-bit (site licenced from work), no?

Yeah, you would need to do a little tweaking but it'll work. I used my own Win7 retail discs to give my Revo a clean install, see earlier post.

Vertakill

Don't worry about the wireless peckerhead. My 3610 worked flawlessly in Win7, which it comes with, out of the box regarding wireless.

The 3700, which comes with Ubuntu, didn't however!

If you plan on going to 4GB of ram, definitely use Win7 x64. Win7 x32 won't see the full 4GB otherwise.

Also, I think there's only 2x slots for memory (I think because I'm too lazy to go downstairs and check that!). So you'd need 2x 2GB sticks, rather than 4x 1GB sticks.

I would just boot off the Win7 x64 USB and wipe the whole PC and make sure you use the full harddrive. And by that I mean, I think mine had 3 or 4 partitions. 1 for OS, 1 for Data, 1 for Recovery (I think) and 1 for some complete horsesh1t software that refused to uninstall until I removed the partition (Acer Arcade or something).

There's literally nothing of interest on the PC as standard so you won't miss out on much. Comes with a horrible amount of bloatware.

peckerhead

It sure does! :eek: Running PCDecrapifier on it as I speak...

Mine had just two (108GB) partitions, one of them with the OS and one empty, which I could probably merge into one using Disk Management. I'll see about leaving on the Win7 64-bit installation that came with it, if the decrapifier and Revo Uninstaller do a good cleanup job.

Voodu Child

Vertakill wrote: »

If you plan on going to 4GB of ram, definitely use Win7 x64. Win7 x32 won't see the full 4GB otherwise.

Unfortuantely you can't actually use the full 4GB on the Revo 3600 or 3610 anyway, even with a 64-bit OS. 768MB is immediately unusable, and then add on whatever you have allocated to your GPU.

Its a known hardware problem.

Vertakill

peckerhead wrote: »

It sure does! :eek: Running PCDecrapifier on it as I speak...

Mine had just two (108GB) partitions, one of them with the OS and one empty, which I could probably merge into one using Disk Management. I'll see about leaving on the Win7 64-bit installation that came with it, if the decrapifier and Revo Uninstaller do a good cleanup job.

There's actually a third, hidden, partition.
You won't see it from inside windows. You'll have to use the cmd prompt and find it. If you were to boot from your USB stick into the windows install, it would show up however.

The third partition has 1, if not 2, software installs on it. Running the uninstaller for Acer Arcade Deluxe caused my PC to hang. Quick google showed that other people had same issue and it was due to this third partition.

Voodu Child wrote: »

Unfortuantely you can't actually use the full 4GB on the Revo 3600 or 3610 anyway, even with a 64-bit OS. 768MB is immediately unusable, and then add on whatever you have allocated to your GPU.

Its a known hardware problem.

I don't think that's a hardware problem though as that kind of thing happens with a lot of PC's with integrated graphics/sound and so on. More like a hardware limitation!
I could be wrong though.

Voodu Child

Vertakill wrote: »

I don't think that's a hardware problem though as that kind of thing happens with a lot of PC's with integrated graphics/sound and so on. More like a hardware limitation!
I could be wrong though.

Im referring to a problem that is specific to the Revo 3600 and 3610. Its a known issue:
http://acer--uk.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3432/~/aspire-revo-r3600-or-r3610-recognizes-3gb-of-ram

Here's a normal 4GB system with Win7 x64:
http://i52.tinypic.com/2zywprl.jpg

Now go and put 4GB into a revo with Win7 x64 and post a screenshot showing the hardware reserved RAM. It'll be something like 768 + VRAM.

Quaderno

Just a few points, since I have my Revo3610 (and my new G2222HDL screen) up and running now.
I did the burning of the recovery discs using the VirtualCD10 trialware. Not much to talk about, just install it (it's free for 30 days), mount a virtual blank and "burn" the discs to an .iso file. Easy.

The Revo3610 comes with Win7 x64. The installed memory is in the form of one stick of 2GB rather than 2x1GB, precisely it is a Kingston module ACR256X64D2S800C6 (PC2-6400/400MHz). And this apparently is good memory, because even without opening the box I have it running now at 1.92GHz (160x12) in contrast to the standard 1.6GHz (133x12). I have run a series of short benchmarks using wprime (32M) a few hours ago and it gave me the follwing results:

133x12/1600MHz 67.721s
150x12/1800MHz 61.917s
155x12/1860MHz 58.341s
160x12/1920MHz 56.565s <- my clock rate of choice for the long term
163x12/1955MHz 55.365s

So it really works, but I didn't try to go any higher than 1.955GHz. At that rate the memory clocks at almost 490MHz (which is very good for the kind of memory that comes with the Revo), but I didn't want to push it above 500MHz and risk a bluescreen. So I settled at said 1920 MHz, a fair 20% above the original performance and with a good bit of safety margin remaining. The memory speed now goes up from 400MHz to 480MHz and the system seems to cope without any problem. I followed that guide and it really worked instantly. The type of board (at least mine) is "FMCP7A-ION-LE", you need that for the .ini-file. Funnily if I am running VLC now it also is 20% quicker, which I didn't expect. So if you want to watch a movie in realtime you have to set the speed to 0.83 or simply switch the overclocking off, because it really is fast enough for watching videos at 1.6GHz.
I am very happy so far. I didn't do a clean install by the way, just a thorough manual cleaning of the drive. I like my Revo

Vexorg

My 3610 which arrived last week appears to have win 7 x64 installed by acer, (its the 2gb ram 250gb hdd version) might be worth checking, would save you some time reinstalling.

Vertakill

Voodu Child wrote: »

Here's a normal 4GB system with Win7 x64:
http://i52.tinypic.com/2zywprl.jpg

Yeah I use 4GB in my PC here in Win7 x64.

Voodu Child wrote: »

Im referring to a problem that is specific to the Revo 3600 and 3610. Its a known issue:
http://acer--uk.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3432/~/aspire-revo-r3600-or-r3610-recognizes-3gb-of-ram

Now go and put 4GB into a revo with Win7 x64 and post a screenshot showing the hardware reserved RAM. It'll be something like 768 + VRAM.

You are obviously right in the -768mb of RAM point, but my last post was mainly about it not being a 'known issue', but more of a limitation.

But with all that being said, I wasn't aware of the exact amount the Revo would use before you mentioned it. I had expected/hoped it would be closer to 500mb'ish though..



Very nice results Quaderno!

The_Conductor

Voodu Child wrote: »

Im referring to a problem that is specific to the Revo 3600 and 3610. Its a known issue:
http://acer--uk.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3432/~/aspire-revo-r3600-or-r3610-recognizes-3gb-of-ram

They're lying through their little teeth with their answer.
Its not an issue with the Atom processor at all- its handled via the hidden options in the 'Bios' You can in fact get a hacked BIOS to install which remaps the memory hole, I think its SLIC 2.2, haven't had a chance to play with it (yet).

antomack

I'm considering getting a nettop and was wondering which of the following options would you recommend.

Want to use is for media playback on a 42" Full HD tv and would prefer Windows rather than Linux, mainly movies in pretty much all the usual formats, mkv, avi, vob, iso, mp4. Will be using it in conjunction with a number of external USB 2 and eSata drives. Want to be able to connect it through an AV receiver through HDMI and SPDIF. I like the fact that the EEE Box has a dvd drive built in and apparently includes an MCE remote. Internet and network are not a requirement at the moment as don't have broadband in the house.

Acer Revo 3610 for £264 delivered from ebuyer
Acer Revo 3700 for £294 delivered from ebuyer
Asus EEE Box EB1501P for £284 delivered from Amazon

The_Conductor

antomack wrote: »

I'm considering getting a nettop and was wondering which of the following options would you recommend.

Want to use is for media playback on a 42" Full HD tv and would prefer Windows rather than Linux, mainly movies in pretty much all the usual formats, mkv, avi, vob, iso, mp4. Will be using it in conjunction with a number of external USB 2 and eSata drives. Want to be able to connect it through an AV receiver through HDMI and SPDIF. I like the fact that the EEE Box has a dvd drive built in and apparently includes an MCE remote. Internet and network are not a requirement at the moment as don't have broadband in the house.

Acer Revo 3610 for £264 delivered from ebuyer
Acer Revo 3700 for £294 delivered from ebuyer
Asus EEE Box EB1501P for £284 delivered from Amazon

To be perfectly honest with you- unless you're doing something other than use it to watch movies, you're better off getting a Western Digital Media player (or similar). Its half the price, and designed specifically to play movies via the sort of setup you've just described......

BenEadir

Guy's,

At the risk of revealing my technical incompetence can one of you sketch out how I can use the Revo and attached 2TB movie Library to wirelessly stream content to other TV's around the house? I've read up a little on DLNA but it seems you have to buy DNLA certified kit and I don't think the Revo is "DNLA Certified" is it? Even if it is, what kit would I need at each TV point in order to receive the content streamed from the Revo?

Am I trying to do too much with the Revo?

Ben

vibe666

BenEadir wrote: »

Guy's,

At the risk of revealing my technical incompetence can one of you sketch out how I can use the Revo and attached 2TB movie Library to wirelessly stream content to other TV's around the house? I've read up a little on DLNA but it seems you have to buy DNLA certified kit and I don't think the Revo is "DNLA Certified" is it? Even if it is, what kit would I need at each TV point in order to receive the content streamed from the Revo?

Am I trying to do too much with the Revo?

Ben

windows can act as a DNLA host (so you can do it with the Revo or any windows PC) so you just need DNLA clients (or a DNLA enabled TV) to stream to.

there's a great list of clients HERE for you to have a poke around with and plenty of filters to get exactly the type of player you want.

all you need is a server (the revo), a delivery system (your wired or wireless LAN) and clients (maybe WDTV Live's or boxee boxes etc.).

if you're going really cheap and don't need to have HD to all the TV's), you might still find a few old (original, not 360) xboxes to stick XBMC media centre on. they're noisy tho, so you'd probably want to replace the case fan with a silent one, but you can pick up the old xboxes 2nd hand from game or gamestop (if they have any in) for €20 or less. the case fan is a standard 70mm PC fan. there's a long thread over in the gaming forum about xboxes and XBMC if you're interested.

BenEadir

Hi Vibe,

Thanks for the info.

I assume an xBox 360 attached to one of the 2 TV's I want to stream to is a good starting point??

Ben

vibe666

BenEadir wrote: »

Hi Vibe,

Thanks for the info.

I assume an xBox 360 attached to one of the 2 TV's I want to stream to is a good starting point??

Ben

not sure, i don't have a 360, i was talking about the really old black ones.

although they do say that you can use a 360 as a windows media centre extender and Win7 home premium & ultimate both have windows media centre built in so it should be easy enough.

a quick test would be to start up MCE on any win& PC and give it a go.

iu imagine there would be some kind of download for the 360 too to enable it as an MCE extender, but google will show you the way there i reckon.

if that works then you could probably get a few pre-owned 360's from game or gamestop for under 100 quid these days too if that was the way you wanted to go.

how many TV's are we talking about anyway?

you're probably going to get bogged down pretty quickly over wireless with more than a couple of streams going at the same time.

Vertakill

BenEadir wrote: »

At the risk of revealing my technical incompetence can one of you sketch out how I can use the Revo and attached 2TB movie Library to wirelessly stream content to other TV's around the house? I've read up a little on DLNA but it seems you have to buy DNLA certified kit and I don't think the Revo is "DNLA Certified" is it? Even if it is, what kit would I need at each TV point in order to receive the content streamed from the Revo?

I don't see a major issue here. I have my main PC with 2TB's of HDD space and it's hooked up, wired, to my router.

Then I've (just recently gotten) 2 Revos and 1 other HPTC in different rooms around the house that stream content wirelessly (mostly HD) from my main PC that I usually never turn off.

I don't see the need for any other 'kit' other than that?

Get your 2TB Movie Library and attach it to any PC in your house (preferably the one with the best connection to your network) and share it onto the network. Then use the other PC(s) in the house to just open it up and stream it.

RE the Xbox 360 - I've just switched from a 360 to this Revo because I hated the 360 as a media player.
While it's handy, in the fashion that it's a console that can double up as a media player, it gets really annoying having to download something on your PC and then convert it before you can watch it on the 360.

With the Revo, you can do the downloading and watching from it and not have to even move from your seat.

BenEadir

Cheers Vertakill, that's a big help.

Aldito

Quick question: Would I be able to run 2 monitors off the 3610, provided I have a VGA splitter? I'm talking extended desktop, not cloned monitors.

Thanks.

The_Conductor

Aldito wrote: »

Quick question: Would I be able to run 2 monitors off the 3610, provided I have a VGA splitter? I'm talking extended desktop, not cloned monitors.

Thanks.

No you wouldn't, the Revo doesn't have the capability- is the short and simple.
Ps- a VGA splitter would never work as you're proposing- it will simply clone the analogue signal, nothing more, nothing less.

j_lennon18

Aldito wrote: »

Quick question: Would I be able to run 2 monitors off the 3610, provided I have a VGA splitter? I'm talking extended desktop, not cloned monitors.

Thanks.

Iv never tried it but you could maybe use something like this.

Voodu Child

Aldito wrote: »

Quick question: Would I be able to run 2 monitors off the 3610, provided I have a VGA splitter? I'm talking extended desktop, not cloned monitors.

Thanks.

You could run one monitor via the HDMI out and the other via VGA.

The_Conductor

j_lennon18 wrote: »

Iv never tried it but you could maybe use something like this.

Voodu Child wrote: »

You could run one monitor via the HDMI out and the other via VGA.

Either solution would work- but would murder performance, keep in mind you don't exactly have oodles of processing power to spare- and you're running the second monitor over the USB bus, off the CPU, not the GPU..... or over the PCIE bus?

The Revo simply isn't designed for this sort of thing- if you've a good processor you can do this ok, but the best way of addressing this is via a dedicated solution built into the graphics card.

Aldito

Tyvm all of you guys, I really need multiple monitors so I guess I'm gonna have to spend a bit more.

Cheers

Vertakill

I had a VGA cable and a HDMI cable plugged in at the same time and it was able to display on both monitors at once if that's any use to you.

It wasn't my intentions to use that but I didn't have a spare HDMI cable the day that my Revo arrived, so I somewhat accidentally left the VGA cable plugged in and it outputted to 2 monitors.

The_Conductor

Vertakill wrote: »

I had a VGA cable and a HDMI cable plugged in at the same time and it was able to display on both monitors at once if that's any use to you.

It wasn't my intentions to use that but I didn't have a spare HDMI cable the day that my Revo arrived, so I somewhat accidentally left the VGA cable plugged in and it outputted to 2 monitors.

What he wants to do though- is an extended desktop on two monitors, not a simple output to two monitors. It can be done- and looks great- so long as you're not trying to do anything that uses the CPU other than very lightly. Its not designed to do this......