Good Question?

Ok, so I am waiting for newegg to send me back an 8930 which doesn't have a faulty graphics card and a cinedash that actually works.

I've been thinking. I want to upgrade the internals on this baby, but I don't want to void the warranty. So, I was wondering that when Acer starts offering the mobile Montevina Quad Core CPUs in their 8930s and the directx 11 GPUs, couldn't I just send my laptop into Acer and have them install both the CPU and GPU which will come from them? I don't want to send the laptop and my aftermarket bought parts, but have them put the CPU and GPU that they have there at the factor into my notebook???

Would this work? If not, maybe I should call Acer up and this could be a good marketing idea for them. They could start a mobile upgrading division or something.

What do you all think?


edit: I do realize that by this time that it may not be the 8930 but like the 8940 or something, but the chipset "Intel 4 series PM45" probably won't change for awhile though, so I thought it'd be ok.


Thanks!

 

I don't think so. You can call ACER to verify it but I doubt they'll do the upgrades for you. And it's not worth it as a marketing idea too, ACER prefer to sell laptops instead of upgrade them, brings more profit.

About the warranty. I read somewhere around here that you won't void your warranty if you keep the original parts. When you need to send your laptop back to ACER you'll have to reassemble the laptop as it was when you bought it. You'll have to double-check that though.

 

Yea i seriously doubt they will i tried to get them to upgrade my 5920g cpu and gpu and they said its not possible only ram and hdd.
I think thats bs cuz i knew for a fact that i could upgrade my cpu at least.

 

I think you all are missing my point. I know that they are preconfigured systems. I am talking about after you buy them.

You buy an 8930 with a 9700M GT mxmIII GPU, but the 280M comes out in the 8930 5 months later. You send in your laptop to acer, pay them the cost of the GPU and installation, and then they send you back your laptop without the warranty being voided.

This would be excellent for Acer. This being because people know they could buy an Acer laptop, and then when new CPUs and GPUs come out and as long as they are the same "Socket" and "MXM" type, they will upgrade it for you without voiding the warranty.

Since the gaming market is hitting laptops hard right now, and there are more laptop workstations being sold, both the gamers and the graphics artists would know that as soon as the newer technology comes out, they won't have to buy another laptop or risk having their warranty voided by doing the upgrades themselves.

You watch; laptops are going to be the mainstream here in the next decade. The technology is getting so good that "overclocking" will be a thing of the past. People will want only laptops because of their portability, their ability to be hooked up to an external monitor (desktop replacement), and their future speed will make it dumb to get a big desktop.

 

Bro i wasnt expecting them to do it for free they just wont do it its there way of making you buying a new 1 asap anyways if you want to be able to upgrade it why not go with ocz or sager or similar?.Thats why they dont put that much effort into their updates either a couple updates every 6months or so but it has improved over the years a couple of years ago they didnt update anything you had to get everything from 3rd party.

 

forgot to mention thats the reson why i got my acer i read everywhere that the cpu and gpu ram and hdd were upgradeable.The thing is that you gota do it yourself and void the warranty cuz the company wont do it for you.

 

See, I think that is garbage. I believe Acer is number 2 in the world in the laptop markets. They are getting better, but there are a few things they could do to be hands-down the top dog and rule the market. I believe this is one of them. Think about it; it wouldn't take much money to do what I am saying. They could just open up a division specifically for upgrades. You send your laptop to that division, the upgrades are done, warranty is still intact, and all is grand.

Maybe I should e-mail Acer about this. Besides, customer input has, I'm sure, been a large part of success for many of the top companies regardless of their respective industry.


What I'm going to want to do in the future is put in a Montevina quad-core, another 7200rpm Seagate HDD and put them in RAID0 (Intel Matrix is installed on the computer), and upgrade the GPU to a directx 11 one when they come out (if it is MXM-III ---> I hope there will be some that are MXM-III).

This will bring my laptop up-to-date and be good for atleast another 3-4 years. Considering that parallel processing will be implemented into Windows 7 and the DirectX 11 GPUs (CUDA with Nvidia is pretty close).

 

Yea maybe in the future who knows when though.But when you contacted them did they even tell you wat you could upgrade?Cuz i had to send them a couple of emails even linkin them to some of the 5920g newer models with the better cpus and gpus and they still wouldnt admit that i could upgrade them.
But i see your point that would make them alot more popular and increase there sales.

EDIT. PS. dont you think your getting alil ahead with DX11?
and i think that the dx11 cards will be at least mxm3 or mxm2
dont know about mxm1 i doubt it.

 

Luv2Increase, I don't think it'll work as you expect. Heatsinks need to be built to take the dual dies of a quad-core CPU (there actually are two bumps), not to mention the extra heat.
As well, the 200 Series will likely debut on the new MXM 3.0 standard, which is completely incompatible with the current MXM slots. So probably no chance of an upgrade there.

I agree that Acer should stand behind their products and offer upgrades, but there's got to be a reason that no other major manufacturer offers that.

That being said, having the essential bits of a system accessible for consumers promotes the user-upgradeable factor of these systems. I've already swapped my CPU, and I intend on moving to an SSD and a GeForce 9600M GT GDDR3 MXM-II card before my warranty expires.

 

The 8930 uses MXM-III GPUs. I'll be good there. The PM45 board is compatible with the mobile quad-core montevina CPUs. There may be two bumps, but the total area is the same --> They are both Socket P Montevina chips ---> The T9400 that I have and the Core 2 Extreme QX9300 which is a quad-core. Both are 45nm as well. Both are the same architecture. The only new chips that I won't be able to use are the new mobile Core i7 chips which are supposed to debut next year in Q4.

I see nothing in the way in doing what I want to do. I won't have to worry about the BIOS because Acer will be having mobile quad-core dx11 computer by the end of next year for sure. Does anyone else want to chime in? I'm sure there is something I'm missing

 

I don't think you understood what I meant.
The MXM 3.0 standard revises all the sizes and form factors currently existing out there into two - MXM Type A and Type B. Both of which would be completely incompatible with current MXM slots.
MXM-III (form factor) isn't MXM 3.0 (standard).
If DX11 cards come out, they'll most likely be MXM Type A and B, not MXM-II or MXM-III.

That being said, it's not as if there's no cards to upgrade to. The lack of Acer BIOSes might put a crimp in your plans, but theoretically you could upgrade to an 8800M/9800M MXM-III card.

 

haha, yeah right.

The 8930 heatsink cannot handle any Quad-Cores right now and never will. In 7 months, Intel Calpella will almost be standard, leaving Montevina and Penryn in it's wake. They would require a whole new motherboard revision, with the elimination of FSB and whatnot.

So your laptop would really only be upgradable for another half-year. And, even then, only to a limited amount of parts. Dream on about a 280M. If the current Acer can't even handle a 9800M GTS, don't even think about that. And don't get me started about BIOS support.

Btw, a QX9300 will cost $1100+. A high end GPU will cost $600+. A new 320GB 7200rpm HDD will cost $150+. That would already cost as much as a new notebook.

 

Well, I guess I'll just have to settle with what I have now. I will keep this computer until Windows 7 comes out, DX11 is here, and the mobile core i7s are on the Acer laptops. I figure all of this will come into fruition by September or October of 09. The mobile i7s will come last. The Windows 7 and DX11 cards will come sooner.

I just hope that the 8940 or 8950 or whatever it will be will be just as affordable as this 8930 was --> $1600

I'll just give this computer to one of my relatives as a gift

 

Or resell it - powerful computers never really lose their value.