Yes you need the copper shim as MooMIlk said. THis heat aspect has been explained many times on this page, so believe it’s the cure. Most people seem to opt for copper about 0.7mm thick.

@ goustafson,

It looks like the 3470 is not compatible with the 5902. Check also which machine the 3470 came from, or is designed for. Many different manufacturers cards are interchangable, e.g Fujitsu’s work in Acer, as do others.

However Toshiba’s don’t. (NB Toshiba cards are sometimes blue.) Also sometimes cards even if they are originally Acer vBIOS, just don’t work. This page has covered the best ideas for 5920 cards that work. Ebay has some tempting ATI HD3670 right now.

Your symptoms are right for a card which has an incompatible video BIOS. If the laptop boots but no disply, the card is most likely faulty. If not booting; video error, (vBIOS or fault).

@ azzhats,
Cheap GPU’s are hard to find, but you might like the HD3670 that are on ebay. At £70/ $110, they are not bad value for money at all.

@ everyone,
I wrote above:
U6b36ef wrote, on September 27th, 2011:

That I had read of incompatible cards causing problems. While that was correct, it was information from another user here on the page. However I have not heard of it often. I thought an incompatible video card would just prevent boot. Again however I would not try booting with an incorrect card in, too often, in case damage was caused, if that is possible.

I know I had a 9500M GS in a 5920 and it would not boot. While all common sense tells us the 9500M GS should be compatible, it does not work. All I and others get is, black screen, lights, fan, and DVD active.

No harm was done though.

U6b36ef.

I have Acer Aspire 5920g with 8600m gt 512mb. The 8600 stop working so i bought ATI HD 3650 and it worked in my laptop. Now i gave this card to my brother who has the same laptop and i bought HD 3470. My laptop doesnt recognise the card ( black screen when i boot my laptop). Can anyone tell me what happen? What do i have to do?

thanks in advance

As my 8600GT screwed,I bought a 3650 and put in into my 5920. The problem is the heat. I tried it in two different 5920 nb, nearly the same problem. If I play some 3D games. the card gets so hot that the notebook(s) crashes.
Both of them have the newest bios. Any ideas please?

For all those still looking for answers for questions like:
-gpu temp spiking; managed to resolve that by putting an aluminium sheet about 0.5, 0.6mm thick (stays in the mid 80 degrees celsius)

-is the 9650M GT really compatible with the acer 5920G; yes it is. It’s been stripped from an asus notebook. The real problem are the drivers which brings me to:

-what driver works; i’ve tried absolutely everything…first i tried installing the latest drivers – it says that it can’t find any compatible hardware…second i tried getting drivers from http://LaptopVideo2Go.com – they can be installed (after reading how to) but then came another problem: the screen freeze/blackness in the 1st minute after booting windows. Had to unninstal the drivers. Tried modifying the powermizer reg keys – didn’t work; found a powermizer off switch program – nope; In the end i tried using the last known stable driver downloaded from laptopvideo2go. That did the trick. After that you can find compatible physx, open cl, 3d vision drivers.

Good luck!

Phobya thermal pad Ultra 5W/mk 50x50x1mm for the gpu chipset.
What do you think?