3820TG Owner's Lounge - Part Two

3820TG OWNER'S LOUNGE, Part II ...

Hendrickson's original thread has crossed the 1,000 page mark, contains more than 10,000 posts and has had more than 967,000 views. It seems that the volume of the thread has overwhelmed the search mode and there is a lot of information from the thread that is lost in its sheer size. I have been asked by Downloads to begin a new thread and provide links to the useful information in the first thread. To do that, I have started reviewing the original thread, a page-at-a-time and noting the items that I think would be useful to new owners. I'm about 25% through the process so far. This is a work in progress but, once it's done, if there is anything I've missed, you can PM your suggestion to me.

With that in mind, here goes ...

Bronsky

March, 2016 Update. Here is a link for a working update for Windows 10 that allows both the Integrated and Dedicated graphics to work.
http://leshcatlabs.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=999

My Unboxing Video:

The obvious place to start is with a link to the first page of Hendrickson's Original Owner's Lounge Thread. You'll find Hendrickson's mini-review and his benchmarks here.


OWNER'S LOUNGE - PART I

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ace...nge-info-benchmarks-tweaks-mods-upgrades.html


RELATED THREADS:

Bios Modification and Other Tweaks: http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/562576-acer-aspire-timelinex-3820tg-mods-tweaks-only.html

3820TGTray: http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/562583-3820tray-hardware-control-powerprofiles-cpumonitor.html

Backlit Keyboard Mod: http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/491169-acer-timelinex-3820tg-backlit-keyboard-mod.html

TimelineX Sandybridge Refresh: http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/553306-acer-timelinex-3830-4830-5830-t-g.html

North American Purchase Options: http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/501992-acer-3820tg-north-america-purchase-options.html

My Clean Install Guide: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6465732-post1612.html (and Converting Foreign Units)

Bankergolfer's Guide for Registering an Imported 3820TG: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ace...rks-tweaks-mods-upgrades-405.html#post6635476

BooQ Viper XS3 Case Review: http://forum.notebookreview.com/7003691-post1.html

Too456's driver update post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/7480048-post800.html

Lennong's 3G conversion compilation: http://forum.notebookreview.com/8132214-post2348.html

Zsero's fan profile link updated: http://www.mediafire.com/?2g70zq3yfa969y6

Zsero's OC GPU on startup .bat file http://forum.notebookreview.com/7478443-post799.html

USEFUL LINKS:

Acer's Official Global Driver Page: http://bit.ly/3820tg

Acer Service Manual 3820t/tg/tgz: http://support.acer.com/acerpanam/M...iceGuides/SG_Aspire_3820T_3820TG_04282010.pdf

AMD Catalyst Drivers (HD 5xxx): http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonmob_win7-64.aspx

Modded Hybrid Drivers (German Instructions - run file install.cmd as admin): http://www.acer-userforum.de/acer-t...ek-audio-treiber-hdmi-download-anleitung.html

Latest Realtek HD Audio Drivers: Realtek

Alps Touchpad Drivers: http://www.mediafire.com/?9xk8n36tp33evsz

Synaptics Scrybe Driver: http://www.uscrybe.com/

AMD Clock Tool (GPU Overclocking):
Download AMD GPU Clock Tool v0.9.26.0 For HD 5870 | techPowerUp

MSI Afterburner (GPU Overclocking): MSI AfterBurner download from Guru3D.com

Enabling GPU Overclocking in MSI Afterburner: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=338906

Set FSB (CPU Overclocking): SetFSB_HomePage

Fixing SetFSB Overclocking Game Problems: http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...must-read-setfsb-o-c-game-problems-fixed.html

OC'ing with more RAM and modding timings: http://forum.notebookreview.com/7404436-post628.html

W7 SP1 issue and Intel Driver: http://forum.notebookreview.com/7461201-post757.html

Registry fix for Alps touchpad/Firefox issue. http://forum.notebookreview.com/7297059-post267.html

USEFUL LINKS FROM FIRST THREAD:

Installing Stock (non-acer) AMD Catalyst Drivers: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6314728-post101.html

Running AMD Clocktool on Startup: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6432896-post1156.html

Video of 3820TG with 9 Cell: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6264930-post2753.html

ClockGen Location on 3820TG MB: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6332729-post311.html

Available Display Model #s: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6416721-post901.html

Bluetooth Cable Part #: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6435151-post1172.html

Motherboard Photo: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6455026-post1485.html

3820TG Compared to 5820TG: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6484843-post1895.html

Setting FSB on Start-up: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6506624-post2210.html

Incase 13" MBP sleeve: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6510080-post2269.html

Buying a 9 Cell Battery in the US: http://forum.notebookreview.com/7313568-post373.html

A Replacement KB for Bilingual KB:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110666263242

Kindan's Guide to Replacing the 3820TG's CPU w/pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kindan_online/

(More to come ... up to p. 300.)


Did you like this Post? Did you learn something from it? Then vote for it in the NBR Amazing Content Contest

 

nize work

here an other usefull link:

Model Content Page

latest alps driver from toshiba

 

Hello gentlemen,

It's the only decent forum were I can look for help for my dear loved Acer.

I'm looking to track what consume my battery so fast, I can marely get 3 hours form the 6 cell. I put everything in power saving, dimmed the LCD to 30%, disabled the ATI 5470... anyway the switching has never worked properly and I don't need it.

See below configuration:

System specs.
i5-450M not overclocked
13.3-inch display with a resolution of 1366×768 pixels,
Switchable ATi Radeon HD 5470 graphics (disabled, drivers uninstalled)
4GB of DDR3 RAM
500GB of hard drive (Changed with an Hitachi, less noisy and more power efficient)
Atheros Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n
Atheros Bluetooth 2.1
3 x USB 2.0 ports
Atheros 100/100/1000 Lan
Multi card reader
6 cell battery Panasonic reported at 6% wear
Windows 7 Home Premium 64

Software installed
Windows 7 SP1
Kaspersky Security suite 2011

Those almost 3 hours are withg power saving mode, browsing the internet only with WIFI on. I ran powercfg - energy and no errors and warnings, I ran also MS power optimizer wizard and again it seems that I have taken every single drop of my battery.

Is there drivers that may be updated?? The laptop is about 4 months old.

I noticed that there is 2 fans inside, the left one for the CPU and the other one a little bit smaller, at the top right I don't know. I noticed that the one on the right is always running. It is very quiet and the air coming out is warm. I'm womdering if it may drop my battery running hours.

When I first got the laptop, I was able to get 5 hours but it has degraded rapidly.

Thanks for any help.

Charles

 

The right fan is for the GPU. If you uninstall the drivers and disable it in device manager, the gpu will drain your battery since it's not shutdown properly.

If graphics switching didn't work in stock configuration, send it in for service. If switching didn't work after you did a clean install... you did something wrong. Be sure to use the VGA AMD/ATI driver from Acer's support page.

If you want to shut it down completely, read a couple of pages back in the first thread... and follow the BIOS mod instructions: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ace...rks-tweaks-mods-upgrades-999.html#post7214705

 

I installed the 3810 NON backlit keyboard I got off ebay for $10. The Bilingual one was impossible to get used to. thanks alot Quebec!

So anyway, I see all the Fn keys are the same except the F2 and F3 keys. But thats not a problem, the 3820 keyboard never had anything on the F2 key, so thats solved, and the F3 key on the old was for Wireless, the F3 key on the new keyboard has a pic of Bluetooth on it, so kinda means the same thing.

Anway, the glossy keys are a bit gros to the touch, but still better than what I had. I wish though I got the backlit for $5 more. Oh well.

 

As I mentioned in the last topic I have a small harddrive problem so it seems. At seemingly random moments the harddrive led lights up, you can hear the drive spinning and it keeps lit for 30 seconds or more during which my laptop freezes. It is really annoying the hell out of me. I tryed using resource monitor in windows but it isn't really always giving usefull information..

At the moment I think it might have something to do with:
-Firefox 4.0 (session restore)
-VLC
-Windows

Can anyone help me with this?

 

Tried installing the Toshiba ALPS driver, but it doesn't work for me. I can't use two fingers to scroll down and have to use the right side of the trackpad to scroll. Maybe I installed it wrong?

 

Now that there is a 3820TG keyboard, I recommend that one. I have this one in mine ATM. New Acer Aspire 3820T 3820TG 4820T 4820TG Keyboard - eBay (item 110660057437 end time Apr-09-11 15:55:01 PDT) It's not shinny at all. The keys have a matt finish.

@charlesjean - three hours sounds just about right for a discharging a battery when the unit is on the dedicated GPU. Although I haven't used it for switching yet, 3820TGTray looks like it will give you some control over the GPU. You sould be able to get back your 5 hours on the Intel IGPU.

Bronsky

 

Hi Porjornoh & Bronsky.

I did the BIOS trick and whooooo what a difference! Jumped from 3 hours fully charged to 8 hours... (estimated) ... but never saw this number before. So I should get a good 5-6 hours intensive web surf. Now the right fan is barely working and no more hot air coming out from the vent.

As far the graphic switch, it was working but very cumbersome. I'm working a lot on multi open session and does not want to switch when there are open apps on the session I'm not working on. Anyway the laptop use is for common task and no gaming at all.

If you have any other tricks to help me to even get more of my battery, please let me know.

Do you know if using the latest intel graphic driver, Atheros WIFI and Realtek, will help? All my drivers are from Acer web site and not necessarely the latest.



Thanks a lot guys!

Charles

 

I had something similar with my new laptop but it never froze. I could see the HDD spinning like hell and was also clicking a lot. It was noisy and was draining my battery. I cloned the HDD to an Hitachi one. Much more power efficent and silent. There is still too much disk activity to my taste but at least it's not noisy.

I suspect Windows 7 is the cause of that heavy HDD disk activity. I had a look to the ressource monitor and page file, log file, bla bla bla, along with the antivirus are causing quite a bit of disk trashing...

Regards,

Charles

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/560574-could-ssd-possbile-solution-broken-hdd.html#post7234538

 

Nice to have the new, clean thread!

When I'm running SIW, my HD6550 shows up as a HD5650, is it the same for everyone else?

Is this just a SIW bug?

 

I can't find any evidence of a failing hdd, diskcheckup gives an all oke. HDTune does too, atleast the errorscan does (the health subtab isn't working atm).

I have included some pictures here of the windows resource monitor on the moment of a crash:
http://i53.tinypic.com/wcful2.png
http://i52.tinypic.com/okzd07.png

 

Back in January when I got this laptop I followed the easy guide here

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6314728-post101.html

to update the 5650's driver to catalyst 10.12 with no problems.

Now having done a fresh install of Win7 on an SSD I tried the same technique with catalyst 11.2 and no luck (got a BSOD BAD_POOL_CALLER and then when I tried again "driver is not intended for this platform"). I then tried the technique with catalyst 10.12 and it worked perfectly just as it did in January.

I don't know if anyone else has had this issue but I just thought I would post my findings. Hopefully it's fixed again in 11.3

EDIT:
Actually with 10.12 I just tried to switch back to switchable mode for the first time and got a black screen. I guess I must have screwed something up when installing, I'll probably reinstall Win7 and try again and post results.

EDIT 2:
Reinstalled 7 and followed the guide again. When you first boot up in discrete mode I noticed the display was low-resolution so I allowed one more reboot just to be safe.

I can confirm everything is working properly including both discrete and switchable mode, and switching with the desktop context menu as well as the P-key on battery.

I'm not sure what my mistake was, but once I got the BSOD I'm assuming the driver was left in a half-installed state and neither usable nor removable (tried many times to uninstall with no luck). I think I either tried installing the latest catalyst driver while still in switchable mode or tried installing the latest catalyst driver before installing the acer/ati combined driver.

 

$52 for a keyboard... I'll use my cheap $10 keyboard lol >.<. As much as I hate it, I can't justify spending $52.

And I'm able to get around 5 to 6 hours on switchable graphics.

What BIOS trick? I'm still waiting for a forum member here to write a mini-guide on how to flash the BIOS. I do not wish to flash in Windows and flashing in DOS didn't work for me. Couldn't read the file or something.

Edit: Toshiba Alps driver isn't installing for me. UAC launches then nothing happens.

 

Not sure what you're looking at, but I see it for $30 shipped (except for Pittsburgh 6% tax).

 

hi, have been a fan of the timeline series with my 11inch 1810t, just bought a 3820TG with ati5470 so i can do some light gaming

my major concern is the inability to update the intel HD graphics driver so i can install win7 sp1, and more importantly not make windows live and other D2D applications crash. sure, i can avoid it by using discrete graphics all the time but i think that totally defeats the purpose of the timeline's long battery life

is there i way i can manually update BOTH graphics drivers with the ones directly from amd and intel, and still maintain a switchable graphics mode? thanks

 

Yeah I was going to say the same thing. I was thinking about canadian conversion, but even then it's cheaper/the same (yeah, take that greenback).

Did you install Acer's AMD Drivers? That should update both drivers for you? at least that's the impression I've been under.


Also, what are the advantages, if any, of doing the non-acer ATi drivers? Currently I just have the 5470 driver from acer's website. Is there an actual advantage to the non-acer method (separate drivers, bios switching, etc.)?

 

US Keyboard for Acer Aspire 3810 3810T 4810 4810T Black on eBay.ca (item 330525460288 end time 02-Feb-11 21:32:42 EST)

 

the acer's amd drivers contains both the ati and intel drivers together

personally, i do not require the newest and best drivers for the dedicated card, but the intel drivers - for certain versions at least - causes problems in windows 7 if it's run under switchable graphics mode. most noticably, the latest windows live applications (mail, messenger) and other d2d applications will fail or have issues. moreover, windows update wont allow you to download and install service pack 1 if you have the questionable intel drivers installed

this problem can be fixed if the newest intel drivers are installed, but we are at the mercy of acer for releasing a more up-to-date driver in order to fix it, because of the way the graphics drivers are packaged (the amd driver from acer also contains the intel drivers, but with the questionable versions unfortunately)

given this situation, i would rather be able to install non-acer drivers even for the future. even if amd/intel releases drivers what will fix critical issues such as this one, we still have to wait for acer to release it for your laptop

as an aside, i bought a lenovo ideapad y560 for my parents last year, also has switchable graphics, also cannot download and install windows 7 sp1. lenovo has not since released a driver package that will fix it (latest version is oct 2010). so if history repeats itself so to speak, i kinda dont want to wait for acer forever to update the driver package......if they ever choose to do so, that is

sorry for the long post

 

Contact Acer and write them a mail with the Bug report.

Just hit them again and again.

 

Good question. The answer is, it depends. Since I use my GPU for simulation, moddeling and basic video editing, I use 10.10e, a modded driver that supports parallel processing. I also have been playing with Firepro drivers on my HD 5650 that look promissing.

On the gaming front, depending upon the specific driver, the ATI revisions could out-perform the stock Acer drivers. It is really version dependent (it can go the other way too). The performance increase may not be worth the trade-off in stability.

Bronsky

 

I followed this guide to allow me to overclock the 5650 in MSI afterburner but it didn't work and I still have the stock 550MHz as the MAX setting. Sorry for not following this a million times in the first thread

Hey Bronsky, your gonna have to add configuration links to programs that require them. Or get idiots like me to write dummy guides after they successfully accomplish these little tasks. lol

I'm not gonna bother to get the tray until I have the required programs downloaded and working

 

I hope to eventually get there. Once I have all the links to the old thread completed, I'll try to organize them into different categories. I'm only up to page 300 of the old thread so far. man ... it's long. It's funny though, to read through a year of this thread. OMG!

Bronsky

 

It's amazing what your doing Bronsky! And thread 2 looks great so far. Very clean and easy to find what your looking for.

I pity you having to go through every page of the first thread. You "should" have a team but in reality if you did they might miss something you know is important. You're the best man for the job, and doing a great one thus far!

Now to get this 5650 OC'd in afterburner... I wanna see if I can get an extra frame or two from metro 2033

 

HOW TO: Enable UNOFFICIAL overclocking mode in MSI AfterBurner - Guru3D.com Forums

 

Ahhhhhh, thank you!

Most guides I followed just said to add the value 1, where as this guide set to add the text "I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it"

At first I thought that's a little silly... But it worked

Thanks inteks

 

Weird, all I had to do was set the unnofficial overclocking to 1 and it worked a charm.

 

Great work Bronsk, I switched my view to show 30 posts per page to make for easier viewing.

 

Hi everyone, especially Bronsky! Congrats on your effort for this thread(s).

I was at a local store today and looked over this little piece of (gold). I'm planning to buy one of these nice 3820TG in the next weeks. Just have a question about swapping the display panel of the 3820TG. You mentioned in this post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6416721-post901.html a possibility to use the panel from the 8372. Does anyone done that yet? Can't find another hint...

 

I also did the reg edit. Maybe that has an effect?

 

The reviews for the panel in the 8372 are not better than for the display in the 3820. The only important point is, that this is not a glare display.

 

That's exactly my point - well, the matte panel...

 

how about an IPS panel fitted inside this laptop?

 

That's because of different version of MSI Afterburner.

 

Hey guys!

I have some good news! I have figured out how to control CPU and GPU fans on 3820! I have tested it and it works great! It could be added to 3820Tray program and I am pretty sure there is a way to control it in Linux too!

I have also found a way to turn off some status LEDs, turn on/off WiFi and Bluetooth (maybe 3G too, but I don't have it, so I can't test it). It could be possible to set "unsupported" backlight levels (I haven't tested) and maybe some other sweet stuff!

Woohoo!

 

has anyone had any luck installing sp1 for winndows 7?

 

What BIOS trick exactly, to interfere directly in the temperature and in the fans?

Looking forward to see what you have!


Ps. Finally I could post here. I was not subscribed to this thread yet.

 

I guess what he means is disabling ATI GPU in hidden Intel section of BIOS.

 

Can you post the information please?

The status LEDs are manageable through the EC. Also the Wlan, 3G and Bluetooth.

 

Can anyone help me with this, I really do not know what to do. I can't even figure out whether it is a hard or software problem

 

Have you overclocked the laptop?

 

No, it is completely stock. Only a fresh windows install...

 

If you are able to RMA, do it.

It could be, that the electronic of the sata port is damaged and the hdd does a softreset at the 30 seconds.

 

Post has been moved to:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ace...inex-3820tg-mods-tweaks-only.html#post7260497

 

Thank you for the information.


[0x71] - The first bit controls the Wlan status.
[0x71] - The second bit controls the BT status.
[0x73] - The first bit controls the 3G status.

[0x51] - Controls the blue LED next to the P button
[0x0A] - The second bit controls the flash mode of the power LED

[0xA8] - TZS0 in CPUID Hardware Monitor
[0xA9] - TSZ1 in CPUID Hardware Monitor

The bits are counted 87654321.

 

Amazing! Thank you for extremely useful info. I will try to add Acer's fan control support for my application.
BTW, do you know addresses for read TZ temps and fans current RPM values?

 

[0xA8] TZS0 in CPUID Hardware Monitor
[0xA9] TSZ1 in CPUID Hardware Monitor

 

Nope. Nothing here. Short of installing it manually, no luck. I'm not going to do the manual install as others have here because its not recommended with Intel graphics controllers at this time.

I am hoping a release with the fix will come soon because I am getting crashing in Win 7 when I use IE 9 RC or sometimes play games on the ATI card.

 

i dont think fancontrol is needed, the 3820tg does a really good job with the fans!!
#

interessting is to controll switchable grafhics and wifi/bluetooth via profile to save power.
and to use the blue p led for backlit keyboard.
and switch a predefined profile wtih the p Key