3820TG Owner's Lounge - Part Two

check my last post in the 3820tg tray thread see if that helps you.

 

I'm with the Intel stock drivers and ATI 11.2 (not modded) don't know if I'm on SP1 (properties of my Pc just says Windows 7 Premium, nothing about SP1)

How should I install the drivers of the first link? As usual? (uninstalling everything, installing stock drivers and then these?)

Thanks a lot to you both.

 

I tried MSI Afterburner. Editing the .cfg-file didn't help me out.

 

If you are running stock Intel drivers, you would not have SP1 installed as Windows Update will not offer you SP1 if it detects that you are running incompatible versions of the stock driver. Anyway, I think I posted instructions a little while back, reproduced here

ATi Display Drivers ( alternate link) and WatermarkRemover [TESTED] [Updated] - Updated 9/4/2011, includes ATi Display Drivers v8.831, CCC2 and Intel HD Graphics v8.15.10.2281. Extract the 7z file to C:\ and run install.cmd as Administrator. After installing, extract Watermark Remover anywhere and run the one appropriate for your system. This is to remove the watermark that you will notice at the lower right of your desktop the next time you restart.

Beta version: ATi Display Drivers and WatermarkRemover [TESTED]. Beta version, includes ATi Display Drivers v8.831, CCC2 and Intel HD Graphics v8.15.10.2321. Works fine, but brightness is set to lowest during and after install, a reboot fixes the problem.

Both updates compatible with Windows 7 SP1. You can install either of the drivers and Windows 7 SP1 update will appear in Windows Update. However it's still best to update Windows using the full installer, which can be found here.

 

on the Acer driver page there is the line:
"Need to know the hardware on your system to choose the right drivers?"
click on the "!" and you get a tool to give you the vendor

http://global-download.acer.com/FilesDownload/HWID/HWVendorDetection.exe

 

i just wanted to update this. people with high temps, read!

when having the laptop flat on the desk, in gta iv the gpu used to get an average 90c on 700/900.

now i just tried the same specs but with some space between desk and laptop - temp maxed 76c and was on average 70-75c!

didnt expect the difference to be so grand!

(i have 6550m)

 

i can't believe how goods this powerhouse is.

I got a 3d06 score of 10024 with gpu 865 core, 1070 memory. Thats with no oc to the cpu. No artifacts. temps got up to 90c after trying different settings for a few hours.

playing crysis 1 for 4 hours got the stock gpu up to 88c.

very impressed, the only thing i wonder is about the gpu fan. gpu-z always shows the fan only ever runs at 30% even when benchmarking. anyone else notice this ? i wonder if i could get the temps lower if the fan actually went past 30%.

 

The cpu-z value is wrong. The fan is controlled through the EC.
Have look at the following threads.

Control Software 3820TG

Discussion of the background

 

installed the tray, but i think the gpu fan is broken???

the 3820 tray shows the fan at -1, then when i change the values it does not change the fan speed at all, but it does with the cpu.

is there any way to turn both fans to full for a test ? i remember the clevos had a fn+f2 or something.

quite remarkable though - even with a faulty gpu fan i still only got 90c with a massive oc

 

Why do you even think your fan is faulty?
All HD5650s show 30% and this has nothing to do with reality.
If your fan wasn't working you wouldn't have a working notebook anymore- 5 minutes into any graphic test and you have a toast.

 

well when running any benchmark, the gpu fan noise does not increase at all, from idle temps to 90c ???

the cpu fan increases from idle to 82c

surely there should be a difference in gpu fan noise from idle to 90c???

does anyone else that uses the 3820 tray show a -1 on gpu fan ? when up around 80-90c ?
---------------------------

strange, i rebooted and ran furmark, up to 93c and no increase in fan noise.

i tried the 3820 tray again, and this time it worked and the fans kicked in at 100%.

so what are the standard settings ? when does the factory setting think it should kick in at 100% ?

unless there is something interfering with the standard setting i.e. hwmonitor, gpu-z or something ?

does anyone else ever notice their gpu fans kicking in at a certain temp ? at factory settings ?

 

<how can you overclock to 865 on core MsiafterBurner only let me to 780 max !

AnyWay i can adjust the max core in msi?

Now Im Running 780gpu and 1020 Memory ! Altough i thin my Gpu can do Easily over 800..

So anyway i can change max settings in Msi?

 

I want to buy the 3820 but not sure how much the 3830 will be ? Anyone knows? If the new model is not much different I will buy the newer model instead.

 

strange, GPU-Z (0.4.9) works fine with me. I even used it to draw a graph between my GPU temperature and fan speed (%). i didnt really verify if GPU-z is accurate, but i do feel hot air coming out as the temp increasing...

 

I have a few questions for long time 3820TG owners:

Has your COA faded? I know lot's of the newer COAs fade because microsoft uses crappy paper instead of laminated stickers now. I might tape over mine and cut around with an exacto knife

Has your palmrest or trackpad faded at all? Tons of old Acers had terrible paint on the trackpad that would rub off.

 

ThrottleStop lets you raise the turbo TDP limit so the CPU is allowed to use the max multiplier (22x for the i5-480m) a lot more often for a boost in CPU performance. If I remember well the value I use is 60 (stock = 35).
In charge it gives you a constant turbo boost. I can't reach more than 160Mhz with my RAM, but 22x160 = 3520Mhz (on 2 cores/4 Threads) and max temp 90°C is good for me.

With ThrottleStop you can also limit the max multiplier and deactivate turbo boost and hyperthreading, so you can test the max frequency of your ram by limiting the multiplier.

 

Will enabling EFI boot on these X820TG notebooks (with modified BIOS) allow faster boot times? As I've understood it, one of EFI's features is faster cold boots but since the X820TG series also have BIOS it will first load BIOS and then hand off to EFI which would mean the boot times would remain the same. Did I get it right or are there any other benefits in enabling EFI boot besides the possibility to boot from >2.2 TB drives?

 

Hello. I have a 3820TG and I'm thinking about buying a SSD, does the computer have SATA III? I'm wondering since I'm curious if it's possible to put an OCZ Vertex 3 in it?

 

Possible, but the notebook has only SATAII.

Edit: Please read the benchmark of a Vertex3 on a SATAII port.

 

Thx. It seems to do pretty well on SATA II as well, although not as well on SATA III of course. The question is if it's wort it's money if you can't use all it's power.

 

The problem of the vertex 2 is, that it need a long time for garbage collection and trim to recover to full speed if you have pushed the driver over their limits.

The Vertex3 should be faster at the recovery time to full speed.

The important part is your workload on the SSD and this is the point, if it wort the money.

For a simple Office Usage I would take the Vertex2 again.

 

COA = no fade.

Palmrest & trackpad = no fade.

7 months continuous use in business setting.

Bronsky

 

msi is terrible on my machine crashes at almost every setting.

amd gpu clock tool is much better. same settings at msi, yet no crashes, artifacts etc - you can also go higher than max msi setting.

cowithgun - i'll download that version and try it.

the problem with my fan is it seems to only go up to 50%-60% (no matter how hot it gets - i didn't want to risk going higher than 96c) , but with 3820tray, i can get the fan up to 100% at any temp.

for fan noise 50-60% is almost silent, but temps get to 96c+
when at 100%, its very noisy as you would expect, but temps stay at 80c in furmark.

i hate fan noise, but when gaming i think its good to have the option to turn the fans on full, and think they should automatically hit 100% when the temps reach 90c+.

 

It seems that 80% of the Posts in this Thread now target overclocking and Temperature issues, may i suggest that bronsky creates a overclockers Thread?

im Not that often in this forum, and he would be a great first post maintainer imo...

anyway, im getting my hands on some of these sometime soon:
Coollaboratory Liquid MetalPad - die Innovation in der Kühlung von High-End Systemen

pretty interesting, they melt at 58°C (burn-in installation) and make a full metal contact, like its soldered to the die (but removable), they had this liquid metal paste which wasnt user friendly caus of high shortage probability when used wrong. but these pads are really tempting me.

at first i only thought of my desktop but now im taunted to void my 3820tg`s warranty once and for all...

Anyone tried these Pads already on the 3820tg or a notebook?

 

May I suggest not to do this. There are already quite a few threads on 3820TG covering everything from where to buy it to how to tweak the BIOS.

If you end up starting a separate thread for each and every activity- what's the point of having an owner's lounge at all?

 

Full ack. There enough threads for the 3820TG which deals with different themas and the overclocking part seems to be done for the GPU and CPU.

Only a few new customer are asking for the apps and they will ever end in this thread, because the most will search for "3820" and fetch the first bigger thread to ask a question.

 

any chance to have 1.1 volt on 5650 ?

 

Hi everyone,

I'm looking into purchasing a 3820tg b.c its far more affordable for similar performance than anything else around. However, I wanted to find out exactly how much of a performance hit I am taking by not going with sandybridge processors:

I wanted to see if anyone would be able to compare the following two setups for me in terms of real life performance (encoding videos, multitasking, other processor intensive tasks), including the possibility for overclocking in either (though I seem to recall that SB laptops cannot be overclocked?). Also, how would they compare in terms of gaming performance?

Setup A:
3820tg .
Intel Core i5-480M 2.66GHz
AMD Radeon HD 6550 1GB,

Setup B:
Another laptop
Intel® Core™ i5-2410M processor (2.30GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 2.90GHz
AMD Radeon™ HD 6630M (1GB VRAM) hybrid graphics with Intel® Wireless Display technology

Thanks for your help

 

The processor is faster but the bottleneck will be the video card in nearly all games. So the performance of both those laptops when gaming will probably be the same. The sony has crappy cooling though and I'm not a fan of the way Sony engineers their chassis. Every time I see an old sony it is literally coming apart in some way.

 

So 6550 > 6630M?

And how much faster is the processor? How would they compare in terms of processor intensive (but non-gaming) tasks?

Thanks

 

Google for benchmarks

 

In reality they are basically the same card with different clock speeds. ATI just has a card and they clock it up and give it a new name. The 6550M in the 3820TG probably overclocks much higher than the 6630M can in the Sony due to the better thermal design. At stock the 6630M might be up to 5% faster.

The Vaio is way more than the 3820 and it is totally not worth it to me. I'd rather spend the extra on a nice bag, SSD, carrying case, and RAM, possibly a 3 year squaretrade warranty.

 

\

Thanks, thats what I needed to know. Based on the benchmarks at notebookcheck, the processor is about 10-15 percent better on the sony. $350.00 CAD more for a somewhat better processor, an effectively similar GPU, and a somewhat better (but not at all great) screen is def not worth it for me.

Will be picking up my 3820tg tomorrow.

Thanks

 

Likewise. Albeit not as much use as bronsky, I'm sure, 7 months of daily use and no fade. I think it's due to the material they made the palm rest out of, it's not a smooth material like other brands.

--

Sorry, my SSD questions. Does anybody know if the 320 series is worth the extra cash over the x25-m? Exams are finishing and I'm looking to do the upgrade in the next few weeks.

Cheers.

 

From what I've seen the 320 was actually cheaper on newegg. It was on sale this weekend for pretty cheap with coupons but I think it expired. I got myself a Samsung 470 128GB for $200.

 

Yeah I've seen it go both ways as well. Shopping for SSD's just confuses me though lol. I'm looking at an Intel 510 that is $289 and an Intel 320 for $299 (on sale from $419). To me the 510 is twice as fast, yet the 320 is $130 (without sale) more than the 510.

Is anybody able to clarify these things for me? Or point me in the direction of what I can google to learn more about how to distinguish these puppies?

 

Dude, are you seriously asking why 160GB is more expensive than 120GB? More storage means more money. SATA-III for Intel 510 is not for every laptop, so that point is moot.

 

Ohhh, more storage means more money! It all makes sense now.

But seriously..c'mon, at least give me the benefit of the doubt - I was looking at the 160gb model for both, guess I must have navigated away from it and it slipped my mind when I was posting this. Didn't realize I has ended up looking at two different capacities.
Guessing the 510 is off my list then. Thinking I'll be picking up a 320 sometime.

 

Just wondering if anyone can provide advice on which Canadian website to buy the 3820TG from and have it shipped to Colorado?

I contacted NCIX but they've been a bit useless, redirecting me to ask NCIXUS who don't seem to list the same stock on their website

 

Got mine from ncix, no problems

 

I shyed away from NCIX because ordering through their site because they require US purchasers to use paypal, which adds an additional 3% on top of the 3% charged by visa/mc.

Having no good options, including eBay, I took a risk and ordered my 3820tg from Lu Computers. I'll admit, I was kind of nervous because there were a few less-than-stellar reviews in the NA Purchase thread. I can't really speak to the customer support post-purchase, but their ordering guy (Eric) was helpful in placing my order and getting it shipped out to me quick. I ordered the 3820tg Wednesday morning with standard shipping and got the computer Friday(shipped to Upstate NY). Everything arrived okay - no complaints.

TL;DR - Lu Computer was fine for ordering and getting the 3820tg.

Just my $0.02.

 

Hi all,

I come back to CPU OC (sorry no OCers!). I saw its effectiveness in 3D gaming where CPU is the botteleneck.
In Arma 2 (High details / GPU OC), I jumped from 15fps (stock CPU) to 25fps (FSB 160Mhz + ThrottleStop).

 

No! 6630M has 480 SP running at 485MHz, while 6550M has 400 SP running at 600MHz. I would like to think that 6630M should have better OC potential.

 

I think he meant in terms of practical purposes, as the Acer has a solid cooling system whereas sony's track record is not the best, and in the case of the SB, there may be some issues due to the hinge blocking outgoing airflow.

Correct me if i'm wrong though!

 

I just had a go at Throttlestop and played a bit with it. With 50w TDP a got a much better overclock. Last time I tested I got BSOD at 3.4GHz, now I got 3.62GHz and did run Prime95 for a few minutes before temps got out of hand (90C) and had to stop it. I need to replace the TIM and do some work on the fan profiles, this is fun!

 

Been using mine from December 20th or so until now, April 19th. So 4 months.

COA mild fading, still very legible. Activation codes copied to the recovery DVDs via sharpie.

Trackpad: No wear.
Track pad buttons: very mild glossiness
Palmrest: raised edge on the right hand side in front, very thin line of black is showing through on the very top edge.
keyboard: space bar has never been sensitive on the very front edge, have to hit it square on in the middle, which I do anyway. Enter key does not work if I hit it on the far left side, but that just started. I have a spare keyboard back home, may try it out. If the average life of a keyboard for me is 4 months, then it's 2 to 3 years for most users. I type a lot. I averaged about 9 to 12 months on two thinkpads and on an eMachines.

 

Try hitting the keys pretty hard all around the edges. I've had some of my keys briefly stick, it just takes a few firm (and I mean firm) strikes and it's got it's bounce back. I'm not sure if it gets stuck, or something gets lodged under. I believe it's the former, but nonetheless they get their spring back.

 

Nah, it's not that. If you put your finger on the very front edge of the space bar and press down, it goes all the way down, but the key angles forward and down, and no space. Nothing under the key. If I hit it just a little bit back from the front edge it works.

 

yes, but even after that 3 % i still get charge less than at lu computer. I live in us too. Lu charges 34 for shipping. But why buy the 3820 now when you can get the 3830 for about the same price?(not sure how much it costs, but even 200-300 more is not bad?) with better specs?

 

It has been discussed a lot and it depends how you define better specs. I'm pretty sure the 3820 will beat the 3830 once both has been maxed out in terms of performance, ie overclocked. The design + the more power efficient ATI card will produce better speed while still not generating as much heat and noise, thats my unqualified guess anyway. The CPU on the 3820 will use quite a lot more energy when overclocked, but that wont matter much because not many will use all the muscles while on battery. I'm waiting for the day when someone is doing a side by side comparison of them both.