3820TG Owner's Lounge - Part Two

Does anybody who uses those German hybrid drivers ever get weird behavior when trying to launch CCC? I'm not sure what ends up causing it, but my CCC has failed to launch a couple times, requiring a reboot for it to return to normal.

 

Anyone know where to get a replacement set of speakers for this laptop?

 

Hi guys,

I own a 3820TG-3022. I reinstalled windows with a new hard disk. I am having trouble with my battery life. I barely get 3hours now. I installed Batterybar and my consumption is around 16W. I know most of you get it under 10 and I'm pretty sure it was less for me too, before.

Is there anything I can do? Could it be that the new disk uses more juice?

 

Disable WiFi and you can halve your consumption. Use Ethernet if you really need battery life I suppose.

 

So I got my samsung 470 120GB ssd and it's great but now I have a leftover 500GB HD. I guess I'll sell it for $40. Is there any good reason to keep it like for warranty or anything?

oh yea also if that lenovo X1 comes out with an IPS screen, we could maybe buy the LCD from asia and put it in our 3820TGs. It is 13.3" 1366x768 according to leaked specs.

 

You might want to keep it as an external hard drive. You'll realise sooner or later that 120GB isn't enough

 

Yes, I second that. I will buy me a 120GB SSD as well, and with a cheap case for the WD 500GB disk I get both storage and speed. Keep it.

 

Nah I doubt it. I don't store any movies or mp3s on my computers anymore because I just download/stream them from the internet when i want them.

The only thing that will take up space is games and programs and 120GB is a lot of games.

 

about my ram doubt:
1333 cl7 ram will works at 1066 cl5 on our note, if nothing goes wrong.

about cpu's upgrade, we spoke about that many time ago, for gaming, which is the best processor i should put in???
i'm very undecided between an i5 580 and a i7 640...
i know that Bronsky and Baretsu have made that upgrade, may you help me one more time with your exprerience and your results??
thank you very much!!

 

Depending on the kind of programs or games you have, 120GB is still quite little. It's better to be safe than sorry

 

For gaming the i7-640m might be better, but i would never buy it. The prices are too high, for this amount of money you can also buy an SB Quad CPU: i5-580m 220,- i7-640m 290,- i7-2720qm 320,- in Europe.

The 5650m will limit earlier than the cpu in my experience, except for something like starcraft which is really cpu demanding.

 

Since an OC'd CPU does not increase frames in 3D games, you want the most powerful CPU you can get. That is the I7-640m. The I5-580m is nearly as powerful and, for non-gaming purposes, will OC higher than the I7. It also draws less power. But, if gaming is your criteria, IMO, it's the I7.

Bronsky

 

I am having a hard time to accept that an OC'd CPU wont give more frames. As a matter of fact the general opinion is that it's quite the opposite.

 

I don't 3D game on my Acer. A number of fairly reputable users of the 3820TG reported a net loss of frames when running OC'd in a 3D game. There are videos demonstrating that. If that is not the case, I would clearly go with the OC'd I5.

I know that you have been playing around with throttle stop and an alternative to setfsb on the tweaks and tray threads but I haven't been paying a lot of attention to them. I just use a simple SetFSB OC and Firepro drivers on my HD 5650. Is there no longer an issue?

Bronsky

 

Well, I did actually notice an increased 3Dmark 06 score when upping the CPU clocks, which is the norm in any normal setting. I can however imagine that others have experienced stuttering or similar that have had an impact on performance. This stuttering or such can possibly be related to beeing borderline of an stable OC or heat limit (intermittent throttling). In any case I would be extremely suprised if anyone could point out a non-existent raise in either frame or 3Dmark 06 score when OC from 2.4GHz -> 2.8GHz for example. The reason I give 3Dmark 06 as an benchmark is that it is well known for being heavily taxing on the CPU. As for the games out there, there are those that do use the CPU heavily, and those that don't. This will obviously have an impact on the OC benefits.

Btw, did you get any improvments with the Firepro drivers, in any benchmarks? Do you have a link or tutorial, sounds interesting!

 

thank you very much guys!!!
the 640m i wanna buy is a bargain (low price oem QS version, tested) so the bucks are not a problem...
i hope the procedure upgrading the cpu on our note is not so difficult (i've took a look the guide in pdf posted in thread, not very hard but not very easy!!)...
if i remember well, Bronsky bought an i5 580, isn't it??
was for OCing?? or for 3mb cache instead the 4mb of the i7??
lesss cache is better for ocing than gaming??
tested with my hand: OCing the cpu degrades performance in 3d gaming
(tried with crysis), helpful just for 3d mark!!!
so, if i'm not in wrong, upgrading from i5 480 to i7 640 (default) performance in 3d gaming will increase, right???

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6815390-post6472.html

ATI FireGL/FireProSoftmod - Discussion Thread for new members - Page 15 - Guru3D.com Forums (post # 367)

ATI FireGL/FireProSoftmod - Discussion Thread for new members - Guru3D.com Forums

I haven't run any benchmarks. This should get you started. When you perfect them, let me know.

I use a particular MilSpec proprietary software to DL, Edit and process aerial images for presentation. My current set-up seems to be the best for heat and stress on the GPU. I have a bunch of compatability issues with different platforms but for my limited purposes, they are okay.

@fabry - I have an OEM I5-540M. Love it. Plenty powerful for me. Hendrickson had the QS I5-580m and could run stable OC'd a full .1 ghz faster than mine. Although I can still run WPrime 32 at 3.7 ghz with no errors, my most efficient OC setting is 3.66 ghz. I can run at that speed all day long and it doesn't even seem to affect temps that much.

As far as a performance increase, depends on the game. A CPU intensive game, you'll pick up a few frames. I would think you could see a difference in a game like Battlefied BC2. However, the I5-480M is plenty fast on its own. For most games, I don't know how mich difference you'll feel.

The only game I've ever played on my 3820TG was Medal of Honor. With my Acer hooked up to my LG 24" 1080p and Sidewinder KB, the performance was not all that much slower than my I7-930/HD 5870 desktop. The Acer seemed able to keep up with the 75 hz refresh rate of the display at full HD resolution. This little machine is nothing short of incredible.

Bronsky

 

I've experienced this as well, but not really a big problem for me, as it happens very rare

 

You guys got me thinking. I went looking to see if anybody else was having this issue. I wonder if this is the problem and throttlestop is the fix. http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...must-read-setfsb-o-c-game-problems-fixed.html

Bronsky

 

Wrong. If gaming is important, the GPU will always be more important than the CPU. Only games that don't really apply to this rule is games like Flight Simulator, SC2, WoW, etc.

You're better off buying a laptop with a more powerful GPU than buying a Core i7 and dropping it into your Acer 3820TG. You'll see performance increases yes, but most of it will be from synthetic benchmarks. Synthetic benchmarks as we all know, are just numbers and benchmarks.

Better yet, why don't you spend your money on a custom gaming PC? $1000CAD desktop PC is already very good and can play most of the games that are already out on the market at max or near max resolution and detail, except for maybe Metro 2033.

 

So with one fan exit on the right hand side.... how does that affect having your hand there using a mouse?

 

Ah that explains quite a lot. I noticed this in an older game and while I knew that it was obviously setPLL causing it, because the game went supercharged only when I overclocked, there was nothing I could do about it. I hope this helps

 

Great, thanks for the links!

 

hi bronsky...
very interesting your "cpu lesson" i'll keep in mind... now i have to decide between i5 580 and i7 640... ocing or gaming... i7 is so awful in ocing... i need just a couple of mhz to satisfy mi OC mania!!
very interesting thr article you posted about set fsb - fix too...
have you tried it??? it works????
sorry for my ignorance, but how works throttlestop?? what is needed for??
thanks a lot!!

 

Hi there i have question
my Acer show ATI 6550 but after using two programs ( HwMonitor and Cpu-Z) its show ATI 5650

Whats the problem here?

 

Hey all, I'm having a slight issue while playing WoW on my 3820tg. Every 2-5 minutes, I get a long freeze of up to 10 seconds. As you can imagine, this pretty much destroys my ability to play the game properly. It's not a framerate drop (still runs at 30+) and my latency is great (sub-100ms for home; ~200 world).

I'm running the 11.3 drivers and even installed legacy dx9 stuff from MS. I just have no clue at what it is, but it's driving me insane. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

There is no problem.

HD 6550M is a rebadged HD 5650 with a higher clocked core and memory speed.
AMD Radeon HD 6550M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

Some software have not been updated to tell the difference between the 2 graphic cards.

 

Thanks

i love every thing in this pc except the screen its very bad i can see the pixels lines i wish i can change it to better one

 

Display quality seems to be the luck of the draw on these notebooks. I am happy with mine.

Bronsky

 

just compared my screen to my brother pc Hp dv3 and there is very large difference

colors
brightness
viewing angles
i wish i can just get his screen and put it in my pc

 

hi bronsky, may you tell me something about throttlestop and the trick about setfsb-fix???
how works throttle stop?? it lets us to OC our processor???
about the setfsb-fix, i've mad everything wrote in the walkthrough but it doesn't work fine, the "win timer tester" application show me that i'm still not
synchronous...
have you used yhat application??
i wanna put to use my OC in games!!

 

Hi! From what I understand, laptop CPUs, especially core i series, are design to throttle their speed down when the TDP is reached (Thermal Design Power, refers to the maximum amount of power (in Watts) the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate). That why only raising the FSB could result worse performance than stock speed. ThrottleStop allows you to raise this limit, for the core i5-480 the TDP is 35W, if you set it to 60W, the CPU won't throttle anymore, and you will be able to get turbo/max multiplier all the time when in full charge (constant 22x for the 480).
So you can use SetFSB to raise the FSB and ThrottleStop to control the multiplier behaviour.
Once again, that's from what I understand, but it works for me.
As said before, most games won't benefit from CPU OC. I really saw the difference in Arma 2.

 

3820tray also allows you to raise the limit and it able to lower TDP/TDC if a userdefined Temp is reached !

if the CPU trottles it switch the multiplier down to 9x !! if 3820tray lowers the tdp/tdc on i.e. 90°C the multiplier goes only down from 21x to 19x (in case of a i5-460)

 

just fast question

i want to update the video drivers the easiest way

so i found that's there is alot of modification and tweaks bu i wonder is this the best method to update i safe

go to bios select the Intel or Ati then go to windows and update the driver then back to the bio to set it switchable ?

 

There isn't an option to choose "Intel". You can only choose "Discrete" or "Switchable" in the BIOS. Unless, you have the modded BIOS, but I highly do not recommend it because some people have already bricked their laptops.

You can update the ATI drivers, but most likely not the Intel drivers. Read the first thread of the 3820TG. There should be instructions on how to do it.

 

thank you very much for the infos!!!
i'll try it soon!!!

 

Thanks i just installed the modded driver from the De . now after installation its say not ati driver found in your pc ? did i done any thing wrong ??

 

Did you install a modded driver or modded BIOS? I would not recommend either.

I would just follow the steps on the first thread of the 3820TG and update to the newest ATI drivers. It is a pretty simple process.

 

A 40% decline in netbook sales can't be good news for Acer. http://liliputing.com/2011/04/microsoft-netbook-sales-are-down-40.html

@Fabry - it looks like you're in good hands. I don't use throttlestop because there is no need to. I don't use my 3820TG for gaming. I see a direct benefit from my OC'd CPU, using only SetFSB and OC'ing my GPU with MSI Afterburner in my graphics applications, so I don't mess with it much.

Bronsky

 

Thanks ill search that and install it

 

another fast question what are the two monitor maker ? Lg and ? and which one reported better?

 

I have an AUO. I like it. There is one report of a samsung that was well reviewed. The LG has had the most complaints.

Bronsky

 

There is no favorite screen; it has been inconsistent with every brand. Every screen on the 3820TG has been of different quality no matter which manufacturer screen you got: Samsung, LG, AUO, etc.

ex: some like AUO better, while others say Samsung or LG is better, etc.

 

Thanks for replies I checked mine and its AUO !!! also i read recent news that acer going to use LG screens in their laptops ( didn't they do that already ?) or this just testing

 

Any ideas why my 3820tg (i5-430) is slower than my buddies 5750?

Everything loads slower on my laptop (boot times are twice as slow; my Firefox has a 3-5s delay, his doesn't. and the list goes on). I have barely anything installed on this piece, and the boot times are ridiculous (90s+ even after xbootmgr; his loads in 40-50s).

I can't figure out what's wrong with this notebook. It's been slow ever since I restored in January or so. Even after a clean install it's slow. I'm debating getting an SSD to try and fix the problem but I'd rather not spend $200-300 to fix the problem if I don't need to.

Would anybody have any possible reasons for this, that I could look for? Most recent boots have ranged from 75s-150s with no extreme degradations.

 

Benchmark your HDD using CrystalDiskMark ?

 

Done:


I don't know much about this, but it looks bad lol.

 

What HDD model is it ?

 

Has anyone tried overvolting their 5650 to 1.1 V with Sapphire Trixx 4.0? Is it safe even if the GPU temperature is acceptable? I overvolted to 1.01 V and ATITool doesn't show any artifacts at 730 MHz core for 3-4 minutes (didn't run it longer), while on 1.0 V it would throw out artifacts at anything over 700 MHz. But I thought I shouldn't keep raisnig the voltage before checking with you guys first.

PS. Radeon 6550 is at 1.1 V right?

 

Radeon 6550 is @ 1.05v