3820TG Owner's Lounge - Part Two

hello,
i m planning a 8 GB upgrade for my (beloved) 3820tg Can someone suggest two snappy 4gb mem modules??

Thank you

 

Hello.

FIXED. No need to read.

I am having an issue with sleep on my 3820TG. When I leave laptop for some time or when I chose "sleep" in start menu, my notebook won't wake up. I can hear the hard drive working, but screen stays black. I can only restart.

Could someone here help me with this issue?

BTW. Hibernation works fine. Normal shut down works fine. Only sleep is broken.

EDIT: It seems that my notebook will even go to sleep when I close the lid and won't wake up screen, but I can hear sound from speakers, windows is running. Only screen won't power back on.

EDIT2: I removed all GPU drivers and installed latest from LESHCATLABS. It fixed my sleep problem.

 

Sometimes when I'm randomly browsing the net, watching youtube and reading e-mails etc I retrive a bluescreen. After It has dissapeard and my computer has been restarted I get the following error log:

"Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1053

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 1000007e
BCP1: FFFFFFFFC0000094
BCP2: FFFFF88004AF5EC9
BCP3: FFFFF88009EB3358
BCP4: FFFFF88009EB2BC0
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\040912-17674-01.dmp
C:\Users\Antonia\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-51121-0.sysdata.xml

Read our privacy statement online:
Windows 7 Privacy Statement - Microsoft Windows

If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt"

I got a 3820TG with Win7HPx64 and HD5650m graphics. Any ideas?

Thanks /Antonia

 

Just curious guys, do any of you use Notebook Fans??? As in external ones. Which ones would you recommend and does it allow the video card to be overclocked a bit more?

 

No need of extra fans.

 

Don't know why but my card is just crazy, perhaps I have ty fans, I don't know, but since the first day I got my notebook I have had troubles with overheating, I have given the notebook to the service center to get it cleaned, I have tried the fan profiles, set it to gaming for example and still its running extremely hot when gaming. When I run ATI tools artifact the card reaches around 95 degrees in just 3 minutes, and this is without any overclocking, just default card.

 

i have been using this notebook for 2 years for whatever reasons you can imagine of without the need of a cooling fan

 

, is it just me being unlucky then (((

 

I had that as well. After some weird resets while playing I checked the temperatures and they were up to 100 degrees...

After checking in on this forum I cleaned and repasted it and the temps came down to middle 80s. Recently I applied the gaming profile of the 3820TG Custom Fan Profiles mod and it never passes 80 now, even on full load =D

 

Hi guys!!!

I've recently acquired the last unit of a 3820 TG in a shopping center of Barcelona by the prize of 380€(450$ aprox.). It was the i3 330 model with HD5470.

Some days before, I had purchased an ASUS u32u with APU E-450 and it was too slow, so when I saw the 3820TG I returned immediately the asus!!

The problem I've is the same I had with my 5820TG...and is...is...the switchable mode!!! is this a new problem? jeje

I didn't resolve the problem in the 5820 because I used it always with AC, and always with radeon card activated.

But now, I use the 3820 always with battery(I have 9 cell and 6 cell bat) and I'm interesting in the possibility of switch the graphic card whenever I want.

ACC were not installed in the 3820. This unit was the sample unit and I don’t know what kind of sw the shoppers installed, or unistalled

So I installed the latest drivers from ACER. Then restart and change to discrete mode. Then, I installed the latest ACC from AMD...almost 10 times with a little differences…

The result is that with AC the switch is OK(when I have the switchable mode, before install AMD drivers), but with battery, only during this session is ok, with sw and with the P button.
When I restart (without change to discrete), in battery mode the P button doesn't work(only increase the luminosity), and changing the card with acc doesn't work to.
After that, I install the AMD acc latest version and the results are the same…
Also I used a aty drivers cleaner before install de acer drivers, after uninstall the acer or amd drivers, and the result is the same…

And now, during the install process (ACER drivers and AMD drivers) I see a warning message (yellow colour!!). The description is something like “another device was found”…but I can switch de cards with AC. In battery mode not…

The only thing that I can do is doing a recovery installation from recovery partition and begin the process again.

Any idea before doing the restore?

Thanks a lot for your forum. You are a gurus!!

How I can write my signature?? I don't have the option in my control panel :s ...

 

It could actually be a bad heat sink. It happens. When you stress the GPU, do you get the fans working hard? 75-80% under load? What does you heat profile look like? How fast does it spike? When the fan is running on the right side, can you feel the heat. It should be quite hot. I have a mouse on the right side and my hand gets hot when I'm stressing the GPU. If you don't get a lot of heat, something could be wrong with the fan or the heat sink itself. If everything seems to be working, the odds are that you have a bad connection between the heat sink and the GPU. It might need a decent paste job with IC Diamond 7.


BTW, a moment of silence please for my 2 year old Crucual M225, which gave up the ghost at 5:35 p.m. today. New 128 GB Samsung 830 already on the way. Original Acer 500 GB 5400 in mt Acer ATM. OMG!

 

Hi guys!

Ive recently opened my 3820tg to apply some new thermal paste. I used the Artic Silver 5 for this. I changed it on the GPU and CPU. After completion Ive noticed that my GPU-fan some times spins up alot more than it used to. This is only happening in Windows and not during games which is wierd (atleast to me ) I thought that when gaming the GPU should be hotter....

Anyhow, did I fail when I put the new thermal paste on? How thin should a layer of the Artic Silver be? It was a long time since I did this and I used my intuition on this one . Would be happy to get some help or thoughts!

 

If your fan is working harder after applying thermal paste I would guess that you have retarded the heat transfer. Did you use the spread method and did you assure that you have a thin film. Did you put back all the thermal pads. Finally, to be honest, I prefer IC Diamond 7.

Before you do anything. Let it sit for a bit. Sometimes thermal properties get better as the past sits.

BTW, I have the original 5400 rpm drive in my Acer temporarly. My new SSD will be here in a day or so. How does anyone work with that drive in their computer. It is so slow and it creates lag while the notebook accesses the drive. OMG, get an SSD.

 

Have fun with the lighting fast HDD.

You have just a little more time to drink your coffee.

 

Yeah I probably have failed in some way. Well I used a creditcard and applied it as thin as I thought it should be. The problem is that Im not sure if I should put on a thinner or thicker layer if I decide to redo it.

I think all the thermal pads were put back on (I dont think they ever let go from the cooler). On the GPU I put on new paste on one place (where I could find the old paste).

If I have to redo Ill buy the IC Diamond 7.

I just read that the paste could need about 200 hours before youd notice a drop in temp. Maybe Ill let it sit for some more time then.

Thanks.

 

Yeah Bronski when I stress the CPU the fans spin extremely loud, and the right side of the laptop feels like lava is running through the thing, its definitely pumping out a lot of hot air, I did this trick where I put the laptop on a couple of small books so that its extended a bit in the air and it actually got me down by a couple of degrees. I think because the fan openings are pointing downwards maybe not enough air gets to escape the vents. I will try to reapply some heat paste too. Don't think I can get the IC Diamond 7 here in Belarus ((( Its a pretty crappy country to be honest, I was amazed that I could find such a nice notebook here.

Btw does the gaming profile stay on all the time? or does it change back to original fan profile after each restart?

 

It does stay active even with restarts. If you feel it is too noisy (I honestly do not think so, and anyway some db are a good exchange for less degrees) you can restore the original profile.

In case you need a link, its the last post in this page: http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/562576-acer-aspire-timelinex-3820tg-mods-tweaks-only-16.html

 

Where to download the newest Intel VGA driver?

I installed the newest catalyst control center (12.6)
driver: 8.980.0.0
date: 11.06.2012

Intel hd graphics:
driver: 8.771.1.0
date: 09.09.2010

 

Bronsky I can understand what you are feeling...
My fist 830 SSD that came was broken (randomly failing and hanging for seconds, even on a desktop), so I had to return it...

Just_a_Nick, thanks for the coffee, but I usually have tea.

Impact Point:
I think the only thing left is to create a backup, but the system restore seems to be inevitable. For me the driver cleaner worked like a charm, and went fluently. If you have cleaned after unistall and reinstalled the drivers, you could try reinstalling the new Intel drivers first.

By the way I think I have never used the P button so far... I prefer the WINDOWS+X combination I got used to on my previous laptop, with well defined power profiles and manually switchable graphic cards, I am statisfied.

But please provide an update on your progress..
And congratulations to the good purchase I hope you will be statisfied as well..

 

Lucky you. My exprience with the Leschatlabs driver was just the opposite. It would never wake up the screen if it went to sleep and it would randomly crash. If the machine hibernated it would crash on wake. I cleanded the drivers and reinstalled the ancient offical acer driver and the mahcine is working fine - sleep, hibernate and no crashes. But I am stuck with the old driver. If you look back a couple of pages on the thread you will see my tale of woe. I would like to use the newer driver but for now I have given up and will stick with what is working. Maybe when I have nothing better to do I will take a run at it.

 

Roamer, I had the same problem with the custom hybrid drivers by Leschat, some crashing now and then, very bothersome...

So I cleaned the drivers and followed the instructions on this site, install the latest driver from Acer (ancient as hell), go to the bios and select discrete only, install the latest AMD drivers from their website, swich to switchable and voila, I got a system with no more crashes, very stable and running the latest AMD drivers and still capable of switching for low power consumption.

 

Is performance in games any better with these custom drivers?

 

That's not exactly an appropriate question. Even with official drivers you can have Radeon up-to-date and I can't imagine anyone gaming on Intel.

The only reason why I would consider home-made drivers is that the 2202 build for Intel is buggy in a way that most HD videos played back via DxVA experience corruption. Thus you either have to turn off DxVA (and use a lot more CPU power) or switch to Radeon where the DxVA works like a charm (and use GPU instead of CPU). Battery-wise, I'd say they're the same. If DxVA worked on Intel properly you could save loads of battery power while watching movies/TV shows. And some heat on your lap, too, if you're watching on a plane/train/etc. Btw, I haven't tried the franken drivers for over a year so I don't even know if the recent Intel builds have the DxVA thing fixed or not. Back then, the Intel build was 24xx and it was still broke, furthermore it gave me loads of BSoD's so bottom-line, for my part it's not worth the hassle.

 

yep, custom drivers --> BSOD

They also made my system hang while shutting down for roughly 15 to 20 secs... No harm done, just weird. With the regular drivers it went back to normal

 

For those of you wondering the same thing, CinSun's nicley upgraded Acer sold at auction for $520. Nice price. He did an exceptional job marketing his unit. I would put an average unit at $400-450.

 

Do you reckon Sony Vaio S a good leap away from this? Fan keeps getting really hot, and it's two years since I bought it. Time to look at something new.

 

I like the S13P. It has the same GPU as the Timeline M5, the GT640LE. I understand that there is a modded bios that lets the LE overclock like mad. The only other unit I would want to look at to compare to the Sony would be the Gigabyte U2442N which has a full power GT640M GPU. It won't be here until later in August, so you might not want to wait.

You're right about that. The Samsung 830 SSD is a lot faster than my old M225. I haven't benched it, but even with my Sata II ceiling, the notebook boots in nearly half the time, Access to the drive during tasks is unnoticable. Hopefully, the drive will last long enough to put it in a Sata III notebook. I'm enjoying my extra cup of Joe in the morning.

 

Oh, I can wait. That Gigabyte was amazing. But the price?

 

PCHome Taiwan has the I5-3210M, GT640M, HD+, 128GB SSD version in stock for $1,100. When Acer buyers were importing the 3820TG from PCHome, they were paying $200premium over the sale price of the notebook in North America (Canada), when it finally got here. I expect that the Gigabyte will sell in the $1K range when it gets here.

BTW, since I was changing the drive anyway, I did a clean install with all OEM drivers. My unit is quiet and cool.

Oh and, who was it that was looking for the OEM background displays and the screen saver? I finally dug them out of the Original HD I had in this unit while my SSD was fried. If you still want them, I the 3 Acer Timeline pictures set as the background slide show. I have the screen saver in the correct location, but since I upgraded Flash, it won't work. I'll sen these to you if you let me know who you are.

 

What about the UX32VD then?

 

It has a ULV CPU, a weak GPU, a decent 1080p display and Asus tends to have horrible warranty service. I don't buy anything Asus.

 

Asus also tend to have mixed range of input devices (keyboards and touchpads) ranging from very good to completely terrible in subsequent models.
Acer uses pretty much the same type of keyboards across the range so you know what you're buying (not that it's very good but at least it's decent) whereas Asus never achieved "decent"- they are either very good or terrible- nothing in between.

 

Hi there

I'm setting up a customized Windows XP on my 3820TG , only for running DAW software.
Where can i find XP drivers? I know i can't use switchable graphics, but im fine with it. BTW i don't want to use anything like Wlan, bluetooth, onboard soundcard, so i don't need those drivers. I think i only need the chipset driver, and the one for the cardreader, and something for the VGA ( if possible, i would use the Intel only )

Anybody can give me some advice? Is anybody using Windows XP on this machine?

 

I think you'll better use the AMD card, since you can switch to "discrete card" only into the bios.

For intel platform drivers, for xp, you can download them from intel website

 

Why don't you just run XP mode in VM? I do that to interact with some of our old office units that are running XP.

 

Virtualizing a system is not suitable to use DAWs, it just adds too much kernel latency. I'm using the system for multichannel, live audio processing.

A tweaked W7 is OK, and runs without audio dropouts for hours, but only if i use it exclusive to run the DAW. Since i have a relatively small (60g) SSD, i cannot afford to have two W7-s simultaneously, but i need W7 for work.
Besides, under XP i can achieve lower latency, and a more stable system for processing audio, and the DAW software that i use is 32 bit only, so i don't even have any advantage with W7. But XP is smaller, and uses less ram.

 

I don't understand properly, so it is not possible to use only the intel VGA under Windows XP?
I dont want to ever use the ATI under XP, and it would be more better for the sytem without the ATI drivers

 

Yes ... you can use the Inte integrated GPU. The suggestion about using the dedicated GPU is because switching won't work in XP. In fact, Acer has a W7 driver for the intel graphics that you can probably install in compatability mode for XP. In fact, that is the first thing I would do after installing XP is see if the current W7 drivers work in compatability mode.

 

What do You think, the W7 drivers would perform better, or worse than the native XP drivers?

 

Depends on how up to date the native drivers are and how easily you can find them. Intel is probably one of those where the XP driver is fine, since they still support XP.

 

Hello there,

it's been a long time since I last posted on these message boards. Seems as though I have about 500 pages to catch up on; haha, just kidding.

I came here because I would love to get your guys' opinions on a problem I am currently facing:

Ever since I had to stay for a few weeks in a very dusty environment I noticed my notebook's CPU and GPU idle temperatures rising. At the moment they're reaching about 55 to 60°C. So I figured that a little spring cleaning of the coolers and fans might help. However, when going through the repair manual for my acer I realized how difficult it would be to reach the fans, as in a complete disassembly of the notebook would be necessary. I am by no means technically illiterate but I don't think I can fully trust my capabilities in (dis)assembly. So I wonder, is there any other less invasive way to spring clean my notebook's fans and vents?

Thank you very much in advance.

 

If you are careful you can blow compressed air into the vents from the outside. If you are comfortable taking the keyboard off, that will give you access to the top of the fan housing on both sides and you can blow some air in there first. Then come from the vent with the air in but try to keep the fan from spinning too much. You can hold your finger on the top of the assembly. That should give you a partial cleaning. If you have a vacuum with a small enough attachement, try getting some of the dust that the air loosened up out of the assembly. That should help. The best way, of course, is to split the unit, open the radiators and get rid of all the dust and repaste the CPU while you're there.

 

Alright, that sounds reasonable. Taking off the keyboard shouldn't be too much of a problem. I think I'll follow your advice and do it this way. Will post the results and hopefully temperature changes next week.

Thanks again!

Oh, while we're at it: Has anyone tried getting switchable graphics to work on Ubuntu 12.04? I know there's vgaswitcheroo for the Radeon drivers but this thread over at the ubuntuforums provides a solution with FGLRX. Is there anyone here who followed through with those instructions and got it to work?

 

The thing to watch out for on the keyboard removal is the way you release the two side tabs. They don't move back like the top tabs. You have to shift the keyboard all the way to one side, clear the side tab, then start along the top tabs to the other side. Then you can just slide out the last side tab. If you find the backlit keyboard mod thread, there is a good guide to removing the KB. It is linked on the first page of this thread.

 

Thanks for the guide. Just tried it out and it works fine.

 

Thanks for the advice fm007!

At the end, I tried the last test and the P button worked correctly! It seems that now works fine... But in my ACC I don't have the option of power saver with ati card. In energy settings I only can see the switch options...

Anyway, the restore is needed but I've never done it from hdd.

Is possible to clone the restore backup to another drive(external)?
If i clone the restore partition, and I change de hdd or I delete this partition, how I can restore from the "new restore partition" from another drive?

I'm really really pleased with 3820TG...is a great thin laptop

 

Hi again,

right now I am in the process of preparing the new Windows install. Back in the day I remember installing the official AMD drivers over the hybrid ones by Acer using this method by Hendrickson. Now I see that there are unofficial prepackaged hybrid drivers such as this one: LESHCATLABS.NET. So I wondered, is there any advantage in using the modded drivers over installing the stock Catalyst drivers in Hendrickson's way?

Thanks in advance!

 

Hi all,

Bought my Acer 3820tg just over a year ago (i5 with HD 6550) and had some problem pop up recently. A couple of months ago I started to experience extremely long boot times and the temps rising to 78ish under load. Also had a few random restarts out of nowhere (typing word documents, browsing the internet etc). I figured after doing some more research that it was either the HDD or the RAM. Since Acers apparently can't handle doing MemTest (it kept restarting as soon as the test started, which other users reported) I figure I'd just replace the hard drive to see how it worked out and while I was at it reapplied new thermal paste.

Worked out okay and looked to be doing fine for a month or so with boot times back down to normal and otherwise seemed okay. Recently I've had a few random out of nowhere restarts again, and the last one that just happened seems to have killed the computer. It randomly shut itself off in the middle of browsing (not a restart, complete shut down) so I turned it back on and shut it off normally from Windows since I was pretty much done anyways.

Now it won't start back up. The blue light comes on when I hit the power, but the machine doesn't boot.

Any suggestions before I start taking stuff apart and guessing?

 

All I get from the modded drivers are bluescreens and weird reboot behaviour... So +1 to Hendrickson solution

 

Does anyone know the model of the CMOS/RTC battery? Those flat batteries or button cells normally have alpha-numeric codes (eg. CR2025, AG3, etc.)
I'll be replacing mine and I would like to buy a replacement first before I open my laptop.