Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG Owners Lounge

What's the easiest way to replace the ATI driver? I'm still using an 11.x generation driver, I tried updating via the following method:

Restart pc in discrete graphics mode.
Go to the ati mobility catalyst drivers site, pick the 5xxx series, windows 7, 64 bit
Downloaded the driver utility and let it do its thing
After it installs I get a BSOD on restart and a crash dump if I try to start it in switchable graphics mode.
If I start in dedicated mode it starts up fine.

What's the best way to update the ATI 5650 driver if I don't want to touch the intel driver?

 

Same issue on mine. In order to use the pc now i must choose "discrete graphics" from the bios settings or else i get the blue screen at the startup when it is selected "switchable graphics". Any suggestions on how to get back switchable graphics? It was good for battery life and kept pc temperatures low

 

Crazy to think this laptop has been out for two years or more. I've had mine since December 2010.

I don't play too many cutting edge games, but I'm curious when the GPU in the 4820TG will fall behind and be unable to run new games at decent performance levels. I'll probably hold out another year, but that new Gigabyte 2442 looks tempting.

 

I just sold my 3820TG but I never really used it for gaming. I needed it for graphics and we have a mobile workstation in our office for editing and assembling. For presentation, the HD 4000 IGPU is powerful enough for my needs. I'll probably be buying a MS Surface Pro Tablet or Samsung S7H hybrid tablet/notebook for presentation.

 

Noooooooooooooo!

Bronsky's 3820TG was like a part of us all. I remember the story about the damaged box, having the delivery person open it to verify no damage by the carrier, the unboxing video with 2001 music, the workplace accident that put it on life support, etc.

Sigh...fun times.

 

Anybody? I'm probably going to have to sell and buy from a better company unless there's some way I can stop the "vvvvVVVVVVvvvvVVvvVVvv" from happening.

 

just curious what's your replacement for 3820TG or are you just scanning the market atm?

 

Can any of you guys tell me which software is necessary for switching monitors? There always were 5-6 options when pressing Fn + F5, but after reinstalling Windows (thus getting rid of a virus as well as of lots of mostly unnecessary Acer software) all it does is switching between Notebook LCD, external monitor and both of them showing the same. The option I am interested in is the one which had the 1/2 symbol, I can now only get to that manually in the windows screen resolution options.
Thanks in advance.

Edit: nvm, found out that it is the launch manager

 

Anyone tried Guild Wars 2 yet on their 4820tg ?

 

No replacement yet.

 

I love the form factor of this notebook. I think it's the perfect size and weight. Give me a better keyboard (non-island), 1600x900 IPS screen, USB 3.0 + Thunderbolt, and an upgraded CPU/GPU, and I'd be very happy.

Realistically I hope this lasts me another 1.5 years or so. Has anybody upgraded their CPU? I'd only be able to add other i5 Arrandales since the i7 Arrandale and SB/IB chips use different sockets, right?

 

You can upgrade to any dual core Arrandale without modification, including the I7-640M. The I7-QM series also uses the PGA 911 socket but the heat sink needs to be modified, the QM series does not support switchable graphics and will run hot in the Acer. Second and third gen CPUs can't be retro-fitted.

The I7-620M was an original option in the 4820TG but it ran very hot and throttled under stress. The I5-540M or I5-580M are better options in your Timeline IMO. I had an I5-540M in mine. It was plenty fast and overclocked to 3.66 ghz. I recommend using an OEM only, not an engineering sample.

If you upgrade the CPU, I strongly recommend using IC Diamond 7 thermal paste which helps keep temps down. A thin film using the spread technique seems to work best.

 

Thanks, Bronsky.

My i5-480m is doing well. No complaints so far. In the future I'll look into an OEM chip upgrade. I still haven't upgraded the HDD. If I pick up a Seagate Momentus or SSD + 7200 RPM HDD, that might provide a nice improvement, too.

Really, I just love this laptop. I could probably use it as is for another couple of years. It looks like there are some promising units like the Gigabyte U2442 that will carry the torch of the elusive 13"-14" well-balanced notebook.

 

Hi guys,

has anyone got switchable graphics working on windows 8 yet?

The acer site talks about windows 8, but I can't see they include or exclude which models aren't going to get new drivers.

I really hope our 4820tg gets it. It flies with an SSD and windows 8, I just can't use the AMD card which sucks, because I need HDMI out! I think I can workaround by making it dedicated GPU in the BIOS, but the battery life will then be rubbish, so it's a tough choice unless they release the new drivers, or someone has a workaround to get it working.

 

Hey all,

I've had a 4820tg for about a year and a half now. Lately, the laptop has been getting extremely noisy, and the fan is on full power. CPUID HWMonitor reports my cores hovering around the high 80s. Whenever I stream HD videos off of the internet, it sky rockets to the high 90s (in Celsius). I guess it doesn't help that my laptop is hooked up to a 1680x1050 monitor as well.

I was going to take my laptop to a repair shop, but it seems like they want to charge about 150 to install potentially a new fan and some thermal paste. Should I do this? Or perhaps the problem is elsewhere.

 

Open task manager and monitor running processes (be sure to select "show all processes"). Sort by CPU usage. When you do some of these activities, what's hogging the CPU?

 

The 4820TG needs a shim if you change the paste. It is not as easy a job as the 3820TG that I owned. Still, new paste can help reduce the temps, if the problem is in the thermal connection. If not, you're wasting your time. The same is true with a new fan, if that is not the problem. To be sure, the external monitor works the GPU hard. My 1080P LG 24" monitor stressed my GPU. Are your cores idling in the 80s? They should idle in the 40s or 50s. Are you getting hot air out of the vent?

Have you tried cleaning the dust out of the notebook and the vent? That would be what I did first. Get all of the dust out and see what happens.

 

do you guys have any experience with dual external displays with the laptop? I was thinking one for hdmi then one for the vga port. I would like to run them at 1080p res, would it be possible? Thanks!

 

what version of ATI driver you use now?
is stable to switch between ATI and Intel?

 

Strange thing happened to me. I decided to update my ATI drivers. Currently using the up to date VGA driver from Acer's site and AMD's 12.1 driver. I rebooted into discrete graphics mode and installed the AMD 12.8 drivers. Everything seemed fine. Rebooted, went into the BIOS to change to switchable mode, and the laptop rebooted after teh "Windows is starting" screen. I was then faced with an error that Windows could not boot due to hardware or software changes/failures. Attempted to do a system repair (not system restore). No dice.

So, I changed back to discrete mode in the BIOS and was able to boot. Fortunately the driver installer made a restore point, as I forgot to make one myself. I performed the restore successfully, then rebooted once more to check that "switchable" mode was working.

Anybody else encounter this? Like I said, my VGA drivers from Acer are all up to date. I didn't have any issues last time I updated my ATI driver via the "discrete" mode. Not sure what to do for the future.

 

Same exact problem with me. I just upgraded my GPU drivers and I'm getting the BSOD right after the Windows is Starting animation. I think it has to do with all the other nonsense that the GPU driver comes with. I'm going to try to unselect everything but the GPU driver.

EDIT:
I tried unselecting everything but the GPU driver, and nothing. Still the same problem. I had to uninstall the drivers, and now I'm stuck with the GPU 8.84 version instead of the 8.92, which was the latest before this new update effed it up.

Does anyone know what the latest working driver was? From this list:
Previous Catalyst

I believe the last one that I was on was the 11.10 version?

 

yep, same thing for me. 12.8 caused the very same issue on mine. I think I'm on 12.6 atm with no issues, but don't want to boot up the machine just to check that.

newer =/= better.

 

Thanks! I'll try downloading 12.6 when I get some time today. But do confirm and please let me know if this works.

 

8.92? But the latest driver package put together by Acer was 8.84.

http://support.acer.com/us/en/product/default.aspx?tab=1&modelId=2076

I forget what Catalyst version that bundled Acer driver had, but I know that I did a manual ATI driver update earlier this year no problem to 12.1.

So, it's good (and bad) to know others had the same problem. I wonder if this is happening on other notebooks with switchable graphics?

 

so checked now, and it turned out I'm using 12.4, not 12.6.

 

You install the driver from Acer's website, however, its not the latest GPU driver. I used the Acer drivers to give me the update to 8.84, but that only gives you the intel GPU update and that's it. To get updated beyond that, you need to use AMD's update unless you Acer comes out with another inclusive package that has the Intel AND the AMD drivers.

And thanks, Kefan. I'll update to that version when I get the chance!

 

I'm well aware of this. My point is, Acer's bundled drivers have the 8.xx notation. ATI's dedicated drivers have the 12.x notation.

So, when you say 8.92, it doesn't make sense because the highest number Acer put out was 8.84.

 

AMD calls the CCC version 12.x
However, with the CCC upgrade, there is packaged a GPU driver that's not 12.X but in the 8.9's or so.
Right click on My Computer, go to device manager and then to display adapters. Look at the properties of the GPU and go to the "drivers" tab to look at what version it is.

 

Ah, interesting. I think I did know that but overlooked it.

The 12.x number refers to the version of CCC. The 8.xx number is the actual driver version.

So I have driver package 8.3, Catalyst version 12.1. Yeeeesh!

Additional question - what's the fastest speed this laptop supports for RAM? I think I read before that if you get 1600 MHz RAM it'll clock to a lower value.

 

Package version is "year.month" meaning Cats 12.1 is January 2012 version. They use it to make it easier on the users. New beta that is out is 12.9 and was leaked this month.

As for RAM- 1066MHz for Core i3/i5 and most Core i7 CPUs and 1333MHz for Core i7 720QM (for core one)

 

So basically with this i5 laptop I'm stuck at 1066 MHz RAM? If I buy 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM, it'll only run at 1066 MHz?

Lame.

 

The problem is the memory controller in the Arrandale chip. All you can do with the 1333 is improve latency. Sorry.

 

LOL not big deal. It just seems like an odd limitation to have. Intentional to encourage upgrades or just the nature of the chipset?

I still may upgrade to 8GB in the future if I see a good deal, but I won't expect speed improvements out of it.

 

Hey guys, I'm having a bit of trouble updating my GPU drivers. Right now, my driver version for the GPU is 8.84 (the latest ACER driver). I reboot my notebook and select "Discrete Only" from the bios. I downloaded 12.6 (the one before 12.8, which is blue screening my laptop). During installation of the the 12.6 update, I unselect the CCC update as I need to use the one that was packaged with ACER to still have the switchable option. Anyways, after installation, I restart my PC only to find that CCC won't turn on, and neither will the siwtchable GPU option. Checking the driver version, the 12.6 did update it to 8.98, however, I'm unable to switch my GPU from dedicated to integrated.

Any help?

 

use 12.4, it works fine with me...both ATI and Intel. and i didn't use "discrete only" method, just install it while on switchable mode.
12.8 for ATI 7xxx series

 

Hey guys !
I recently had a problem with my acer 4820TG.
Previously , whenever i booted win 7 , it would be pretty fast. Howveer after a while , it lowed down ( i think it's normal because of the huge game files i would download.)
Just abt afew months ago, my laptop had some hard disk problems , i would still barely be able to boot but sometimes , it would not boot and i had to enter the windows recovery environment to try to boot my laptop. Usually, the repair would not work and i would enter the elevated command prompt to run a chkdsk on boot . There are usually a large number of bad sectors or corrupted files and the chkdsk would just take hours to run. but when i end school and go home , the computer was usually able to startup and there wasn't any problems then expect for occasional shutdowns.
Just last week, I can no longer even reach the windows 7 loading screen. When I switch on, I see the BIOS screen for a few seconds, then i would reach the page where they ask you to launch startup repair/start windows normally. Whenever i chose the startup repair option , i would reach the blue screen and hanged there (i think it's the startup loop) and i wasn't able to reach the windows recovery environment. Now , my laptop can't boot into windows and i have googled many options but they do not seem to have worked. Based on my observation , i think my laptop has been corrupted as i couldnt be a lose hard disk connection since it' s the internal hard drive.
Can anyone out there help me ? Would appreciate it a lot !

Some additional info : my laptop's acer 4820TG
- i7 core processor 620M (2.66GHz , 4MB L3 Cache)
-4GB RAM
-500gb HDD(used to be 640gb but i sent it for repair once under the warranty and they gave a 500gb...)
-ATI mobility raedon hd 5650 (1gb)
- The windows 7 os that came with it ( i think its home premium if i rmb correctly)

Would appreciate it if anyone could reply me asap and give me detailed steps .. I can't afford to send the laptop to acer for a repair as my warranty had expired last year already.

Thanks alot guys !,
Shawn

 

At first glance it looks like your HDD is failing.
Try to boot using Ubuntu on USB-key and check SMART status (all parameters- not just general "ok" or "not OK" status).

If it is indeed HDD failing, you'll have to replace it.

 

Hmm , what do you mean by check SMART status ? (can you explain in further detail )
Sorry i'm new to this kind of stuff ><
Thanks for the quick reply tho !

 

SMART is a monitoring system. All HDDs report certain parameters that help you predict failure or at least confirm issues.
It's unlikely that you would have multiple corrupted files due to file-system error. NTFS has been designed to protect against such issues and definitely multiple issues.

That leads me to believe that the problem is the harddrive itself although at this point it's just speculation.

That said if it's just a software issue you can re-format at any time and install Windows again however if it's the HDD failing you are running out of time. The HDD may die on you completely so you should confirm or rule out HDD as a problem, backup your files (that is something you should do anyway) and buy a new HDD if needed.

 

Oh okay thanks ! ill start dling ubuntu tmrw when i get to use a computer (im posting this on my phone)
Any links would be gladly appreciated tho !

Thanks again downloads !
(Would post on this thread aft. testing tmrw !)

 

how to use the 3G module driver?
should i install the driver 1st from acer website? i dont know if i already have that driver?

 

I'm noticing a lot of blurry textures in games. Seems other people using the 5650/6550 have the same issue. Most 3D looks okay, but certain textures (e.g. hair on 3D characters) are blurry.

Not sure what is the best driver to use, since there are various issues we've previously discussed. I think I want to just go back to the last package that Acer provided, even though it's a year old. What's the best way to install it?

 

Is there any way to overclock ram for this laptop?

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
18-OCT-2012
-------------------
I don't believe there is. And I would not recommend playing too much with the RAM. If you want read the following for a detailed description of my upgrade that made me love this laptop even more.

I have really loved this laptop, so after about a year I wanted to see if there were any benifits to upgrading components. short answer YES!

As one of the programs I needed to use was limited to Win 7 32bit, thats what I had installed. The first upgrade was RAM. I was at my local MSY and noticed that there was a 16GB kit available for notebooks. sweet I thought, so I grabbed the set of 2 chips, Patriot PSD316G1333SK. I am fairly certain this RAM MUST be used as a 2 chip set. It installed and detected fine, booted fine, with the usual limitation at 3.5GB minus the Video Ram etc(cant remember the exact usage now). So I was pretty sure the laptop liked it ok.

Fast forward to last week, and a new Hard Disk was purchased. I wanted more capacity than an SSD can provide without sacrificing the DVD Drive, so I got a WD 750 7500RPM drive. I was planning to install Win7 64 at the same time to get the RAM benifits. Thats where the fun started. Windows DVD, USB windows install, even Hirens would not boot. The instant it got to the windows animation it would crash. I thought actually the hard disk was the issue so I wasted days playing with formatting/partitions etc, I mean the RAM works, right? Just by chance, I was fixing another laptop that I suspected RAM, and as it was after hours, I thought I would test my RAM in it. well it crashed at the same spot. It was then that I thought the specs say 8GB limit for a reason, then read it was a limitation of the Arrandale CPU.

So down to the shop and see what RAM is there. Now there is some Kingston KVR16S11S8/4 1600 specced RAM and I could find nothing on the web to say if the laptop would work or not with it. So I got 2x 4GB sticks and also 2x $GB sticks of Patriot PSD34G13332S for the other laptop.

The kingston RAM would boot further, but crash alot, I mean alot. Not stable at all. So I put the Patriot 1333 RAM in and now everything is great. Not a single crash.

This is like having a new laptop all over again! I have just ordered a new CPU, I am swapping out the i5-460M for a new i7-620M. The i5 has been great though, no question.

The other laptop I am fixing needs a new CPU, and it is an i3 Arrandale, so I am buying 1 CPU to do a hand-me-down.

I use PassMark Software - CPU Benchmark Charts as a rough guide as it is good to see visually all cpus in one place, and I take into account the application and other system parts can affect the system, not just the CPU(before I get any replies about it).

scores....
other HP Laptop:
i3-370M 2,049 replace with my i5-460M 2,474 = nice upgrade.

My acer:
i5-460M 2,474 replace with i7-620M 2,474 .. well no change but I am hoping it improves something!

I think the index was 4.7 before I did the upgrade, but here is the latest figures. Sorry I dont use any other benchmarking progs.

windows experience index: 5.9
Processor: 6.9
RAM: 6.9
Graphics: 6.7
Gaming Graphics: 6.7
Primary Hard Disk: 5.9

Sorry if this post was too long but I like to give enough info so anyone having the same issues or want to try a simiar process can get enough without needing to wait for more details.

I will report back on the CPU upgrade, and also possibly going to SSD the System dis, move to an external BD Disk and add the 750GB as the second disk into the optical bay with an adapter.

cheers,
Brian

 

GREAT NEWS!!!

If you look into acer's website download section, now you can download new drivers for windows 8!!!

 

Are you talking about the new VGA driver?

I wonder if that can be installed for W7, too? I would assume so but safe to check first.

 

Yes I think it is possible to install them on W7 too

 

need some help here guys, i have a 4820tg-6847 and 2 days ago my laptop started running extremely loudly when doing absolutely nothing. at first i thought it was the HD but after listening closely the loud sound appears to be coming from the fan on left side, i also noticed that the area to the left of the touchpad gets extremely hot. is this the cooling system going out, HD, GFX card? my cpus are idling at about 75c with just chrome open and if i try to do anything else the temps jump to 100c. the fan on the left side is making an extremely loud sound like its blowing fast but but its blowing extremely hot air out slowly. any help would be appreciated. thanks.

a few notes about my above post, i checked and none of the cpu cores have any load one them so i know its not a process doing this to my laptop. immediately when i turn the laptop on i start hearing the loud sound before windows loads, the longer the laptop is on the louder the sound gets. i can hear the sound very loudly if i listen near the vent on the left side and as the sound gets louder i feel a stronger vibration coming from the left of the touchpad right about where my Ctrl/Atl keys are along with the temperature to the touch getting extremely hot. im not sure what is located here if its the HD, Gfx or just the cooling system. again any help would be appreciated. thanks.

 

In Task Manager check "Show processes from all users". Something like svchost.exe could be causing your CPU to work so hard. I'm not sure what a resolution could be, though.

 

as i stated above it is not an issue of processes or my cpu working hard. when i do check in windows my cpus are at 0-5% load, they are barely working at all and there are no processes hogging any resources up. i just tried boot up and did a check disk, when i started the laptop you could hear a slight buzz and feel vibration coming from the fan area, by the end of the check disk the fan had moved to full speed and the entire area around the fan on the left side was very hot to the touch as well as the whole left side of the key board. by the time i got to the windows login screen i just shut down the computer because of the loud fan and extremely high temp, it took over 2 minutes to shutdown from the windows login screen without me ever having logged into windows. the air coming out of the vent was already extremely hot when i got the the login screen as well the left side of the laptop itself, even though the air is hot and the fan sounds like it is going at full blast it has a sound kind of like a baseball card in the bicycle spoke and doesnt seem to be blowing out very fast. could this just be the fan failing or something else, cpu, hd, gfx putting out to much heat because of a malfunction and the fan not being able to compensate?