Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG Owners Lounge

What are the normal idle temps? I just bought the Cooler Master Notepal Infinite cooler and I'd like to see if it made a difference.

Pic:



Sorry, I took it with my cell phone. The cooler is nice to use on my lap and makes typing a little easier Got it on sale at MicroCenter for $19.99

EDIT: Left 4 Dead 2 temperatures on Medium-High (60 FPS on the first level, even with fire and all):



Did get hot, but no throttling

EDIT 2: BF: BC2 ran beautifully on low too! Same temps as above.

EDIT 3: After 20-30 mins of Prime 95:

Linky

EDIT 4: Doesn't look like it's worth buying the NotePal Infinite for cooling purposes - the only plus I found is that I can use the cooler on my lap while in bed. I'll be trying the NotePal U2 sometime later. Also on sale at MicroCenter for $13ish

EDIT 5: Here's my post on the accessories forum regarding cooling for those interested (it includes a picture of the bottom of the laptop):

http://forum.notebookreview.com/acc...ook-coolers-buyers-guide-130.html#post6559698

 

There used to be a post regarding the crapware to uninstall from one of the other threads, can't remember which one tho... you might wanna search for it under the 3820TG Owner Thread or the venerable Arrandale Timeline thread ..

 

What is the difference between the 10.6 and 10.7 ati catalyst driver? Also, are we suppose to download the 1.1mb version or the 69mb version?

 

You can check out AMD site for the readme of 10.7 to see whats in the new revision. You should be downloading the entire package thats abt 120+MB or more. That package contains everything required and will also check whether any of the ATI software you currently have in your laptop needs to be replaced and automatically install it.

 

The largest file on their website is only 69 mb. Do you think that is the same one you are talking about?

Catalyst Software Suite: 1.1 mb
Catalyst Control Center: 69 mb

 

Go the 69mb fella, cant see any 120mb myself.

Maybe he forgot to go mobility?

 

wait i wanna ask, what basically is the difference between this and the 4745g. they pretty much look very the same

 

u guys are lucky u can even install ATI's catalyst drivers.. i can't at all! >:{}

anyways.. i've just noticed that the intel gfx card doesn't support HDMI out.. it only works with VGA out

so if u want to run HDMI out only.. u'll have to use the 5650 card and obviously can't take advantage of the long battery life.. not that there is much point when it's connected to an external monitor anyway since u'll be most likely plugged in

so yeah HDMI out does not work with the intel gfx card

 

I guess HDMI doesn't work on the Intel GMA HD. I just tried to use the Intel GMA HD and it switched to the ATI HD 5650. Thanks for letting us know.

 

Do you guys leave the battery plugged in when you have the laptop sitting with the AC charger plugged in?

Edit: also, is this the 9-cell battery in this picture?

 

No, that picture above is with the standard 6-Cell battery.

 

Here is how the 9-cell battery looks on the 4820TG. It sticks out from the bottom.

 

haha oh wow that is a bit absurd. I think I may just purchase a second 6-cell when they become available to buy.

 

Hi all, I got my Acer Aspire TLX 4820TG about 3 months back. I was happily using it until now. My battery does not seem to be charging at all! My notebook will show the battery as "0%, plugged in and charging" but when I remove the AC power after a few hours of charging, the notebook shuts down straight away as there is no power in the battery. Has anyone encountered this and know the solution?? :|

Thanks!

 

There are benefits:

- Better airflow
- Easier to type on when standing on a desk
- More battery life

Drawbacks:

- Can't fit into a slim sleeve case
- Probably uncomfortable to use on lap
- The 6-cell may provide enough battery life for your needs

 

Select the one called "Catalyst Software Suite" its actually a download assistant that will help you to download the full software suite thats 120+MB or more.

 

Its either a defective battery or charger i suspect You have to return and get it replaced...

 

Can you guys tell me ATI 5650 is comparable to which desktop graphic card.Is it comparable to my XFX 9600gt 512mb.

 

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 is comparable to the NVIDIA GeForce GT 335M (72 unified pipelines). I'm not sure how the NVIDIA GeForce GT 335M compares to the 9600GT, but they should be similar in performance.

 

Which is better for games 800$ 4820tg with i3 and 1366x768 or 800$ acer 7741g with 450m,but tougher 1600x900 resolution for games ?

 

How are you comparing these two laptops? The 7741g has a 17.3" screen and the 4820TG has a 14" screen. The 1600x900 resolution on the 7741g wouldn't be better than the 1366x768 resolution on the 4820TG since the screen is so large. Also, the 7741g isn't portable at 7.3 pounds and the battery life will be much less than the 4820TG.

The 7741g is a desktop replacement laptop and the 4820TG is a thin-and-light laptop.

 

As far as I can tell, the Acer 7741g has a 5470M in it. This video card is weaker than the one on the 4820tg. Furthermore, even if the video cards were the same, it would be more difficult to run games at acceptable frame rates at the higher resolution. I would go for the 4820tg.

 

So I've almost convinced myself to cancel my Asus u35jc pre-order and get a 4820tg from Amazon. I'm not a huge fan of the plastic wrist rest or the trackpad on those Asus models (the Acer is much better IMO), which makes me a bit wary.

Is there anything I should be aware of before I place my order? Excessive heat, bad keyboard flex? I tested one out at my local Microcenter who bizarrely remove the battery from their display models, so I think that was exacerbating flex issues.

Also, can anyone give me a rough idea of battery life while gaming? I'm assuming it's in the 2 hr range, which is what I'd expect from the u35jc anyways.

Thanks for your input!

 

Its not a problem the portability and the battery,but I wanted to know is the i5 processor gonna compensate the framerates on the bigger screen.The 7741g model has hd5650 too.

 

The Core i5 will not compensate that much for framerates. It'll mostly depend on the graphics card. However, you should know that the higher the resolution = less framerates.

 

Also, the 4820TG is available with an i5 (see the MicroCenter link in the OP) in the United States. It's $100 more, but also comes with a bigger hard drive.

 

Does Acer use any specific sound card or just onboard?

 

Almost every budget laptop has onboard sound. The speaker drivers are just enhanced with extra features.

 

I'm a gamer (but not a hardcore one), how about using some gaming headset with it's own usb sound card? I was thinking Plantronics GAMECOM 777 gaming headset.

 

You'll be fine using your Plantronics headphones through the onboard sound in games. It works quite well for me.

I use Plantronics headphones in Counter-Strike: Source on the 4820TG. I can hear footsteps clearly.

 

Hey guys,

I can't get wlan working. After doing a clean install of windows and installing the broadcom wlan drivers, I can't find any networks at all, even though I've turned wifi on (wireless orange indicator light is on).

as you can see I have launch manager installed, with wifi enabled. however the network tray icon says there's no networks available, even though there are networks, as my other computer is able to find them

both device manager and network center recognize it as broadcom 802.11n network adapter, so it might not be a driver issue

 

Your router/modem might be set to hide its broadcast?

I set mine too do that.. i have to manually add it to my network list.

I have a few layers of protection though.

Just a thought...

 

I actually made them put a battery into it to see how much it would stiffen up the overall structure. Interestingly, it makes all the difference in the world... night and day. The thing is truly fantastic, but it needs the battery to hold the back together structurally.

 

FYI, another confirmation that this process works!! Thanks for fiddling with this stuff so we call can benefit

 

Well, I just finished a clean install too. And I found it pretty challenging, especially because there are a variety of WLAN vendors chips that are used. It took me a while to figure out that my unit was Broadcom (after trying Atheros and Intel) Weird thing is, it let me install the other driver packages without complaining. Not sure if this is what you're experiencing, but I could tell by device manager whether my WLAN was working or not.

Pain in the arse actually. I know it sounds stupid silly, but it did happen to me.

 

I hope to see soon the i5 model in amazon,because it doesnt need to pay tax and is i3 problematic processor :/

 

hmm this is strange because device manager and network center both recognize the broadcom wlan fine, and the drivers are installed too. wifi is enabled from acer launch manager. it seems that everything is working, minus the fact that it can't find any networks

 

ok nvm i was being an idiot, I accidently disabled the wlan autoconfig service. after re-enabling it and reinstalling drivers all is fine

 

Ahhh.. that would do it! Glad to hear that you nailed that one.

I have another one now. Spastic behavior from the switchable graphics in either Sleep mode or cold boot. The machine spazzzzes out big time!

 

i3 is not problematic, but I noticed that some people in this thread were having throttling issues due to heat at lower temperatures than those with i5 processors.

 

hey guys
i need your help.
i want to do a odd change.

which caddy for ssd do i need?
i red about 9,5mm and sata but where should the sata connector should be?
can you send me somelinks?
thanks

 

Which wlan wireless do I have? How can we check it there are 3 options?

 

First of all, sorry for my crappy english

I have come in doubt, I was sure that I wanted a 4820TG i5 HD5650. Because of 3820TG's lack of optical-drive... I think that I will hate that I need to have a portable optical-drive with me if I just needed to play a DVDmovie, install a game etc...

Sizewise doesn't matter between the two, I can live with the extra millimeters, and then have an integrated optical-drive.

But realized the better cooling 3820TG has, and it's better potentiale of OC... Easy, cheap extra FPS when gaming. Is the 3820TG more quiet than the 4820TG??

BTW. issues with keyboard-flex and bad build quality, I have tried 3820, 4820 and 5820 in a store. I think it seems pretty well build, and the keyflex is next to nothing. There was a Asus UL30 next to the Acer computers, and what kind of cheap plastic-feeling that is, and the keyboard is SO flexi compered to the Acer timelineX

 

Compared my 5820TG (which basically has the same cooling as 4820TG) and my friends 3820TG when playing BC2 and I would say that the noise difference is not noticeable.

 

How much the gpu can be overclocked before the i3 to throttle ?

 

The GPU temperature somewhat affects the CPU temperature since both the GPU and the CPU share a cooler. Throttling (on the i3) technically occurs under normal non-OCed conditions, which means that OCing may cause throttling temperatures to be reached earlier. Apparently (from reading this thread), not all folks with i3 processors have issues with throttling, so it may be different from you. My i5 does reach fairly high temperatures when gaming, but I haven't really seen any evidence of throttling yet (I'm not OCed at all).

 

Sup guys?
I'm now the proud owner of a 4820TG and here's my mini review.

I've got the 4820TG-Epic edition. (AKA AS4820TG-5454G64Mn)
I5-450M 2.4 GHz (Turbo to 2.66 GHz)
HD5650 (ofc)
640 GB HDD
and a 9-cell battery.

Features:
The notebook: Not much to say
Nice design.


Opened: Screen and keyboard
People talked about the screen flexing, but it's not nearly as bad as I thought. The keyboard is okay, although I'm still getting used to it. The screen is nice. There was a lot of talk about visible lines of pixels, but my screen looks like it should when I sit like I would normally do when working on it. The viewing angles suck, but to me that's unimportant.


From the side: Battery
The cool thing about this notebook is, of course, the 9-cell battery. AFAIK these are still rare in USA, but I had no problem getting a hold of one over here. The battery almost doubles the height of the notebook, but I don't mind it when I get 10 hours of battery life. I haven't tried actually letting it stand on battery for 10 hours, but the Windows battery thing shows 9 hours and 36 minutes right now, and I'm only at 84% battery.

Also notice the 3 USB connections. There's one more on the right and IMO there should've been 2 on each side and one of the ones on the right should've been next to the power cable, to make it easier to connect mice. Just saying that they could've done this in a more efficient way.

Benching:
Temperatures:
Started out by running IntelBurnTest and Prime95 to see what the max temp is:

Surprisingly, Prime95 gives higher temps than IBT ('bout 4C). My theory is that the turbo function throttles down a bit when running IBT, probably because of the load. At 85C it seemed the CPU throttled back the turbo to cool off, but it hasn't throttled back to <2.4 GHz even at those temps, so nothing's overheating.

After that I ran Furmark.

The screenie speaks for itself, really. If I had given it more time, the temp might have increased to 78C, but this is still a great temp.

Just for fun I tried combining Prime95 and Furmark:

BAD IDEA. Even at stock clocks, this results in extreme temps.

Performance & overclocking:
3DMark Vantage:

Didn't get a total score because the res is too low. Will hook up the notebook to my 24" sometime. Still, the results look decent. The i5 beats the OC'ed E8200 in my desktop, which is impressive. Not by much though, but it's a notebook. Also notice the GPU temps. Very nice!

So, with the help of CVonV, I tried overclocking the GPU and reached some decent stable clocks even in Furmark:

750/1100! Pretty darned good IMO!

Ran 3DMark Vantage again:

Although it's still not valid because of the res, it is a major improvement over the stock speed. And look at those temperatures! Only a 5C increase in exchange for a 45% performance increase. Unbelievable.
(Also note that even in Vantage at these speeds, I'm getting lower temps than I did when using Prime95 and Vantage together @ stock)
EDIT: Played some BC2 and the CPU temps went to 97C while the GPU temps were 89C. Too hot IMO. I will no longer use Vantage for testing stability and temps.

Games:
I've only had this for a very short amount of time and haven't had much time to play, but what I've seen so far has impressed me.
In COD4 I've been getting 125+ FPS @ 1366x768 + Max settings, except no AA and no specular maps.
In BC2 I got 30-40 FPS on medium settings 1366x768in the first missions of the campaign.
In Beat Hazard I got about 50 FPS with dips to about 30, I think.

Conclusion:
Very satisfied. 9/10 for what I'll be using it for.
Would recommend this to others.



BTW I've tried to OC the GPU, but Afterburner didn't work. Noticed OP had OC'ed the GPU. What did you do/use to OC it?

 

AMD GPU Clock Tool for the HD5870

 

TYVM, worked like a charm.

 

An update on the 4820TG i3 thermal trials I've been doing.

I played Alien Swarm for 3 hours the other day and the highest CPU temp was 84C and 87C on Core 0 and Core 2 respectively. It should have throttled but I did not notice anything in game.

I also played TF2 for 2 hours and the highest CPU temp was 77C on both cores. Definitely no throttling there.

This is the i3 version. Maybe there was throttling but it does not seem to affect my gaming. Overall, I think the laptop is a keeper.