Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG Owners Lounge

You can check the manufacturer and version of your LCD panel this way:

>click start button
>rightclick "computer"
>select "properties"
>in new window, click "device manager" (near top left)
>in device manager, expand the "monitors" menu, you should see a "generic PnP monitor
>rightclick "generic PnP monitor" and select "properties"
>in properties window, go to "Details" tab
>in details tab, open the drop-down menu and select "hardware ids"
>it should now tell you what brand and version of lcd screen your laptop has in the "value" area below the drop-down menu.

 

Yup, it's AUO.

http://screensnapr.com/v/YNTTeL.png

Meh, I guess I'll get use to it like the grays appearing brown -- I've already convinced myself that I'm seeing gray, not brown

FYI, I'm coming from 4+ years of using a HP Pavillion dv6500 laptop (15" display SEC3345).

 

Just picked up a MomentusXT with the best buy gift cards I had, backing up the old 500GB 5,400 RPM right now.

Anyone running the 1.22 BIOS?

 

Does the 4820TG support 1333 mhz memory?

 

yes, but it downclocks to pc8500. however, i put in twin 4 gb sticks of crucial PC3-10600 and my WEI score for memory jumped from 5.9 (stock memory) to 6.9

 

Maybe it's running at lower timings which helps too.

I think someone posted earlier in this thread that all Core i3 and i5 mobiles only support up to DDR3 PC8500. Faster ram will simply downclock and run at tighter timings.

 

that's right. it runs at CL7 when downclocked (rated at CL9 for PC10600)

 

Hi guys,
I have done a complete clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate (64bit edition). All the drivers are installed and available on the support site of Acer. I am now facing a strange problem, When i put laptop in sleep mode and wake it again when on battery and running on Intel HD graphics mode the whole display gets distorted and i cant see a thing. If in such a condition i switch to ATI Radeon then the screen works fine again and if i revert back to Intel HD the screen is distorted again. Has anyone experienced such an issue?

P.S. Also if i hibernate laptop in distorted screen state and start up again all things are fine!!! this is very surprising behaviour. Plz check if someone is facing such a thing.

 

I want to apply new thermal paste to the CPU and GPU but I noticed that the GPU has a thermal pad. Should I remove the thermal pad and apply paste or just leave it on? What thermal paste would you recommend? I've been searching for reviews comparing cheap "no-name" thermal paste with the more expensive ones but I can't find any, so if you have any links I would appreciate it.

 

DealExtreme: $8.25 Slow-Bounce Laptop Inner Case (14.1-inch Wide-Screen)

I bought this. It works great and it is cheap. They also have a 13inch one if your a 3820tg owner.

Amazon.com: IC DIAMOND 7 CARAT 1.5 GRAM THERMAL COMPOUND: Electronics

Absurdly good performing thermal paste. It actually surprised me how much it dropped temps on my main rig compared to as5 and mx-2.

 

After 3 months of experimenting with various 11" to 14" laptops. I have settled on the 4820tg. The battery life can not be beat. I ordered it from J&R for their return policy. I must say the screen on this thing is shockingly good. Crisp and clear with really good viewing angles. The screen on the last 4820tg I used from Amazon had a terrible screen, worse than my M11X if you can believe it. But this one is killer. This laptop's a keeper.

 

I saw a 10C difference. Amazing.

The quality of every display is different.

Bronsky

 

Originally Posted by turned2black View Post
I must say the screen on this thing is shockingly good. Crisp and clear with really good viewing angles. The screen on the last 4820tg I used from Amazon had a terrible screen, worse than my M11X if you can believe it. But this one is killer. This laptop's a keeper.

How it is possible that for the same model there are different displays?
How to know which to buy and from which retailer?

 

i own acer aspire 4736 with an core 2 duo and 2gb RAM..
im planing to buy acer time lime..can someone send me the best acer laptop or should i buy timelime..im a little bit gamer and i work more on multitasking..
please message me @ Brain Supplement@yahoo.com for your answer...

many thanks..and happy new year!

 

Me too I am content with the screen. Who's the manufacturer of your laptop screen by the way ?

 

Mines says CMO 1457. A quick search shows it's manufactured by Chi Mei Optoelectronics. Never heard of them, but this is clearly a good screen, so I'm happy to have a no-name good screen. During my laptop "testing" period I have had laptops with screens from Samsung and LG, among others, and this one is by far the best.

 

Ooh ok , mine says AUO , but tell me something what kind of tests did u do with the screen ? I will like to do the same with my screen as well.

 

I have done no testing. I just based this opinion on use. Some of the screens I have used are borderline unusable. Yes, the M11X is awesome, but its screen makes it pretty useless in my opinion. I was playing Batman: AA in the dark and the screen was still terrible. The blacks were washed out and the text was still blurry.
When I said "testing" in my earlier post I was referring to the fact that I have used (and returned) about 10 laptops in the last 3 months.

The computers I have used include:
Lenovo Y460
ENVY 14
Studio 15
Inspiron 15
M11X R1
M11X R2
4820tg
HP dv6t Select Edition
Hannspree HannsBook


In my opinion the 4820tg is the best. Although Y460 would win if I could get more battery life out of it. The Y460 had the best keyboard and mouse, but the screen was just middle of the pack. The HannsBook has an awesome screen... better than the one I'm using now in my 4820tg. Its mouse is terrible, but I use a wireless mouse so it was not an issue with me. Of course, the HannsBook has no dedicated graphics card, so gaming is out. But if you need extra laptop just for general use, it's a great little machine. And it's $400.

 

Hi I've been using this laptop for a few weeks now and I love it! Especially with its gaming abilities, everything ive thrown at it (DIRT 2, Black Ops, Battlefield BC2 etc) it has handled at max settings.

I've just noticed however that it was stated to come with Microsoft Office Starter 2010, but I cant find a trace of it anywhere. Does anyone know of a way to get it, or am I just being blind?? I don't really want to pay for the full version as I'll only be using word, thats why the bundled starter edition would have been great.

Thanks

 

Yes, you should remove the thermal pad from GPU. But I would not recommmend to remove the other pads that are on VRAMs. I have applied shin-etsu on my proccessor and IC7 on the GPU, I didnt want to use IC7 on the cpu because it tends to leave scratches on the the cpu, I used it on the GPU because after removing the thermal pad I thought there should be a thicker compound instead. I have noticed big drops in my temps, about 3C-5C on load temps and CPU newer throttles down. But most importantly I am getting about 5-10C drop on my idle temps. The cpu idles about mid 30s and while just light browsing and using a word document, it stays around 37-40C (on my lap). My load temps are around 84-85C after 30 mins of prime95 high heat torture test. But most amazingly the gpu temps after 750/1100 OC never goes above 75C (using furmark 0XMSAA). I used this guide to disassamble my laptop. I found it very hard to dissable compare to other laptops that I owned. Good luck.

 

Thanks, this was the kind of detailed answer I was waiting for. I've already opened up my 5820TG and applied some random no-name thermal compound to the CPU while I wait for the MX-2 to arrive, just to see how the heatsink makes contact with the die. As I expected I didn't see any drop in temps. I even think they increased by 3-4 C... Anyway, the MX-2 should arrive on Monday.

My brother also bought a 5820TG last week with the only difference being the i5 460M (I have 450M) and his temps on CPU are ~10 C and on GPU ~15 C lower than my 5820TG. These differences in temps are before I changed the thermal compound in mine.

 

So i received this laptop for Christmas and am just now realizing that it says it has the 480m corei5 but the sticker says it has the 460m. I am not sure what to believe or why there would be a different processor. Why is this. Oh and also is there a way to make the switchable graphics work better? Sometimes it works sometimes it dose not and i have to restart the whole computer.

 

You're lucky, you got the newer line of 4820TGs. I bet your GPU is also ATi 6550 rather than 5650.

 

It says i have the 480 but I seem to still have the 5650 according to the driver and ccc... So do i have a 480 or is it just a glitch?

 

The ccc might not recognize the 6550 since it's just a rebranded 5650 chip (with stock volt overvolted by 0.1v, and stock clocks overclocked by 50 mhz).

The 480M, on the other hand, should be correctly recognizable.


Try this, open AMD GPU Overclock Tool, and see stock clock of the GPU, is the core clock 600 or 550? If its 550 then it's 5650 still, if 600 then it's 6550.

 

Would that be amd's overdrive??

 

No, although that might work also (in showing GPU clocks if it were a 6xxx version). Make sure to get the latest versions of either of those softwares though.

 

You need to update the BIOS to the newest version in order to see 5650 turn into 6550. Cheers!

 

Didn't some with 5650 who updated with recent BIOS also have their 5650 identified as 6550? I wonder if it unlocked the voltage or anything.

 

Does that mean the by just installing BIOS 1.22 the 5650 will be 6550??

 

After flashing the 3820TG to BIOS 1.19, the GPU will be detected as 6550. But the 4820TG and 5820TG have different BIOS compared to 3820TG so flashing to 1.22 might not change anything (Acer didn't attach a change log for 1.22...). At least BIOS 1.19 for my 5820TG didn't change anything, but I don't want to flash to 1.22 without knowing what it actually does.

 

At least on the 3820TG, the different ID for the GPU appears when the unit is placed into "dedicated" mode only.

 

I bought my 4820TG in August from Microcenter and I have the same monitor according to the device manager. IMO I can't really agree that the screen is all that great, but I guess I'm just used to using my 17" asus laptop for the last 4 years that had a pretty nice screen and a macbook pro. The screen is completely fine for websurfing, emails, word processing, excel, programming etc which is really the only time I actually use the laptop screen; whenever my laptop is home I connect it to a 1080p 23" display.

The Momentus XT has had a pretty nice improvement in loading performance, everything launches much more "snappier" now than compared to the stock 5,400 RPM disk.

My next step is to get some of that IC7 thermal paste for the CPU (and GPU if I'm feeling daring enough) that everyone has been talking so much about. And possibly some new RAM, a whole point jump in windows rating seems pretty good; those who have upgraded, have you noticed any kind of performance increase? What brand did you guys get for the RAM upgrade? I think I'm going to go with GSkill, I have used them in the past and haven't had any problems: Newegg.com - G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model F3-10600CL9D-8GBSQ

Happy New Years!

 

Here is the change log I found on the net: Aspire Timeline 4820TG Bios V1.22 - Acer-Userforum.de

It seems v1.21 changes a lot of things; v1.20 also added supports for AMD RobsonXT and Capilano (the rebranded VGA). I updated my 7805 and my mainboard's serial number, as seen in CPUID, changed to JM41_CP (originally ZQ1B). 5650 didn't change to 6550, nor max voltage.

 

Ok so anyway i got the AMDs GPU clock tool installed and it said it was 550. But I'm going to try updating the bios anyway. Thats after i make a recovery disks thought which i still haven't done...

 

Well I was unable to find one of these anywhere. Guess I'll either wait for the next gen stuff or I'll pick up a laptop with similar enough specs from the market place here so I can start gaming on the go! SC2 is an addiction =/

 

No, MINECRAFT is an addition. Lol.

 

My Acer 4820tg only has ONE USB 2.0 port that functions - the one on the left hand side!
All 3 USB ports on the right, don't work at all. Brand new, any ideas??
Thank you.

 

My guess that the USB Card is bad or the connector from the Mainboard to the Card is disconnected (or loose). At least in the 3820TG, the solo USB port is connected Directly to the motherboard while the other group was on a separate board, connected to the mainboard via ribbon. If the 4820TG is configured the same, you can assume that the mainboard controller is functioning. Sounds like an RMA to me.

Bronsky

 

Are there any issues with VGA out on the 5650? I know the integrated GPU can't use HDMI so I'm wondering if the two display outputs are exclusive to each GPU?

 

So when you first get the computer/fresh reformat, there's software that has a bubble come up when you press caps lock, etc. I was cleaning up all the bloatware and I must've accidentally deleted that specific software. Would anyone know what it is specifically?

 

Launch Manager ?

 

Hi, am having problems with the Intel media and graphics control colour management thing. The lowest brightness setting on the laptop is too low but the next setting up is too bright. I have used the graphics card settings to adjust it to my liking. However every time I restart the computer the graphics management system doesn't apply my settings.

How can I fix this?

Thanks

 

You can try this. Type 'calibration' in the start menu, click on "change advanced color management" and in the newly opened window uncheck "use my settings for this display". Then hopefully your manual settings will stay put.

 

Does anyone now where the clockgen is located on this laptop model??
Does the cpu/gpu have thermal paste or pads?

 

were can i get my hands on one of these computers? i cant find any stores in the US that have one of these in stock. any ideas on where i can purchase one?

 

MicroCenter carries them at some stores. It's the only place I've seen them. They have the 4820TG-7566 btw. I got mine there, and it's a great little machine.

 

--DISREGARD--
Sorry, browser cache hasn't been cleared for a month. Amazon DOES NOT have them in stock.

 

Does anyone have problems with transferring files to any kind of storage device connected to any USB port? My brother also bought a 5820TG a couple of weeks ago and I noticed that file transfers would cancel after a few seconds if the window for the folder from which the file is transferred and the window for the folder where the file is transferred to are closed. So if I keep only the small window with the info about transfer speed open, the file transfer will be cancelled without warning after a few seconds. The only difference between my 5820TG and my brothers being the BIOS version (1.18 vs 1.19), I flashed mine to 1.19 and now I have the same problem.

Is it possible to go back to older BIOS versions? Or maybe it's fixed in 1.22?

 

Its strange sometimes it applies my settings on startup, sometimes it doesnt. I am using the 8.15.10.2025 driver at the moment.