Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG Owners Lounge

I don't think you can do that... cos in the bios there's only 2 option, Hybrid or dGPU... which i assume means discrete GPU card

 

I got some fresh SC2 temps for you guys



Doesn't look that bad. The maximum temps did reach 92 degrees Celsius, but I never experienced lag in game, or any evidence of throttling. This screenshot was taken immediately after completing the second mission of the singleplayer campaign. I've been playing for ~30 minutes at this point. The laptop was on my lap and the room temperature was 24.4 degrees Celsius.

 

Ran prime95 again for ~50min., this time with integrated graphics on.

 

im surprised no one has tried undervolting the CPU to drop the temps, or is it not possbile with the i5

cause i remember having a 5920g and that thing ran hot. undervolted, dropped the temp to about 75-80 at load

 

where did u guys get ur 4820tg's?

 

not possible with i3/i5/i7

Microcenter, there's links in the op

 

It's not as straightforward with the core i series as they dynamically change their voltage based on cpu load & speed. In theory you can adjust it somewhat as a lower starting vcc will translate into a lower top end voltage - but I haven't been able to find a tool that will let me set a base voltage on the 4820. If anyone knows how to do that I'd be very appreciative if they passed it on.

 

they have i5-520, the ones at microcenter lists i5-450

 

High or ultra?

 

Default (medium), but at an appropriate resolution.

@hihowareu: HWMonitor is bugged. We all have the i5-450M

 

You can't play on high? I am sure the 5650(550/800) can handle high, shadows low, 30fps.
I am returning my envy 14 with 5650(450/800) for the 4820tg. On the envy I was able to play on high, shadows low, 27-30fps 1600x900.
Is this res 1366x768 available in sc2?


Thank you for the info

 

The res 1360x768 is available, and that's what I use. I haven't tested high settings as I didn't have much time to play. Will do so whenever I get the chance

 

That's good news because it wasn't supported in beta.

Thank you

 

Been playing single player against the A.I. and the first couple of Terran missions in Starcraft 2 while watching 2 hours of America's Got Talent. I think it's called Mars Sara or something like that. The resolution is at 1360x768 and graphics is almost all on high. I just hate it that you can't play Starcraft 2 without broadband internet connection.



Also, how do I make the graphs from the .csv files? I'm still new to Microsoft Excel 2010. Can you help me make the graphs, ngaw?

 

Does anyone know what the latest switchable-graphics-capable graphics driver version is? The one from the Acer site seems to be from the first quarter of the year (March or something). The one from the ATI site doesn't seem to support switchable graphics.

 

Do you have switchable graphics turned on in BIOS? I just updated mine to 10.7 from 10.6 and I still have switchable graphics. Also, make sure you have the Intel GMA HD drivers installed.

 

I can't say much for your taste in TV shows but the temps look good. In the back of my mind I am wondering if NGAW's heat sink is working correctly. Any other I3's out there. You guys should all run an identical benchmark to compare temps and throttling.

Bronsky

 

Ok, so I have both the Intel and ATI drivers from the Acer website installed. What procedure would I follow to update to 10.7s? Simply download and install the driver? No uninstalling?

EDIT: Also, does anyone get funky video artifacts when switching graphics? They go away after a few seconds, but they still appear and are annoying.

 

I installed 10.7 and then restarted the computer. I went into BIOS and I selected "Discrete" instead of "Switchable". When I booted into Windows 7, it started to install new ATI HDMI drivers, etc. I restarted when it completed installing drivers. Then I went back into BIOS and selected "Switchable". Then I booted back into Windows 7.

I think that's the correct way to do it. I read it somewhere in one of the threads.

P.S. I don't have any artifacts of any kind when I switch graphics. The screen just goes black for a few seconds.

 

Been playing SC2 all night. Runs perfectly on High/Ultra. The only thing I'm not really a fan on is the screen on this laptop, blacks are very dull, looks fine with just windows, but games like SC with a lot black don't look amazing (still looks good, but not amazing). Not a big deal for me though since I will be using an external monitor when I move back up to my house at school.

 

I agree with you about the blacks being dull. I had to tilt the screen a few times during Starcraft 2 gameplay. The only thing bothering me is the units are so tiny on a 14 inch screen. I'm so used to the 22 inch monitor on my desktop. haha

 

Cool, thanks! I guess the artifacts only appeared a couple of times for me. They seem to have gone away after further testing.

So I can just DL the catalyst software suite and run that after enabling discrete graphics in BIOS?

EDIT: Never mind, everything went successfully

 

Hi - first time posting here. I have had quite an experience with my new 4820tg and I thought I would share a few insights if I can remember everything I went through. Most of the issues I'm going to describe I blame on Norton Endpoint but that's not a new story.

After uninstalling Norton and installing Nod32, my Radeon 5650 disappeared and was relabelled as a standard VGA card by Win7. I tried everything to reinstall the drivers (I received the most help here) but basically to no avail. ATI CCC kept giving me errors and telling me that it couldn't find the card. What finally worked was:
1. Stop the auto install on Win 7 for new hardware
2. Uninstall the 'standard VGA card'
3. Download the newest 5650 driver from acer and extract
4. Reboot
5. When Win asks about new driver, point it to the 5650 file location
6. An error may pop up with the install (mine was code 43) - I rebooted and it was all good (finally).

To many this may sound like common sense but I was relying on Win 7 auto features to 'fix' things for me - so much for my innocence.

I also had a couple of other problems.
1. My CPU and memory was being overloaded without anything being run in the background. That was a problem with wmpnetwk.exe which I found the solution to at Fix wmpnetwk.exe In Windows 7

2. My computer still won't go into sleep mode properly - it freezes and won't wake up. This also seems to be an issue caused by Norton but I haven't been able to chase it down yet even though I've tried multiple solutions.

Please let me know if anything doesn't seem right or is unclear. I think the 4820 is great but it's taken me many days and nasty looks from my wife to get this worked out (I even almost thought about buying a fruity computer once - forgive me). Thanks for everyone's help here from previous postings.

 

Confirming that SC2 runs well on High settings. Temps seem OK too! I would like to get a notebook cooler for gaming on a table. What would be the best one for the 4820TG?

 

dry ice

































kidding..

cooler master u2 w/ customizable fans ftw

 

The Zalman ones are great too and very quiet...

 

I really like the Zalmans because I can use them on my lap, but they are so expensive compared to everything else out there.

@wasabi.: The U2 is cool, but I'd like something with a bottom side so the fans aren't out in the open. I was thinking about the CoolerMaster Notepal X2 or X1.

EDIT: Also, I'm concerned about the magnetic nature of the U2 fans - will that not mess with the internals of the laptop?

EDIT 2: What about the CoolerMaster NotePal Infinite?

 

Thanks for posting your results! Good news that you're able to play star craft without any throttling. It adds to my hope that acer might be able to do something to fix my unit.

It is a bit of a razors edge though - with your temps 3 to 4 degrees below the throttling point. Hopefully the jump of 2-7 degrees over your max temps from torture testing just means that SC2 represents the max in heat production.

As for the charts, I'd be happy to make them for you if you'd like to post the raw data. If you want to do your own, a good starting point is to highlight the top left cell of the table (A4 or A5 I believe) and do insert->line chart it will build a basic chart based on the data - you'll just need to remove extra data and do little tweaks.

 

Which settings did you check mark in logging for Everest? I want to repeat the same process as you. I'm going to redo this test again tonight to see if the temperatures are accurate and I'll send you the raw data.

 

Time,CPU Mhz,CPU Multiplier,CPU FSB,CPU %,GPU Mhz,CPU °C,CPU #1 / Core #1 °C,CPU #1 / Core #2 °C,GPU Diode °C,HDD1 °C,CPU W

(apologies for cut and paste)

 

Hey guys, I've been looking at the 4820TG for a while.

More specifically the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG-5454G64Mn, which is the one with i5-450M + HD 5650 + 9 cell 9000 mAh battery.

I need this for school, so it has to have at least 7.5 hours of battery life. Now, I know that the battery is rated for 11.5+ hours, but I was wondering if anyone has this and can confirm that the battery is good enough for 8 hours of normal use (Office, interwebz, etc.)?

 

well you have to realize the fans are exposed by nature. the u2 is meant to also act as an optional carrying case.

i prefer the U2 over a lot of the other coolers out there because:

1) really good bang for your buck. just $20-25 and you get an awesome cooler
2) customizable fans. place the fans underneath the intakes. place the fans underneath the laptop fan. place one fan under a hot spot (such as the left palm rest) and the other underneath the intake/fan. you have many configurations available to you to find the best cooling setup.
3) great ergonomic angle. makes typing a lot easier with the slight incline.
4) this thing is QUIET. when i first got mine it was so quiet i thought i got a defective unit lol.

what do you mean magnetic fans? the fans latch on with hooks

 

Yes. I believe people have supported upwards of 9 hours with the 9-cell. Not sure if it was the same model, but I'm pretty sure you'll get that on that one too.

 

Oops, I thought the fans attached magnetically in some review video I saw (I had sound off). Haha

The reason why I want fans that are enclosed in something is because I might sometimes use the cooler on my lap. I know this is a terrible idea with some coolers, but aren't there some that have air intake on the back rather than on the bottom?

If I determine that i will never use the cooler on my lap, I will most likely purchase the U2.

 

the microcenter models only have 6cell batteries, that has a real life batt life of about 5-6 hours right? where can u get a 9cell battery in the US? is it the same size or does it stick out on the bottom

my only real issue is with the keyboard... it just look like a dust trap with the floating keys... anyone here actually like it?

 

@holymoly: Yeah, I love the keyboard. It's very quiet (except the spacebar key). Just have to use canned air once in a while.

Also, check this out guys! I just played SC2 with Medium settings while on battery. The laptop was on my lap. The room temperature was 24C. I was playing the Red Circle TD map - a map where there are many enemies and explosions on the screen at once. I took this screenshot after ~30 minutes of playing:



Look at the temps! They are so low compared to my previous result with SC2. Could this be because the battery charging increases temps?

 

Doesnt the CPU downclock itself while on battery (depending on power profile)?

This would lead to lower temperatures

 

You know, maybe, but the thing is, there was no lag in game whatsoever!

 

Are you sure you were using the ATI video card? Something is surely off there.

 

Yes, I attempted running it on the Intel card and there was massive lag even at low settings. Also, I alt-tabbed into Windows and opened HW monitor immediately as my team lost the match - the screenshot shows the HD5650. If I were on the Intel graphics, it wouldn't show the ATI card afaik.

If someone wants to write a test procedure for me to follow, I can try to get some graphs going.

 

I actually like the keyboard

Hey, anyone know how I can check to see if I'm running the Ati 10.7 catalyst drivers or the Acer ones? I did a complete fresh install of windows (again lol), installed Acer Ati driver > Intel VGA > reboot to bios, turn to Discrete graphics > installed Ati 10.7, but I think it's still using the Acer drivers. Not sure I can check the difference between the two.

 

You need to leave hwmonitor running while you're playing for it to capture accurate temperatures. Once you alt-tabbed the rendering process stopped, idling the gpu and cooling off both chips considerably. If you play a half hour match, leave the sensor program running the entire time.

 

Ok, will do

 

The program is called everest( |MG| EVEREST Free Edition 2.20 Download ) . You can export a csv file( file->preferences->logging) which can be opened in excel. Excel can then make a chart out of the data.

Would love to see the results of the situation where it gets to 90 degrees! Thanks!

 

My temps are 90-92C hwmonitor(high temps but no lag) on both cores playing sc2 for 1 hour gpu 82C. I am using stock drivers can somebody tell me how to get the latest gpu drivers and how to install them.

Thank you

 

Micro Center - Acer Aspire TimelineX AS4820TG-3195 Laptop Computer - Carbon Black LX.PSE02.228

Availability:
Usually ships in 7-21 business days.

 

What are the steps to setting up logging of temperature and clock speeds vs time?

EDIT: Here's HW monitor after playing SC2 for about 45 minutes on High:



No throttling as far as I can tell. The only lag in the game was due to other people lagging :s

EDIT: Also, I'd like to note that the second I alt tabbed my temp dropped from over 80C to under 70C. 15 seconds later it was under 60C.

 

Check in devices > drivers. http://forum.notebookreview.com/6526794-post2559.html Should look like the pic on the right. Driver No. 8.753.0.0

Bronsky

 

TYVM, just what I needed to know.

 

besides the 4820TG, is there any other 13-14" laptop that has similar specs/batterylife out on the market? im ganna go down to microcenter today and check it out