Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG Owners Lounge

This might be an appropriate post for another subforum, but I just installed Firefox 4 and am noticing some blurry fonts while using the ATI 5650 GPU. If I switch to the Intel GPU things look much more crisp, although switching while Firefox is open will cause it to crash.

I'm running the stock ATI drivers and have checked that in the CCC AA and AF are set to use program settings instead of preset values.

Any ideas? Thanks.

 

Okay, thanks, but that guy seemed to have done it quite easily.
I dunno if the disassembly can vary from models ^^'

 

@inm8#2

Disable hardware acceleration in FF4- fonts look blurry with it enabled.

 

Getting to the mini-PCI card slot is very easy. You could look for one of those new WiFi cards that have a bluetooth module built in. I believe Intel released the Intel 6230 N which combines an Intel 6200 WiFi card with a bluetooth transreceiver. You can look into that as it will definitely be easier to add that card than the dedicated bluetooth module.

 

Has anyone here installed the windows 7's service pack 1? I know that it doesn't show because of the outdated intel drivers that acer has, so is there a way of upgrading the intel hd drivers like the ati ones?

Also has anyone found a workaround up the brightness keys not working when you update to a later version of the catalyst drivers?

 

Installed Win7 SP1 via the standalone installation package from Microsoft. No problems so far. Don't have any experiences with the brightness keys not working though.

 

Heres my story. I was overclocking my GPU and pushed the clocks to 800/1000. The computer screen froze, and I thought it would be fine to just reboot it by holding down the power button. My laptop is hooked up to an external monitor via hdmi. After booting up, the ati hdmi output did not show up in the audio playback devices. Also there was constant static coming out of my speakers. I re-installed the ati drivers for my graphics card, and now it seems to be fine except for one problem. When I start up, from the windows logo to the login screen there is that same static, till the login sound is played. I think the hdmi sound is controlled by the gpu so is it possible I "broke" the hdmi audio output while pushing the clocks too high? If somebody wants I can post a vid.

Update: The static continues until a sound is played by windows, for example the login sound makes the static stop and the audio return to normal. When I change resolutions from the catalyst control center, there is static until I play a sound, for example start music from itunes or send a message on AIM. If I knew overclocking could damage the card, I never would have done it.

Nevermind, I think there was a problem with my monitor, just gonna use the headphone jack to out put audio now.

 

Use the newest Catalyst and it should work again with the brightness keys.

Should be a driver bug not a hardware defect.

 

im a new member
pls help
my max temp while gaming or rendering videos is up to 101 C, im in philippines,
but in average of 90+ in gaming
what should i do? pls help

 

again see the posted links to the modded catalyst + intel drivers

 

Yeah but where would I buy it? Newegg?

 

Thank you, but didn't find where to buy it ^^' (all the websites where I found it look like it's not available anymore =/ I must precise I'm living in France, so ... ^^')
-------------
Another question please, which case are you using for your TimelineX are you using please ?
I dunno if it's possible to get one with little pouchs in order to take a mouse/the charger with the pc, but without being a bag. Hope you'll see what I mean ^^'

 

My machine hits 85C on GPU and CPU when gaming in windows, and gets to 95C when rendering with handbrake in linux. In linux the kernel throttles it down from 2.53 to 2.4GHz when it hits 95C and it floats between 94 and 95 while doing it. Luckily nothing in windows I run gets it that hot.

I hear applying new thermal paste can help, and I've got Arctic silver laying around somewhere in my apartment I might try on it. Note that it's no job for first timers or amateurs, find a good service tech to help you out of you want to do that.

 

The -6847 is the only one in the US with the 480M/6550 and a 640GB drive.
But no BT.
If if it is that critical you could be using a BT dongle in the meantime. Good luck in any case.

 

Yes, but for now I've got no answer of the seller of the "non-bt model", so I think I'll buy the new one, with BT ^^
I also thought of buying a usb BT dongle, 'cause I don't need 4 usb ports at the same time.

EDIT : Do you think this caddy bay would be great for the 4820 please ? ( http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-SATA-2nd-HD...ultDomain_3&hash=item20b136a1d8#ht_4747wt_905 )
Also, could I put a 12.7mm caddy bay into the 4820 please ?

 

I have no idea where to buy it from. It's a new card from Intel so it might not have hit all the distribution channels such as Newegg and Amazon. Over time, availability should increase.

As for the laptop case, I don't use one so can't help there.

Visually, I don't think the DVD bay is high enough for a 12.7mm caddy but I haven't measured or tried to check so not 100% sure on that answer.

 

Found the 6230n (6300n hasn't got bt in fact) on ebay (there : INTEL 100 PACK BULK CENTRINO ADVANCED-N 6230 WI-FI HALF en vente sur eBay.fr (fin le 01-avr.-11 22:01:23 Paris) ).

For the caddy bay, apparently it's only possible to get a 9.5mm fitting in the 4820. And I dunno if the one I found is "totally" compatible with the 4820.

And thank you very much

 

9.5mm caddy fits perfectly btw.Im using one from ebay 9.5 a little sad that i can't have a 1tb hdd in the odd bay since its only 9.5 and 12.7 wont fit

edit: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270708545640&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT
i bought that one so if its similar it will fit. and it took 2-3 weeks for me to get I live in US. there are pictures i put early in this thread i think like 8 pages before this or so with pictures of the photobucket with the after since the faceplate cant fit without modding and I dont wanna break the faceplate tabs.

 

Okay, thanks for your "review"
Saw your pictures (even if I don't see much on these ^^'), it seems like the caddy bay is a bit more "into" the 4820 than the odd, right ?

 

lol sorry camera is some sauce. but it is a bit more into i would say about 1/4 (i know its less than half an inch defintly) inch into difference from the original, but nothing too distracting for me. Totally worth it though ssd+hdd is awesome and since i dont use my odd.

edit: pretty sure if i could fit the original faceplate it would look even better.

 

Yeah, thanks Right, SSD is definetely great ^^ And I won't use odd too, I already got an external one if needed, so

 

thanks

tell me if you apply arctic silver and whats the difference

 

How hard is it to replace the wifi card? Is this a warranty voiding procedure?

 

Hi everyone I'm new here. I have had my 4820tg for about a month now and everything running just great. This is my first laptop so there is a lot of things I'm not used to. So this is the list of question I want to ask, sorry if this has been asked before.

My hard disc is 640gb and there is only one partition. How to divide the partition, I've tried pressing Alt+F9 during booting and can't find any option to manage the hard disc partition. I've read about partition wizard but I prefer to not install that software. Is there any other option?

I want to do clean install and again I press Alt+F9 to format but acer still install all the bloatware. Btw which bloatware is useful for this laptop. Can you give me the exact instruction how to do this thing? Sorry I'm really a noob.

My biggest concern now is during playing 720p@1080p movie, the image is not too sharp and kinda blurry. Compared to my friend's laptop which is 2 years older, the picture for the same movie is sharp and clear only some lagging maybe because he doesn't have a good graphic card.Is there anything to do?

So that's all I think, I hope someone can help, thanks.

 

if i remember correctly theres 3 different partitions for that disc. 14gb for acer recovery, 100mb for windows and the rest is your hard drive. Clean install with the recovery discs, will always put bloatware only way is to completely install windows 7 like I did for my ssd. On the first post on this thread shows how to active windows again on the acer. It didnt work for me luckly the bottom oem key on the bottom worked fine.

oh yea did anyone find the best copper shim dimensions for the gpu.

 

Installed the copper shim on the GPU today with IC Diamond 7, and I am very happy with the results thus far.

I ended up using the 15x15x1.2mm copper shim, it fit nicely so I didn't bother trying the 0.8mm thick shim I also ordered. Here are my idle temps (let the computer boot up and run for about 15 minutes before taking the reading).



Previously the GPU would idle around 53C. I will post some more readings when the laptop is under heavy load later when I play some L4D2.

 

Nice, you notice with the 1.2mm copper shim the thermal pads for the memory chips on gpu also make contact? I might order a 1.2mm or 1mm not sure yet.

 

I didn't notice any memory chips on the GPU. Are they the little guys around the GPU die? http://www.notebookcheck.net/typo3temp/pics/35df732b92.jpg

To be honest, I'm not sure if they made contact or not. If they are the same height as the GPU die then they will make contact, if not, then there is no way the rigid shim will make contact. I played 45 min of L4D2 (1080p, highest settings) and the max GPU temp was 85 (was hitting high 90's before) . However my max CPU temp was 96... I can't remember what temps I was hitting before with the CPU. So I'm thinking either I did a crappy job of re-applying the thermal paste to the CPU, or perhaps the shim is too thick and the CPU is not making proper contact with the heatsink. Maybe I just need to wait for the paste to "break-in" some more. What kind of CPU temps are you guys hitting when playing CPU/GPU intensive games?

 

Not hard at all. Remove 5 screws and remove the bottom plate. The WiFi card is held down by one screw and antennas. Disconnect the antennas and unscrew the chip to pop it out.

No warranty void stickers anywhere even with entire disassembly.

 

I've been playing Crysis 2 lately...

-CPU hitting 96C max
-GPU hitting 85C max

 

Hi, I'm forumnewb. I've been using an Asus ul30vt (Intel Core 2 Duo, 1.7ghz+Nvidia 210m, 8-9 hrs battery life), a fantastic computer for almost one and a half years but time has moved on and games are demanding for more and more from my hardware and keeping Starcraft II only on low/medium is starting to bother me.

I'm very close to purchasing the Acer 4820tg for an upgrade in graphics and processor power without sacrificing too much battery life. What has concerned me lately was the display issue which almost all reviews I've read have jumped on.

I intend to use this as a primary computer at university where I will be carrying it for a few days a week through many lectures and library study sessions.

Here's the question:
To you users, has the display's shortcomings in contrast ratio or overall quality detracted greatly from your experience with the computer? Also, would its battery life (which I hear is about 5-6 hrs.) make it ideal for my use?

Thanks.

(By the way, when I take notes or type, my display is on the dimmest possible setting, no wi-fi, dedicated card on my Asus)

 

The 4820TG is great for playing SC2, it can handle the game on highest setting @ 1080p perfectly, with overclocking you can play on Ultra smoothly as well. Also the battery life makes it ideal for use at a university. Usually when I'm on my campus I use the laptop on average for about 3-4hrs, so I rarely need to bring the charger with me. The screen is decent on the laptop, but you can't really expect something too amazing from an $800 laptop with this kind of performance. A game like SC2 is playable on the laptop screen, but the not having the deep blacks in the display makes it a bit annoying (relative to playing it on a 23" monitor). When I'm at home, 95% of the time the laptop is function as a desktop. For web browsing, office, or programming the laptop display is completely fine IMO.

Have you noticed a significant difference with gaming performance with the i7?

 

Thanks for the opinion. It was either this or the Asus u41jf-a1 but I've heard much too much negative when it came to build quality. I'll be putting an order soon.

Where did you guys buy your Acer 4820TGs?

 

check the first page of this thread has links and places for it.

 

I got mine from Micro Center.

 

I am wondering if you guys can help me. I did a clean install on a new (upgraded) hdd that I put in my system. Everything seems to be working fine. That's until I started running a cpu usage widget. It is stating that my clock speed is at 1.173GHz. Is this normal? I have the m480 in my system. I am pretty sure it was running at 2.67GHz under normal conditions before the upgrade and clean install. Can someone help me with this? I'ma keep looking into it in the meantime. Thanks

Update: Nevermind. Found out that the system scales down the clock when it is unplugged. Didn't know that...go figure.

 

I'm not sure how I can test that, but we can do an experiment if you like on frame rates. The i7 620m in fact, does run at 3.33GHz on turbo boost which allows my games to perform better. So far most of my games are able to maintain decent looking graphics with the help of overclocking of course, and good performance speed @ 30 - 45 fps.

 

Amazon had the lowest price for a while, at $729. That was for the -6847 which has the i5-480M, 640GB hdd, and Radeon 6550. I believe the price is back up now.

 

Yup, got one when the price was $729 on Amazon, wife loves it

 

This morning I wanted to swap out the 1.2mm shim for the 0.8mm shim to see if that would fix my CPU heat issue (CPU max temps were hitting 98C, higher than before the copper shim mod), but unfortunately the other 0.8mm shim I ordered, mysteriously vanished out of existence (Spent about 2 hrs looking for the damn thing, to no avail).

For the meantime I replaced the 1.2mm shim with a generic thermal pad (the ebay seller was kind enough to include some pads with the order ). After running 95 Prime for 10-15 minutes max CPU temp was 83, max GPU was 82. I'm thinking that the 1.2mm copper shim is too thick. It may be creating a small gap between the CPU die and heatsink.

 

looks like 1mm might be the right size then.

 

Yeah that's what I'm thinking too, I think someone on the boards mentioned that they used a 1mm thick shim. I'm curious as to what CPU temps they are getting...

 

hi,

became a proud owner of Acer Aspire TimelineX AS4820TG-6847 yesterday and actually I am very pleased with it.

There's no bluetooth though and wanted to ask, if any of you succesfully swapped the stock wifi module (i believe Intel 6300) with Intel N advanced 6230 which has got a bluetooth chip on it?

thanks

 

Well I'm biting the bullet and having Ghost Armor design an invisible clear skin set for the laptop. I've looked everywhere for skin covers, but to no avail, before I confirm the order, anybody else have any luck with protective skins for our notebook models?

Better yet, anybody else want in on some Ghost Armor skins while they have the design man on board?

 

Gotta say these things are built TOUGH. my 4820tg got ran over by a truck earlier... the only thing that broke was the LCD. Got some new dents and had to adjust the fan (it got sandwiched by the protective covers). Other then that, it still works fine.

 

Damn dude, you should have gotten some of that Ghost Armor.

 

Wow! You should see if Acer will trade you your machine for a new one to keep the old one as a demo of how tough they are. I always laugh when people claim that metal frame laptops are tougher than plastic. hah!

 

how much is the ghost armor? Where on the laptop does it cover? I'm interested in it but depends on price though. I seen someone sell an clear body protector for the 4820tg on ebay but its gone now

For those that have the 4820tg and the warranty is about to be over or you don't care too much about it, you might want to replace the keyboard with a backlit. I just did it today and it looks pretty nice.

 

Hello,

is someone able to full control fan speed on 4820TG? I have tried 1810tray (little control over 4820 fan), 3820tray (no control at all) and AcFanControl (little control).

Welle

 

where did you buy the backlit keyboard? can you give a link ?

thanks