Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG Owners Lounge

The application for it is being required by my university to have a tablet, and me not having the money to afford a decent one without selling my laptop. Given what I currently do with my laptop I can deal with some loss in performance. The 2740p has a similar processor, a integrated graphics card roughly equivalent ( a little weaker) to this laptop's integrated graphics card, and I rarely use the dedicated card now that I am in school anyways so its no real loss. If i can get 500 for this laptop and then purchase the 2740 for 7-800, I think its worth it.

my only other option would be holding on to my laptop and then buying an ancient tablet like the 2710p for cheap. But then theres the headache of having two computers to keep in sync with one another.

 

Hey, been a few months since iv checked in, laptops been great, it now has a ssd in it and 8gigs of ram. Now im feeling a bit rebellious >_>

...............Can you put a 920xm in one of these? or is the SLBLX 820qm the max it takes?

Screw the heat output >=D. Only reason i ask is cause i can get either for sub 150. ( 820qm for 80 is a hot price, im down if i get conformation from you guys that itll work =p. )

But ya so whats the highest processors the mobo supports 820 or 920?

 

Hmm. That is odd that your university requires you to have a tablet.

I have a viewsonic g-tablet running honey comb if you are interested. It's a tegra 2 tablet. I was thinking of getting rid of it because I use my smartphone and my laptop mostly.

 

Anyone ever had a problem with the sound? My sound is randomly switching between speaker and the realtek digital output so sometimes the sound is going out fine on the speaker and sometimes it go out through the digital output which I can't hear.

 

Happens to me when I plug in my HDMI cable, sometimes. I guess it assumes my LCD monitor has speakers, which it doesn't.

 

So, what are the most stable drivers people are using for their 6550m? whenever I upgrade to 11.10/.11, i almost always get texture problems in a couple weeks (idk why)

 

I used all the drivers listed here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/561840-3820tg-owners-lounge-part-two-80.html#post7480048
They all work for the 4820tg as well.
The graphics drivers listed there are latest drivers from ATI and Intel, but the package is modded to support switchable graphics. It has been working great for me, I have very smooth gameplay on BF3 playing on 1920x1080 resolution (external monitor), playing on low quality.

 

Although I haven't tried that, I find that hard to believe.

When I played black ops last year on an external monitor I had it at that resolution and on low and the vRam could just not handle it. I played through it, but it was between 24-35 fps most of the time.

If your playing something as intense as BF3 it must be at like 20 fps...

But like I said, I haven't tried it, perhaps I should because if so that is very impressive. Low quality is no joke in that game.

 

BF3 runs quite well on my 3820TG overclocked with current drivers, run through the HDMI to my LG 24" IPS 1080p 75hz display. Temps would be the only thing I would worry about on the 4820TG.

 

Speaking of Battlefield 3 do you guys encountered any freezing and crashing while playing multiplayer ? I can only get into the game for a few minutes and then it freezes and I have use task manager to close the game. The error says "Battlefield 3 has stopped working".

BF3 Multiplayer remains unplayable for me and it sucks.

 

okay i dont understand this, am i really the only one among 4820tg owners with these problems.. before i sent my acer for repair because of a defect in motherboard i also countinuously had problems with sound and touchpad. i got a new motherboard under the warranty and they also checked the whole system including sound and the report said everything is ok.. but the sound and touchpad problems remain and they did not discover any defects under repair.
the sound just stops working for no reason while i watch videos and turns back on when i restart or if i refresh the video for 10 times (it also does cracking sounds here and there). same with touchpad, base functions always function but multile gestures like scrolling and zoom stops working without any reason and starts working again after restart. and it happens everyday. what is wrong with the sound system and the touchpad? why does it suddenly stop working and starts to function later ?? thanks to anyone who could give any information about this

 

I have had a couple of interesting experiences with Acer customer support chat recently. I wanted to get a replacement battery while I'm still under warranty. They placed an order then later canceled it. Then they placed another and now I'm waiting. Lots of running around. Awful service, I say.

 

May I ask for help here?

 

I'm having some trouble updating drivers.
-I used driver sweeper to get rid of all the GPU drivers this laptop has.
-I then went to the AMD website and downloaded the latest one, installed them, but the driver didn't stick. (the resolution was still that very low resolution, even after restart).
-So I used driver sweeper, removed whatever I had previously installed, and restarted.
-I went to the Acer website and downloaded the August 2011 drivers for the 6550 GPU. However, when I look at the driver properties, it gives me the following:

Driver Date: 6/13/2011
Driver Version: 8.840.7.4000

I then went and installed the AMD drivers over, and it again gave me the same date and version.

Before my clean install, I was able to update to the AMD drivers and from stock and the driver version changed to 11.XX.
Idk why this is happening. Any help?

 

My laptop battery shows fully charged but when I disconnect the power the laptop turns off immediately, ie not going in to battery backup...

Is it because of a faulty battery or anything else..?

 

ok but the acer service wasnt the problem for me now.

They said sound is fine and it mainly is but for random reasons my sound sometimes just stops working. I get no sound from any application.
If I reboot the sound comes back as windows is shutting down.

also, if i am playing a video and skip to random places in the file it can lock the sound and it works untill i click on another place

 

hello on my 4820tg i notice that the female usb ports are a bit larger than the male ports of the items i want to plug (i.e mouses external hdd)..so that sometimes the two parts loose the connection. Is it normal or should i consider to change the usb hub on the laptop?
the one port on the left does not give this issue

 

Hello, the built-in cardreader on my 4820TG stopped working and I've already tried installing a new driver but it didn't fix it.

I've been searching around and I couldn't find any post with a similar problem, hope someone here can help me out.

 

Would it be alright to install the Intel RST and chipset drivers from there too? And would updating Intel RST and chipset drivers in general allow an increase in general performance anyway?

 

Wow, actually received the replacement battery today. I'm glad I did this right before the warranty was set to expire. Now I have a backup in case something happens to my primary, but after a year that one is still doing great.

 

How did you go about requesting for a replacement? I have about 1.5 months remaining before my laptop is 1 year old (since purchasing). Battery is wearing down but I can still use it.

 

Wasn't the battery covered by 6 months warranty?

 

Just did a customer service chat. Told them the battery doesn't hold a charge well any more. They asked if I updated BIOS, tried calibrating, etc. I said yes. Explained that the charge capacity according to Battery Bar has gone down.

It took a bit of convincing, but it's nice to have a backup.

 

Did they ask you to send the old battery back?

 

Nope. Just sent me the 2nd one with no strings attached.

 

Does anyone know if the keyboard is replaceable with a keyboard like on the asus ul30? I actually really like the keyboard on the 4820tg (how it feels, etc) but it does get a lot of dirt and dust trapped underneath the keys.

 

I Have And i will say its great it works fine

 

Has anyone had any trouble with the switchable graphics? For some reason I'm unable to switch to the high-powered graphics card and it's made any and every game I've got on here lag horribly.

 

I had a bit of a scare tonight. I spilled a bit of water onto the laptop. A teaspoon's worth fell onto the trackpad and front area. I absorbed it with toilet paper pretty quickly. Fortunately no water went into the keyboard area as I have a silicon protector there.

The rest of the water spilled in front of the 4820TG onto my desk.. It began to creep under the unit, and there were a few small drops on the underside so I wiped them accordingly. I don't think there's anything to fear there, as I moved the laptop quickly before it could have a puddle under it.

Everything seems fine but I'm still pretty nervous. I was playing a game when this happened, and after cleaning up I played for another hour or so.

The trackpad is fine, but I wonder if a small amount of water went underneath the button despite the quick toilet paper absorption. I figure if any water reached the motherboard something bad would have happened. Crisis averted? Anything I should do to take precautions?

Lesson learned.

 

How do you guys install drivers on this laptop.For example,do i need to install both intel and ati drivers for graphics.What are the latest drivers for good performance.

 

Take a look at the first post. There are instructions on installing drivers.
-Download the AMD driver from Acer's website and install it. This will install both the Intel and AMD driver.
-Then restart your computer, go to BIOS and select "discrete" GPU.
-Go to AMD's site and download their latest drivers. It should be something like 11.10 or something.
-When installing this, go to "Custom Install" and unselect "Catalyst Control Center" You already installed this with Acer's VGA driver and reinstalling this will remove the Intel driver.
-Once that installs, restart your PC, go back to BIOS, and select "Switchable". You should now have updated drivers.

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Question: How do you take out the ODD from the acer? I have a ODD to HDD adapter and I want to use that, but having difficulty taking it out. I have taken out all the screws from the bottom, but its hard separating the plates. Please help.

Edit: Nevermind...I finally decided to use some logic and saw there was a screw right next to the ODD after you remove the main plate on the bottom. Removed that screw, and pulled the ODD and it slid out.

 

thanks man but i have one question.Is this the latest amd driver with 1.1mb size

ATI Catalyst? Mobility Display Driver

 

What you're selecting is an autoinstaller. It will detect your setup and suggest which driver to install.
Just use this one, it's 92.3mb ATI Catalyst? Mobility Display Driver

An edit to my previous post: Unselect "Catalyst Control Center"

I'll make a picture tutorial if you're still having trouble.

 

ok thanks man..After unticking ati control centre in option,I installed driver successfully.The catalyst version is 10.10.

 

Did you untick the control center from the driver downloaded from Acer or from amd's website?

 

I unchecked catalyst center in amd's driver(the link you provided).

 

did everything update?

 

Ok, here's what i have done.I installed 8.84.7.4 version (218mb) Vga driver from acer site and then, i went to bios to swtich on discreet graphics ,installed the latest drivers you provided and switched back to switchable graphics.After doing this,i am still on 10.10 version.

 

Hmm...were you updating from stock or have you updated your GPU driver before?
Go to device manager and tell me what you see in the driver properties for the GPU. What's the version and date there?

 

Hi, typing from pad in hurry, sory.
I already formated. Own Windows disc. No backup for drivers. Can't find on the web. Looking for Wifi mostly. Virtal keyboard are a mess. Browsing on a pad sucks. Please help with link or send mail to (EDITED: got my answer, thanks).
Please.

 

Acer Support: Downloads & Support Documents - Notebook / Aspire / Aspire 4820TG

There are three different manufacturers for the wireless lan (Intel, Atheros , and Broadcom)
If you have the 4820TG-6847 (the one with the AMD 6550m GPU), then most likely you have the Broadcom. If you're unsure which one it is, try broadcom first, if that doesn't work, then use Atheros, and then try Intel.

Once you get wifi working, let windows update do its thing. It will take about half hour to hour to download and install all updates. With the update, most drivers, such as the intel GPU/CPU drivers willl be installed.
As for the dedicated GPU, you'll have to manually install the driver, but there are people here to help you with that if you lose your way.

 

Thank you, good sir.

I realy did not expect the wifi not to work properly from scratch.
I usualy have no problem with finding the drivers, but the acer website is a mess.
When looking into the list of device, selecting Aspir 4820TG would give me a complely diferent computer...
Maybe a bug because I was on a pad?

Anyway, it went nice from there.
Thanks again.

 

i have a question regarding the VGA Drivers, currently im using this version (8.84.7.4) which is provided at the manufacturers site, are there any better versions out there?

 

AMD has released November/December 2011 drivers a month ago.
If you go to the page before this (479) in this thread, I've outlined directions on doing this. Post here if you need help.

 

hello guys..i really need your help. my led backlight will not working if i use high performance gpu (ATI 5650). The screen is functioning but it really too dark which is darker than a dimmed screen. but if i switch to intel hd graphic, the backlight turns on. switching back to ati however will retain with the dark screen. any help would be very appreciated.

 

Does this happen regardless if you're plugged in with a power cord or not?
Try adjusting the brightness by pressing and holding the "Fn" key (bottom left) and pressing the right arrow.
If that doesn't work, try pressing the Fn key and then pressing F6 to turn on/off the backlight.

 

yeah it happened on both plugged and unplugged power cord. the brightness key and the backlight key only works when using intel hd graphic. BTW, i plugged to external monitor using vga port when using ati graphic and the screen shows everything. however, on my notebook lcd it still remain dark.

 

Oh wait....did you try updating your GPU drivers just before this?

 

So I reinstalled WoW today after not playing for quite a few years (bad idea, I know). Anyway, for some reason the game will NOT run in 1366x768, or even give me the option to. It does not seem to detect the graphics card when I am running my ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650. I really can't figure this one out, all other games run just fine.

When I manually switch to the intel integrated graphics, WoW automatically runs in 1366x768. Although the resolution works fine on the integrated card, the game obviously doesn't run very well, as it would with the dedicated card. Does this have something to do with the switchable graphics or something?

I updated my AMD catalyst drivers (using the BIOS switchable-discrete-switchable method), but no luck.

Any suggestions?

EDIT: I've also noticed that when I disable the Intel integrated card, and run the Radeon HD 5650, WoW runs fine. Only when the integrated is enabled does it get messed up. This is odd and definitely not the solution I am looking for. I don't want to have to go into device manager and disable my integrated graphics card every time I want to play the game.

 

Maybe that's a sign that you shouldn't play...quick! There's still time!!

Anyways, what catalyst version have you used for the update? For the latest one, (version 11.12) The release notes say "Water textures may be corrupted in World of Warcraft."
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalystSoftwareSuiteVersion1112.aspx

That's perhaps what's giving you the problem. As of right now, you can sit tight and wait for a new update, or you can find an older driver that wasn't problematic with WoW to play it.

Either that, or I'd suggest reinstalling the drivers. First use driver sweeper to get rid of all AMD drivers, then first install VGA driver from acer's website and then install the appropriate portions of the AMD drivers from AMD's website.