Acer Aspire TimelineX 5820TG Review + discussion.

Does anybody have a copy of the service manual for the 5820t? Or maybe a disassembly guide of some kind? How does one go about removing the keyboard from the top?

Thanks in advance

 

There are 6 clips along the upper border (edge closest to the screen) which you can push in with for example a toothpick. Just don't use anything metal that could scratch the surrounding glossy plastic part or the clips. You may have to press down on the upper row of keys (Esc, F4, F8, F12, Del, End) to see the clips. Be careful when you're lifting the keyboard as it's connected by a thin ribbon cable.

 

Could someone list all of the drivers that should be installed while doing a clean install of Windows 7 x64?

I have installed following drivers
1. GPU
2. TurboBoost
3. Chipset
4. SATA AHCI driver
5. LAN
6. AUDIO
7. WIFI

and I have a "freezing" problem once every 10-20 seconds when doing disk operations (e.g. unpacking a ZIP file). I do have put into that notebook an SSD drive and I though I will have absolutely NO disk problems. The issue I am facing is described in another thread. ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/501946-aspire-5820tg-stuttering-issue.html). If anyone can help, please do so. Thanks

 

hey!

i got some undetected hardware in my windows control panel. could someone please post a screenshot from the controlpanel with all hardware? so i can see whats missing and install the drivers...
thx

 

Hey guys, does anyone know a website in the US where I can buy this?

 

Nice review, OC-Freak - very thorough!

I just have a question about the touch-pad, though. I recently bought a 5820T with the Core i-5 (without the graphics card, otherwise identical I believe). I had a real problem with the touch-pad, which was that sometimes the cursor would just freeze on the screen, and stay put however long I moved my finger around. It would only resume movement if I removed my finger and placed it down again. I assumed it was some kind of glitch with the particular machine I had, so I returned it. But then I had a go on one of the display models in the same store (not the same model exactly, but an acer with the same external design, and I guess the same touchpad drivers), and it did EXACTLY THE SAME THING!!! So, I guess there's always the possibility that there's something strange about my finger. Though I've never had any complaints to that effect.

I noticed that you did have some small reservations about the touchpad, but I'm just wondering if, since your initial review, you've had the same problem as me? For me, it used to happen at least once every minute, which drove me nuts.

Any insights (or solutions!) from anyone would be most welcome!

 

I had the same thing if I didn't move my finger for some time, so I guess it's designed to be like that. It never stopped working if I continously moved my finger, but if I kept it still for some while I had to lift it up and down to like "wake the trackpad up" again.
I didn't get bothered by it though, and didn't really look for driver options to adjust it either, I don't have my 5820TG (instead I have the 3820TG now - but it has a different trackpad). anymore - so can't check.

 

has anyone found any stores selling the i7 version? i dont trust amazon....
all i have seen is the 4820 and the similar aspire 5740 with the i7.

thanks

 

Hey
So Ive had this laptop for a few months now and have run in to some issues...
1. The "freezing" issue with the hard drive, Quiet HDD isn't enough to fix it(SSD INC).
2. Jitter(crackling sounds) on the jack audio output when tuning volume lower than 11(lol).
3. When playing a d3d9 game like world of warcraft I get some serious texture/graphic bugs!(fixed this by setting d3d to 11).
4. How do i update the graphics driver(or any drivers) on this thing? I read through this thread and you have to switch it to discrete? Does this have any impact on the laptops power saving capabilities? And do I just leave it at discrete or do i turn it back to standard after the driver is installed?

Would love it if anyone knows a few fixes or got any comments to these problems.

Also im wondering if anyone that has opened it up has checked how many free ram slots there are and if its used 2x2gb or just a 4gb(cant open mine yet do to me wrecking one of the tiny screws^^)

Any way, its a tight laptop and I cant think of any better in that price range/format=)

Edit: Actually fixed the HDD problem now by burning wdidle3.exe to a bootable cd

 

Care to explain? Thanks.

 

wdidle3.exe is a wd made "dos software" that lets you change or disable the power saving function on the hard drive.

After some use I do notice it didnt entirely fix this, but its better!

I guess to entirely fix this problem you gotta swap the hard drive.

 

I just realized that my 5553G looks identical to the 5820TG. How can the 5820TG have such bad cooling when my laptop CPU or GPU (overclocked) rarely go past 70 C with intense gaming sessions? O.O

 

I recently purchased the 5820GT-7357, it comes with the western digital 640GB hdd where it ticks pretty crazy during idle, anyone has the similiar problem? I have no trouble reading files, but the ticking is loud and annoying, and worries me every tick!! Please help!!

Morris Lee

 

Use QuietHDD (search Acer forum here, there's explanation for it).

Btw how hot does your 5820TG run? Like, during games?

 

Just to double check, you get the spin down and instant spin up which creates a ticking sound too?

for the temperature, I recall the CPU around 87 max with Crysis, haven't check the video card, but the bottom of the laptop does not get hot, only gets warm, my old 5920 upgraded to T7700 2.4GHz and HD3650 overclocked gets pretty hot like just under 100c for CPU and almost 90 for GPU

I am going to test the temperature sometime AFTER my exams are over, HAHA and will try and do a overclocked temperature recording too

Morris Lee

 

I see, yeah ditto with exams here (got one tomorrow I should be reading a few more times over for). Interesting though, lmk what framerates you get w/ Crysis with an overclocked GPU, I'd like to compare with mine (sig).

 

I really like to know if you have the same hard drive issuse as I do

As a matter of fact, I just overclocked it today and test cysis for only a couple of seconds, pretty good results at 700/1100

Cheap very high at dx9 and medium shadow and model, @1366x600 custom resolution

 

Anyone has disassembled this laptop? pictures of the internals maybe?

 

I've decided to return my current Acer (again) for refund and buy the 5820TG.

I'm just so fed up with the slow game performance of the AMD CPU. Also the screen on this laptop is a little defective with weird dithering (which gave me an excuse to return this laptop RMA without paying for 15% restocking fee).

 

Nice, anyway, you asked for the temperature results, here they are

CPU 87c highest, GPU 82 highest at 700/1100

I think without OC is around low 70's for GPU

Temps in celsius

 

@Morrislee,

Could you try furmark (xtreme burning) + intelburn (for all 4 threads) at the same time and see if the temperature gets to 100 C and throttles?

Also, I'm just wondering, when you look at this color gradient picture here,
Do you see smooth transitions at the bottom of all the gradient bars, or some sort of abrupt cutoff?

 

My 5820TG as a rather annoying dithering when using the 5650.

Using the Intel card this doesn't happen.

 

Anyone else? I hope this is not showing that all ATI cards are incapable of rendering simple colors.

 

What do you mean by dithering? do you have any screenshots of the issue?

I have not notice any rendering difference other than that intel graphics will render the models in Counter Strike Source slightly messed up, color and simple windows decoration rendering are the same, I can't tell the difference.

 

Crysis pushed the temperature to the max already, and I was playing it for couple of hours.

I don't like doing extreme burning though, not very good if under OC anyway.

I never got to 90c though, so i doubt that it will ever get to 100c

the temperature outside my place right now is about -20c, so I think that makes a difference too. May differ when summer comes

 

@ Morrislee:

This is what wyldcat and I mean:

1) stock gradient image
2) what a screen/driver with dithering defect or problem shows


If you want to test your screen, try tilt your screen back ~5 degrees from perfect angle first, then look at the (1) image. Focus on the lower ends of the bars see if the transitions from the brightest ends of the color/gray spectrums are smooth into white.

 

Hello,

In my 5820TG, I'm trying to change the HDD with the SSD OCZ Vertex 2 120 Gig.
However I can't install the SSD inside, as it seems there is a mechanical obstruction. Indeed the OCZ casing goes under the SATA connector, while the HDD has some space under the SATA connector.
When I try to install the SSD, the casing seems to get in connect with some kind of black rubber border which lies under the laptop's SATA connector.
I think if I can lower that black rubber border by 1.5 mm, the SSD could enter.
However, I have no idea on how to proceed. I tried pushing down the black rubber with the screwdriver, but it's only on one corner, so it doen't work. The whole black border needs to be pushed down.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll try to post some pics later on.

Any of you encounter similar problems? Any fix ideas ?

 

Ok, I see a difference, but my ati one actually still looks better than the intel one actually, when I tilt it, it it showed up some of the dots little more unevenly, did you update your ATi driver?I updated it pretty much the second day I got it

When you install the mobility driver directly from ATi site, you will get a blackscreen, wait until your harddrive is no longer reading then press WinKey, Right Arrow, Enter, this should select the shutdown key on the start menu, and starting your computer again will load the driver fine.

Morris Lee

 

Then it must have been the screen's problem, good thing I returned it.

Hopefully after they refund me, I can buy a 5820TG which has a screen that doesn't do this.

 

Ok, so I booted up the PC today and it hasn't happened yet.

Something pretty weird is going on, but no, it's not a screen problem since it happens only with the HD5650.

@morrislee, yes I updated the driver by setting the BIOS into Discrete.

EDIT: So, I changed to Intel and then back to ATI and it happened.

Will post pics ASAP.

 

Oh wow, thats worse dithering than the Acer I returned.

 

Just woke up, I will take pics of mine and compare it today

 

seems like mine is doing this too, maybe it is just how ATi render stuff.

But I look closely, ATi provides a better gradient effect on my default wallpaper, so in my opinion, it actually gives better picture, not nessary a solid colour.

So I don't think it is a defect, so give it a rest

 

I don't know why this happens... I mean, I just turned on the PC and it's not happening now. I have the latest BIOS and the latest ATI drivers.

Seems random.

 

Try tweaking with the CCC contrast/gamma/brightness/saturation settings. Is it only happening when contrast/brightness is high?

 

As I said, it seems random, since I don't do anything for this to happen. Been turned on since my last post and it hasn't happened yet...

 

I see. What are your CCC calibration settings (gamma/contrast/brightness) anyway? Just curious.

 

@jerg,

do you have an Aspire 5820TG now?

Maybe it is depended on which video card windows is booted with? if it is booted with intel, it will look "better"or if Ati then Ati will look "better"? I donno, I don't reboot my lappy much, only put it to sleep XD

 

No I need to wait till the store credit refund is granted (probably in a week or so), then I can buy it and have it shipped to me. Overall probably won't see it this year :/.

 

I am going to see if this is the same problem on my friend's 25534 with the same 15.6 inch led back lit acer laptop, that one is got a hd3200, way different chipset but also ati, we will see if it is ati's rendering issue

 

The dither is visible as we speak.

 

Weird,

Thunderwolf here who also purchased a 5553G (almost identical to mine) claims that he/she doesn't experience any dithering problem it seems.

 

Here are some advance color settings.

Open ATI Catalyst in advance mode.

click Graphics/Desktop and Displays/right click on the display on bottom/click Configure/go to Avivo Color tab/change saturation and hue or color temperature control

 

At least to my experience, the dithering only happens because the screen can't do smooth hues on HIGH BRIGHTNESS LEVELS, meaning if you set brightness and contrast ridiculously low the dithering doesn't show, because the maximum brightness (white) is too dim to show the dithering.

However this is a makeshift solution and tired out my eye. Besides a monitor SHOULD be able to show both the whitest white and blackest black, while maintaining all the gradient hues without ugly pixelating/dithering. It is either an ATI or a screen defect.


@ Aylafan,
you don't know how many hours I've put in trying to tweak both the Avivo and the Color management in CCC trying to fix the dithering issue. It just doesn't work.

 

hey, do you guys have this issue where you would not be able to adjust the brightness of the screen using the keyboard but perfectly adjustable using Windows' power configurations?

The Fn+Right and Fn+Left is completely useless, but Fn+Up or Fn+Down still changes the volume fine. Anyone experiencing this same issue?

 

If you read in the 3820/4820 threads, they all have this issue. Apparently it's some conflict with the newer ATi drivers, and the whole intel chipset + ATi GPU combination.

How's the screen color thing going for ya Morrislee? Is it hardly noticeable or getting annoying?
---------------------------------------
I read at 3820TG owners lounge that a new BIOS update causes 5650 chips to be recognized as 6550 chips. Perhaps that could allow for voltage bump-up and subsequent GPU "upgrading" to 6550? AFAIK newer TimelineX's will only carry DDR3 for the ATi 6550s, so the only difference is a little higher stock clock due to a little higher voltage.

 

Woot looks like my RMA is getting through later today, gonna buy the 5820TG as soon as I get the store credit refund lol. There's a 0.0001% chance that maybe I'll get a 480M/6550 new version but I'm not betting on it, nor does it really matter.

Morrislee I saw your post on NCIX 5820TG page asking about battery and bluetooth, it does have the 9-cell battery right?

 

I checked with my friend that has a 5534, he doesn't have this issue. Yes, my 5820tg is 9cell and has bluetooth

 

Did you check what brand of screen he has? Maybe it's just AUO screens.

 

I don't think it is the AUO screen, my old Aspire one has that too, but never with this issue(intel graphics though)

I think it must have to do with the switching, I boot it up with ATi today, it looks perfectly fine

and a gift for you guys
Aspire TimelineX 5820TG-7357 review Morrisoft