Acer TimelineX 3820TG Owners Lounge. Info, benchmarks, tweaks, mods and upgrades

If you would like to look yourself I have high res pics of the complete mobo here.

 

I am looking into a bulk purchase of 20+ units of the Samsung flash SSD. I am awaiting Samsung's response directing me to a distributor.

So far they have said,

 

Never heard of Temple Depot, No website? are they legit? Do you have any more info on them. Do the batteries fit the 4820TG? Do you have their Prices?

 

Nice pictures

 

Nice RAM rating, what sticks do You have?

 

I am using Mushkin Essentials 8GB PC38500 (7,7,7,20)

 

Are you bulk purchasing this SSD for a reason?

Bronsky

 

The environmental consultant's insurance adjuster has agreed to cover my notebook. Now I don't have to fight my own insurance company over whether or not it was "field equipment" (I think I was arguing uphill on that one ).

Computeruniverse will not let me have FedEx pick up a unit at their "will call" desk, even though FedEx is willing to do it. I really like the color of my unit, but it looks like PChome is the place to order from and I'll have a silver 3820TG.

I can't belive how much smaller my 1410T feels. I am wondering how I ever used this as my main computer for 3 months while I was waiting for the 3820TG come on the market.

Hey Insider, I thought you got downsized. Nice to see you're still around.

Bronsky

 

He means the Acer Temple Texas Service/Repair Depot.

"Service & Suport Call Center, U.S.. Repair Depot & Parts Warehouse. P.O. Box 6137. Temple, TX 76503. 800-816-2237"

I would use the number he gave you.

Bronsky

 

Do they have the 3G unit in stock at pchome? There's another german shop with a pickup desk... perhaps they're willing to do the FedEx workaround

Cyberport.de - Computer, Notebooks, Fernseher, Apple, Handys & Digitalkameras

[email protected]

 

If those are for the 3820T/TG they should fit the 4820TG. I have both 3820T and 4820TG the batteries are identical. I am looking to get a 9 cell myself too.

p.s. Sorry to hear the news Bronsky ... I hope the insurance deal is set in stone, and just order the 3G variant that you wanted

I wonder some of your parts are still working ?

 

What is EC?


Superb pics, tgoode.

 

Hi, I just noticed one thing on my notebook. If there is darker image, brighteness goes up, and if there is white image, it goes down. I suspect Intel HD driver is causing this. Is there a way to turn it off? Thanks.

 

Thanks, looks like a good upgrade.

 

Unless I can find the 3G on the PCHome website, it doesn't look like it's in the cards.

The Tech told me he'll evaluate the entire system as soon as he can and let me know what works (he also told me to stop calling him every 15 minutes ).

Bronsky

 

That's the spirit!I bet You did.

 

Ummm... I like having spares???

I am thinking of an initial order of 1 or 2 units for testing. If they work I will do a bulk purchase of 20 more and will resell the remainder. With the wording of the email from Samsung, I don't think they'll take the request seriously if I only want one or two in total. I will probably make a small markup to offset the cost of the test drive order. It's only fair considering I will probably have to lay out over $4000 for the order.

Let's make sure they'll sell them to me and that I can make them work, first.

 

Embedded Controller, the nutronics part

 

So this PCI card will fit into a 3820T and give it 2 full USB3 ports?? Where can I actually buy one of these. Googling doesn't give me any and I can otherwise only find desktop PCI cards.

 

Go to the commell site and click on distributors...

Unknown if it'll work. It should - it takes someone to buy one and try it.

 

Ok so, I have never overclocked a laptop but have overclocked many of Desktop. I purchased setfsb from Abo today and he checked to make sure that the machine was overclockable.

My Current Spec is:
3820 tg
i5 460m
5650
8 gigs of GSKILL 7 7 7 7 27

I entered the activation code and clicked getfsb. It appears that im all ready around 132 on my fsb without OCing.

I do not have access to the lower slider and only the upper one. The green box indicates a default of 139/760.

I have tried to move that slider even the slightest bit and only achieved a low end rating of 2.6 before boost. I guess my question is that this is so much different from desktop overclocking that it doesn't seem familiar at all. Am I missing something?

 

You should look at this thread - Bronsky has had a lot of luck o/cing his, but he has a different clockgen (which is now water powered) than many 3820tg models.

I have what may be the more common clockgen and have not been able to get it over 2.68GHz with any level of stability. I am already in contact with IDT to get a more recent data sheet that exposes FSB and RAM multipliers to give to abo. The clockgen that I have in mine can be seen in the other thread.

Which clockgen have you selected in SetFSB?

 

... actually that was funny.

BTW, those of us who were watching Dell last Spring and hoping for a decent redesign of the XPS 13 to compete with the Acer 3820TG - you can probably forget it. Rumor is that the 13 and 16 are being replaced by a 15 and 17 model much like what HP did with the Envy. Dell Studio XPS 15, XPS 17 rumored to be coming this fall -- Engadget Seems to me that Dell and HP took the easy way out, instead of doing the engineering work to make a decent 13" unit. Looks like the new XPS will have Fermi Cards (2GB Video Memory on the 15's card) but they will probably be huge by our standards. Dell has really been a dissapointment lately.

Bronsky

 

can anybody tell me which zeroshock 3 case fits 3820TG?


i'm assuming it would be the regular 13.3 inch version

but they also make wide 13.3 inch version and also apple mac 13.3 inch version..

 

Well, me and my bro SIC (posted up above) haven't figured out how to OC our 460 processors yet, but our video cards seem to have strong GPU potential (although GRAM is flaky at 940mhz and completely unstable at 950mhz). Here are my stock numbers and 750/925 graphics overclocks for 3dmark06:

My 3820TG, Core i5 460m, STOCK CLOCKS:



i5 460m STOCK CLOCKS, HD5650 @ 750mhz / 925mhz

 

Very nice stock score. The OC score seems low.

Bronsky

 

Can't seem to get the graphics memory up very high at all. I did manage to get SetFSB up over 3ghz now, which brought me up to a 9336 on 3dmark06. Guess I have to keep trying.

 

Meanwhile my i5-430m with 5450 has roughly 3700 3D Marks with no overclock, and 4200 with both CPU and GPU overclock!

 

Too bad you can't get higher memory speeds, memory speed is an bigger bottleneck than core speed.
It's all down to luck mostly, some has better overclocking memory than others and so on.
I know Acer made an deal with hynix this summer for GPU memory shipments, earlier they've been using mostly samsung chips. Maybe you have hynix chips and that they have less overclocking potential than samsung.
It's all just speculations though.

 

Bad news... The Samsung drive won't work.

And, the Kingspec SSD arrived today - As predicted, it doesn't work.

Time to look at the USB 3.0 option I think.

 

Is this the SSD you were waiting for, to test your pci-e connector. Or do you have another one ordered as well? Wasn't it a Kingspec or sommething like that?

 

are you going reimburshed for the stuff u had inside the notebook? like the cost of the CPU upgrade u did etc?

 

Yep it is the intel card and it's settings..

someone else on this forum a few pages back helped me out..

i have enclosed a picture to where the settings are..





EDIT:

So i am currently running on a clean format... but i remember before the clean format, if i unplugged my laptop it would automatically switch to the Intel Card. and if i plugged it back in, it would switch to the ati.

Now though, when i unplug or plug in, it doesn't switch automatically

Any suggestions?

 

Example for above : ( i tried to fix my post above but it would not save)

So right now i have the laptp plug in, in power saver mode, and it is using the HIGH PERFORMANCE card.

I shut the laptop off, i unplug it, and TURN it back on.

It doesn't switch to Intel , even though it's on battery saver mode, and NOT plugged in.

Before this would kick in. maybe somehting i am missing?

 

So I am thinking of getting the 3820TG myself.. and where I live I can choose the i3-370m, i5-450m and i5-460m as an option. How well does the 370m overclock? will you get noticeable benefits on CPU intensive games or PCSX2 with the 450m or 460m? What's the best CPU you can upgrade to? Right now I am thinking of getting the 370m and upgrade it to a better cpu later.

 

Meh. To behonest the whole thing is buggy, sometimes when mine tries to switch it just goes blank and i have to reboot the laptop.

I also have a clean install.

Just the way it is unfortunately

 

Why upgrade, just get the right one now. I've got the 450m and oc'ing the cpu and gfx together, it all gets slower. Any newer processors you put in sure won't make it look silly.

The 450m has more than enough brunt to run any game anyway. I'd say if anything the gfx would be the bottle neck long before cpu intesive games slow down.
16 seconds 1M marks stock clock? thats quick. Not far off I7 Desktops running at 3.2ghz.

Get 8gb 1333mhz ram and an ssd instead

 

So far they have agreed to reimburse my original retail price with no depreciation as well as my original shipping costs. They're fighting with me on the I5 upgrade because they say that the value of the I5-450M is included in the original price and I still have a functioning I5-450M. I hate to admit it but I think they have a point. We will probably come to some agreement on the vale of the 450M and subtract it. They have agreed to cover the SSD if my company's tech will certify that it is not functioning.

Bronsky

 

Can I ask where you are getting the i5-460m?? Anywhere in Europe? Or that would ship to Ireland? Want to get one of these babies before I go back to college!

 

Most of the I5-460M units being bought in the US are from PCHome in Taiwan.

Bronsky

 

Hi! Is it better for you too if you disable surround sound?

 

Yup it's from taiwan. the 3 cpus I listed above is what they actually have in the flyer/catalog here. They even have a 330m version . The i3-370m version starts at around 27,000NT or $850 and the i5-450m is about $100 more expensive. They didn't the the i5-460m version at the store though.

I am pretty impressed with how well the i5-450m overclocks, I am just not about with the other two.

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Have you installed Acer PowerSmart Manager? I think this might cause the problem. I uninstalled it because it resets the Windows Power Profiles but the laptop stopped switching the graphic cards automatically.

P.S. Hey, Bronsky, glad you can get another lappy I hope you make it "Bronsky Custom Edition" again, like the old one

 

If your looking to playing any games on your laptop I would forget all about the I3. At least that's the case in Sweden. In Sweden you can only get the 5470 ATI instead of the 5650 with the I3. And regarding games the graphics card is much more important rather then the cpu. And 5650 is a way better card then the 5470. Also it's much harder to upgrade the graphics card instead of the cpu.

So go for the I5 that has the 5650 ATI, if you are planing to do any gaming at all. The gamming performance difference is worth a lot more then 100$.

 

No catalyst mobility 10.09 for us ...

.. the build of 10.09 should have a few bugs and will not be released.

We have to wait for the 10.10.

 

Just got this email back from computeruniverse.net

Thanks for your inquiry. We will probably be able to add it to our product range around the end of September. Please note however that we generally only carry the German models, which will always have German keyboard layout, operating system and software.

Seems promising...I'd much rather order from them than from Taiwan if possible....still waiting to hear from Cyberport.de

 

Taiwan to the US was only 3 business days for me. Got the 460m version for $1055 to the door.

 

Sucks. I start artifacting around 940mhz on the memory and lose it completely at 950mhz. Would be sexy to bust 10k 3dmark06 but doesn't like my unit is going to do it. Also, it looks stable at 3.04ghz overclock, but @ 3.2ghz it already starts to screw the pooch.

 

You can do 10k, but you really have to push the clocks up high I think my memory was 1100 and core 750. CPU at 3.4x turbo.

 

Thanks for the info.

I was awaiting for the SXPS 1340 refresh too, and was planing on buying the refresh when it'd become available, guess that day won't come, wondering what Dell Bill was thinking when he told us the refresh worth the wait would be in Q4.