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

No, not that I am aware of, but the EC upate dialog box gets behind the main update dialog box in a blink of an eye. What will happend if you don't answer yes to it I don't know.

 

Hey Guys!

I've managed to install the new bios but only with Bootable USBDOS,nothing special so far. But i can't understand why would acer put something like this in the readme " Run "Flash.bat" batch file to flash BIOS in pure DOS environment or Windows x86/x64 OS. "

Of course...

 

I ran the bios update from windows 7 desktop worked just fine for me. The bios update has lowered my overclocking range to 166BCLK now Not sure why

 

OCZ seems to be dropping the price of some of its drives. 120GB = $190 OCZ debuts SandForce-driven Onyx 2 SSDs, priced as low as $1.58 per GB -- Engadget

Bronsky

 

Nice! Not familiar with Sandforce though, how does it compare to Indilinx driven drives?

I've noticed that the Vertex and Agility series experienced a drop in price.

I hope Onyx 2 fits this tendency.

 

I think OCZ pioneered the Sandforce controller in its pro line late last year. The pro line with the Sandforce was the first commericial unit that was faster than Intel if I recall correctly. I haven't followed them much lately so I don't know about this particular model.

Bronksy

 

The problem on sandforce is, that they are using an "on the fly data compression" to get a high write rate. The on the fly compressions doesn't work on all files very good and the write speed will go down.

 

I've ordered another one from Cendirect as well as a i7-620M OEM...

Guess this means I will be selling off my i5-540M equipped staples machine soon...

Anyone need a 3870TG-3022 with a backlit keyboard and added mini PCIe slot? I'll be selling it with a 500GB factory HDD and 4GB factory RAM...

 

i had to reinstall 1.13 the new bios 1.17 caused the first crash yesterday.
the crash was so strange and nothing was running at the time that i can only think of the bios as the reason.

 

Have you a crash log? Send it to Acer.

 

Hi guys,
I was wondering again if anybody knows where to get the 6-cell battery for the 3920TG in the UK. Thank you!

 

Glad to see someone ordering one of these. Are you in Canada or the US? Hopefully the US, so I can see if there is any problem with cross-border shipping. More likely, since you have a staples machine, you're Canadian. Eh? I would assume that the models in stock will likely have similar clockgens.

Also would like to see how well the new unit OC's. I'm assuming you'll have the clockgen ID'd the first time you put in your I7. Interesting to see you go with an I7-620M. We have been waiting to see somebody OC this thing but earlier efforts have not been very successful.

Are you going to swap out the CPU right away or run some OC tests with the I3-370M in there. It really helped when I ran baseline speeds with the I5-450M before I put in the I5-540M.

I'm still waiting on news about my board. How long should it take Shark to complete an inspection? Repairs? I would think a properly set up facility should not take long for either. I would think the inspection and repairs would be done at the same time. If they tell me that the board is too far gone (which I seriously doubt) I will order from Cendirect the next day. Shame they don't take Amex or I could use my firm's credit card.

Anyway, good luck with your new unit. I have been tempted to just get another unit and sell my old one when I get it all together, but I think I want to keep my original unit. Anyway, I'm saving for an HP Enterprise Tablet when they are released.

Bronsky

 

Did I miss something? Why are You selling after that nice soldering job You've done if I may ask?

 

Don't you have an Acer Direct store in the UK? Can they get parts?

If not, I think your best bet is MK Electronics in Germany for an OEM battery. Otherwise your stuck with Ebay.

Bronsky

 

Another option:

ACER - Notebook Ersatzteil Shop

103 EUR incl. VAT

Keyboards, MOBOs, CPUs, Cardreaders, Bluetooth adapters, LCD Panels, WIFI mini cards, Webcams...You name it.

 

Nice prices...not. 661 euros for a i7 620m OEM Cpu. Hmm could almost buy a whole 3820TG for that.

 

Yep, CPU prices are harsh, but the price of the 6 cell is OK IMO.

 

It is more than the cost of the I3-370/HD5650 from Canada that is now available in the US. Retail cost is $749 + 60 shipping. So, the Acer on sale in Canada is $80.71 less expensive than the I7-620M GPU on sale at that on-line store.

Bronsky

 

where are you located? are you willing to solder another backlit keyboard for me? email me (username)[email protected]

cheers

 

Because my search for a reasonably priced mini PCIe SSD has failed. The SSD from Coresolid is only available in SLC at a cost of $10 per gigabyte.

I've settled on hand wiring an expresscard SSD to the 2nd PCIe pads.

 

That I have to see.

Bronsky

 

Sorry, I am not interested in doing modification work for others. I have a fulltime job as it is. I don't want to turn a hobby into another job.

 

Yup, I am in Canada, eh? I am actually hoping for a different clockgen in the new laptop. IDT is not being very open about the FSB and PCI registers. I suspect earlier failures to OC teh i7 in this laptop has more to do with the clockgen than anything. I have not had a ton of luck with this laptop (although I haven't given up oin getting the register specs from IDT).

Shark could take some time. SMT rework is pretty specialized and finicky work. I am OK with it for chips that have external legs, but I can't do it with BGA like the ATI chip and Vram have. I wouldn't expect a one-day turnaround.

 

Should be possible. Can you post the link to your favor expresscard?

 

I haven't deciuded yet. Any suggestions? I'm looking for 64GB.

 

No, I have no suggestion.

I only want to take a look on the datasheet for the SSD controller. Because I only had read about a few models which used the USB Port and not the pcie lane.

The speed up again USB Flash sticks was taken out of four flash chips versus two or one in an USB stick.

 

Shark seems to be located right in the middle of a cluster of motherboard factories in Shenzhen. I'm hoping they don't take more than a few days.

Bronsky

 

Here's a write-up on the new $189 120GB OCZ SSD. http://www.fudzilla.com/memory/item/20334-ocz-shows-its-new-onyx-2-ssd It looks interesting.

Bronsky

 

I7-640M ES installed & running fine

Heat - Idle temps are between 42-46C and run upto 66-67C under full load @ 3.458Ghz. Bottom of the laptop is not that warm to the touch after several hours of general use...kinda simular to the 450m with the stock thermal paste (gonna re-apply a thinner coat of mx3 and see if i can lower the temps into the 50's under constant load).

Performance - noticeable performance boost (startup, installing apps). Windows score for both CPU & Memory jumped from 6.7 to 7.0. I haven't run any benchmarking software as of yet but I did do a backup with acronis true image.... the 450m took exactly 7m40s to complete my 3820tg's 12gig backup vs 4m42s for the 640m. (both backups ran in balanced power mode and the backup capture was identical;done just before and after cpu swap).

Battery - around 6h30 with BT & WiFi enabled and display set to 40% with intel GPU in balanced power mode and 7h49 with display set to 0% in power saver mode. CPU fan operation in both modes was dead silent as is the case when it's on AC. Discharge rates(batterycare) are constant between 7.7w - 8.2w during light usage/idling.

That's it for now

 

Hi guys quick question, ive been searching everywhere on my laptop for this option but cant seem to find it....how to I make it so when my battery is attached to my computer but its plugged in, to not keep the battery charging?...right now it says charging while its plugged in and my batteries in it

thanks!

 

Wow... How do you manage such low discharge rates? I have the Staples model (thinking of selling to my mom so I can get the one with the 5650 ) and when I'm in class running OneNote, wifi on, BT off, and have 3-4 tabs open in firefox I easily run at a discharge rate of 10-11w. Lowers to 8-9w when I'm just in OneNote and have everything else minimized. I did a clean install of Windows 7 and only installed the Acer program for the on screen stuff (volume, wifi/BT control, etc...) Also, I'm usually running at lowest screen brightness, Intel GPU and power saver mode. I get my info from BatteryBar v3.4.2

Any tips on improving battery life?

 

some of you might be interested in this software that helps you save additional energy

What is Granola?

 

Hi all,

(Warning, long post)

Just received my 3820TG from computeruniverse! The only downside is that I missed the core i5 460M model just by a few days (The news was posted in this thread while I was waiting for my unit).

Now, I have a couple of questions:

1- Do any of you experience erratic or jerky touchpad behavior while plugged in? It's quite difficult to do anything that requires the minimum of precision. If I run on batteries, the touchpad works ok. Note: while typing this at work, I notice that here this doesn't happen. The electrical wiring at work is probably a lot better than at home, something to do with proper earthing maybe?

2- I haven't done a full disk image yet, and last night I run windows update hoping the touchpad was driver related. Would the alt+F10 at POST procedure reset the installation to factory state? Should I have to re-activate windows in that case? Maybe it's worth trying to back up the OEM license as mentioned elsewhere in this thread before?

3- Last, if I understood correctly the many related posts, the easiest way to be able to restore those two hidden partitions is by having done a disk image (tgoode's procedure seems way too convoluted to me, as I want to do the minimum work possible in the "windows side" before going to linux). I want to be able to have a simple way to restore the notebook to its "supported" state, in case some day it needs to go back to ACER (I have already had too many support people telling they couldn't provide support because I run an unsupported OS, e.g. while troubleshooting my home DSL connection through the DSL router web's interface!)

As a las note, although I haven't really gone there in details yet, I can confirm that the latest ubuntu 10.10 beta seems to run great. There may be issues with graphics drivers for the ATI card atm, but the future is bright (AMD has unveiled initial open source drivers for 5xxx family of cards)

 

Hey,

the simple way is to create the 3 recovery DVDs and the driver DVD and not to delete the PQ Partition.

The smaller hidden partition is something like the /boot Part for Windows and can be deleted.

Grub 2.x will find the hidden recovery partition as a Vista bootloader and you are able to recover Windows.

Ubuntu 10.10 runs very well on the 3820TG.

 

Hi, before I will buy new wi-fi card, is there a way to somehow get better siganl from Atheros based wi-fi card? Where my friends have 4 to 5 signal bars, I get 1 to 2.... Some other drivers perhaps? Also, is there a way to reduce time needed to switch GPUs? I switch them pretty often, from Intel to ATi its fast, but other way from ATI to Intel its slow, sometimes it takes almost minut before screen even goes black. Thank you.

 

The bars just a gadget.

 

Do you need the DVD's when you have the PQ Partition intact?

 

lol i was just gonna ask if there will be significant battery decrase if I upgarde to 640m. Great results mate. Question, do u o/c your GPU ? If yes could you do a 3dmark06 to see what score you get xD im sure just over 10k. But im more curious to see if there is a significant perfomance boost when you play Bad company 2 if by any chance you own it Cheers!

 

Great, now if you could overclock it (if you can) and report back the results please . All other i7 owners have never come back to us with proper OC results. (Meaning it hardly overclocked at all)

P.S Are you running G.Skill 8gb of ram ?

 

Why don't you wire the expresscard ssd to a blank PCIe board? Then you can still use your 3820TG. Get a cheap wifi board and cut the end off to make a connector. Also you have less risk of screwing up the motherboard.

 

No, but it is save. Just one partition on "a dieing HDD" is not very useful.

 

I think he has a QS and not an OEM. It would be nice to see its OC'ing performance.

Curious to see how the Canadian models OC. I think TGoode has one on order from CenDirect. It looks like CenDirect will be the primary source of units sold to the states. I would like to see how well they OC.

Bronsky

 

I got a 3820tg with the i5 450 and ati 5650. Yesterday I bought this cooler from zalman:

::: Zalman, leading the world of Quiet Computing Solutions :::

Running 3dmark with CPU oc'ed, the temperature of the warmest core dropped from a max of 85 C, to a max of 77 C.

The oc'ed GPU dropped from a max of 74 C, to a max of 67.

So the cooler lowered the CPU temp 8 degrees, and the GPU 7 degrees celsius.

I'm very happy with the results. Gonna do more testing with higher cpu-clock (this was with fsb at 160) and prime95.

 

Well I hope you come back with some i7 640 ES OC results, what other i7 620 owners have all failed to do in this thread

After all this time we are still in the dark about the i7's overclockabilty on this system.

This would make me get one:

 

Did you photoshop that or is it from the Alienware units?

Bronsky

 

How do you manage w/ the small stoage space if you use an SSD on this laptop?

 

Thanks for the report! Can you confirm it's working with BIOS v13 or you have already flashed yours to v17?

 

Is switchable graphics supported out of the box?

 

Alienware m17x R2 I think. Still imagine 4Ghz and stable

 

Windows 7, Updates, Drivers, Office 2010, Photoshop, Acrobat Pro, etc. can be stuffed into 20GB, leaving nearly 100GB of usable space on a 120GB SSD or ~215GB on a 240GB SSD. It's only been up until recently that laptops have been selling cheap with 320GB/500GB/640GB drives installed. I've had a number of laptops in the past few years with only 80GB and 160GB drives in them and never had a problem.

You can always retro-fit the 500GB or 640GB stock SATA HDD into a small 2.5" case with USB cable and use that for storing loads of movies and other media if you need to drag it around with you.

ADDED: I really wish I could have gotten one of those $256 deals on the Corsair 256GB!!