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

hmm, sounds tempting, but i was pulling a 92C max on the card with assassin's creed 1920x1080 with medium/high settings. Can it go much higher safely? Maybe a notebook cooler would suffice.

 

@Bron:

This machine is getting more and more attractive everytime I come back on to read the forumz. Btw, does the 3820TG have a PCIe slot for DIY ViDock?

 

I am not sure about that, is says output voltage around 19V , and I thought 3820TG takes around 12-13V , isn´t it ?
EDIT: aha, so I was wrong, 19V is true..

 

What a coincidence I was thinking the same thing. If the laptop has a PCIe slot for external GPU, I would be the happiest man on earth !!!

 

Yesterday night i was getting comfy with W7-s energy management, and i've fount a switchable option, for a feature i think may cause flickering. its smg. like when on battery,and lower brightness, it sets the brightness to more below sometimes. Tonight i will look after that.

 

It works also on the version 1.13.

An HowTo is written in the linked post.

 

Your GPU was at 92C?? Sounds like a CPU temp. If it was the CPU, you still have 13C of headroom before stuff starts to melt - plenty of room for an OC'er.

Bronsky

 

With the bios 1.13 the CPU will be clock down @ 99°C. Just a hint.

But 92° ist to much for GPU!

 

Anybody has the same issue?

while the laptop is on power, if i "caress" the lid top with all 5 points of my fingers, its some electricity appearing, feels like buzzing. From battery, that is not present when i touch the lid.

ELSE

Is any OCZ vertex2, or intel x25m benchmarks available? i want to be sure that the more expensive, but almost the same spec corsair F60 worth it. I mean with this machine / or the same chipset. I'm interested which of the 3 above mentioned SSD performs better and what difference is in their raw power, and some OS boot tests, and app installing times, what would be the most important for me.

 

mmm...electricity thing maybe related to the wifi antenna amplification used by Acer. Actually, the top of that lid is covered by that antena.

 

No lightnings here either.

 

@Just a Nick, with the bios mod what is the extra intel menu? Is it just for the shared ram? Or are there more settings we can unlock too?

 

Csatlakoztatott töltővel, ha ki van nyitva a fedél, és finoman hozzáérek a tetejéhez 4 ujjamal, és finoman simogatom. Ilyen nagyon furcsa érzés, áram alá helyez a gép neked ilyet nem csinál?
MOD: a fém felületre gondolok, nem a tetején a műanyag csíkra

Wrote for kiskapu in hungarian, to check out this issue with the lid.

 

I've arrived late to the party, but have just ordered the i5 460M 3820tg (5650) from computeruniverse.net for shipping to the UK. Doesn't look like there are any reports from people who have received this version yet, so I'll post an update for anyone who is interested (just in case there have been some minor changes to the 450m version).

Have read some (admittedly not all) of this forum, and am amazed by what you guys have managed to achieve with it so far (mods, overclocking, etc ).

Cannot wait to receive it :-D

 

My 450M model came from Computeruniverse. If the 460M performs as well as the 450M does, you're going to love it. I assume you'll be swapping the keyboard and OS. If you haven't seen my guide for converting a Computeruniverse unit on the first page of this post, you might want to glance at it.

Bronsky

Oh ... congratulations!

 

PM sent.

And now, to lengthen my post to pass the caracter limit...

 

pretty sure it was gpu

what would you say is a gpu max?

So you got the gpu voltage clock settings to work just_a_nick? Have you played with the settings at all? findings?

thanks,
zeem

 

If anyone wants to make a deal with me on my 460m model, I'm ready to downgrade to the i3 370m. I really have no use for extra speed on the i5 (this one seems to OC stable to 3.1ghz without me really trying to hard). I almost posted it on e-bay for $995+$30 shipping (I have $1095 in it with the 4GB upgrade) but realized I would only get to keep about $950 USD. Dunno if I want to save only $115 to downgrade to the CAD version @ $835. I was hoping to to get closer to $200 so I can jump on the next SSD deal without breaking the bank.

ADDED: I'm in Orlando, FL if anyone wants to check it out before buying it (or just to check it out before buying a different one)

 

No there is not a big extras, only a few smal one:

• enable power save mode of the sound card
• disable lan
• disable USB
• disable PCI-E root hubs
• Intel grafikcard
• disable c-state
• disable Turboboost
• change the controller of turbo boot (default driver)

There are few more, but I think they are not importand at the moment.

 

I never got the GPU hotter as 80°C.

I would chage the unit.

 

@bronsky

medal of honor beta plays butter smooth around 50-70fps on my 450m 5650, with some overclock 666/1060. I does play much much smoother than bad company 2 but then again there is no desctruction so cpu isnt stressed that much .

So I hear there might be room for more o/c to the gpu, that would be nice as mine doesnt heat up more than 80c even when o/ced however when i test clocks with ATI tool i get loads of errors when i scan for arfitacts but games like bad company or medal of honor beta run very well with no errors and sometimes i get a full system freeze when playing world at war but thats apparently common issue.

So any way to get higher clocks to the gpu so far?

 

Couldn't wait... I slapped the i7 in there (52 minutes)



By the way, these Cen Direct units have the ICS 9LVS3197B, which is somewhat overclock resistant. I am still trying to get more detailed reg specs.

 

Glad to hear that it runs smooth. I kinda like the game. Been playin it on my desktop I7-930/AMD 5870.

The GPU issue started from Just_a_nick's conversation on the Bios thread and it looks like the GPU can have its voltage changed by flashing the bios. Worth looking at when I get my motherboard back from China. I'll probably brick my motherboard for good this time.

There's no destruction? I saw some walls being shot away ... thought it had the destruction engine.

Bronsky

 

for $100 in savings, you should just keep it... i mean, $100 isn't worth the frustration of say, getting a unit with a dead pixel and having to go through the whole RMA process if the i5-370 turns out badly,

 

Dam ...

Bronsky

 

Just curious.. But is anyone having performance issues?

My performance in 3D games seems to vary. The other night I was playing things like CS:S/HoN on max, but now it feels like the performance has been cut in half.

 

i dunno why but when i tried to play team fortress 2 i would get rly nice frame rates indoors and rly crappy outside in the battle (game is few years old) and ppl with worse specs that mine (450m 5650) seem to be running the game butter smooth everything on high but for me lowering settings doesnt help. Not sure what it might be. i think i tried both 10.7 and 10.8 drivers. ehh

 

it does run on frosbite engine (the one in bad company 2) but there is no destruction but they did add some nice effects. Thats why game runns so much smoother than bad company cause it doesnt stress the cpu so much with physics and destruction i would say.

 

Hmm, weird. I restarted a few times and it's back to normal.

And yeah, that is really weird. I can play 1366x768 on high settings fluidly with a HD5470.

Maybe you have the same problem as me? I did notice that when I get the performance issue (low 3D performance) that it was the same performance as if I was playing on battery. I'm thinking it's a bug in the drivers causing the system to not switch from battery to AC performance, along with the system power options.

 

Finaly got myself a Momentus XT 500GB. Amaizing and imediate speed boost, should be given to everyone with the drivers license My system boots up in 32 sec, widgets, RSS-feeds and all. Even better, my huge-@ss java IDE is at least twice as fast. On the down side it realy is a noisy drive, it literaly shakes this tiny machine, but I'll get used to it eventualy.

 

@Everyone, since I havent gotten a response yet:

This machine is getting more and more attractive everytime I come back on to read the forumz. Btw, does the 3820TG have a PCIe slot for DIY ViDock? Even if it doesn't, I'm still very interested in getting one because of its value.

 

hey guys

i'm new to this forum and got an acer 3820g from germany. m460 version with 750gb hdd and umts

my last notebook was a lg p310 tarsia, of which i was very proud of.. but looking for some new

finally i got the mentioned acer and started living it. but i got some serious issues for me.

i reinstalled win7 prox64 myself for a clean and fast system. first things i can say is... this machine feels extremly slow running windows... i dont know if it is the hdd, which feels kind of a 4200rpm unit out of the 90's or something else. my tarsia's speed difference is like comparing a ssd with 4500rpm harddrive... and my tarsia still got only 4500rpm 320gb! so whats the problem with my acer? i installed any driver listed on the acer page...

but thats not my only problem

i got some graphical lags (?)... let me explain

running 3d06 and passing the second test watching the fireflys i noticed that they are "jumping" sometimes. means the screen is in a kind of smooth graphic freeze and half a second later, the fireflys are about 5cm ahead. its just not a fluent representation

the same problem releases when playing league of legends for about every 2-3 minutes...

all those issues where tested without OC!
OC is some other part of which i am not getting started so far with this book... very strange behaviour. but this is another topic....

i hope someone can understand and help (sorry for my english... i'm german )

 

The 3820TG has no external pci-express slot.

 

So... my 3820 has run it a slight problem while in Japan - its throwing off a ton of heat, even to the point it turned itself off earlier today. The majority of the heat seems to be coming from the left side fan. Is this fan cpu or gpu connected? And, the power adapter does say 100-240v, 50-60hz. In Tokyo, its 100V and 50hz. The unit is from Canada, and the power adapter doesnt feel hot at all.

 

I think the left fan is CPU connected.

 

I really do hope mine is overclockable
I think I'm going to install an english win 7 home premium x64, then use the german os activation key and activate via phone (apparently this has worked). Not sure whether to change the keyboard at the moment, as moving to Austria soon so the german keyboard may actually come in handy (assuming I become able to write german...) .

Just to report, UPS delivery from Computeruniverse.net to th e UK is ridiculously fast. Ordered it on monday night, shipped on tuesday, has arrived wednesday noon. Just going to pick it up from the mail hold now.

To say I'm extremely excited would be a massive understatement right now ;-)

 

Nice, congrats on Your upgrade.

Though I'm planning an SSD upgrade, just for the information, where did You get the Momentus XT? Ebay or hungarian retailer?

Thanks in advance!

 

In the unlocked BIOS the On-board LAN is by default disabled in PCH Control Sub-Menu, but I have it and it's working.

 

Ok do you recommend doing this mod? And is there a pre modded driver out there to download? Thanks!

 

I know a hungarian seller, who sells corsair nova 32gb SSD-s for 20k huf. nice one for boot drive, if an external HDD-s 20MB/s speed is enough for you for storage. It's enough for me

 

It has one or two mPCIe _inside_. You can cut a hole in the bottom and get the cable thru it, if it's your liking. But you buy this laptop for it's GPU, there are millions of other laptops with crappy GPUs and ExpressCard slots.

 

Firefly was the same for me too. Try quietHDD and try either disabling APM and AAM or moving it to full performance values. I don't have 3dmark06 installed now to see if it helps.

 

How did you get rid of this annoying KB flex? i hate it. the touchpad is not my favourite too, but this KB sucks. the cursor keys are the worst.

 

Szia! It is the worst keyboard in my life too! I am using it with an external keyboard and screen, that's how I can actually enjoy using this laptop.

I sent it in to the service center to fix the display, and asked them to fix the flex on a note. They did not fix the display, but they did the keys. But since last week, it started sqeeking, sounding like it needs oiling... Maybe Hungarian models received a dodgy set of keyboards...

BTW, using external screen with HDMI -> DVI and keyboard and mouse in a USB hub, this laptop really provides some desktop like experience (ok, my desktop was 2 year old).

 

For the service guide, mine is just 30 pages, but at least it's free. Just google: "aspire 3820t service guide"

 

I have done it to reduce the reserved ram for the intel graphikcard.
All the other parts just an extra option.

You don't need a modded driver. The bios reserved 32/64/128MB of ram and the normal Intel grahikcard driver will add more if it necessary.

 

My Corsair F60 finally arrived, and i'm looking forward to install it, and pu a clean W7 up on it. Before that, i want to test the HW of this machine, to prevent later recognition of HW faults. Can anyone help me in that? the first thing, i will test the cpu, and gpu if full loaded, how high the temps going up. Anyone can tell me his own 450m &hd5650 s stock max temps?

 

GPU 70-72C CPU 84-87C
GPU 74-76C CPU 89-91C (OC'd 30-35%)

I would run WPrime for an Hour in loops with CPuz monitor (some like Everest better - there is a 30 trial) then run the Intel Burn test. I check for artifacts on the stock clocks as well with ATI Tool (should we call it AMD tool now ). ATi Tool 0.27 b2 download from Guru3D.com. That should give you a comfort level with your hardware before you put the SSD in there. Wait till you see how much faster your unit is with the SSD and a clean install.

Bronsky

 

thx for your hint, but already tried with quitehdd without solving the problem...

it just seems that some combination of hardware is not cooperating as it should. i had an acer book 7 years ago and recognized the same problem... still high and solid fps, but framedrops/skips all the time... it just makes it unusable for gaming in my opinion.
i cant even handle a rts game like league of legends with missing seconds in fights... its might be better for my funiture to leave gaming with this book then...

so what...

is there any suggestion for speeding up my windows performance without upgrading to a ssd? its like a turtle comparing to my p310...

 

DL Medal of Honor Beta and run it - let us know how it goes. It should run very smooth. Some owners have noted a problem with lag in playing older games. Nobody has yet figured out the cause. This thing should run rings around your P310.

Bronsky