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

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Nah... they don't mess with a Corporation here (ref.: 16 tons), they are like Maffia, godfather of politicians and stuff. Besides suing the company would lead to the loss of another 2000-4000 people's jobs. No sir, no one in fault will be punished here.

BTW the insurance on the whole dam was $50000.
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You will only need Launch Manager, all others are junks.

 

I just wanted to thank everyone who have contributed to this post, and helped me along with many others who are/were interested in purchasing 3820TG.


With help from this thread (and also 3820TG North America Purchase Options thread), I purchased 3820TG from PC Home.
At the time, they had some kind of promotion going on; whichever i5 - 4X0 model you chose, it automatically added i5 460 model to your cart for 30900 TWD.
It seems the promotion is over though(they also had a similar promotion for i3 models as well).

It took no more than 5 days to receive the laptop from Taiwan, and so far it is great.
I received the additional 2GB RAM, along with a carrying case and a mouse.
I also bought the YADI keyboard skin, which I kind of hesitated at first, but I am very glad I did add it to my cart.
PC Home has customer representatives who are quite fluent in English, so if you have any concerns or questions regarding a purchase, you should email them without hesitation.


I followed the guideline, first post written by hendrickson, and everything went quite smoothly.
For those who are using Windows7 for the first time, I would like to point out that when you re-install the OS, it makes a folder called windows.old which contains all the information from the previous installation.
I recommend keeping that just in case, since you could also revert everything back to the previous installation as long as that folder exists.
I did not know about this and I accidently erased it.


My laptop came with LG disply monitor, which I think is great .
No problems with the monitor at all. Keyboard is fine, no complaints.
I am considering on the wireless card upgrade, but don't have any problems with that so far, since I use it mostly at places where the signal is strong enough.
Oh, I also bought the Zeroshock III case, and it fits quite well. I bought mine on ebay.


I did encounter some problems, one was occasional spikes (freezes) when playing games.
I read through the posts and found a cure with QuietHDD.
Another problem was that when I changed the graphics to 'Discrete' in the BIOS, the ATI drivers disappeared for some reason and everything became choppy.
This was taken care of by re-installing the ATI VGA driver from the initial setup.

My 3dmark06 score is 7515 with stock settings.
I probably will OC the GPU in the near future... but no need for it now since I'm not playing any demanding games.... at the moment.


It's been about a month since I had the 3820TG and I think it's a great machine that mixed performance with portability quite well at a reasonable price.

Highly recommended, as any owner of the machine would agree.

 

If you use the stock Acer driver it does it automatically without any program. For any other driver, or upgrade, it depends.

 

So, I think I may know how to solve your fan problem. You say that you did a fresh install - did you install all of the acer motherboard and chipset drivers?
Without software controlling the chips, everything is on max power. This occured to me as I was doing a partition restore using a boot disk, and the fans were going non stop, and the battery went from 75 to 14 in around 45 minutes.

My idle temps are similar to yours (I also have 460m), so either the new versions with the 460m have badly applied thermal paste, or our temp sensors are naturally high. I'm hoping possibly the latter, as my 5650 is going 90+ on 3dmark06 even on stock clocks...

 

Try it while you have something 3D running in a windows. It's the 2D frequency. Start ATITool first, then click get frequencies.

 

Yeah, over 90% the report is not precise. It will jump a bit after some time. And always use the statistical method if you want anything reliable.

 

Separate 2D/3D clocks are a good things to have else the fan would run much more frequently. BTW is it normal that using external monitor forces 3D clocks?

 

I had many nVidia desktop cards which only throttled at 115 C, and they still run today.

 

I know. Especially the Momentus XT should be making everything vibrate it a little bit more...

I wonder when you can get a 128GB SSD for the price of a 64GB now .

By that time the SSDs will become attractive for me.
64 GB is just to little.

And the Momentus XT isn't that cheap. The 500GB version is even outpricing a few 64GB SSDs here.


Guess i gotta bite into the sour apple and pray that the price of the SSDs drops fast, very fast...

 

Bronsky, I wanted to ask you that how toxic was the thing which needed to be washed down from your laptop? Because here those guys are kind of cleaning their houses with their own hands, wearing nothing but a dust-mask and a rubber boot/glove set. In mexico bay every picture I saw has shown guys with space-suit like full body protection, where obviously all they had to do is to put some oily sand into containters. It looks quite a contradiction...

 

They actually have better 5650s. It's just the memory which is slower. A BIOS mod would easily help on this, BTW.

 

I would just run ATI tool for an hour to find your safe frequencies. If you go by 10% under those values, it shouldn't shut down. Then it's something else, like the RAM.

 

You have an absolutely amazing ram... It's far faster than 5730...

 

I would never use anything higher then what ATI tool says is artifact stable for 1 hour!

 

I would have suggested deleting the whole partition before install. That is the only way to have a windows install which is "clean".

Be careful with your ram, if it's a non matching pair you might need to purchase a mathing par if you are into overclocking.

There is no need to tinker with graphics card drivers, the first post was written when the factory one was old and buggy. Only upgrade if you are playing with the latest games, like SC2.

 

BTW my Corsair F60 seemed super fast, it wasn't at all.
I've shut down intelst energy management, so the CPU is always @2650, 49C idle, and now 4k R/W 120/170 ; 512k R/W 285/265. Looks for me the CPU is still the narrow point using the drives max write speed, somebody should test these with some OC. I disabled the whole power saver function of the CPU, and there is possibility to just modify the settings to a better SSD performance, but leaving the Powersaving function on, but it needs some extra time to test it out.

Is there any negative effect on my CPU, that it runs @2650Mhz?(t hink its turbo mode, because everest shows a 10% overclock)

I know there are some 3820TG owners here with SSD-s , let me see those 4k / seq. R6W speeds with vertex2!

 

When i start ATI tool, get the error message:
"the kernel module driver does not seem to be running."

Your copy woks good out of the box?
the furry cube doesn't rotates for me while its scanning for artifacts.

 

My briefcase just needed to be washed with deionized water before it could be handled because the bottles in the consultant's trunk were samples taken from a groundwater monitoring well. Any traces of contaminants would be in the uG/L range (parts per billion) which would be easily washed away with a deionizing wash.

In the gulf they were dealing with straight oil residue, which also off-gases VOC's that are carcinogenic and toxic to humans (and generally any living thing other than oil eating bacteria ). That is why they were required to use Stage 3 Haz Mat protection.

As for the clean up in Hungary ... oh well! I would not touch any sludge with a PH of 12 with my bare hands. Although that sludge probably does not have the VOC fraction that is so dangerous in oil, gasoline or chlorinated solvents, the incredibly high PH could probably eat your skin off your bones and then bleach the bones white. No offense to your countrymen, but they are not playing with a full deck as we say in New Jersey.

Bronsky

 

The poor Danube River. I read it hasn't even recovered from the gold mine accident in Romaina ten years ago. How do you treat something like this, pour acidic solutions into the river to stabilize the ph? Do they filter or remove sediment at the river bottom for the heavy metals & metalloids?

And now for something on topic, will the integrated graphics of the 3820T be enough to watch 2+gb h264 mkv files, youtube videos and normal things like that? I don't play games so I'd really like to take he $$ I'd save from buying the TG and put an i5 520m into a normal T model.

 

That's the way it should be. Kernel module was only needed for overclocking old ati cards. For scanning it shouldn't rotate, as it's comparing the image all the time.

 

More than 120 local people were taken to the hospitals as they were trying to fight the flood when it happened, without any kind of protection. Some of them were standing in it at meter deepness for 3 hours, before any help arrived... Not a very nice story...

For the Danube, everyone hopes that it's massive enough to dissolve the pH levels. From the measurements it seems that at least the heavy metals are not a problem, it's all about the high concentration of alkali that kind of burns everything.

 

I would recommend the 3820T for all my friends who doesn't care about 3D games. I use mine on Intel almost all the time (as mine has display problems on ATI), and for desktop + hd videos + youtube, it's more then adequate.

 

I got it. How should i determine max for GPU & RAM?
First, set the cores freq, till it got some error, then adjust the ram?

 

OK, big update on graphics issues:
I've spent half an evening figuring out how to make ATI run @ PCI 2.0, but I found no solution. No matter what I do, it always stays PCI 1.1 under Windows 7. I have tried .inf modding Catalyst drivers up to 10.9, but no change.

I am not sure, but probably as a result of this, the 3dmark06 Firefly demo is skipping a lot under Windows 7. It lags mostly when there is a change in the scene, which makes sense as that's the point where there would be a need for more data exchange between the card and the system.

I can imagine that it's the issue which ruins gameplay experience in many games. It's possible that some games are written in a way to handle these kind of problems, while other games are more sensitive to PCI-E bandwith issues.

The interesting part is that I have a dual booting system with Windows XP, and under XP, using a .inf modded desktop Catalyst 10.9, there is no issue at all. PCI runs at 2.0 and the 3dmark Firefly demo is fluent, without any kind of skipping or lagging at all. So there is definately a solution, but Acer or ATI needs to address this issue!

Can you have a look that what does your GPU-Z say for your cards? If you move the mouse at the PCI-E 2.0 16x @ 16x field, what does it say? And if you have time, can you run 3dmark06 / Firefly demo to see if you have any lagging/skipping at various parts?

 

Native for You bro

yean the mouse slipped, and nightshift sucked my brain. im going now home and make it for you.

 

Try them separately. When you found them separately, try to combine them. There isn't any strict way how you should do it, just play with it and be prepared for lot of system reboots.

 

Sorry, I was looking at the detailed information for PCI-E 16 @ 16. Can you take a screenshot of that one?

 

Here you are.
But mine shows 1.1 too. i use catalyst 10.8

 

thats exactly what i am saying all the time about gpu lags!

and indeed, with mouseover it tells actually running with v1.1

// ref. the cooling system all time on... i did install all drivers from the acer page. which driver / app / whatever is controlling the fans?

 

Hey zsero, how can I find the safe frequencies for my gpu ? I'm new to this ATi Tool. hehe

 

Is ATI tool = AMD GPU Clock Tool?

 

No... Its different

 

#600 pages of post at 3820tg owner thread!

 

What I would like to know if is anyone is being able to run PCI-E in 2.0-mode? Is it even possible on the 3820TG?

 

Same here with a 3820TG with ATI 5470... only 1.1!!

 

oK...I got some more specs on my machine:

panel AUC322C
HDD WD5000BEVT-22A0RT0

 

1.1 here too.

I'll try to run 3dMark06 later.

 

I have the 5470 installed in mine, and it also shows 1.1.

I noticed something odd though. GPU-Z says that my current clocks are 750/800 with default clocks being 400/500. Unless it's supposed to be that way of course.

 

Hi. I can´t run the new BIOS flash 1.17 - get a message ´Driver(WDM) Init fail!(0x137). Any ideas ?
Also, while streaming some BBC Iplayer HD programmes with the ATI card switched on, the playback isn´t as smoooth as with the Intel Graphics integrated card. Isn´t it strange ? Does anyone have similar issues ? I was hoping the new BIOS might help!
Sorry if this topic has already been discussed before- can´t plough through all those pages.
Thanks for any reply

 

Is your 3820TG 460m 5650 extremely slow after fresh windows 7 install? I think I have found the cause (and hopefully solution).
Before I did a fresh install, I ran a HD Tune benchmark to see what the hdd was like. It gave very good readings, very few downward spikes and the average was around 81mb/s

I then reformatted and repartitioned, and windows felt much slower. I booted a Linux ubuntu live cd and ran the command "sudo fdisk -l", which alerted me that the partitions did not align with the physical sector boundaries of the hard drive. I thought this might be unrelated, but on installing unbuntu, it as alerted me that I should delete the (empty) partition i had reserved for linux and recreate it, which would align it, and so I did.

Now, the interesting bit - I rebooted into windows and ran HDtune. All of the partitions which I had left untouched had quite large downward spikes in performance, whereas the partitions I had rebuilt did not have these spikes at all. Just guessing, but this may have also happened for some others who did fresh installs. I'm about to image my windows partition and delete and recreate it to see if it solves the issue.

I think this is to do with the logical sector size on the 750GB hdd's (and possibly others) being 512 bytes, whereas they are physically 2048 bytes.

Fingers crossed!

 

Maybe it is the other way, and you have poor performing ram?

Here GPU memory in 3820TG runs 1100, while 4820TG also runs 1200.

 

Do you actually own 4 TimelineX models?

Bronsky

 

No, just one 3820TG and one 4820TG.
The 4820TG will be going to a new home in 10 weeks.

Tested both before swapping CPU's. Since the different CPU's are being shipped, posted as a comparison reference that shows the difference.

 

Since you have both the 3820TG and 4820TG, if you ever get the time, it would be interesting to have a comparison of the two, including benchmarks, performance and temp data since they are equipped nearly identically. I would be interested to see pics of the displays side by side.

You also seem to be very successful in OC'ing your GPU. Maybe a brief description of your methodology would help neophytes (I include myself in that category). Congratulations on the >10K 3DM06 score.

The 1200 stable ram setting does indicate an exceptional VRAM setting. Most have had a hard time keeping 1050 stable. The difference between 1100 and 1200 is a significant step (albiet almost impreceptable in performance ). Any stability problems at that setting?

You are in Germany? I know this will sound crazy but the EU units seem to OC better ... Okay, there I said it. The 3 highest OC'ing CPUs are Hendrickson, OCFreak and mine. Hendrickson and I both bought German units and I think OC bought his in Norway. Wierd. Have you ID'd your clockgens?

Bronsky

 

Does the I5-460M not have the same 4.5/s DMI as the I5-450M?

Bronsky

 

Last part first.
Florida.
4820TG from Newegg $750
3820TG from PCHome $950
Sorry, keep forgeting to check clockgen.

Stable in all gaming tests. That is only done for furure reference though. As games come out, I want to know how far I can push it in the future if needed. For now, stock clocked is fine.

Following is copy and paste of portion of test method I used for the 4820TG.
Nothing unusual.
3820TG results were posted before, and similar.

-------------------------------------------------
realtemp 133x21
min 37c, max 86c
xsbench 1101, 13.292, 2793.56 MHz


2.53ghz, 133fsb x 19, (133x21=2.8ghz) ati 550/800 (stock)

wei-5.7, cpu-6.9, mem-5.9, vide-6.7, game-6.7, hd-5.7

3dm2k6 (stock) 7577, sm2-2710, sm3-3372, cpu-2975 (64bit)

3dm2k6 (650/900) 8452, sm2-3086, sm3-3838, cpu-2983 (cpu-83, gpu-65c) 64bit
3dm2k6 (650/1000) 8877, sm2-3269, sm3-4075, cpu-2992 (cpu-85, gpu-67c) 64bit

3dm2k6 (650/1100) 9237, sm2-3443, sm3-4272, cpu-2982 (cpu-86, gpu-67c) 64bit i5-460m
3dm2k6 (650/1100) 9237, sm2-3431, sm3-4283, cpu-2985 (71c) 64bit i3-350m @ 2.8GHz

3dm2k6 (700/1100) 9469, sm2-3534, sm3-4415, cpu-2991 (cpu-86, gpu-70c) 64bit
3dm2k6 (700/1200) 9841, sm2-3703, sm3-4625, cpu-3004 (cpu-87, gpu-71c) 64bit
3dm2k6 (750/1200) 10124, sm2-3857, sm3-4791, cpu-2979 (cpu-86, gpu-72c) 64bit

i3-350m, 2.26ghz,
3dm2k6 (750/1200) 9429, sm2-3752, sm3-4650, cpu-2388 (cpu-75, gpu-87c) 64bit
3dm2k6 (770/1200) 9546, sm2-3808, sm3-4723, cpu-2396 (cpu-80, gpu-89c) 64bit

3dm2k6 (750/1300) lock
3dm2k6 (750/1250) lock
3dm2k6 (800/1200) lock

RE5 = 48.2
RE5 = 63.3 (750/1200) (cpu-84, gpu-71c)

 

Specs show different, but specs have been wrong before.

Compare Intel® Products,

Any app I can run to confirm?

Post # 6000

 

Hi guys!
Just reporting in to let you know that mye device also is running PCI-E @ 1.1.
How much of a differnce would it make to fix the issue and get it running at 2.0?

Another question. I have my display language in w7 set to Norwegian.
I want to change whis to english. Is this possible with this W7 version?

Thx in advance!
Kevin

 

Are you sure it is not simply an issue with GPU-Z displaying wrong info?

Any other app to confirm?