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

The only 3820TG model available in the US is distributed only by canadian retailers who will ship to the US. That model is an I3-370M / HD5650 and has no bluetooth. You can buy it for between $735CN and $775CN. There is an I5 model sold at Staples in canada but it has a weaker GPU (same power as the Asus U35JV). You can get the 14" 4820TG in the US with an I5-460M and HD5650 for $799 as soon as it comes back into stock. Amazon.com: Acer Aspire TimelineX AS4820TG-7805 14-Inch HD Display Laptop - Black Brushed Aluminum: Computer & Accessories

The I5 will probably chew up more battery power but I don't think it will be significant. I could get close to 6 hrs on battery with wifi on, BT off and low display settings operating on IGPU only.

Bronsky

Our firm just got an HP clearance circular - Envy 13 refurb for $669 with 1600 x 900 display. Tempted to by one as a back up till I get my unit and then sell it. But I wont.

 

accually i think power managment was preventing switching in my case. I uninstalled it, installed 10.6 (it was already working ) and upgraded to 10.8. Before i would install power manager and it wouldnt switch automatically but its alll gooood now.

As for the i3 or i5 and power consumption i dont think that it makes so much difference as there was a guy here couple or dozen pages back that upgraded to i7-640m and was still getting like 7-8 hrs with wifi off screen on lowest.

 

anyone have experience overclocking the i3-370m yet? i'd like to hit 10K in 3dmark06, but am maxing out around 8800 with just overclocking the GPU.

i tried using the freeware setfsb and ICS9LPRS365BGLF as instructed in the first post, but what shows up are negative fsb values.

 

I don't get it. I never ever had ePower installed on my current windows and everyting works perfectly. Just how it works for many others.

 

Guys do you have PowerPlay enabled or disabled? How is it different to windows power manager?

Also is anyone using Chrome on their 3820tg ? Mine crashes so often and i dunno why. I've got adblock and speed dial extensions installed, its so anoying but its so much faster than firefox any1 has same problem ?

 

Do you have both slides activated or only the top one? I would move the top slide until the CPU is set at 160mhz and then hit setfsb in the command window. See if that works.

Bronsky

 

Disabled. It overrides windows power management and does a lot of wierd crap like shutting down my wifi card all the time. It drove me nuts. I've had no problems with chrome. I use that and Microsoft mainly.

Bronsky

 

I remember the bug in 10.6 and I don't recall it in 10.7. I can't quite check now unless I can get the engineers at Shark to get off their butts.

Bronsky

 

Both slides are activated, but I've only been adjusting the top one. When I select the clock generator and hit the "get fsb" button, i get the values -202/760 on the top and -58-760 on the bottom. Is it normal to see negative values? I've used SetFSB on other laptops and I've never seen negative values upon hitting the 'get fsb' button. When I change the slider to any value, the laptop will just freeze up.

 

Hi guys, i discussed with Acer service, they will take the lappy without HDD if i want. Thats nice.

The aluminium lid still has its electro massaging feature, since now i figured out its usually active while the lappy is on AC, and the only way to get rid of it is connecting a HDMI cable, which has something on the other end. Sometimes its active while on battery, and stops when connecting to AC. I think its not grounded well, or maybe the VGA has smtg messed up inside.

Along this "feature" my unit sometimes resets itself. Its happening 1x / day, and sometimes comes with BSOD.

Today i've figured out, that while i'm browsing with FF, sometimes scrolling with the cursor keys gets wrong, and if i hold a direction, its not scrolling towards, but the system turns off instantly

Thats REALLY REALLY WEIRD TOO i think

Acer service will pick up my machine without a HDD this week and repair it, i'm curious whats going on, and what causes the restarts. I'm not OC ing any components.

Somebody complained for slow SSD speeds, well i posted some pages ago, that i'v noticed that too. Disabling the complete intel powersaving stuff in the registry helped, my Force F60 was able to run full speed, and an optional OC of the CPU would end up in 4k Seq read/write speed up, possibly above the manufacturers given speed. Somebody could try that, its interesting, and discussed in JJB-s SSD tweak thread, in this forum.
After testing, i've rolled back the changes, because it made the CPU run always on max turbo clocks (2650mhz)

The issues with the HM55 chipset, and SSD speeds should be mentioned in the first post. There are two easy solutions to get a speed improvement look for JJB-s and Stigmatix's tweaks thread on this forum.

 

i am having the exact same clocks, and when i move the upper to 133 or 160 or 180 or whatever, it freezes

 

The problem is that there is no perfect fit for your clockgen so the values on the display are not going to be a perfect match. You can't use just the top slider. In fact, you will sometimes notice that the mhz speed is controlled by the bottom slide. You have to use both in incrimental increases to get a decent OC. It takes a lot of patience. This thread might help a bit. http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/513560-possibly-overclocking-unclockable-3820tg.html

Bronsky

 

it could be that this clock generator is not the correct one for the i3-370 units. I've donated in order to try the shareware version. will let you know how it goes once I receive the code to activate.

 

He can't tell you the exact clockgen in your unit. The only way to know the exact one is to eyeball it on the motherboard.

Bronsky

I'm sitting in my half dark office missing my backlit keyboard . Normally I would keep the lights off and keep on working.

 

i'd like to try the AsusG73jh clockgen mentioned in the first post as well (requires the donation). I actually looked at your link and found another clockgen that doesn't give me the pll error, but it also has the negative values i mentioned earlier and will freeze no matter what adjustment i make. i'll keep doing the trial and error though. thanks for the help!

 

I have only had success ocing my 3820s by direct manipulation of the hex byte values of the pll registers

The sliders make mine crash as well/

 

good to hear they will take warranty work w/o HDs. The electro massaging feature actually sounds nice ... wish it was an option on the notebook. The SSD solution links might be a nice addition to Hendriskson's SSD installation guide which is pinned to the first page. This thread moves so fast, he may never see this, you might want to PM him.

Bronsky

 

The electro massaging issue is nothing new to me. My 3820tg has it and previous 2 laptops xps1710 and lg p310 had it to. I dont think there is a solution for that but it doesnt bother me and never did.

Not sure about u not sending your HD with it to acer, what if its OS issue and they will just take your laptop check and send it back to you and say they couldnt find anything or smntng. Try updating your gpu drivers maybe.

 

I dont get it, our hand is too sensitivew for electricity, or only we got badly grounded models? Because some 3820TG-s don't have this feature.

Mod: My catalyst is 10.8. I think they can't send it back to me with this issue. for this price i think i have the right, to not want the lid electroduce me.

 

Apple now sells more units in the US than Acer. IDC: Apple's now third largest PC vendor in US with 10.6 percent market share -- Engadget. While I can understand its focus on the Chineese market, Acer needs to get its Timelines here in some real numbers and variety (like a CPU faster than an I5-460M). I mean really, knocked out of 3rd place by Apple?

Bronsky

 

I had a HP 7010nx a few years ago, it also had an aluminium lid, but it didn't have this grounding problem. Since its so thin I guess its a gounding problem, it might even be intentional. Does it happen on grounded power outlets as well? Thank God, my unit does not produce any freezes, never even saw a BSOD (even when it run OSX 10.6 in Virtualbox while converting a movie in Win7 and PS CS4 and Aftereffects opened).

 

I have the electro massage feature as well.

 

Is there a way to limit the amount of shared memory / hypermemory allocated to the HD 5650 video card? It takes too much memory and leaves me with 0 free memory after running a game, then eventually crashes it.

I suppose I can turn memory paging back on, but I'd prefer not to because there's 4gb of ram...

 

Default Clock 3DMark06 = 7415
Stable@ 700/1000 3DMark06 = 8590

just cant top that 9k...

 

i've got i5-450

and also, someone with same error as me should try the shareware version, i don't know if i should buy it, maybe i even will, when i get money

 

3820TG with the i3-370M

SetFSB shareware version (Asus G73 clockgen) successful overclock. It looks like I am stable around 173FSB and GPU 655/1020. 3dmark06 score 9008. I cannot reach 10K =(. Not too bad though as the main reason I bought this particular laptop was to run SC2 at high settings. It plays the game perfectly at these settings even under stock conditions.

 

I'm sure I know the answer before I ask, but there's no chance of putting an i7 quad in one of these and getting it to work, is there?

It will run too hot and screw up the whole switchable graphics thing, right?

 

1. heat problem
2. BIOS
3. power consumption
4. no switchable

 

i5 580m just arrived I'll have it installed this afternoon and will let you know how she does and how well she OC's!

 

The HD5650 have 1GB on Board Memory and should not take any system ram for games.

Thank you for the test and the report.

 

Hey, you should try the SSD thing i've mentioned, i thin kwith a little OC on the CPU ends up a little oc on the SSD perf. too.

 

AriStar what drivers do u use and what cpu? I found tat 700/1000 are the highest and only stable clocks and so are dozen of 5650 owners in different models. Im able to get 9050points in 3dmark06 with these clocks. I've got i5.

Hendrikson question for you, did u get any arfitacts in AtiTool when doing 675/1090 o/c when recording that bad comapny gameplay? Btw nice one with i5 xD waiting to see some nice results

Syberia no way to upgrade it to quad, as high as you can go is i7-640m..

 

Bronsky, did you make a warranty claim on your motherboard or is the insurance company paying for the repair?

 

I'm using the Corsair Force F120. While ATTO shows about 250/250 MB/s, CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD give me pretty bad scores. About 200/130 there. Could you please post your benchmark numbers from CrystalDiskMark or even better - a screenshot, after applying the tweaks? I'm very interested in seeing what you mean by "full speed".

And oh, thanks for letting us know there're good tweaks around.

 

The consultant's liability insurance company has already reimbursed my original purchase price when they totalled the unit. It's in the bank. I had already paid $140 for a refurbished motherboard before I knew I had an OC'able one. So I am waiting to see if shark can resurrect my mobo and then to see if there is anything else wrong with the unit. If there are still problems when I get the board back, I still have enough to order a new unit from Canada and swap in the upgrades. It seemed like a good idea at the time but I was not expecting this to take a month or more.

The damage to my unit was purely accidential. No warranty coverage for it.

Bronsky

 

That seemed fast. The I5-540M in my unit felt so much powerful than the 450M. I'm looking forward to the results.

Hey, check out your clockgen ID while you're there. I am curious.

Bronsky

 

I have the canadian model, i3-370. i just tested and 720-1050 is stable too. ill see how much 3DMark06 diff is.

 

Canadian (Cendirect) i3-370M here too.

GPU: 710/1020 - (can't get the memory clock any higher without artifacts)

CPU: SetFSB with Asus G73 clockgen (I had to buy SetFSB shareware to get it to clock for $6 USD), I'm running at 2.9Ghz (up from 2.4Ghz stock) and it looks pretty stable. Temps hit 70C max.

Cheers,
McRaft

 

At the speeds above, I'm getting 9400 3DMark06!

Not bad for a lowly i3 proc I can live with that.

 

Finally got the money together to order one of these so Ill be buying one off computeruniverse over the weekend...I just have a question...how exactly does the utms model work? Do you need to put a sim card into it? Because here in Ireland you cant get two sim cards with the same number but I do like the idea....
Thanks

 

I have no screenshots saved, my F60 was around 250/250, but after i switched off two powersaver somethings in regedit, atto showed a stabil 285/270. This was the 4096k, 4k random boosted too, but i dont remember the numbers.

Stigmatixs tweak ruins turbo mode so i rolled back the canges, but JJB-s tweek looks better, and can be optimized a little.

 

Ok the operation was a success, now running a i5 580m . First impressions are the notebook does feel snapper.

Overclocks around 152 BLCK max, as expected less than my i5 450m, higher default multipliers = less overclocking room..

Managed to reach 3.8Ghz

I'm still testing but temps seem good.

 

Nice speed. Best I could do was a hair under 3.7ghz before the great flood. Now I have something to shoot for when the motherboard gets back. Anybody faster or is yours now the fastest we have seen in this thread. BTW, I would bet that the I5-460M does not OC as well as the I5-450M by % because of the smaller bus. I think that is the key to the mad OC room the 450M has.

Bronsky

 

Yep the i450m is a mad overclocker, still you have to remember this is a QS sample 580m. But I'm really pleased with it. it seems to max out at 82-84 degrees around there overclocked running prime95.

Stock power consumption levels on lowest brightness as per below PNG:



This CPU consumes less than my i450 it seems. I never got near 8 watts on my 450m... As low as 6.5 watts is well nutts Will come in handy on my
long haul flights to New Zealand.

You were right Bronksy as you said with your 540m it does feel like a new computer now. Snappy and Photo shop seems faster.

 

I am also running mine at 2.9GHz (FSB 182). Current GPU is 730/1010 and 3DMark06 is 9413. Still running Prime95 and ATITool artifact test, but this seems like the best my machine can do. I'd love to see someone hit 10K with the i3-370/5650 though =)

 

Yep, the i5-460m in my 3820tg blows....
Could only get 171MHz FSB and 3.6GHz out of it without messing with memory...

Must be because I run 32bit win 7, and everyone knows that blows too.

 

So much for the bus theory ... I stand corrected. Was that your 3820TG or 4820TG?

Bronsky

 

Yeah, I think that's the best we're gonna get unless we put a Turbo CPU in there like these others guys are doing. I'm not too bothered by it since a 9400 score is only about a 5% difference from 10k.

More amusing stats: a current i7 Alienware M15X pulls about 10k 3DMark06... That is a 10lb dedicated gaming notebook The M11X can only do about 5500 stock...

 

Sorry, edited to show it was the 3820tg.
But even when the i5-460m is overclocked, it still can't keep up in games with the stock clocked i3-350m in my 4820tg that has more overclockable video. Just stressing the point that all this CPU talk is less important than GPU if gaming is your thing..

EDIT: The 171fsb/3.6GHz was only during testing, and not stable for gaming at that speed.

 

Do you guys have brand new models? I had 700/1000 arfitact scan for hallf an hour it was all good, but then gamed for a bit and got a freeze. I used to clock higher with no issues but i think my vents/thermal paste are to clean/change.