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

Hey everyone,

I just bought this unit over the weekend and thought I would add my input as a new owner. This laptop is a significant imporovement over my old 17" HP desktop replacement and in my opinion, the build quality and battery life are wonderful (though I do have to agree that the bilingual keyboard is annoying). As a university student, I purchased this mainly as a portable unit to take to class with, but I wanted some capabilities for gaming. This laptop fits the bill perfectly and gaming performance even at stock is adequate for the games I play for the time being (Source games, LoL, SC2, SF4 all run smoothly).

I am able to overclock my hd 5650 to 800/900. The core overclock from the results in this thread looks very good, but the memory does not overclock as well (I have tried oc'ing memory higher with 550 but artifacts appear).

One question I'd like to throw out there for those more experienced with overclocking is would I see a memory bottleneck at this core clock and is this abnormal (considering I'm seeing mostly ocs of around 600/1000)?

Regards,
nux.

 

what are your temps like?

Me and a few others have gpus that OC in a similar way, and get up to 90 in temps.

It's the luck of the draw.

 

Hey guys,

I have a little problem here... I installed clean W7 on my 3820TG and everything works perfect except Launch Manager. First of all there is no Launch Manager folder in Start Menu after installation, if I go to Program Files and start LManager.exe - nothing happens but the program sits in Task Manager after that.

So, I've installed LM from Acer website for my laptop... But it doesn't work, why? I want my "P" button to switch graphic cards.

Thank You!

 

Thanks for your input!

My temperatures seem to plateau at around 87-88 degrees C at 800/900 in furmark, which I felt is pretty high (read somewhere that gpu danger zone is around 90 degrees C) so for now I am just running it at stock clocks.

Regards,
nux.

 

LM is not related with "P" button. You need ATI drivers from Acer's site in order to make it work. LM is only needed to show various OSD icons when you use Fn shortcuts.

 

Yep, yours is in the same batch as mine. It's basically a bad GPU. I'm almost finished with the warranty register process. I'll see if Acer support can do anything after that.

 

I overclocked to 700/1100 today... temp went up to 72 degrees stable... artifacts appeared after couple of minutes playing and later system totally crashed with black screen

 

Merci Marc.

It's weird that the power options on the taskbar doesn't list a high performance mode but the mobility power options (win+x) does...

 

So I just ran through the first mission of the Starcraft 2 campaign. Everything is still on stock clocks, and I was able to play the game @ 1920x1080 with textures and graphical settings all set to Ultra. It wasn't 100% smooth but pretty darn close. So far I'm pretty darn impressed

 

On the taskbar, you can access the high performance mode by clicking on the tab underneath which gives you the other options.

Bronsky

 

Try bringing down the GPU speed and raising the memory speed. You might find a better combination.

Bronsky

 

My 330M is supposed to have a speedstep range of 7x-16x. For some reason though, it seems never really to go below 10.5x, even while on battery and running power saver. I've even tried messing around with the maximum processor state setting which has accomplished absoluly nothing...

And another thing... Is there a reason to switch between power saver and high performance, if you've already tweaked the balanced settings to your liking? I mean, is there anything going on behind the scenes that one should be aware of, apart from what can be tampered with in the advanced settings?

Thanks =)

 

Keep us posted. I can't OC the mem over 900 without getting mad artifacts in the ATI Tool. Haven't noticed temps though....

 

I received my 3820tg from Germany today ! it's beautiful ! and everything seems to be working fine so far (haven't tried many things tough but I like what I see). I just made the recovery discs into ISOS and the only thing that is left : I can't find the acer registration tool anywhere. And the language isn't helping. I tried to do it online by myself but it says that my SN is already registered !!

Anyway, once I find this app, can it be used after a clean installation of W7 ? or should it be used only with the original installation ? I ask because I really want to get rid of German W7 as soon as possible

 

Yes it can. It drove me nuts too.

Bronsky

 

nvm 10 char

 

Quick question, as a non gamer (I'll most likely be photo editing with Photoshop and Lightroom), would the HD5470 be of any use or should I just save and go for the Intel HD. I will be throwing in a SSD for sure but I just want to know whether or not the HD5470 will be any better for me. Thanks!

Rick

 

Which GPU do you have? I have the HD5470, and I find that anything higher than 1050 memory produces artifacts and crashes.

 

just bought this notebook couple days ago.
haven't tried it a lot but everything seemed awesome!
But i have couple questions:
1. how to make the webcam fullscreen? the default resolution is 640x360 and change resolution didn't solve the problem
2. I tried to create DVD recovery using external dvd since it didn't included in the package but after spending two hours only half of the first dvd filled (2 Giga). imagine that i need to back up 12 Giga Windows, meaning 3 dvd x 4 hours = 12 hours @_@
is that supposed to be that long?

 

There is also the hidden BIOS-settings to fiddle with, but I have had no luck so far to lock it at 7X.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/480992-acer-laptop-phoenix-bios-bios-mod-request-73.html

 

Is it possible to perform step 4 above if you don't have a USB DVD Writer? Can the Acer eRecovery Management software create an iso file instead?

Note: I am doing this blindly since it's all in Chinese.

 

I have a problem with the sleep- and hibernation-options. Putting it into sleep- or hibernation-mode does nothing, other than turning off the screen.

Anyone know what the problem may be? Can't put it in a bag or something. The CPU goes warm.

 

Try using the demo Version of Virtual-CD

It let's you create a virtual dvd burner and a virtual "blank" dvd to be burned. I created all my isos that way just yesterday. Any problem just le me know

 

Cool mate, thanks!

I've gotten the hidden menu to appear, but I haven't really had time to play around with the settings yet... I notice that there is a turbo mode switch, but as far as I know, the 330M processor doesn't even support that! I guess some of the options are just there for show, and aren't doing anything

I'll mess around with it later and might get lucky with it. I'll post back with the results =)

 

I use hd 5650. I saw in some forums.. people get crazy overclocks... I think some of these units are like diamonds and some not...

For now I am using M4acr0s s SATANIC clocks 666/1050 .. works ok

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ace...rks-tweaks-mods-upgrades-116.html#post6432896

 

Thanks for the reply.

I have the drivers installed, now what do I need to do to program the "P" button to switch graphics?

Thanks.

 

Hey guys, do you know an app that can display cpu and gpu core temps upon start up and minimized directly to system tray? The nearest i could find is core temp/real temp but it only shows cpu values. Thanks for the reply!ü

 

^ThrottleStop...

 

Hmm. Nothing more I suppose. It should work when you are on battery power and no software that uses GPU is launched at the moment of switching.

 

Jeeeesus. Is all you ever respond to about overclocking and modding?

 

I've reached
engine : 660 (perhaps more), ram : 900 (910 = bug)

With my 5650m, I'm a bit disapointed with the ram :/ (around 8500pts 3DM06)

I'm pleased with the performances, but I wonder how can be such a difference (most users here get the ram past 1000mhz)

 

My guess is that nobody knows what the problem could be. Do you prefer 10 people replying with a "I don't know what the problem might be" ?

Furthermore, you really aren't providing people with a lot of details here.

I once had an issue on my old computer, where putting it to sleep/hibernate would cause a similar issue. The only way to get it back on was to hard reboot it. I eventually found out it was caused by a VPN client installing a protocol that somehow prevented the computer from entering sleep/hibernate. Other than that, I don't have much help to provide.

 

while its nice to have a super OC'able GPU, i wouldn't worry about it much. on my 4820tg i could overclock the ram to 1200 and be stable for hours... but is it worth it to push the gpu and make it heat up a bit for 5 fps in starcraft 2? lol

i mean the difference between 20 to 25 or 25 to 30fps is great when you need it but i was already hitting 40fps on high graphics/textures without the OC.

 

Jay ... did you put the keyboard in yet?

Bronsky

 

Not yet, will probably do it tomorrow or during the weekend.

It's awesome trying to type on this canadian keyboard lolol... i make so many mistakes.

The cooling in this machine is outstanding... i played starcraft 2 for hours earlier and max temp only reached 69C.... and i was worried about throttling for the longest time!

 

Jay:

I like my new unit but I think I'm getting ready to put the BL KB on it, the I5-540M, new IC Diamond and the internal BT module. I'm going to wait till I have plenty of time to do it because I want to open it once and close it up. I went and got a set of jewelers files for fitting the new keyboard. that should make it easier. I really miss the backlit KB. Wait till you try the new KB, it feels so much better than the stock one.

To all:

Has anybody successfully used MSI Afterburner to OC the 3820TG. When I run it on my 3820, it gives me the stock clocks as the max settings. There is no room on the slode to OC. Am I missing something?

Bronsky

 

Try save the max clock to a profile, then exit the afterburner, then run it again, should give higher limit...

 

Jewelers filers... THATS what i need!!

Had a of a time trying to snap in the keyboard last time

 

Even when I save max clocks to a profile, it will not let me exceed 550/800 clocks. Do you know of a good reference on Afterburner. I guess I could check on the 3DGuru site since I think they have an MSI forum.

Bronsky

 

You did change
EnableUnofficialOverclocking = 0
to
EnableUnofficialOverclocking = 1
on the MSIAfterburner.cfg inside MSI AfterBurner folder, right ?

 

Thanks Lee ... that was the key. I can now move the slides past factory clocks.

Bronsky

 

I can't seem to find it now but I thought Bronsky made a post about installing a fresh copy of Windows 7 on the same drive (IE not upgrading to a Momentus or SSD), so I gotta ask here. My question is, there are 3 partitions as it comes from the factory, is it ok to format all 3, shrinking it back down to 1 partition and then continue with the installation? Mainly I'm curious about the first one, PQService OEM reserved.

 

So Bronsky, when I buy this I can just download FSB (free version) and OC to 3.0 ghz? Is it 3.0 Ghz both cores?

 

anybody got the link to that 3820tg ebay auction? I can't find it. I'm thinking about getting that one, and giving the problematic gpu one to my wife.

 

That partition contains the original instalation, if you don't want to create your recovery dvd's you can always leave this partition intact and press ALT + F10 during boot to access a recovery procedure.

I've made my recovery dvd's and also left this partition intact, just in case .

 

I don't know if you can get those results with the freeware version. I have never used it. The donation is about $5-$6 so I just send it to abo-san. When you do, he will ask you for a screen shot of the diagnostic screen and tell you if your unit will OC.

OC'ing the CPU is much like OC'ing the GPU. Some OC better than others. An OC of 30% is decent performance. I have gotten 3.17ghz out of my I3-370M. That is an OC of 32%. I run my notebook at 3.0ghz because that clockspeed seems runs the closest to nomal temperatures. At 3.1ghz, the temps climb to 83C even under the slightest load.

Since the I3 has no turbo mode, yes, that speed is the CPU running on both cores.

Bronsky

 

nice score on the cpu there bronsky.

Well guys i've decided to take my 3280tg apart clean the vents and change stock thermal paste as my cpu goes over 100C and throttles (skips) while playing.

I already have IC Diamod thermal paste so my question is what do i use to remove old thermal paste and how much of new one i put on cpu and gpu ?

Cheers

 

The temptation of writing my own 'TurboBoost' utility based off abo-san's SetFSB and current CPU load is growing bigger. Could easily be done

 

Can somehow briefly explain how to read the ati tool program? I see the furry block and some things that look like artifacts. However, it still reads no errors for so and so time.

 

anyone tested a new driver released by Acer?

VGA Driver (Supports AMD Radeon HD 6370M/6550M Graphics) 8.741.1.6 ?

and there is a new BIOS too... not sure if i should upgrade. cant find the change log....