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

There's a large probability that won't work even if you get the cables for it, and that you'll have to choose one or the other...

 

Thanks for your answers! It is possible to connect two screens if the laptop screen is switched off. Now I will take out the dremel will post pictures after

 

AMD announced yesterday that it will be releasing the new performance range GPUs in Q1. I assume Acer will roll out an update to the 3820TG at CES. If Acer simply swaps a 400 shader core for the HD 5650, they are missing a real opportunity for an incrimental upgrade to the 3820TG. I'm wondering if anyone else will figure out that the 13" high performance market is wide open and Acer will get some competition.

Bronsky

 

Looking into potentially getting one of these. Couple of questions.

Is this computer fairly new or is it coming to the end of its short life cycle, i.e a newer model on the horizon?

The hard part is finding a place in Canada that will ship to the USA, all the while accepting AMEX.

I don't really want to pay with pay pal. Might have to suck up and pay with a debit card or visa/mc, but going to have to look into the coverage I get from that.

Is getting one from Germany a lot more money? I would assume?

Thanks.

 

Very bad don't try it

 

Computeruniverse does not ship to the US anymore. The other german retailers require a wire transfer, etc. PCHome seems to be the only other real option to a Canadian Retailer.

Nobody seems to want to accept AMEX in Canada. I tried.

It looks like the HD 6550 GPU is on the Horizon. I would guess in Q1. If you're not in a hurry, I would see how that developes. Even still, when they are released, you will probably have to buy them from PCHome as I would expect it will be quite some time until the US or Canada sees the new units.

Bronsky

 

bronsky what do you think will be the increase procentage with 6550 chip compared to 5650 ? Stock and o/c..

 

The Mob. HD6550 could very well be the same 400 SPU part from the Mob. HD5650. AMD is lookling like they'll put out some rebrands this generation along with the new GPUs.

Mob. HD6370 sounds like it falls into the same family as Brazos's HD6310 which is an 80 SPU part like the Mob. HD5470.

When Llano launches.

 

I think that's very likely. The new HD 6550 should be very close in performance to the HD 5650. Just by increasing the voltage, they could make it perform more like a 5730. We'll have to wait and see.

Bronsky

 

Thanks for the help.

I think I will just get my gf to buy it on her Visa/MC.

Pretty sweet price for the rig...its like its too good to be true.

 

Ohhh, a couple of other things.

How does the warranty work, since I am in the US.

Also, what about Duty?

 

When you get your machine and have it completely booted up, you should run the registration program that comes pre-loaded. Then go on the Acer USA site and open an account. You should see your newly registered unit there. There is a box indicating the purchase date and confirming the warranty. But, you have to register it first.

If you have any problems out-of-the-box, you can send it back to the seller if they have a decent return policy (read them! They are all different. It might be wise to call and ask as well). The first thing I would look at when you get your new unit is the display. If it is grainy or shows visible lines, you might want to send it back. A few units have been reported to have these problems. If it is okay, all subsequent warranty work will be done at the Temple Texas Repair Depot. You can request warranty service on-line if you are registered.

Good luck with your unit. Yea, the price is decent. Oh and there is no import duty thanks to the NAFTA.

Bronsky

 

Need help with OC of 5650..

When i start AMD GPU Clock Tool it says that my
Engine: 99,9
Memory Clock 149,9

Is this normal? Can i change the values to the "safe" clock of 650 950 ?

 

Its normal, that's because its in idle speed...

 

So I can change the values to 650 950?

 

Can if your card can support it, but it will stuck at that value until you restore it to default...

 

I changed the values but when i start the program again the values are back to default, i ran it in admin mode...

Any ideas?

 

When you enter the value and click Set Clocks, does the clocks on GPU-Z changes?

You are using version 0.9.26, right?

 

Maybe this is not a good thread to write to, but here it goes. Give me a reason to buy or not to buy 3820TG i5 450 2.4Ghz, 4Gb RAM, 320Gb, HD5650, 6cell. I'm a student and I need a light laptop for studies (programing, calculating, modeling.). I did some searching and it's down to this model. Because of i5 and HD5650 it outruns my second choose by a mile asus u35jc. Will this be a correct decision, to buy one? Neglecting the average glossy screen are there any other flaws?

 

It's just PowerPlay working in ATI Catalyst. You can disable it if you want. PowerPlay is just lowering the core and memory speeds to use less power. When you run a graphics program, the values will jump back up to normal.

 

Acer's quality control could be better. Be sure to inspect your unit when you get it. The display in particular. Some of them have been grainy. My 2 have been fine but clearly of variable quality. The island keyboard is loved by some and villified by others. In all, it is fairly well built and dependable notebook.

Bronsky

 

Keyboard is weak, screen is subpar, harddisk is slow... and it's the best computer I've ever owned. If it broke down today, I'd go out and buy another one, not another model.

 

I want to do a cross-breeding of Acer's 10.6 drivers and ATI's newest 10.10 drivers. I thought about installing Acer's drivers first, and going to the device manager and installing only the display driver part of 10.10 on top of it, keeping the CCC and such. I thought maybe we can eliminate some of the problems when you install 10.10 by itself. However, there's no .INF file in the 10.10 so it doesn't work. Any ideas?

 

Seconded,

as a student myself, this laptop is great for bringing to class (great battery life and portable) and has wonderful performance in compiling code and in matlab (I have i3-370m model). It is also capable of playing games which is a bonus.

For negatives I would say the keyboard can take some getting used to and the display is grainy (if you sit a feet in front of the monitor) and might be unbearable for some people. Finally, the power supply is actually really big, but that is only relevant if you decide to bring your power supply with you (I haven't actually found that necessary due to the battery lasting longer than my classes/lab sessions).

Regards,
nux.

 

I would remove all drivers, install the 10.6 and then switch to discrete and install 10.10. That is how I did it (only with the 10.3 drivers) and it works perfectly (only the arrow/brightness don't work).

Bronsky

 

Hello I have the 3820TG from Canada upgraded to a I7 620 and 8gb ram with a vertex2 extended 180gb like the laptop it has the LG screen witch is only nice coming from a 13" macbook pro. For those of you that the keyboard "bounc" / flex all I have been dooing with all my acer/gateways is unclip the keyboard don't take out the ribon cable you don't have to and just put double side tape on the plastic base under the keyboard were the flex is apperent. I just use the 3M from any convinient store and it mak's all the diferance in the world.

Just though I should share.

Now for my problem I have win7ultimat 64bit and when I install the acer ati drivers and in the power saver mode the system wont shut down it hangs at the shutting down screen rebuilt 5 times with no sucess any idie would be grate.

Chris.

 

Display quality varies. I got a 'grainy' display, but after a week of use I've seemed to adjusted. It's only from a bad habit of leaning in and staring at the screen too close.

Even with the flaws, this is an excellent buy. Wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone.

 

Pretty much this. It is really a wonderful laptop in terms of portability (size and weight). Me and my girlfriend just got ourselves one each and we are both very satisfied. The long battery time means that you sometimes even can leave your cord at home when going to class, which makes it even more portable.

It is also very fast for most applications (the HD might be a tad slow, thou, but you can always get a Momentus XT or something like that) and all-in-all a good choice. As long as you don't perform any heavy tasks during extended periods of time I also find it reasonably quiet, so you won't disturb your neighbour in the study room.

Only downside for me is that since I run Archlinux I can't use the switchable graphics - yet (at least not with the proprietary driver) - so I only have about 4 hours of battery, depending on use. But if you plan on running Windows, this won't affect you and you should be able to squeeze some additional hour(s) out of the battery.

And yes.. note that it does not have a CD/DVD drive, so if you have no other computer with CD/DVD you might want to get an external device.

 

I finally found the solution to my freezing problem thanks to MW2 multi, showed me BSOD with name of the file, turns out its athrx.sys(atheros driver) and i wasnt the only one having this issue. Well i researched it and noone seemed to figured what to do about it. So i simply removed the file and boom no freezes in any multigame, thing is that once i reboot my laptop wifi doesnt work anymore so i have to put the file back into system32/drivers/ reboot and wifi works. I did install new and old wifi drivers and issue seemed to be same, you think the uninstaller simply left the file there and never replaced it with new one? I might try that, im just happy that i managed to get it right this time.

So basically if u have issues with laptop freezing on multiplayer games athrx.sys is responsible. No more hardcore resets for my 3820tg shame he had to take like 50 of them or smtng like that. now all i gotta do is do is put new thermal as cpu goes to 100 and throttles.

oh yea

 

Mine is on the edge of being grainy, I have to sit back a little for it to go away.

 

Just installed the new graphic drivers.

Old 3DMark06 score: 7588
New 3DMark06 score: 7539

Lets hope they at least optimized stability or something

 

Just a quick question.
After a clean install of win 7 I'm using default acer graphic drivers (10.6). But after I shut down (or put into sleep) my computer, then plug/unplug it and boot up again it doesn't recognize the change.
So sometimes happens that I'm running ATI card even when I'm am on battery just because I first turn it off and then unplug.
Is it standard behavior (i can't quite remember how it was before formating drive) ? And do new drivers fix that (or bios) ?

 

I'm presuming you mean that you're not able to switch to the Intel HD graphics. The switchable graphics seem pretty sensitive on this matter; the drivers need to be installed correctly (and in the right order) for it to work. See below, install instruction recommended by Hendrickson.

 

Fellow 3820TG'ers,

Thought I'd share this with you guys. Nothing fancy. Just a quick way of checking which gfx you're currently using. I made both the CCC and Intel tray icons to 'Show Icon and Notification' in the system tray.

So, now you know which gfx you're on by quickly glancing at the tray. You can easily do the same on yours.



Cheers.

 

After reading all those about a possible refresh in Q1, I'll just wait...hope my Z70va (yes, its 6 years old) can hold out til then.

About the hard drive...isn't it slow for all 5400rpm drives? I'm sure things would change if you drop a SSD in there.

 

Even though you may see a refresh in Q1, the new units may not reach the US for months.

This computer cries out for an SSD or a hybrid at least.

Bronsky

 

For XP I would suggest including the newest driver packs. But for dual boot you need to go into BIOS anyway, as XP only works with non-switchable GFX.

 

All driver has inf files, you just have to look hard. But I had no success with any non-stock driver combination for battery life. For web browsing with 8-9 W and ebook reading with 5-6 W, I only had success with super stock, non-tampered Acer driver. Every other combination gave 10-12 W while browsing and 8-9 W while ebook reading. All on Intel.

 

I hope it will land in Hong Kong early though. My Z70va has been very good for these years so I want something good to replace it.

SSD is the first mod I will do

 

Is there anyway to make sure you get the LG screen?


Also, I have been out of the mix, why do do many places seem to give discounts for cash over CC etc...? Just sort of strange to me.

 

In places like HK, we almost always get discount for cash purchases (for some items, considerable discount as well) since for retailers, they'll have to pay fees to the credit card companies when they do credit card transaction. At least that's what I think.

 

I'm planning on getting a SSD for my as3820tg.

I am deciding on Crucial RealSSD C300 vs OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G 2.5" vs Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH080G2K5 2.5"

Any suggestions on which one is better (performance-wise)? Thx

 

In my professional opinion, Intel is the best. I work as an EE and we've benchmarked many 1.8" SSDs for an upcoming product and Intel always comes out on top in performance, power consumption and reliability.

They aren't the cheapest, but they are worth the money. You'd be surprised at how poorly some SSDs perform.

If the 2.5" drives from Intel perform as well as the 1.8", you won't be disappointed.

EDIT: Thought it would only be fair to say that I have not had experience with the OCZ drives. Their mechanical characteristics are not fit for our application.

 

I figured that.... I guess it is more I don't like paying with cash, for somethings, because a CC acts a a mild form of insurance a lot of times. AMEX is great, if you buy something and get screwed in a bizarre way the cover it.

thanks

 

Yes I know...and we tend to finance (no interest, no cost) these sort of purchases so probably another reason why retailers give out discount for cash purchases.

 

Has anyone gotten a cash discount (I assume this could apply to Paypal?) from any of the Candian retailers for this notebook?

What about PC Home?

 

hmm, one dealer in Taipei, Taiwan has couple of 3820TG with i3-350M 2G/500G for $720... with i5-450M 2G/500G for $850. does the i3-350M like being overclocked?

 

All three of this are good. You will see no difference between them in real work. Only in benchmarks (some are better in sequential r/w operations, other - in random r/w operations).

 

What a giant FAIL, the new ATI/Acer driver is. I've spend half a night trying to figure out how to make it work, but it always gave me BSOD during the driver install. When the driver was finally installed (after about 8 BSOD, uninstall, reinstall, sweeper, safe mode, everything), the new CCC decided to throw an exception error every time I wanted to open it, or a GFX switching was to happen. So it quit at the moment I wanted something useful from it.

But it changed something in windows to not let you install the old CCC version back. So I had no other choice but to clean the partition and restore from an old acronis backup. At least now I have a snappy windows for some time.

But it is a terrible driver, don't even touch it! And it doesn't even fix anything I've done a screenshot in GPU-Z both before and after, and _every_ field is the same, except the version info. So it has no added features, nor a fixed PCI-E.

 

Oh, and while other manufacturers are trying to fix fan cycling issues with new BIOS-es, Acer genuinely swapped this progress and _introduced_ fan cycling in the new BIOS, once it already had a perfect one (1.13).

And it's not cycling between speeds, but it's cycling within a speed. So if the fan is at say setting 5, then it modulates setting 5 to have some nice sine wave on top. Aaaaah.