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

Ok the Intel 6200 card I ordered from ebay turned out to be a fake. Worked terribly in Windows (kept disappearing altogether, and reception was worse than the broadcom).

Returned it with no problems, but it'd be nice to get a genuine one.

 

I have a different 3820tg and it has the atheros wifi card. There is a world of difference. I recommend it to replace your Broadcomm.

HDMI only works on the ATI GPU.

@Hendrickson ... Put in 8GB of and OC'ability is seriously degraded. But, I'm not getting the memory dump that I was getting before. Catalyst keeps shutting down. I'm wondering if there is a problem with 10.10e that is only now showing up with the additional Ram. I will be reinstalling the Acer driver this weekend to see. I guess I should test the ram as well. The Ram really makes the Windows scores look good.




Bronsky

Edit: The notebook feels faster and snappier with the extra ram. My ability to OC is nearly gone. I can not raise the Front Side Buss over 144. I was running it at 158 optimal and higher at max setting.

 

which Atheros card came with your new 3820tg?

 

Bronsky

 

Hey guys a little help please, i can't seem to flash the bios version 1.19 on my notebook, it fails everytime i run flash.bat on windows. I'm running win7 pro 64 bit. Current bios is 1.13. Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

I recently used flash.bat to upgrade 1:13 to 1:19 with no problem and I have W7 Pro 64 bit on my unit, so that can't be the issue.

@all

I had my unit (4GB Ram) operating at an optimal speed of 3.0ghz/3.65ghz at FSB setting 158. I installed 8GB Ram today and the OC fails at anything over 143 FSB. That is nearly a 50% reduction in OC speed. Is there something inherent in the addition of the extra ram that compels this result or should I suspect that the Ram is not performing correctly? The additional RAM causes no other problems and, in fact, the notebook feels quicker overall.

Bronsky

 

What if just using one module ?

 

After i run Flash.bat, it displays the message 'WFlash64 Error: Flash BIOS Fail. (0x4D0)' simultaneous with the message 'Nuvoton Flash Update Tool: The system flash was update successfully.' I restarted the notebook and checked the bios and still shows 1.13, although the KBC version updated from 1.10 to 1.15.

 

Run Flash.bat from usb stick. It work for me every time.

 

I'm wondering if anyone have tried to install Windows XP 32bits and run 3Dmark 06 ?
how much more points can we expect?

 

Is it fully charged and plugged in?

 

Thanks for the reply although i'm not quite sure how to do this should i just copy over the files on a usb stick and run it from there or should i use the usb stick as first priority device on bios?

 

Hi, i'm running my notebook on full ac power, no battery for the longest time. Hmm let me try flashing it with the battery plugged in

 

Flash BIOS from DOS! That's the only way it works for me on Acer!
request download ticket | ifile.it

 

I have dual boot on my laptop windows 7 64 bit and windows xp 32 bit. It's useless actually because you can't use any of the gfx card! I've searched a lot but there's no driver available for either ati and intel for xp. And people also confirmed that switchable graphics don't work on xp...

 

Im using also the broadcom and it works ~18h a day without problems.

I have the same problems as you, if I overclock the BClk to ~150MHz.

 

Okay i'll try this as well. It's weird though because 6 months ago i was able to flash the 1.13 bios version through windows from 1.10 stock if i remember correctly. Anyway, thanks!

 

Wow that's weird! I got it successfully flashed using a usb stick. I just copied over the files on usb and run flash.bat from there. Now on 1.19. Thanks you all for your help!ü i appreciate it!

 

Just copy the files from folder Bios 1.19 or 1.17 (only the files not the folder ) on a stick and run flash.bat from there.

 

Yup thanks mate!ü exactly what i did and got it successfully flashed. thanks!

 

I think the newest bios is not at all worth flashing on my unit as it decreased my gpu overclocking capacity. Rolling back to 1.13!ü

 

I know I had the same issues when I ran 8GB I lost a lot of OC. Thats why I recommended the 1333Mhz ram that would hopefully give you some more OC.

Maybe send back that 8GB and try for 1333Mhz ram? Its no good if you can't get past 144BLCK.

 

I must say that 1.19 has increased performance on my 3820tg and solved my freezing/reboot issue or it might be modified guru 10.10e drivers. Either way it works for me..

 

Is there any reason to update to a newer bios if you have no interest in overclocking?

 

No luck for me mate, it definitely decreased my gpu oc. I have 10.10e hotfix installed as well but same results. With bios 1.13 i have higher gpu oc and stability.

 

Thank you Bronsky, It is interesting to note that the broadcom card in my 3820tg sells on ebay for around $4 whereas the atheros Ar5b97 sells for around $25.

 

what's the maximum o/c you can do on 1.13?

 

XP works perfectly on discrete mode. That's the setup I use.
You have to mod the inf. Download the desktop driver and mod a device id to 68C1

1333 Mhz is no use for us, as the BIOS will always start the RAM in 1066 mode. I have an idea how to flash SPD chip on the RAM to force starting at 1333 timings, but I'm not brave enough to do it yet.

 

Why would you want to not use win7 and use XP?

 

Just got a 3820TG-7360. Liking it so far.
Updated my bios to 1.19 yesterday but I did it right inside windows with the Winflash64 'JM31119.exe'. I was reading some previous posts and realized I might have done it wrong...Should I have flashed it with bat instead ?

 

I have 1333mhz Ram. It does not help OC'ing. It does however serioulsy improve the speeds of our satelite imagery/GIS software. So, it looks like I'll be opting for the higher ram with the I5 at stock speeds. I'm keeping the old ram if I change my mind and want to revert to 4GB.

What I don't understand is why this is? Anybody?

 

So I have some dumb questions. I can't get a game to play, WoW.

Anyhow, I figure I should update my chipset driver and video drivers. What is the best way to do that for this computer?

Should I update my BIOS first or not worry about that?

Thanks.
Ser

 

Does that mean the performance bottleneck for your software was the memory speed and/or memory qty?

If so, makes me wonder how often that is the case. Are processors getting so fast that other components are the likely issues nowadays?

 

This has always been the case for the past couple of years. Rarely are you using 100% CPU load. These CPUs are very powerful. Biggest limiting factors are ram & HDD speed.

Could be bad ram Bronsky. Try to run memtest86+ and see if it's stable.

What brand memory is it? In my experience skipping out on quality when it comes to memory can get nasty very quickly.

 

I would suspect the ram you are using has high timing values and possibly a different voltage requirement. I do not think you can manually tweak these in the bios as you would in a desktop system. So while 1333 ram may imply more headroom to overclock, it could actually be inhibiting your OC because the charge/discharge rates of the 8gb of ram are slightly slower and with this slightly slower rate and more ram to go through, you end up with less headroom to OC. Also ram timing rates usually have to increase whin you raise th fsb rate so you are trying to OC the cpu frequency by increasing the fsb but you are also increasing timing on your ram. So you need to get ram that has the lowest possible timing values to have the best headroom to OC. You should be able to see this same effect at the standard CPU frequency using prime95 which will use your ram. should give a slightly worse result with the 8gb ram vs 4.

 

The Ram is G Skill. It was very well reviewed on Newegg. The RAM passes certification on my GIS program. That's a Milspec certification. It runs the graphic software perfectly. My notebook feels faster than it did, even though it had a faster running processor before. It is an awesome workstation for its size. I like this configuration and think I'll keep it like this for now.

All I have to do now is refit a replacement keyboard (more filing) and my Acer is the way I want it. Then I can start worrying about optimizing the software.

FedEx has my new HP Slate 500 and should have it here by Monday from the factory in China. I've never modded a slate before.

Bronsky

 

Hey guys,
Really need your help. All of a sudden today my laptop has started lagging and stops every couple of seconds in games. No idea why it never happened before. Would this be the hard drive? I installed the update to a registry cleaner I've been using for ages today thats the only thing I can think of. i did a system restore to yesterday when it was working to no avail

 

Is your laptop running on battery (loose power port plug)? Have you overclocked anything too much?

It shouldn't be the problem of HDD, as the game should have been loaded into your RAM / GPU memory already. Is it a generic issue with ALL your games, or just a specific one?

 

I just tried dirt 2 but it lags with videos now as well...any ideas?

 

The video lags happen on the intel graphics too so its not the gpu....Im nearly certain it must be the hdd...is there something I can reinstall to fix it?

 

Hi guys, anyone having certain "missing features" after updating the graphics drivers from AMD?

This is exactly what I did:

New problems:
- I can't use Fn+Left/ Right to increase or decrease brightness when using ATI mode (works fine when switched to Intel HD)
- Certain customizable features in ATI catalyst not working no selectable.. Can't even set the video colour to "Full" (can't really remember the exact terms as I'm not using my notebook now)

Am also using the latest BIOS (v1.19, I think). Everything else works fine, though. (Although I almost had problems accessing my BIOS immediately after updating to the official AMD Catalyst drivers.. I could only go into my BIOS after my 4th reboot hmmm)

Probably will post a screencap tonight..

 

Read a couple pages back. This was discussed. The Fn + is a known issue with the latest drivers.

 

@dbaby7: if u experiencing lags (especially in old game), it is most likely due to the aggressive power saving of the HDD. try quiethdd

 

The term "Fn" is too short for a search.

Is there another way to increase or decrease the brightness when using ATI mode other than Fn+Left/Right?

EDIT:

Also, are there any other major 3820TG factory issues besides the PCI-E that owners should be aware of?

 

^Does the screen brightness slider inside power option works ?

 

I can max to 650/1050 on 1.13. 3dmark06 crashes when i use these values using 1.19.

 

Yup, thats the other way you can adjust your brightness.
Also, you can go back to using the default AMD drivers from acer.

 

Ohh.. ok.
At least it's not just me..

---

Yep, works that way too.. =)

===

Sorry, I have just one more small question.
The wireless switches on by itself every time I boot up. Any way possible to disable this automatically?

I use the LAN cable most of the time, so I don't really use the wireless feature.

I've tried exploring the BIOS but what I could do is to move the wireless (Atheros) device by sequence (up and down).. maybe I didn't look hard enough?

Thanks in advance!