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

Hello Hendrickson, can I just ask you how exactly did you manage to increase performace of your RAM memory and get 6.5 W7 index from default 5.9?

Thanx for the reply

I have Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 460 @ 2.53GHz | 4,00 GB DDR3 1066 | ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 2650 MB Total available graphics memory

 

AFAIK, no dual core Arrandale will support Ram speeds above 1066mhz. Gaming performance will be unaffected by the additional speed.

Bronsky

@Tomika if you add 4GB more ram your W7 Index score goes up. Here's mine with 8GB Ram.

 

Oh...I thought that Hendricson somehow overclocked his RAM memory, coz I saw in description that he has 4GB...?

 

I think he had 8 in-and-out if I remember correctly.

 

Correct me if I remember wrong, but I think he had this avatar before he bought the 3820TG, he had it when we only had the "The Official Arrandale Timeline Thread", it might be taken of his Gateway (Core 2 Extreme I believe) WEI.

 

35watt TDP on the i7 620m/640m which it says on intels site. The Quad core CPU's of course wont work on the socket that this laptop uses so no bias update is going to change that. These processors are much better suited for a 13.3 inch laptop like this. Sticking a Quad CPU in it would be very not logical.

 

Now that you mention it, that sounds right.

Bronsky

BTW, this new HP Slate is incredible.

 

Finally received my 3820 from LU. Its even more sexy in person! I cant wait to fire her up and try some Civ 5! Quick question before I start tearing everything apart though. How far can I go before voiding the warranty? Id assume removing the cpu and applying thermal paste is an obvious violation. RAM and HDD is ok? Can I get to and install the BT module void free? Thanks!

 

Id like to know to, is it ok to put back the cpu that came with the unit if you need to use the warranty if you upgraded?

Its tough though cause acer has no terms really, everything is done after you get the machine. I would suggest going to the acer site and registering the laptop first of all here( link). I wouldn't think the paste would make a difference in voiding the machines warranty if they took apart the cpu, wonder what kinda paste they use on it so it can be reaplied if need be? There would be no other way of telling if the machine had been opened or not other wise. I would think cpu upgrades with warrantys would be common stuff with warranty any more.

 

I found out that MSI Afterburner is much better to use than AMD GPU Clock Tool. Instead of a static clock that gets maintained and doesn't change, with MSI-A you can set several overclock profiles, and set one of them with default clocks (550/800), in options put the default clock profile for 2D, and put anything you like for 3D.

This way basically the GPU dynamically jumps to the overclocked state whenever a game is opened, and jumps back to 100/150 MHz (the resting clocks with default clock) when you quit games. This saves a lot of power and unnecessary heating issues and could increase GPU longevity since it's not overclocked all the time.

 

Is it possible to replace the speakers, I mean for a better quality speakers or with higher volume.??

 

My 3820 is coming back from Acer tomorrow, they didn't told me what they have done.
If they have changed the screen this will be my christmas gift.

-_-_-_-

I was wondering too, if applying thermal paste would void the waranty (I think so)...
On one side, one day or another, with intensive usage, we must dismount the unit to aspirate the dust inside (generaly this is the moment when I apply thermal paste on my laptops...)
On the other side, loosing the waranty is a bit risky with so thin components.

Just an example : On my old 5930G, the laptop was running smoothly the 2 firsts month, then, after that, was totaly unable to play racer games (racers are the most demanding in ressources, not that they are the best looking, but they constantly load scenery, cars, IA, textures ... So they inflict a constant warm to the laptop).
After some research I found that the graphic card was too hot (strange for a new laptop). There was no dust in it.
I applyed thermal paste and all went well, now I'm able to play racers on this 5930G.

But perhaps the heat pipe, or ventilation was having a problem, the thermal paste solved it (but for how much time ?).
Perhaps with a repair, the laptop would have go even lower in temperature than what I get now, and will resist a bit more to the dust camping inside it...

All this story to say : thermal paste, the first waranty's year, is good for people who WANTS it, for the others, waiting a bit is not that stupid, just consider you are "running in" your laptop. If all goes well, then, give it a try

 

OFF Read Your review, nice. You wrote battery life could be better, though You didn't write any data, what battery runtime You get?/OFF

 

So I went to the Taipei IT fair that panzerfan mentioned.. the best price I could find for i3-370m version is about 23600NT/$785 and the i5-460m version is about 27100NT/$900. That's including ram upgrade to 4gb.

BTW anyone in Taiwan who can teach me about the haggling skills needed to get the stores to sell the demo units for cheaper? Back in the days my parents used to be expert hagglers...

 

With WIFI and Bluetooth off and with the display at its lowest setting the battery disharges 17% per hour. That means a max batty life of 5-6 hours. With the wireless radios on and the display at 70%, battery life is < 5 hours.

I'm hoping they design a thin and light slice batty for this unit.

Bronsky

 

This thing is unfixable, please help
Poor 3d performance / PCI-E runs at only x1 not x16
I tried the Acer driver, the acer driver for 6 series ati video and ATI Mobility 5650 drivers.

 

You are spot on as far as battery life. That's what I have been noticing with my 2 week old 3820T

I am keeping my fingers crossed for a larger battery, but still slim.

 

^I think he's talking about HP Slate ?

 

yea nice review bronsky glad u didnt go for ipod touch x4 aka ipad. This is such a usless device to me i still dont understand why ppl buy it where u can get far more functionality and portability out of iphone4

 

Have you entered bios and choosed graphics to discrete and then entered Windows and installed drivers. Install latest ATI drivers with graphic mode set to discrete and see if that helps if you havent allready. It has worked for me and many more

 

@ Emzvr you will get it working, sometimes the fun of laptops is getting to the setup that you most like which can be extremely frustrating. Its not as if you don't know anyone else with the machine to get help from. Take your time and it will be just fine.

 

I've having serious issues with my harddrive, hoping you guys can help. I play a lot of WoW and that's where I see most of the issues, but I've had it occur in windows once or twice too. The problem is that my harddrive / system freezes for 3-7 seconds, VERY often. I'll be playing and the game stops, I can hear the harddrive spin, then click/access, and then it's back to normal. It happens soooo much. Pretty much every time something 'new' happens, like opening my inventory or click a target. I don't even know how to diagnose the problem, but I'm hoping it sounds familiar to someone? And I'm hoping the answer isn't "your hard drive is dying" because I've only had the thing for a month.

On second thought it's almost like the harddrive is behaving like a DVD, like where it freezes as it has to spin up to access data. It's just that it can happen multiple times in a minute.

 

Use quietHDD! If it's not something exotic, like a Momentus XT, it will solve the problems.

 

hey guys how do you think would this notebook handle 24/7 power on, i mean no shutdowns whatsoever with continuous downloading on the background, online gaming foreground...? would that activity wear down the hardwares much easily? tia!

oh, does this mean quietHDD doesn't really work with momentus xt?

 

Its actually worse on a laptop to continuously shut it down. I have an alienware laptop I bought 6 years ago and its still running and Iv never turned it off for the reason of just turning it off. Thats what Iv read and experienced.

 

So I went ahead and tore down the notebook and got the keyboard and BT installed. However, I cant get the BT to turn on and im not even sure its working. I did some searching, tried the fn + f3 and all that does as far as I can tell is toggle wifi. I did just realize in my haste I forgot the screw to secure the BT module. Is it possible this is needed to ground it or something? Any help would be appreciated!

 

I set it to descrete and when I try to install the latest ATI drivers 10.11 nothing happens. I mean according to the installer everything is installed correctly but after restart the driver version is the same. Nothing is changed.

 

Do you mean, you bought BT module + cable and it does not work after installation. I had such problem. It seems that most of modules/cables are marked as "3820 and 4810 compatible". This is not true. Yes, both 4810 and 3820 has same connector for BT (4pin), however their pins mapping are different. So cable for 4810 will fit in our 3820, but BT will not work. What is pins mapping for your cable? Can you take a picture of it in hires?

 

How do you guys update BIOS?

I tried via Windows and "Flash.batch" file, but I get "Flash BIOS Fail. (0x4D0)"

 

Remove all ati drivers, sett to discrete and then try to install again. That might work, has had some similar problems once and that has helped.

 

My laptop came back from Acer,
they said there was no issue with the screen.
At least they didn't charge me for the return.
I will resell the laptop, end of story for me.

Perhaps I'll get a new one, if someday I can test the screen before to buy it...

 

I am new here , I just bought a the 3820TG with core i3 and 5650.
and the bios is 1.13.
I am planning to change the cpu after reading some of the post( CRAZY amount of post in this thread)
if i am not planning to overclock
will the 1mb extra cach on the core i7 really give the advantage over the core i5
lets say 2.67ghz core i5 vs 2.67ghz core i7

also do i need to flash the bios first to install cpu like core i7 640m or i5 580m??

as they are really the same price to get from ebay.
(should i worry about "FAKES"?

Thanks alot!

 

If you're not OC'ing, the differences between the CPU is not that different if you are comparing two with identical clock speeds. The trade off there is power vs energy use. I would probably go with the I5, choosing efficiency over a slight power increase.

Yes ... be careful who you buy CPU's from. Some people swap them out of units and try to pass them off for new. Buy from someone reputable.

I got am OEM.

Bronsky

 

So did anyone manager to get that fan controller working at all for our 3820TG's ?

 

so do i need to flash my bios first if i want to change cpu to like mm core i5 580 ? as it just got released not too long ago..
should i flash to 1.17 or 1.19 ?

so in games, will i see much different between different cpu ???
like a core i3 2.4 vs core i5 2.53(540) vs core i7 (620)

the main confusing part is..
you said before overclock cpu reduce the game preformance on this notebook, this is why i don't plan to overclock, instead i want a faster cpu..

 

i will overclock the gpu( seems like it will give more performance in gaming)
if i change cpu then i will not get the 240gb vertex2( may get a XT 7200.1
if i don't i will use all money for that ssd

 

If you're main purpose is gaming, go wtih the faster CPU. But a I5-580M runs at the same speed as the older I7-620M. Between the two, I would get the I5-580M (because it reaches the same speeds as the I7-620M more efficiently). For gaming, however, since the I7-640M is faster than the I5-580M I would get that. Not confusing at all. I think all of the arrandales are supported in 1:13.

There are other purposes I use my notebook for, that are more CPU dependent (like MATlab) and the OCability of the I5 plays into that decision ... that's when it gets complicated.

Bronsky

 

Yea...its this one 2.1 Bluetooth Module + cable Acer Aspire 3820 timelineX - eBay (item 130457276816 end time Dec-20-10 19:46:30 PST)

I tried messing with epower to see if theres an option to turn it on but I didnt see anything specific. There doesnt appear to be any front end for launch manager so I cant turn it on with that either. Im guessing youre probably right about the pins being different and that sucks

 

just ordered a Core i7 620m
as i will not overclock it.
and anyway it's turbo mode is 3.33ghz already
don't think i need higher then that.

also ordered a ocz vertex 2E 240gb

and a bluetooth module as mine don't come with Bluetooth.

while i am going to open the notebook anyway.
why not.

 

Is there a turbo-mode on the 3820T's?

 

Yes. I think any core i processor has it, but I am not sure.

 

No turbo mode on the I3.

Bronsky

 

Hey guys my friend has the 3820TG and it does not turn on.

There's no response from anything when he presses the power button. Nothing unusual has happened and it just suddenly won't power on anymore. He's tried the standard procedures already.

Would resetting the CMOS battery do anything? We're open to suggestions and any help is appreciated, thanks.

 

anyone notice
when using acer 's new ati display card drive my 5650 showed as 6550!!!

weird!!!!

 

The 6550 is rabranded (renamed) 5650 AFAIK.

They'll ship with i5 480M CPUs in my region in like 4-5 weeks.

 

Congrats on that! It's gonna be an awesome unit!

 

Anyone? Please...

 

Could be almost anything. When the power adapter is plugged in, does your friend's unit show the blue-orange LED in the front?

Loss of power like that is never a good sign. If jiggling with the power cord doesn't help, it will Probably need to go for warranty work.

Bronsky

 

Hi every one there I have this machine but my unit shows hd 5650 with 450mhz core speed ? am I missing something ? my friends gpu shows 550mhz...

do I have a faulty unit ?

 

hi... i just registered this account... to say this...

YOU ALL CAUSED ME SOME DAMAGE TO MY WALLET!!

but... i love you guys.... cos i am loving my 3820TG ATi5650~~

truth be told... this thread made me drop more money for this laptop than the cheaper Aspire 4741G Nvidia420M

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: