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

For gaming having anything more than 4 GB is useless as of now. Going to 8 GB might be useful in another 2 years.

 

Hi everyone,

Haven't been here in a while. Lately been noticing that when I move the hinge for my 3820tg, it will sometimes result in parts of the screen flickering blue. Lately, moving it results in more of the screen momentarily flickering blue.

Has this happened to anyone else? Anyone know what the warranty situation is on the imported 3820tg or screen options?

Thanks!!

 

hello everyone,

how do you clean a 3820TG keyboard that has been spilled with beer? the keys on the right side have already became sticky.

 

Use a plastic tool, pop the keyboard out. Check the "3820TG glowing keyboard" thread for how that's done (trust me, it's easy, I can do it in 20 seconds with the right tool).

 

thanks jerg.
so there's no need to bring it to a service center? how do i fix the sticky keys?

 

Oh I thought you meant how do you replace the keyboard.

The first step which is to detach the keyboard from the laptop is easy. For cleaning the only tangible way is probably to pop the keys affected off and wash/wipe everything. That I'm not sure of details (since I've never done it before) but a quick googling will show you the way.

 

I would just spend the $30 and get a replacement keyboard. And, I would stop drinking beer over the KB.

Bronsky

 

Bronsky,
Did you originally have the 370m in your 3820tg?
and were you able to overclock it?

 

after several hours of thinking,
i decided to keep the 8gb( while it is only 39.99 each 4gb stick anyway)
heheeh i decided to keep it as now in win7 benchmark the memory score showed 6.8 lol instead of 5.9
ok why not for the score!!

also now i can completely turn off the page file to save harddrive space for something else. ( only have a 120gb SSD)
( also have a 32gb SD card (Class 10) for music/movie storage)

(And i love SSD so much, i upgraded my wife 's gateway 1803h (su3500 cpu 11.6") 's harddrive to 64gb SSD, and the SSD does help even on that notebook)

 

Hi everyone, currently I have the ATI display drivers v10.10. I did a quick check with GPU-Z and it says that this card is not OpenCl compatible. Looking at the GPU specs in AMD website it says it is but that the driver for it should be ready for this final quarter of 2010. I was wondering if anyone had installed a newer version of the driver and if you could tell me if it's finally enabled or not ?

 

thanks jerg and bronsky. i just wiped the gaps between the keys using a damp cloth a couple of times and everything is back to normal now. i can still smell beer on the keyboard though but i believe this will be gone after some time. hopefully there is no further internal damage.

 

I don't know about 10.10 but I've been using 10.11 and now 10.12 and neither of them show up as OpenCL-enabled in GPU-Z. GPU Caps Viewer, on the other hand, detects OpenCL and you can run an OpenCL benchmark if you have drivers for OpenCL installed.

 

understand that the latest 1.19 VGA bios allows our 5650's to be displayed as 6550's... Does that mean they inherit the properties of the 6550? (i.e. 600mhz stock core speed and 1.05v stock volts). If so it'll be a free upgrade in terms of performance and overclock-ability.

 

Yes ... it OC'd quite well. It would clock up to 3.1+ghz but I ran it at 3.0ghz to maintain optimal temps. OC'abiltiy is determined by the clockgen installed by Acer, which is somewhat random.

Bronsky

 

Is that the only difference between the two (5650 and 6550, assuming the 6550's will also be DDR3 which they probably will in such a thrifty laptop)? Did ATi not improve the physical structure of the 6xxx chip? I'm pretty sure it's not binned higher, since 6570 will be using 5730-binned chips.

 

@Bronsky I'm sure it has been covered before but is there an easy way of checking if your clockgen is OCable? can anyone link me to a post covering overclocking? I have setFSB but I believe that I am required to alter some values?

BTW thanks for the speedy response

 

There is still some debate about which hex in the 09h group indicates that TME is enabled. Here is the thread. http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/513560-possibly-overclocking-unclockable-3820tg.html I will add this to the debate. My HP slate 500 has a "1" in the second space from the left in o9h and overclocks quite well.

Bronsky

They are all the same chip. The 6550 is simply clocked higher. The 6570 is over-volted and will have DDR5 video RAM as well. This is the GPU I would like to see paired with the new dual core Sandy Bridge chips.

 

Is there another driver I have to install besides 10.10 for OpenCl to work ?

 

Hey,

I've just bought this computer and are going to do a clean install, anyone that have a list of all drivers?

 

Backup the drivers from the hidden folder at C:\OEM\Preload\Autorun\DRV before you do a clean install.

 

Hello guys!
I have some problem with launch manager I hope you can help me with!

Every time I boot the computer Lmanager hangs (25% CPU), and I see no pictures when changing volume,network...

I have already tried to reinstall it but the problem remain.
Thank you for your help!
(sorry for my bad english)

 

Sorry to drop in like this, but has anyone upgraded the LCD panel on the 3820tg with other panels, such as the fabled 1440x900 as found on Vaio Z? I know that it doesn't seem to be an economical proposition, but I am curious if this is actually something that is possible...

 

I think you need Catalyst 9.12 or newer and the AMD Stream SDK which is bundled with Catalyst 10.11 and 10.12 that I know of.

 

That will be cool!!

 

No one as far as I remember.

It'd be cool, no doubt about that one. Economical? Maybe. I'm not sure whether it'd be possible though, last time I remember the Z had a 13.1" screen while the 3820TG accomodates a 13.3".

If the Z is shipped with 13.3" panels the swap would be great, still, I don't remember anyone in this thread posting about actually replacing the LCD.

 

Just got my 580m and Backlit keyboard installed, loving it!

I have not tried overclocking the 580m yet, i dont know how. When overclocking the 370m i used the freeware version and punched in the 29, 39, 97 codes to get it to 2.88ghz. When I use those settings with the 580m i get a blue screen then reboot, I need a way to do smaller overclock increments to see how high I can go.

The max temp I seen my 370m was at 85, and idled at 45. Now with the 580m it idles at 30 and max I seen with prime95 for 30 minutes is 69.

I think i did a really good job of cleaning the old goo off with nail polish remover then applied some mx-3 thermal paste. The stock paste could have been applied better so I dont know if the better temps is because of the new thermal paste or because the 580m draws less power then the 370m.


I dont know how the turbo function works with the 580m but idling in windows with zcpu it shows the speed jump between 3.2ghz and 3.3ghz (multiplier of 24x and 25x). Even in games I never see it stay at 3.3ghz.

im running bios 1.13

 

The Vaio Z screen is 13.1" as posted before^^ but i think you will find that it was available in resolutions of 1600x900 or 1080x1920 as of the latest models (VPC-Z)

It would be a chore in itself to find one at a decent price. the cheapest ive seen the 1600x900 is $450

 

@bronsky
I went through that thread you linked and found it pretty useful.
I've had no experience with editing the Hes Table in setFSB so i just copied tgoode's values as the same clockgen seemed to work for me too. The computer is now showing me these stats:


Is it overclocked?

 

I was just wondering what everybody's idle temps for their GPU is as well as what the temps usually get to after an hour or so of gaming. I wish to know what they are without overclocking as I have no intention of doing this because games run just fine without it. Just want to compare mine to see if its normal as I've heard this BIOS version (1.17) does not cool as well as the most recent.

 

Can someone help me with this>?

I bought 2 4gb mushkin pc3-8500 ddr3 for my 3820tg for 39.99 each, and it works nicely
and today i see the corsair pc3-10600 is at 49.99 4gb stick

should i bother changing it?( as i can still do it)
should i spent that 10 extra dollars for the corsair??
if i will really overclock to 1333 bus, will the mushkin 1066 memory make it?

 

From what I recall, none of the Capella's able to support the PC3 10600. I do find it interesting though that the HM55 is actually able to support this.

 

Mushkin is a good brand of memory however technically the 1333Mhz memory may be better for overclocking.
IMO you should go for the Corsair 1333Mhz memory after all, Its not going to make it any less overclock-able and could prove to allow you to push your 3820tg much further.

 

actually hehe
the main main reason go 1333
is
just incase i change notebook in 2011
i can still use these memory for it, as i highly doubt most mid end notebook will come with 8 gb memory.

 

by the way.. the price of corsair memory is 47.50 eheh
lower is better.. so it is 7.50 different each... i think it worth it right?

 

the mem clock is not supported by the cpu, so no speed gain, and there is no way unless you do some heavy lifting with the pc, you are going to notice the unlikely increase in performance.

although for those 10 bucks I advise you to take the pack of civ 4 that is on steam, a steal might I add.

 

I will get a new AUO screen in the next few days.
I have a LG one now, wich cause me eyestrain, and I wanted to try changing for an AUO, to see if things get better for me...

I would be surprised if connectors of the "Vaio Z" screen and "3820TG" were the same.

I've referenced 5 compatible screen (2 AUO, 1 Samsung, 2 LG), all 1366x768.

Someone told me this one is compatible too :
Toshiba LT133EE09300
(but still 1366x768)

Anyone know how good the Toshiba's screen are ?

In the dismounting manual, it's say that we have to dismount barrely all the machine to change the screen ...
I will try to not dismount all.

The screen can be easily unclipsed, the only problem come from the hinge :
the plastic make a tour of the hinge, and another piece of plastic (back of the screen part) will surely block it when I try to remove it...
so I don't know if it will be easy or not.

 

Hey,

does anybody get the GPS function of the Huawei 3G card working?

 

Sandy's bridge is comming :

Un PC sous Intel Sandy Bridge déjà en vente ? LaptopSpirit.fr - PC Portable, Ultraportables, Netbooks, UMPC et mobilité

HP one, 15" And it get an HD6570 inside it seems.

 

does anyone know any good ways to get the 3820tg in the uk at the moment, as far as i can tell they don't sell them here

the german amazon sells them and it looks like they will ship here but i've been having trouble finding out what the keyboard layout differences will be and if there are other issues such as acer warranty situation on imports

are there any uk 3820tg owners about, what route did you go?

any advice would be great

 

French here, but Computer Shop, Notebook Shop and more | computeruniverse.net (German store) was very serious.
I've sent back my 3820TG to Acer for waranty, no problem, it's international waranty (the case was treated in France).

differences between QWERTY and QWERTZ :

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Qwertz_de.svg/800px-Qwertz_de.svg.png

http://courses.gnowledge.org/Data/g...4cb5d5f97b0940e168f9475f/799px-Qwerty.svg.png

 

thanks for the info, what made you decide to buy from computeruniverse?

and how are you getting on with the keyboard, is it causing you any major problems

 

Numerous people on this forum have bought their 3820tg from computeruniverse. AFAIK, everyone has gotten excellent service and some even free hardware upgrades in the process.

 

For me there is no problem, because AZERTY and QWERTZ key's layout are the same (independently of what is written on these keys)

But it seems QWERTY has a different layout, which means
1/ Adapt yourself (not that cool)
2/ Buy a 20$ keyboard from ebay

 

How do you guys update bios? I tried via Windows, but got error

 

ok cool, i'll take a look into the replacement keyboard options are and see if im brave enough to take that on, thanks

 

I thought there was a UK source of the 3820TG with the HD5650. Anyway, if you have a local computer shop, they can swap out a KB for you in a few minutes. The KB should cost about $30 and the should not charge more than $25 to do it.

Bronsky

 

nobody has news on the SB 3820tg? There are some HP pavillions being sold already. One member here got a dv7 with SB and a 6570 (rebranded 5600/700), and yes he was on the US. There were others retailers on Malaysia and some other pacific country.

 

I think Bronsky or another member already mentioned that the Core i7 (quad-core Sandy Bridge) will be released in the next 2-3 weeks. The Core i3/i5 (dual-core Sandy Bridge) will most likely be released in mid-Feburary or later.

It seems like HP is the first manufactuer to release Sandy Bridge laptops. Only time will tell if other manufactuerers will follow HP's footsteps this early.

 

Ok, so I ordered an i3 3820TG with HD5650 last night. Did I make a mistake? I'm worried the price for a sandy bridge 3820TG equivalent will be more expensive...

 

There several other laptops from different OEMs that have already been spotted in the wild, with SB chip, including the Asus N series and the Aspire series (the aspire being sold already in HK if Im not mistaken)

There is absolutely no possible explanation other than prioritization of the sales of the current line for they to not launch SB soon.

The chips and chipsets have arrived for OEMs since Q3 of this year, the design of SB has already been done for quite some time.