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

Some more progress. It seems that the only way to get picture on the screen is to run it in extended mode. So the computer is recognizing both adapters at the same time and seems to prefer the Intel one (both icons also in taskbar).

So if I set the extended display to any other than extended (disconnect projector, duplicate, projector only) there is no picture on the laptop. So far I haven't been able to get picture out through vga either.

 

At the moment nobody knows where the bios is stored and how you can read it.

 

if you really feel you must do it
Tool to Insert/Replace SLIC in Phoenix / Insyde / Dell / EFI BIOSes
you can figure out everything from there

 

I found the i7 620m upgrade to be quite significant actually going from the i3 350m. I think that going with i5 is the best bang for the buck personally.

(now thinking hard at getting an SSD upgrade sometime down the road for this little rocket)

 

I know the link, but inside the Bios file 1.19 are only Nvidia Bioses are included. (G73 and Geforce 7400...)
I have not found an AMD/ATI one.

 

They better honour it!

Can't GPU-Z read the vBIOS? Or ATI Win Flash or something like that?

 

GPU-Z no [ 10 chars ]

 

i3 in the 3820TG has HT too. Check your facts.

The 6550 and 5650 are the exact same chip. LOL

 

disregard this. i5 pretty much same as i3.

 

hi guys...
just finished backup-ing and burning a recovery disc...
now i'm ready to set and customize my lappy.
one thing i've noted: the entire system is a little bit slow and not so reactive....
in your opinion it's because there's too many acer & third party programs, applications and tons of craps pre-installed in the system when it comes out by factory or because my laptop mounts a 5400 750 gb HDD?? or maybe both together??
wich is the best solution right now??
thank you very much!!!

 

Best: Get an SSD

 

There is a nice 128 GB Kingston for $140 right now.

Buy.com - Kingston 128GB SSDNow V Series SATA II 2.5" Solid State Drive (SSD), Desktop Bundle

Also, has anyone tried switching the AUO or LG panel in the Aspire 3820TG for the screen from its sister TravelMate:

Acer TravelMate Timeline TM8372T-3602 13.3"

I am wondering is the business PC would have a better panel. It seems to be matte.

 

i5 has turbo mode. But turbo can be disregarded when you overclock. But overclocking the CPU is a pain to do.

 

Oh yeah guys a very clean install and a SSD....
but i'm in difficult finding an in italian win 7 home premium 64 bit ISO, and SSDs are very expensive and the capacities are very small....
with a 7200 rpm WD HDD i'll increase the reactivity???
thank you!

 

Who said anything about turbo mode? I was correcting his mistake. The point is that there isn't much difference between the i3 and i5. If its a few dollar difference, that's fine. But I would not loose too much sleep over it.

My issue is the screen. I am going to try the matte screen protector to see if it makes the LCD bearable. I've never been too picky with screens. Not sure why this one bothers me so much.

 

Hello friends,

I also got a 3820TG with Core i5-460M (overclockable with SetFSB - "good" CPU ) and AMD 5650, which I'd like to overclock ... but can't find a tool. Which one do you use? The AMD GPU Clock Tools doesn't work, tells me that not GPU was found, but it is activated !

Greetings

 

guys, glad that I found the as3820tg laptop ... cause I was looking for a 13" one with decent cpu and good graphics (to run some games of course), and decent outside look.

overall impression: god damn .. where have I been

no time to read all ~1k pages, but page 1 - the OP has made it nicely informative, so big thans

 

Use AMD GPU Clock Tool version 0.9.26

 

sweet deal cept my steam folder takes up that much space alone lol

 

Went to Staples and got it exchanged for another LG screen. This one seems to look better though. I think the majority of them are LG screens.

 

HELL YEAH
thanks my friend
it works !

 

How about to read and flash bios of ATI5650\6550 ?
HAve tried lot of software. Nothing...

 

I have owned the lappy for about a year now and still running the same ATI drivers but Ive been thinking about switching.

I went to the Acer support page and I noticed that they havent been updating the driver since I got the laptop... How come?

Anyways what drivers are you guys running and are they stable? Do they remove any functions that the "stock drivers" have?

Ps: I saw that the 4820tg ATI drivers have been updated date 2010/12/2. Anyone tried these? If I do should I remove my old ones or just install the new ones over?

 

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to say thanks for all the help! and I bought the i5 version it is awesome!

thanks again

 

If the 3820TG is good enough for Bronsky, then it's certainly good enough for me!

Just be sure not to put it in the trunk of your car again, my friend LOL!

 

bankergolfer, I see you have 1333Mhz RAM with overclocked i5 450M.
If I install 1333mhz RAM w\out overclocking my i5 460M will it work on 1333Mhz ? Or I should oveclock my CPU to reach this frequency?

 

AFAIK stock i5 processors do not support 1333MHz, only 1066MHz. I don't know what trick bankergolfer used but i5s do not support 1333MHz because Intel locked it down.

 

You can install 1333 MHz memory just fine. it'll just run at 1066 speed.

 

Doesn't turbo mode overclock the overclock? Sorry that probably didnt make sense....for me I have a i5-460 which is 2.53 to 2.8ghz or thereabouts. When I overclock the base frequency to 3ghz it will the turbo to 3.25ghz roughly....check out the Intel turbo boost monitor Processors — Intel® Turbo Boost Technology Monitor

 

True. Say you have the i5-520m, base frequency 133MHz, x18 multiplier at stock, x22 at turbo. Say you overclocked your frequency to 150MHz, then at stock multiplier it would run at 150x18=2700MHz, but at turbo boost it would run at 150x22=3300MHz, so in a way yes, turbo mode does overclock your overclock. However it is recommended to disable turbo boost when overclocked as it can reach upward of 4GHz if you are not careful when in turbo boost mode, which is really dangerous as it can fry your CPU at that kind of frequencies, not to mention instability, crashing and possibly throttling.

 

My I5-540M turbos up to 3.7 ghz OC'd. Hendrickson's I5-580M turbos up to 3.8 ghz OC'd. The unit will become unstable at speeds over that and blue screen before it will fry the CPU.

Bronsky

@Bankergolfer - notice that I got an HP Slate 500 to take along as a field notebook. My 3820TG doesn't travel to site investigations anymore.

 

Where do you go to disable turbo mode? I don't recall seeing it in the BIOS.

So I want to do a clean install of Windows 7 of my 3820TG-7945 with the LG screen (mom and uncle says it's fine. I agree). How should I backup the stock Acer image? I'm thinking of using Acronis. Also what drivers should I use? The buttons such as Fn+F3 is VERY useful, so I don't want to lose that after my clean install as I've noticed in many laptops where I do a clean install, I lose these functionality.

 

What program did you use to oc the 5470?
I don't think AMD GPU Clock Tool version 0.9.26 supports the 5470

 

I have a 5650 and I used AMD GPU clock tool, whichever version is linked to in the first post, you could also try MSI afterburner however you need to alter the config file to allow unofficial overclocking

 

Very nice! Just looked it up and it looks amazing!

 

I don't have palm check and all the other synaptic settings.. how did you guys get them?

 

Did you install a fresh copy of Windows?
are the synaptics drivers installed?

 

Why i can't overclock the i5 430m?
I got an error in setFSB?

 

Who's using the new Mobility 11.1? Does your graphics switching work? I can't seem to get it to work (see posts 9204 and 9207)

 

have you tried different clockgens? if so, you probably have one of the locked clockgens, there is nothing you can really do unless you figure out a pll pin mod. it would be easier to upgrade your CPU to an i5-560m or i5-580m that ought to give you a serious performance boost

Did you install the stock Acer drivers beforehand, then switch to discrete in bios and then install 11.1?

I'm running 11.1 and it is working perfectly, try installing the updated Acer drivers which support the 6550m also.
They are working well for me.

 

You have to mod the bios. The Turbo mode switch is hidden.

 

I did a fresh install of Win 7, then installed the stock Acer driver, then newer Intel driver, then the 11.1.

Could it be, that the newer Intel driver messed something up? Can it be uninstalled normally?

 

I own a Canadian i3-370m model of the 3820tg. However, I bought an i7-620m and installed it today. I followed the guide by Kindan and all seemed to go smoothly. However, when I tried turning it on it the display would not turn on. The laptop itself would turn on, as I heard the fans and the lights were on.

I made sure the two LCD related plugs (white one and the ribbon) were connected, but it still would not show an image.

Anyone have any idea what could be wrong?

Thanks.

 

Try closing the lid and reopening, that worked for me. That is, if you don't have the lid doing anything like toggling sleep mode.

 

did you switch to discrete graphics in bios before installing 11.1? im not sure about the intel, you dont actually need to install that from memory, just the switchable one. i may be wrong though

Could be the i7 CPU, try reinstalling the i3 to check if the problem persists, if it does, it would be safe to say that something has probably been damaged.
Also try the external monitor through VGA or hdmi

 

I did switch to discrete. I'll try uninstalling everything and running driver sweeper then reinstalling just the acer amd and 11.1, no Intel.

 

I don't think that's going to work, or work well if you can get it to. The i3 and i5 have integrated gfx chips which the timelineX siwtches to / from along with the dedicated GPU. The i7 1st gen CPUs do not have an IGP, so I really don't expect this to work.

Now an i5 480M should work a charm.

 

The 620m has an IGP and should work. I think there are a few who use it in a 3820TG.

The fastet i5 is the 580M and it works. I'm using it.

 

Why can't I use my Win7 CD key?
I formated all my hard drive, and deleted the recovery portation.
Then installed new Win7 Home Prem. download from torrent site and when I input the CD key I'm getting Wrong Key
What can I do to use the CD key that came with the laptop?

 

The key should work, if you take the right Windows version and source.