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

Once again, if I had to guess ,I`d say not until well into Q4.

On further consideration I might add that there could exist the remote possibility that the marketing and sales jockeys at Acer would want to sell this thing into the school and college crowd.Oh what a bonanza that`d be!Of course that`s just wishfull thinking at this point in time.

 

Bronsky, With my German to English Windows 7 install I had to use the phone activation but once done its activated No issues there. Its all automatic too over the phone you just key in the codes.

3 hours of BFBC2 yesterday and the CPU core never went over 78 degrees and the GPU maxed at 82 degrees. This is overclocked at 660 and 1070. Not bad since my ambient temps are around 32 degrees in the room where my computer is. No aircon in that room.

 

My wear level is at 2% (current capacity: 63472 mWh; designed capacity: 64800 mWh)

 

My wear level is @ 3% that was after 2-3 charges. I've discharged and recharged about 10 times more and it seems to stay at 3% thankfully.

 

a bit off topic have you guys seen mobility radeon 5470 with gddr5 in any brands laptop 64bit gddr5 will be awesome almost equal to 128bit gddr3

 

damn my i5-450 goes up to 90c when flat while playing bfbc2, btw what settings are you using? im almost on everything on high (except shadows) aa x1, afx2 and i wouldnt say it runs ultra smooth, maybe its outdated ati driver i have. ill do format and give it another go.

 

That's surprisingly low CPU temps, I'm for sure not getting under 80c when gaming with my 450. I guess room temps have been around 28-32c the last days and after a few hours in Borderlands I see 85-90c on the CPU typically (not clocked). Around 80c or a little less for GPU (clocked). The 430 shouldn't run that much cooler than the 450. But I guess air humidity and stuff like that play a part too.

Edit: Might have to ad that this makes we wonder how "comfortably" the i7-620 and so forth would run in the 3820TG in my "enviroment" during summertime. It no doubt put out some watts more.

Mac

 

More on thermal output of the i3/i5/i7.



From this review. It's not directly comparable to our 3820s, but it gives an idea.

Summary - all the i5s seem to run very similar when it comes to performance and heath. The faster clocked CPUs are, well, yeah, a little faster as expected. The i7 on the other hand is noticeably hotter.

Mac

 

M4cr0s, is your cpu overclockable?

Guys, what do you think is the difference between LX.PV102.243 and LX.PV102.172???

 

Yeah, the 450 clocks fine with SetFSB. I do however have an issue in certain slightly older games, a sort of "glue" effect. Slowdowns, but soft/smooth, not typical lag. Probably related to either multi-cores and processor affinity, or some kind of throttling (repeated experiments haven't helped explain it). I haven't seen anyone else reported similar in this thread though.

Mac

 

@Bronsky

you needn't have problems with having a german OS, if you use Vistalizator, it can change windows 7 display language to english (or any other). It worked with mine... German-->portuguese

I also have already made a clean W7 installation. Everyting is working great ATM.

 

Maybe you have already done it, but you could monitor the CPU and GPU frequency, and see if throttling occurs. You can use GPU-Z to monitor the GPU frequency and get a nice history graph. For the CPU, you could use TMonitor, RealTemp, or similar.

These soft slowdowns sounds like some form of throttling. You usually can't force it to happen in all games/apps, but when the CPU and GPU are under almost max load, this could happen. Some older games can be very heavy on CPU, due to their coding.

 

What I've tried is to run the long benchmark in wPrime with 4 threads while blocking up the fan exhaust. I got the CPU up to 95c but it didn't throttle. Havent successfully reproduced this experiment with games (you sort of have to move around to really tax the system, and if you're tabbed out to Windows you don't move around. None of the games I've experienced this issue have benchmark loops.

Mac

 

I doubt any manufacturer will do that, using such an cheap chip and then add expensive GDDR5 RAM? Doubt it. You'll probably have to wait for next ATI generation early 2011 for that.

 

That is exactly what ATI is doing with the 5500 series desktop GPU. HD 5500 series gets GDDR5 - Graphics - Graphics - Fudzilla It's an inexpensive way to stretch the GPU's obsolensce period without having to retool the factories. I would expect on-board DDR3 be upgraded to GDDR3 on the mobility GPUs first. Further upgrades would probably depend on prices falling.

Bornsky

 

My CPU temps were much lower than expected with ambient temps of around 32 degrees (Flippin hot!). I'll post some proof next time I play for a few hours. I'm using the unit via HDMI out @ 1080p and its propped up about 4 cm with a book underneath it. Maybe that has a lot to do with it. If I did sit my 3820 flat it would be around 85 degrees max.

 

Has anyone disassembled it and tried some MX-3 on it?

 

It might be a bestiality, but it may have somthing to do with internal communications, maybe the same issue of the PCI bandwidht already mentioned and apparently solved but maybe with drivers that don't "always" really work??

if it isn't throttling there aren't many other explanations.. other than just a faulty chip

 

@Hendrickson This keyboard is a bich! I need to take a break. My KB seems to require a lot of fitting. I'm breaking out the dremel and squaring off the bottom tabs. I can't get the top clips to snap in place. I think it has to do with the thickness of the KB. I'm hoping that, if I square off the clips on the bottom it will go deeper into the retaining slots and give me enough room to lock the top down.

The backlit keyboard swap is not for the faint of heart. It would be much easier to put in a regular US keyboard. I have the feeling that I will be filing down the cutouts on the top that receive the clips with a microfile before I'm done.

Bronsky

 

how about the graphics card upgrade is 5650 soldered? what mxm port is it possible to upgrade to gts 360m/5830/5850 gddr3/gddr5? though cooling might not support it

 

Its soldered.....

 

If the keyboard is that thick, then wouldn't this solve the flexing issue?

 

bronsky can you pm me about your 620m source

 

Thanks for the responses. Don't you think that's a bit weird? On most laptops that I have used, the current capacity usually meets or exceeds the design capacity of the battery.

 

One other thing: Does anyone's power jack look like this ? :



Since the power jack is off center, when I plug in the power adapter, it seems to shave off some of the plastic on the tip of the power adapter's connector.

 

Aye. I never claimed it was easy, I said it almost killed me at times. Specially soldering the 3.5v off the speaker..That was a %itch. I used a screw driver to push down near the clips at the sides and top. Later a black marker pen to over up any marks from trimming down the bottom tabs. I bent these down about 2-3mm.

Its not easy, but when it done it sure looks great Mines coming off again soon for some double sided tape in the middle.

 

On every laptop I've owned the wear level has been anywhere between 3-7% out of the box, so I'd say it's quite normal.

 

err abcheng please fix your image. Its too large and is screwing up the page. Yes my power plug looks like that.

 

abcheng mine looks the same, nothing wrong with it. Im about to do a fresh install of win7 question is in what order should i install drivers? I mean the Intel Gpu and Ati drivers.. im a bit confused can someone help me out in here..

 

Is the tip of your power adapter fine? I haven't seen a power jack that has looked like that from factory before.

I would probably just install the Intel drivers first, then the ATI drivers, even though order should not matter.

 

That's pretty bad. I haven't ever had a laptop with wear levels that bad right out of the box. The only time I have seen that is from a refurbished or open box laptop.

 

Funny, I was just touching up my filing with some black aluminum paint. Yep ... lots of work. I think I can get it in now, waiting for the touchup paint to dry.

Bronsky

Edit: what a beautiful sound - to hear the KB click.

 

Nice got any pictures of it? did you connect the power to it or just the keyboard for the moment?

Well I'm off for a bit to watch Spain win the world cup 2010

 

Hey,
so what's the internal structure? Dual fan dual heat sink dual heat vent? Just wanted to confirm

 

I didn't connect the power yet. I took a lot of pics to evaluate the power source. I'll post pics later. When I do the CPU, I'll power it up. Enjoy the game.

 

Can someone post link to download this "switchable graphics"? I have 5740g with hd5650 and i5 430m.

 

5740G don't support switchable gpu....

 

I want to try it

 

Download the ATi driver from Acer website under 3820TG....

 

it is in this driver ?

 

Yes, and if support switching, you can just right click on the desktop and change the gpu....

 

I will try it and it have much differend motherbord than 5740 ?

 

Most likely, even the notebook size is different....
cramping those 15'' into 13''.....

 

Oh that is nice. Thanks lee.
On a side note, how much do you need to disassemble to get to the fans?

Also, has anyone tried applying better thermal compound to see if it helps with heat dissipation?

 

quick question to any 3820tg owners that did a clean win7 install, i wanted to download latest 5650 drivers from ati website and i did but they didnt work but i read later on that the units with switchable intel graphics are not suported. Well i had to download the one on acer website but rly watned the latest ati omega, any way around it ? I mean leaving Intel but changing 5650 drivers... plz help me out in here.. thx

 

I find that weird, as the 10.6 mobility catalyst drivers work wonders on my 4810TG ( it's an HD4330 which isn't even listed in the compatibility list), and the switchable graphics work perfect.

Have you tried switching to "discrete" in the BIOS prior do installing the catalyst?

 

i have not! thanks for that ill try that but what about the switchable seperate driver? where do i get it from? Could you provide links to drivers plz, cheers mate

 

There isn't a switchable separate driver, the feature is bundled with Catalyst drivers already.

Catalyst 10.6 mobility

 

Are you interest in a tool, which is able to (de)activate the Bluetooth, Wlan and 3G module on command line?