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

kindan

nice guide

rep for u

 

Has anyone tried overclocking an i7 620m on their aspire 3820g laptops ? Anyone ?

 

EDIT: Oh never mind, that's GPU overclocking. Woops.

 

REALLY ??? How ?!

 

Wow + Rep, great work on the guide and 99 photos Is it hard to replace the CPU? I mean the antenna wires look a right pain! Have you checked to see if your FSB can let you overclock?
I will add a link from the first page to your guide here.

 

If it was possible to become fan on facebook of "Do a "Hendrickson" ", I would definately join

 

Very nice job Kindan. I think you now own the first I7-620M 3820TG in the Western Hemisphere. The way it looks, if I want to make my unit OC'able, I will probably need to replace the motherboard in the hope of getting a different clockgen. Your description of the wire routing and replacement is better than the Acer manual. They should update it with your pics.

Bronsky

 

Yeah I had almost 200mb of photos. I went way over the free limit for flickr so I just paid the yearly fee.

Actually to be honest replacing the CPU itself was the easiest part of the whole thing. Getting the antennas out of the plastic loops is far easier than getting them back through it. You just kind of have to stuff them into the loop and hope they come out the other side.

I posted some pages back that I haven't been able to overclock using the free version of setFSB as it causes the laptop to freeze. I'll try playing with it some more now that I have the guide out of the way. I don't really like the idea of a forced donation for the shareware one so I'm not sure if I intend on paying for it yet.

I finally did a reinstall of the OS as my initial scores were with the Acer supplied Windows 7. With the high performance profile in Windows 7 selected I can overclock the GPU to a stable 705/1075, but my scores are still fluctuating between 9500-9650 which can be had with less expensive CPUs.

 

I suspect you will have to swap the mainboard out for another if you want to OC. Since you technically don't have a warranty on it I don't see the harm in doing that. I actually took my 3820TG apart again so I could get some cleaner shots for the guide for important parts for the same reason.

The wire routing is extremely important for the white antenna. It wasn't until I was routing the white antenna back through the loop that I realized it was covered in cuts. When I inevitably take apart the 3820TG again to install the third antenna I'll take pictures of the white WLAN antenna so others can see.

Where can we purchase the service manual anyway? I was looking around online before and only found them for $13+ and I'm a cheapskate. Not about my technology purchases - just the "accessories."

 

send me a PM with an email address.

Bronsky

 

Hi, to all, I am currently using this notebook for my gaming. However, when i play Modern warfare 2 on it, i experience low framerates. Can anyone please help me with this?

 

Wow you guys are really tech enthusiasts. And can do without a warranty since you will probably do your own repairs. But seriously is it easy to pick it up? This way, I could perhaps care less about the warranty issue that I'm so concerned about...

 

I'm not a techie but bought one abroad because worst case scenario I can drive to the u.s. Border to use the international travelers warranty if they won't let me use it in Canada. And I put it on a visa so it doubles that warranty to 2 years I think.

 

Hey there. Ok lets see now, have you changed you power plan to High Performance ? and the other thing is you must disable power play in the ATi Catalyst Control Center (CCC). Open CCC, click on graphics(top left hand corner), select powerplay and untick the Enable PowerPlay option. If you want better performance you can always overclock it using AMD GPU Clock Tool . Everyone here does it I think haha.

 

The ITW is a joke. Seriously, even the 2nd shop I asked about it commented that acer is the only brand that has this limitation. Rest like asus or hp, even Dell has much better warranty service. Plus I just need pay S$200 more for a dell 3 year warranty which includes accidental damage coverage. Really makes me consider the inspiron 13r since it's slightly better than the UL30vt, the other lightweight asus model I'm considering.

By the way, I don't live in Canada or the states. I'm from Singapore. We do have local independent notebook repair shops that would probably fix up for perhaps less than oem service center. Best if I learn to do it myself, that would be a useful skill.

Sorry for the acer negativity, if I can find a circumvent around the warranty, I'll be more than happy to pay more for the 3820tg. It's the best specs notebook I can choose for it's price

 

If warranty is important to you, the Acer is not your machine. Dell has far better warranties (which, with a Dell, you are almost guaranteed to need ). Actually, I would look at an Asus with its 2 year standard warranty and 1 year accidential. That way, you could add an additional year through your credit card. If you're willing to live with the Inspiron 13r, the new 13" Asus models would be a better choice IMO, as the graphics capability is similar.

Best of luck whatever you get.

Bronsky

 

This thread is massive[/end].

I've tried to search but didn't found any good. I got the 3820TG I5-450m and did a fresh reinstall with Win7 ultimate, how should I know wich WLAN drivers to use? There is like 4 different drivers here: Acer Europe - Service & Support, Drivers & Utilities, Downloads

regards

 

Try the broadcom.

 

Hi all! I'm going on a vacation soon and I'm leaving my acer at home for obvious safety reasons However, I do plan to take one of my older laptops with to surf the hotel's free wireless network, now and then, but this laptop does not have a wireless card. I now wonder if it' possible to somehow connect the wireless card from my Acer, to this pc. It's a rather old laptop, running on Windows 2000, haha.

 

I've just got my 3820tg and I love it. And I love this thread, its been a real help..

But, now I've got two problems.. I really cant get the newest Radeon driver to install.. I've done the steps in here but it doesn't work.. Nothing works! I cant install the HD graphics drivers from intels homepage either.. it says its not right for this computer or something like that..

And Another thing! When i start a test in furmark my GPU temperatures goes up really high.. It stops at around 104 degrees celcius.. The CPU stays cool but the GPU as I said goes up really high.. The weird thing is that the comp doesnt feel especially warm to touch anywhere.. Nothing near 100 degrees anyway..

Anyone experience same problems as me?

 

Yea. Mine got hot when I tried it before updating the drivers. You should be updating all of your drivers through Catalyist. Did you try to install and then switch to dedicated in the bios? I had no problem updating everything. I am currently running 10.7 and it is flawless.

Bronsky

 

I read that you cannot update the Intel drivers, but when you install Acer's default ATI drivers, it comes bundled with the Intel drivers. Then you change your laptop to discrete mode in BIOS and install the ATI 10.7 Catalyst drivers. Then change it back to switchable mode in BIOS and everything should work fine.

Nevertheless, you should try installing the ATI 10.7a (beta) Catalyst drivers, since that seems to be working for most people with the same problem as you. ATI Catalyst 10.7 Beta Win 7 | Vista XP (32|64-bit) download from Guru3D.com

 

Probably not because the wireless LAN card in the 3820TG is a mini PCI Express card. If your other laptop is old enough to be running Windows 2000 it most likey has a mini PCI card slot, nothing at all, or maybe a PCMCIA card slot. Newer laptops can have Express Card slots which look similar to a PCMCIA slot, but aren't the same.

 

How is it possible for the 3820TG to get 5-6 hrs battery life (normal usage) with its 6-cell 66Wh battery?

The Toshiba R705 also has a 6-cell 66Wh battery and only has an Intel integrated GPU. But it's battery life (normal usage) is just 4-5 hrs.

Thanks.

 

Thanks bronsky, I think I wrote in another thread that I'm now considering the UL30VT, huge thread with lots of info over at the asus sub-forum. I'm also looking at the U35JC (a better version of UL30VT), which well unfortunately isn't avaiable in Singapore so I'm looking to import it from Malaysia. The A42 is too heavy for my tastes. Plus I looked at the gaming benchmarks, the G210M in the UL30VT is decent for gaming, at least at low settings at stock resolutions and lower. plus its overclockable.

But I'm going to call my local acer service centre today to clarify the ITW, giving it a last shot before I make a final decision.

p.s. I'm using a latitude in my current company, but of course being a business laptop, its pretty good & reliable. Had a vostro before in my previous company and it was good as well so I got good experience with a dell (including a technician coming to my place to replace my motherboard after the GPU went dead, I really like the in-home service)

 

I think there are various other factors that affect battery life including but not limited to
hard drive
screen
ram?
lol that's all I can think of cuz I think I read that the hard drive in the timelineX uses less/if not same power as some SSD?

 

My company used Dells exclusively for 10 years. My last company Dell was a Vostro 1500 with the 8600M GT. The increasing GPU demands of our areal/satelite video and photo editing software mandated a much better CPU/GPU combination. By then, our company was having a lot of problems with Dell service. We went to a local tech company for our company computer service and gave up on Dell. The service is far better. I like the latitude. That model and the precisions are the only dells worth a dam.

Bronsky

 

I think Acer's battery ratings are based on the IGPU.

 

Ya so even when comparing the toshiba with the acer both with igp acer still has more battery life so yah.. there must b sumthing else that reduces its battery consumption

 

delete 10 char

 

Thanks for the reply ayafan and bronsky, ill try those beta drivers that you mention! You guys dont think my GPU took damage from those 100 degrees?

 

Read somewhere on the amd forums that it's max temp is ~115°C.

 

I finally got it to work (installing catalyst 10.7)! I reinstalled windows 2 times and all of a sudden I got it to work. Sadest part is that I don't know how I did it.. =(

Edit:

But I still get more than 100 degrees when I'm running Furmark. Hows your temps?

 

That's hot. What kind of temps are you getting under normal use? Run a monitor and play a game to see what your GPU is doing. I doubt that your GPU was damaged, but it seems to me that you might not have a good connection with the heatsink.

Bronsky

 

If you are a german user, use the 14 day return option.

 

Do you mean how the temperatures are during gaming or do you mean something else that the GPU is doing? My idle temps are fine. Around 50c.. I played a single game (15 mins) of Starcraft 2 and the temps came up to 90c!

RMA?

 

Way too hot ... somethings wrong with the GPU. RMA the unit.

Bronsky

 

Starcraft 2 overheats your GPU and will probably damage it if you're not careful.

There's a fix around for that, just google it.

 

No, the fix works only for the menu. These problem is not a starcraft 2 problem.

 

Yea ... beta driver addresses the Starcraft 2 problem (10.7a) but meatandsauce's GPU spikes with benchmarks too. It is just too hot and I would return it.

Bronsky

 

Unbelievable that they didn't fix it already... this was a problem in the beta already and I thought it was fixed... I'll have to check my temps

 

There is a beta driver 10.7a.

 

Yep, but there's nothing about the GPU burn issue in the release notes, it's about forcing AA and performance improvements regarding Quad ATI CrossFireX / Eyefinity:

Code:

ATI Catalyst™ 10.7a beta driver features:

    * Starcraft II: Support for Anti-Aliasing through the ATI Catalyst Control Center when using a Windows® 7, Windows Vista® or Windows XP based system with an:
          o ATI Radeon™ HD 5xxx series graphics card or ATI Radeon Mobility equivalent series of products
          o ATI Radeon HD 4xxx series graphics card or ATI Radeon Mobility equivalent series of products
          o ATI Radeon HD 3xxx series graphics card or ATI Radeon Mobility equivalent series of products
          o ATI Radeon HD 2xxx series graphics card or ATI Radeon Mobility equivalent series of products
    * Improved performance for Quad ATI CrossFireX™ for Eyefinity™ supported configurations

 

The problem happens only, if you looking all the time at the menue. Just patch the game files. A few howtos are public.

 

Ive talked to Acer and they did an RMA. So UPC is comming tomorrow to pick the unit up.. Lets see what they say, ill report in a week or so! Thanks for your advices..

 

As Bronsky said, probably poor contact between the GPU and the heatsink. If the GPU gets extremely hot while the air blowing out on the right side is relatively cool that's a prime indicator of that. You can even do a so-so comparision yourself. Say the CPU is running at 70-80c and the GPU hits 100ish, if the CPU side is hotter than the GPU side, deffo something wrong with the heatsink, fan or the contact to the GPU. Seen this happen when modifying graphics card cooling solutions, swapping CPUs/coolers and similar. Even smoked an Athlon 1200mhz back in the days due to a faulty clip on the heatsink (this was before thermal protection auto shutdown got built into mobos/CPUs).

Mac

 

Hello,

I have a completly different question. I currently own a 15.4 inch laptop which is old and large and heavy. I definitely want something smaller. However, I can't really decide between the TimelineX with 14" or 13.3".

The point is, this laptop will be my ONLY computer and I don't want to buy and use an external larger monitor to hook it up to it. So I have to be able to do everything with the laptop, which is gaming, web surfing, word processing (university, writing research papers, etc.) , some video and photo editing, watching movies, etc.
When I first heard of the 3820 I was instantly drawn to it, due to it's light weight and great cooling system as well as the long battery life. However, there's also the 4820. It's screen is a little bit bigger but I'm afraid that the cooling is bad since I might do some overclocking on the GPU. Even without the overclocking, I'm scared that the laptop will shut down when used in warm rooms or outside in hot summers or during normal gaming. Also, a bad cooling system decreases the overall life time of the computer.

So, what should I do?? I could get a 2.4 Ghz Core i5 with Radeon 5650 in the 3820 for 800€ or go for the 900€ 4820 with the same specs?


I dunno, I just think that 13.3 might be too small, also have glasses already. There are not thick, but anyway.

Is the difference between 15.4. and 13.3. really that big? Has anyone switched and can report if I would get used to it over time?

Does the difference between 14" and 13.3" really matter?


Right now, I'm more drawn to the 13.3" due to the better overall package + lower price. The only thing that bothers me is the screen size.

I really hope that someone can help me with this.

Thank you

 

Personally go for the 3820TG, here's why. The cooling in the 3820TG is much improved. It has 2 fans and heat sinks. Where as the 4820TG has one fan which has to cool the CPU and GPU. Thats the deal breaker when it comes to the 14'. Which I looked at getting before i found out it has 1 fan to cool the whole unit.

Also the resolution on both screens is the same, yet the slightly smaller 13.3 screen suits the resolution better. .7" difference you will hardly notice. I come from using a 17" screen and find this screen just fine.

 

I see. The cooling is exactly the point which I like about the 3820. But don't you have the advantage of being able to use your larger 17" laptop from your signature? I can't do that that's why I'm not sure what to do.

 

Anyone having issues with the mousepad. The multitouch- and scroll- functions stopps working for me every now and then. Comes back in a while, but irritating that I cannot scroll sometimes.