Acer TimelineX 3830/4830/5830 T/G

And here it is, the in-depth-review from notebookcheck.com.

Test Acer Aspire 5830TG Notebook - Notebookcheck.com Tests

 

Although I do agree that the new TimelineX isn't better than the old 1, notebookcheck is a questionable site.

I have seen the reviews on CrapBooks and they refuse to show any benchmarks on the regression of the conversion from Nvidia Graphics to Intel Graphics instead showing useless geekbench numbers which is skewed by the inclusion of the Sandy Bridge CPU.
And of course it got high scores I wonder if Apple paid them off to write crap and of course any sign of overheating is quickly written off.

 

That Atheros wi-fi module probably lacks 5 Ghz support.

However... if they workaround the throttling issue and the bundled SSD (every Italian model has a 120 GB SSD instead of the HDD... and no HDD option) is decent, the 4830TG could me my new notebook.

 

I don't remember if any actual 3830 owners said this already, but how long does the battery actually last? I'd certainly bet more than a dollar that this 15.6" won't come close to 8 hours on wifi. I can see that more easily for the 13" but real numbers for idle/wifi/gaming for any size would be useful. The 3820TG gets in the 5-6 hour range for wifi so I think the 3830 would give a more reasonable 6-7 hours which is slightly less than the reviews are stating.

Thanks in advance.

 

Any news on buying the 3830? Getting it in the USA? Getting a US keyboard for it? Thanks!

 

I'm so tempted to buy the 4830tg I actually feel sick, but this whole throttling issue turns me away every time my mouse hovers above an order button.

 

You should play the waiting game till the throttling issues are solved.

 

I just ended up buying a 4820tg because I was tired of waiting and it still isn't available in the US. I also like the design of the 4820 better.

 

I am going buy a y470 for 950$ if this thing doesnt come out in the next week.

On has pretty much the same specs minus the long battery life. Its rated at 4hours.

 

Ok boys and gals .. I checked my 3830TG into the service centre over a week ago and it's still there. So till I get it back can't follow up on other tests.

Yup. The Atheros module works only on 2.4Ghz and it's slowwww. I bought a Netgear N600 for my 3830TG as a result. The Intel 6300 Ultimate on the 3820TG is a speed demon and works on both bands so it's sort of a downgrade.

 

Don't know if it's been said, but looking at the pictures here:

Aspire TimelineX | Photogallery

The Australian 15" seems to be black, or at least have the option for it. Hopefully black 3830's exist too.

 

That is the picture for 3820.

 

Actually, that's a picture of the 5820TG.

It says it is a 5830TG, but it doesn't even mention a USB 3.0 port. It also lists only 3 USB ports total, but there are actually 4 USB ports total.

The 2 in "Intel® Core™ i5 processor 2410M" is missing from the short description.

There are so many things wrong with this page...

 

Just got mine 5830TG, and as far as I can tell, I am quite impressed. Design looks great, build quality is not the top, but for the price I think great
Some crap programs from Acer, but I got rid of them fast, installed newest drivers. The only one problem I had until now is that I can't use Nvidia without being plugged in. Option for its use is gray and It can not be selected, but I think it will disappear within few more driver updates (hopefully ). Battery life with their program is quite amazing, tried even playing Football Manager and no problem for hours. Did not try any tests, because right now, I am getting ready for my High School final exam, but if you want to know something, that is not time demanding, I will try to answer

Andrej

 

What's the throttling deal? So there ARE drawbacks to this?

 

Yes it's one hell of a drawback- you're buying something that in certain conditions may be as fast as Core 2 Duo T3200

On a partially unrelated note- MSI GE620 also has issues with throttling on SB so it might be more to this than just Acer's mistake.

 

There are reports that this series uses old B2 revision chipsets. It shouldn't be an issue if they use SATA III for the HDD/SDD... but what about the optical drive?

 

Why would that matter? the OD only needs 1.5.

 

FYI, notebookcheck.net has now also reviewed the 4830 on their German site:
Test Acer Aspire 4830TG Notebook - Notebookcheck.com Tests

You can translate it. It should make their English site in the next week. They talk a bit about graphics throttling, but I got sort of lost in the translation.

Bottom line was they thought it was a great value. They also said it's a great candidate for adding an SSD.

 

How can any reviewer recommend this unit as long as the CPU is throttling and heat is not under control?

Bronsky

 

Well, maybe the throttling explains the good battery life

 

If CPU is throttling, then heat is under control

 

Hey Guys, I currently have 4820Tg and it's great. I'm planning to buy 4830TG, it looks great with better specs. Could the throttling issue be isolated one? few hundreds faulty Acers out there? I'll have 7 days to exchange the laptop, so what's the accurate method to check this issue? Usually first batch has lots of problems in quite a few laptops, but 4830TG has been released here just now, but available in other countries from past two months, so it has to be new batch. Will Acer have rectified the issue in newer batch? Also, I got my eye on latest Vaio 13.3 SB series and it's very expensive, but is the quality good or Sony is just selling brand name? Who makes the best laptop nowadays in terms of QUALITY? My previous vaio's FZ-4000 graphics card got toasted after 1 year, just went warranty expired and I'm still mad at Sony for that.

 

quality is not really a matter of hardware failure since each manufacturer gets 3-10% faulty units during warranty, if I'm not wrong..
sony has better screens =)

 

I barely read or really trust Notebookcheck's reviews, any longer:

They really seem to get paid for their test-ratings.

Regarding the heat propblem, it seems it turned out as I mentioned a lot of pages ago, but whats new to me:

It appears to me, they turned a former safety switch: the overheat throttling/shutdown into a feature for normal use, of course its cheaper than installing better hardware.

 

I hope that it can supply what is needed (without stop working).

 

You guys might also want to check out the Acer Aspire 3750, the first 13" Aspire Series (Not TimelineX)
Acer seems to like cannibalising their own notebook models' marketshare.
Logically speaking it should be much cheaper than TimelineX.
Proof of its existence but I don't trust the review since they do not know that Acer Panels differ according to luck.

 

The strange thing with all acer sandy bridge laptops is that throttling temp is set lower than for previous CPU models/computer models, throttling seems to happen already around 85-90C. Older i3/i5 could usually take up to 100C or sometimes even 105C before throttling.

I guess it's an hidden BIOS setting rather than an limit of the CPU.

As I see it none of the xx30TG models are worth considering due to the throttling. ALL reviews I've seen where they've thrown decent load at CPU/GPU it has throttled, which kinda sucks if you plan to game on it.

 

I will never understand Acer's product development people. This unit will compete directly with the 3830TG. Other than the CD drive and its thickness, it looks a lot like the older Timeline.

Bronsky

 

AFAIK it has only integrateg intel GFX though, no option to get anything else.

 

Different SKU different Graphics.
Expect GT540M to be in different submodels.
There is already 1 with GT 520M sold in Malaysia.

 

Here is the GT 520M version being advertised in Germany. Fudzilla When this model was introduced last January, it was anounced that the GT 540M will be offered in all the Aspire x740 models.

Bronsky

 

I have a cousin that works with Taiwanese companies like HTC, Acer.. etc, He basically told me that these companies are great at making a good products, but they are clueless when it comes marketing, making a long term plan, or other common sense business stuff..and that is why they are falling behind.

I know many of you are wondering why Acer hasn't tried to push the 3820/3830tg to united states.. I wouldn't be surprised if the people at Acer are cluless about it's potential

It's hard to describe, but I live in Taiwan and I've witness this kind of mentality a lot. People have certain way of doing things that's neither efficient or rational.. it can be very unprofessional but you go along with it, because that's how it's done.

I know this is slightly off topic, but I thought I'd contribute, because I've seen other people make similar comments about the way Acer does things.

 

Continuing with the off topic rationalization - I lived in Japan for a while, and I know exactly what you are referring to, because it exists there as well.

 

anybody knows how the GT540M (2gb) will do against the 6550 / 5650?

 

The 1.03 BIOS has been released for the x830 series, here is the changelog:
1. Updates nVidia N12PGS VBIOS to 70.08.45.00.3E for P5LJ0/P5LS0.
2. Fixes vbios info variable incorrectly cause SMT line resolution change to 1024*768.
3. Updates Intel VBIOS v2111.
4. Updates Intel MCU v00000015 for 206A7 J-1/D-2 Sandy Bridge CPU.

Test-round, anybody?

 

Stock clocks to stock clocks, the GT 540 will outperform the HD 6550 by a bit (10-15%). I think the 6550 may still have the edge under full OC but we'll have to see. Since the new bios is out, maybe we'll get some better performance figures from the 3830TG owners. You have to also consider the effect of the dual cooling fans of the 3820TG. It mught help keep the 6550 performing on a par with the GT 540M.

Bronsky

 

Could anybody test the new BIOS?

 

I got my 4830GT this morning, updated the bios to 1.03 and tested it: it's still throttling.

 

/10chars

 

And it's also throttling with furmark only.

 

After how many minutes?

 

With furmark only it happens after 8 minutes.
Throttling usually kicks in when the gpu temp hits 75°C. the cpu was hovering around 80°C long before that, sometimes it did jump up till 86 but only for a moment.
I will try to run some non-synthetic benchmarks tonight, see how much does this affect the framerate in a real-world scenario.

 

That's too low, they should increase the throttling temp

 

Disappointing...

 

Hey , is the 3830 worth getting? Buying a laptop in a few days, considering this and asus u36

 

Not worth it IMO. Only going to be worth it when (if ever?) they fix the throttling issues.

 

Unfortunately, in Italy ( Europe?) I can't see any 13''-14'' alternative with a decent Sandy Bridge CPU (i5), a decent NVIDIA GPU (GT 540), USB 3.0, an optical drive and good battery life. It's not a good moment to be on the laptops market.

Moreover, I've read that some 14'' ASUS notebooks (Sandy Bridge and GT 540) have throttling problems too. Too bad.

 

MSI also have throttling problems with SB CPUs which leads me to believe that the problem is not with inefficient cooling nor with something as simple as BIOS settings.
Don't want to jump to conclusions but it's more likely that Intel is at least partially to blame rather than that so many major manufacturers suddenly forgot how to design laptops.

 

Lenovo too http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/576364-thinkpad-sandy-bridge-cpu-throttling-problem.html
HP too http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...ndy-bridge-2xxx-series-owners-lounge-414.html

Something is wrong with this Sandy Bridge / Huron River platform...

Could anybody try this? http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...asus-g51j-x-cpu-throttling-investigation.html

There are reports in the HP thread that it does work (but the system could overheat and crash).

I'm reading that Alienware had throttling issues too and they fixed it with a BIOS update, but the Alienware cooling system is better than average. Acer, HP etc. affected systems seem to share the shared CPU/GPU cooler, so they overheat when you stress both the CPU and GPU.