Acer TimelineX 3830/4830/5830 T/G

Since the 3830TG and 4830TG have built-in batteries, could it be heat that is destroying the charge capacity?

 

Either way Acer needs to do something about it. I actually played BC2 recently and have noticed intermittent lag from the throttling issue everyone is talking about. But it hasn't bothered me too much.

 

what brand of cells did you get? sanyo or panasonic?
i noticed that chinese users are reporting more wearing issues on panasonic cells, camparing to sanyo.

 

According to BatteryCare it's Panasonic My older 1810tz which I've had for 2 years is at 22% wear, but my 3830TG which I've had for 2 WEEKS is already at 21%. Something is wrong, and it's not just a calibration problem...

 

Does this only happen in the 3830? i really dont understand why noone buys/talks about the 5830

 

No it also happened to my 4830 TG but as Ive written earlier I only loose battery capacity when im playing games while the laptop is disconnected. Ive lost about 2 % per cycle.
Now Im only playing games when the laptop is connected and the wear level stays at 8% for one week now.
So a fast discharge seems to be too much for the battery and it looses health. It might be easy to prevent but its still a big failure of the engineering I think. I think Ill just wait some more time and if the wearing gets worse I will ask Acer to change the battery. I think there is a six months guarantee on it.
BTW I have a Sanyo battery.

Yesterday I ran some stability tests and my laptop only throttled after 20 minutes of prime and furmark. I have no problems in games or anything else.
I can even oc the 540 gt to 800 mhz core / 1000 mhz ram which boosts the 3d mark 06 from about 8k to 10k.

 

now i'm wondering:
- some unrecognized defects exist in these cells;
- since cells are built-in, they are more close to heat sources, which destroying their capacity;
- the compact layout of 3830 worsens the heat problem.

 

Where did you see this? On a chinese forum?

 

yes, i read several topics on x830 cell wearing issue, in more than one chinese forums, and asked some posters via PM.
most of them said they're using panasonic.

 

The problem is that if Acer change my battery, they're going to put in the exact same battery, the Panasonic... Then 2-3 weeks later I'll be calling them again...

 

4830TG, 14% wear after 1.5 months.

 

Less than mine, but still too much! 14% after 1.5 months is... unbelievable.

Especially when Acer mentions the built-in battery as "good for 4 years"

EDIT: Called Acer again, they're still looking at my problem, and will get back to me within this week... I'll post here when there's progress

 

by the way, anybody got a decent color profile for the new timelines yet?
I'm dieing from this blueish tint.

 

Man forget this i am buying an Asus or something with a Removable battery.

 

The 13.3" Sandy Bridge from Asus doesn't have usb 3.0, though I don't know if that's important to you. It also lacks the 540m gt, I think it comes with 520m

Also, not everyone has battery problems, you may want to wait a little more a see what happens, and also regarding the throttling (which I don't experience, because I don't play extremely heavy games).

 

Mine is Panasonic, at 26%. Ah... Destroy the Battery!

 

Ok this has really gotten out of hand, it's now at 25%!!! 1/4 of my battery is gone in just 2 weeks! ¤&%/&%&(

 

What do you guys use to check the battery wear?

edit: do you mean the percentage of the battery indicator icon at the bottom-right of the screen when fully charged?

 

I use BatteryCare and Aida64. You can try BatteryBar pro as well

 

Forgive me for asking, but does the reported wear percentage agree with your usage? For example, if you use 40% of the charge and extrapolate to total battery life, does it agree with the estimated battery life factoring in the percentage of wear?

 

The info about battery wear comes from the ACPI interface. In linux it's exposed as /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/info. On my 4820TG, which is now 6 months old, I see this:
present: yes
design capacity: 6000 mAh
last full capacity: 6040 mAh

(rest deleted). On my son's 4820TG his last full capacity charge was 5900, and it came that way and hasn't dropped since we got our machines. Note that the battery itself keeps track of these numbers, not the machine. Also, you have to mostly fully discharge the battery and charge it every so often to get accurate numbers. I honestly expected to be missing more capacity than this by 6 months.

 

Just asked to Acer Indonesia on Twitter ( @acerID )

My tweet: @acerID Saya beli 3830TG di FKI, skrg Battery Wear sdh 27% (dg BatteryBar & Battery Care), baterai bermasalah? Bisakah saya dpt penggantian?

Translation: @acerID I just bought a 3830TG at the FKI, and now the battery wear is 27% (shown with BatteryBar & Battery Care). Is there something wrong with my battery? Can I get a replacement?

FKI : Festival Komputer Indonesia (Indonesian Computer Festival) held on 8-12 June

 

Please report back when you get an answer

 

Could this whole battery thing be only software issue? Are there any real signs of battery wear?

 

I have 2 batteries. 1 is a year old snd 1 is 9 months old. Virtually no wear. Amazing.

Bronsky

 

But I am not understanding the whole thing.

n0elia, at 25% battery wear are you noticing your machine lasting 25% shorter on battery? I recall you saying you got nearly 6hrs on battery at certain settings. Duplicating the same events are you now only getting 5hrs?

Because at the rate you are going you will be at 50% in a few weeks. Maybe the software is reporting it wrong?

 

after i charge my battery it always shown 99% never 100% and now my wear level already 9.95% i never play heavy games and never charge while using my laptop.

i buy my laptop only 6 days ago but my wear level at 9.95 % now.

is my problem because i didn't do first 8 hours charge ? because i read post in page before that i didin't have to charge the first 8 hours charge.

 

The Answer : @ngakaks silakan hubungi ACSC terdekat untuk dipastikan apakah benar baterai mengalami kerusakan.

Translation : @ngakaks please contact your nearest ACSC to make sure whether the battery is damaged.

ACSC : Acer Customer Service Point

 

It's now at 27%... it just goes on and on... I'll hit 100% within a few weeks

Yes it doesn't last as long... this is a major problem. If this is a problem with all the the new timelines they have to recall the batteries


EDIT: I talked to the support at the website where I bought it, they said I could return it until the 23rd. I'll definitely consider it, since Acer still hasn't responded. If it's a software thing, wrong calibration etc. I'll keep it, but it doesn't look like that

 

Why my 3830TG (i5-2410M) runs slower than my 4740G (i5-430M), especially after it wakes up from hibernation.

Also, right clicking on the desktop requires a 1 second busy-cursor on the 3830TG before the menu shows up while it is instant in the 4740G.

Opening Mozilla Firefox 4 also faster on the 4740G..

Will clean Windows installation helps? (my 4740G has clean-Windows installed, rather than Windows that comes from recovery disc/partition on my 3830TG)

 

Me too... 27% now.. Panasonic battery. Yes, Acer (or Panasonic) HAS TO recall the battery or they will lose their customer one by one..

 

I was interested in the 3830TG until i found out about the battery problems. Really sorry some of you guys are suffering through this. If i was in your position and a return was viable i would do it.

 

The thing is, if I return it I don't know which machine to get instead. The other 13 inch SB machines are either much more expensive or heavier. The
Acer 3830 is both thin, light, cheaper and good battery life (IF the battery is not faulty!)

 

i wonder if the wear level is an acpi error and not an actual fault in the batteries themselves.

 

you said it is not lasting as long, but has it reduced by 1/3rd? If you could get 6hrs on power saving power with wifi on, are you only getting 4hrs now?

I think real life numbers are more important than what the software numbers say.

Oh, my advice would be to exchange it. In the face of uncertainty that will at least give you a new unit since you may have lost confidence with this one, and at best reset your warranty so if it is a problem with all the batteries you will know as more data piles in over time.

 

unclewebb: So I finally get some time to try your suggested ThrottleStop setup on my TG3830 runnning GTA4 game....here you can see the results: TG3830-GTA4-ThrottleStopLog-test2.zip

some notes:
-The zip archive contains three logs with different multipliers(21,22,23) set for the second profile.
-For each test I started the game with ThrottleStop on, played couple of minutes to 'warm-up the cpu' and at the end I executed the built-in 'benchmark' mode in the game, then I exited the game and disabled ThrottleStop.

I think the results aren't so bad. With all three mutiplier settings the temperature didn't get higher than 94°C. Ofcourse the lower multiplier tests have a bit lower temps(around 90°C).
ThrottleStop definitelly avoids the laggy 1200Mhz mode dictated by Acer BIOS which is great. Thanks for making such great tool!
And I haven't noticed any significant framerate difference between 21 and 23 mutlipliers (according to the built-in GTA4 benchmark the difference is around 1fps).

BTW I also created very simple visualiser of the log files from ThrottleStop (currently Windows only) so if you are interested you can get it here: ts-graph.zip

 

Huh yeah this seems to be an isolated issue with the newer TimelineX's...

I just checked the battery wear on my 9-cell battery that came with my 5820TG (bought about 6 months ago), only 2.6%.

 

well, it seems i did manage to reset the wear level counter
lets see if it gets me through the day tomorrow

 

How did you do that??

 

Thanks for taking the time to test ThrottleStop. The warning message scares some people but the reality is that ThrottleStop gives you a lot better control of your CPU and you can set it up however you like.

Those sudden drops to 1200 MHz were killing gaming performance. ThrottleStop lets you work around this problem while keeping the CPU core temperature below the Intel specified thermal throttling point so it should be perfectly safe for long term use.

Your little graphing app is handy too. If I ever have the time and motivation, I'm thinking about adding in a graphing option to ThrottleStop. Maybe someday.

 

turned off the critical shutdown in windows and let it drain
the battery stopped depleting at 6% and stayed there for an hour
since i had 14% wear thats 20% charge alltogether and my usage scenario (web browsing) took aproximately 5% every quarter hour, so that was the proof that the battery actually holds the extra charge it reports as wear
lets see if it stays there for a few days but at this point im fairly convinced that the battery wear we are experiencing is actually an acpi reporting error in the bios

shocking

 

I sorta experienced the same thing. Did a calibration the other day, and I also turned off critical shutdown. It reached 0% and stayed there for 45 mins. I was able to browse for almost an hour at 0%. I'm doing one more calibration now to see if the wear level will change, and also to see if it will allow me to use the machine beyond 0% battery

 

acpi just reports what the battery tells it. I.e. if the battery says its last full charge was to 75% rated capacity, acpi can't tell otherwise. When you discharge the battery nearly all the way, the BATTERY reports the new last ful charge correctly. As you use the battery, if it doesn't keep track of discharge / recharge current then it gets out of whack. I'm thinking this is a weird issue with the battery circuitry.

 

Ok so it's at 0% now, and it just keeps on going while posting this...

 

Your CPU can run all day at 94C. That was the stock temp on my I5-450M with crappy factory paste job. It is still 10C under the Max temp and 6C under the normal throttle temp.

Bronsky

 

My eMachine D620 did the same thing the first 4 or 5 times I ran it all the way down. It's a good thing, since you have more capacity than the battery thinks it has. Hopefully it'll "learn" and the lost capacity issue will go away over time.

 

I use throttle stop a bit on my 3820TG to make sure I get max speed when video editing and converting works well. Keeps that multipler at the highest. I didn't really have any issues but i find it helps.

@ Bronsky, being 3820TG vets and still loyal to our 3820 TG's are you going to upgrade to the 3830TG? Or sideline it and wait for the next timeLine. I'm thinking of going with a (heavy ) But high spec'ed HP dv6t i7-2820QM 6770 2GB ATI and 1080p anti glare screen. I'm after a 1080p screen so i have eqaul desktops in dual screen mode. But I will NOT sell my beloved 3820TG here as the HP has no 3G.

Also does the 3830TG have a UTMS 3G mobile broadband option? Would love to slap a Gobi 3000 UTMS in it for 21mbps 3G via my simcard.

 

Well I used the machine for 1h and 10 mins while I was at 0%. Right now I'm charging to 100%, and will see if the wear level changes. If not, then I'll probably return it tomorrow. Maybe I'll pick a 3830 again, since not all of them have faulty batteries, and I could be lucky...

I don't know what else to get. The 3830 is the best in price/performance ratio right now

 

you know, id be willing to ignore the throttle issue and even if ALL batteries were crap as long as i could buy a replacement on my own. But like u ellio i see there are very little other options. I can afford to wait a little to see what LLano laptops show up.

 

I charged it to 100% before I went to bed, woke up this morning and saw that it had gone down to 88%, ?