Acer TimelineX 3830/4830/5830 T/G

The 4830T has no GPU so won't be a good choice for gaming. With judicious use of throttlestop you should be able to get acceptable performance from the 3830TG.

 

Battery Wear still 0,6%.
I didn't charge it 8 hours for the first time, only until it is 100%, then I use it until 84%, then I shut it down.

Disabling the Windows Update service (from service.msc) allows the factory reset in the eRecovery to be clickable, but it only restarts the 3830TG, but not performs a factory reset. Any solution?

Tips:
If you want to get the latest Intel HD Graphics 3000 driver, you can get from 4755G (released this month) official support page, so I hope the driver is the latest one.
Here's the link.

Typed this on 4740G running Ubuntu 11.

 

how long have u had it? im really concerned about battery wear D:

 

Looks like MSI will have some competition for the 4830TG as well. MSI introduces new X460 ultrathin 2x USB 3.0 ports. As long as they don't price themselves out of the market, this might be worth a look.

It looks like Amazon has gotten a shippment of 4820TG's as well. http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Timeline...005Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310408241&sr=8-1 They are the I5-480M/HD 6550 models. Nice!

Bronsky

 

I pulled the trigger and told myself...wth it's cheap and comes with an xbox. I'll post some tests soon.

 

This is exactly the day when I got the battery (7-9-2011).. and the battery wear decreased on the next day.

 

nice! is throttling a big issue on ures?

 

My 3830TG was just "repaired" (cooling/throttling issues) and will arrive the next 2 days. I don't think anythink will have changed, but we'll see.

 

I just bought a Sony Vaio SA, but I'm having second thoughts. Thinking I should've got the 3830TG, for the extra graphics capability. Can the throttling issue be fixed or is it still a crippling feature?

 

The throttling problem can be mostly solved, by using throttlestop and forcing the multiplier to somewhere around 18x. It's not a perfect solution, but it keeps the CPU from dropping down to 800MHz and killing performance.

I'd look at underclocking the GT540M if you don't need all of the GPU horsepower for a game, to keep the heat down. Also if possible, undervolting the CPU as well.

 

@KevanB: I'm getting my 3830TG back tommorow or the day after tommorow. Then I can tell you if they resolved the problem.

It cannot be fixed by a bios-update or anything like that. And I guess it's more like a PERMANENT problem. The only way to play on it, is to use ThrottleStop with the CPU @ 1800mhz (with advanced settings you can get around 2100mhz).

If you can get your hands on a 38 20TG (the predecessor) it might be the best choice. It's running stable even with overclocking and has therefore around 30% more cpu-power than the 3830TG.

 

I was eyeing up the 3820TG, but I need more battery life than it offers.

If the throttle issue doesn't get worked out, I'll probably stick to the SA. The performance of a throttled (w/ throttle stop) 3830TG is probably comparable to an un-throttled Vaio SA. I got a pretty good deal on the SA and I don't mind spending the extra $ for it, it's really only the graphics of the 3830 that appealed to me.

I was also considering a U36SD, but that's been delayed (again! ). It's too bad about this throttling issue, otherwise I'd be dead set on a 3830.

I'm interested to hear your results.

 

The 6630 GPU in the SA is no match for the GT540 in the 3830TG. Even if you underclocked the GT540M to about half it's stock clock speed it will still be faster than the 6630. OTOH, if what you're doing is more CPU intensive then the Sony SA is likely a better choice. note that a LOT of Sandybridge CPU based machines are throttling, some worse than others but it's a very common problem. The 3830TG seems to have it far worse than most tho.

 

Is the 6630m in the SA underclocked? I was under the impression that the amd 6630m was pretty much as good as the nvidia 540m.

 

There must be some misunderstanding here- unless 6630 is in fact underclocked in SA that is. HD6630 is on average 2-3fps slower than GT540M regardless of a game you choose to compare (DIRT3, Crysis 2, CoD BO, BF BC2 etc.) Given that these games run at some 50fps (with the exception of Crysis 2 which is closer to 30fps) it's not a big difference at all.

On top of that 6630 should OC like hell- it's sold @485MHz and it's the same core that is used in 6650, 6730 and 6770 meaning it can get up to 725MHz (with higher voltage no doubt).

 

Good point.

Most references I've seen say the 6630 in the Sony is not underclocked. That said, I wouldn't expect a Sony to be very overclockable. Say what you want about Acer and Asus, but they do make some pretty overclockable laptops, but Sony's are known for not running much faster than stock.

The difference depends a lot on the game and / or the benchmark. The GT540M is about 10 to 15% faster at most older stuff. More modern games they seem pretty evenly matched. I think I'd go for the 6630 even if it was slower for some games because it uses a lot less power, hence should run cooler.

 

The Vaio SA has a 1600x900 display, that's around 40% more pixels than the 3830TG has. Therefore, the graphics seem to be much slower.

Battery life between 3820TG and 3830TG is not that much difference. In theory it should be an hour (8 vs 9). When I used my 3830TG on battery, it ran a bit more than 6 hours.

 

I got on my 3820tg

6 hours on word, wifi off
5 hours of movie, wifi off
4 hours of surfing, wifi on (duh!)

i thought it would be better than that...

3830tg seems to have nearly twice the battery life...

 

Not necessarily true, if you look at what FPS each laptop gets in comparable games they are very close as stated before (within 2-5 fps for most new games). I’ll run some benchmarks to see what FPS the Vaio SA gets at 1600x900, if someone else can run the same test on the 3830TG (at native resolution with same settings)? Not sure what qualifies as a “good” benchmark tool or game for current comparison, I don’t much like comparing 3DMark scores.

Also you have to take into account the decrease in FPS based on the throttling in the 3830TG. It would be interesting to see what results of testing with and without throttle stop. Certainly the results will vary depending on the game, whether it is more CPU or GPU dependent. Regardless of the game there will be some noticeable decrease in performance with the throttling.

 

12 hours, are you kidding? You should read the reviews first. In idle mode it has around 10.5 hours, when working on it with wifi enabled you'll get 6-7 hours. Acer is talking of "8 hours of pure performance".

The battery life is much longer, meaning that you won't have to buy a new one after a year or two, but only after 5 or 6 years. This doesn't work as intended, as many people on this board here are reporting of terrible wear levels after some weeks of use. You don't need to be an engineer to conclude that the massive heat could be responsible for that, but maybe it's just the cells.

 

i read notebookcheck reviews, they might not be accurate, but since I don't own a 3830tg... how can I know?

they said:

Review Acer Aspire 3830TG Subnotebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

 

I've had my 4830TG for about 4 weeks now and my battery wear is good! It was showing 3-4% battery wear for a while, but after I did a full discharge/recharge cycle, it is now showing 0% wear!

Model: Sanyo Li_Ion_4000mA
Designed Capacity: 66600mWh
Total Capacity: 66622mWh
Current Capacity: 66622mWh

So the battery is fine. What sux is the keyboard. I am finding that I need to sometimes really bang the keys. If I touch-type too lightly, the key presses down and feels like it should have responded, but the letter does not appear on screen. This is really annoying!

 

The battery wear problem is a problem of the Panasonic cells. Some people reported that they sent their 3830TG in and got replacements from Sanyo.

In fact, I really love the keyboard. Gonna miss if I will change my 3830TG for a 3820TG!

@Zapperpower: Okay, in idle mode you may get 12 hours. But you are comparing "working with Word on 3820TG" and "Idle mode on 3830TG". 7 hours while surfing might be correct, as long as the notebook ist new. After two years of usage it might loose one hour or two as well. Judging by the advertisements, both models have 6-7 hours of battery life and should therefore be comparable.

The problem could also be your ATI graphics enabled while working, which drains the battery faster. I read of the problem a couple of weeks ago.

 

In addition to what mavo82 said. Having 6 hours or 12 hours of battery life in idle mode doesn't really impact your daily life. You might as well close the lid and let the laptop hibernate/sleep or shutdown if you know you're going to be gone from the laptop for that long.

What really matters is the battery life on the laptop with normal usage. Surfing the web, watching a movie, typing an essay, etc. In this situation, the 3820TG and 3830TG will have similar battery life if not a few improvements here and there.

 

As for the battery cell manufacturers- from my experience over the years with many laptops (and I do pay attention to battery manufacturers) the best ones come from Sanyo and that has been the case for years now.
The worst tend to be Sony ones- apparently Panasonic wants to join the club.

So if you have a choice or you're looking for a spare battery- always go for Sanyo.

 

My wear level is now at 5.35% after 4-5 discharge cycles. It has been increasing slowly (by about 0.2% - 0.6%) every time I turn on. Is it considered normal?

My battery is Sanyo btw

 

Just got my 3830TG back from ACSC and it seems they don't want to know about my throttling problems:

I properly packaged my notebook when sending it in and got it back in a bigger package, where the notebooks original package just bounced around. They also damaged the original package.

I'll contact my computer store, maybe they'll take it back. (as in fact, Acer is telling me they can't do anything about it)

 

Now you can see why Lenovo just knocked Acer into 4th place for notebook sales.

Bronsky

 

The c't - a famous computer magazine in Germany - made a survey on the service of notebook manufacturers. Lenovo was on one of the last places, as repairs took approx. 3 weeks and some notebooks came back with the same errors and heavy scratches on the surface. IBM was always first, but now that Lenovo took over the Thinkpads, they're unfortunately no more known for best service.

On the opposite, my 3830TG wasn't touched at all by the Acer service. It came back the same way I send it in (even the newspaper pieces were at the very same places!) They only took some minutes to write me an answer.

 

Actually, my experience with both Acer service and Lenovo have been very good. My point about Acer is that the company seems to be its own worst enemy at times. It had a great 13" ultralight that performed perfectly and seems to have ruined it just to save a few bucks and throw NVIDIA equipment into its units. For its service personnel to think it's okay to tell customers that throttling is natural will tell you how little the company appreciates its market. When the last generation timeline was introduced Acer was in second place, threatening to rival HP for first slot in notebook sales, The company seems to have imploded since then. These timelines are very dissapointing.

Bronsky

 

My computer shop agreed to take care of my case, I just need to send in my notebook. It'll take approx. 4 weeks though.

I just complained at the acer online service and asked them to take my notebook and give me my money back. The first answer was: "you should talk to your reseller, we can't do that." Now I explained that my reseller told me to talk to them, because he cannot accept a return without a fault. I asked them to talk with my reseller. Maybe that will work.

But Bronsky, of course you're right. I just took a look a the 4820TG in a nearby computer shop. It's so well designed, I don't understand why they throw a completely new model on the market.

Edit: This reminds me of a case with a sat-receiver manufacturer. The receiver had a system freeze every 10-20 minutes and sent it in. I got it back without a repair, the service center was telling me that system freezes are perfectly normal and no error. I should just dis- and reconnect the power cable, this will solve the problem. Well, I just sent it back The second time they replaced the mainboard and had a new firmware ready, the problem was solved.

 

If this is by design then Acer needs to inform customers that their laptops can not run at their rated speed before the sale. This is like buying a car with a high performance engine and every time you try to go up a hill, you find yourself limping along in the slow lane because your vehicle is overheating and throttling. An automobile manufacturer would quickly have a class action lawsuit on their hands but laptop manufacturers get away with this because not enough consumers complain.

mavo82: Your testing makes it obvious that the cooling system has been inadequately designed so the 3830TG can not run at its rated speed without overheating. Now we know that Acer has no intention of updating the bios or fixing this problem. No surprise. This is no different than the throttling Acer Gemstone Blue laptops that were never fixed either.

 

But that only happens when you use both the cpu and gpu. That means you can use the cpu 100% for hours without throttling, if you're not using the gpu.

So the T models with IGP won't have this problem, am I right?

 

Hi guys quick question about the speaker above the keyboard is it an actual speaker or it's just there to look pretty? Because I bought a 4830tg and it doesn't make any sound, just the speakers below the laptop work. Thanks

 

Does it look like speakers and does it say Dolby Home Theater? If it does then those could be the speakers, but I'm not exactly sure. I do not have the 4830TG, but I can comment that my speakers are located above the keyboard on the 4820TG.

 

there are two speakers placed at the laptops bottom, I'm just wondering about the rim, found between the keyboard and display if it does anything

 

Even with a disabled GPU the system will overheat. The notebooks without the nvidia are mostly Core i3 (at least in Germany they are), they shut down the system at 85°C while the Core i5 allows up to 99°C without shutdown.

It's quite simple: in the 3820TG you had 40-50W power consumption with 2 fans, now you have 70-80W and one fan only. Guess what happens

 

Notebookcheck.net says it's just for "optical enhancement". I'm guessing just for looks.

Speakers

The sound system consists of two speakers that Acer has placed on the notebook's bottom. The rim, found between the keyboard and display, would let you await even more speakers. However, this rim on which Dolby Home Theater is also printed is only an optical enhancement. The sound system doesn't include a subwoofer. The software can't compensate this fact, either.

Review Acer Aspire 4830TG Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

 

thanks I just checked too. apparently only 4830 version has the speakers placed at the bottom, thats so lame lol. I have to lift the laptop to hear the sound full volume .

 

Very good here on 3830TG, It can reach 7 hours, WiFi on, while charging my Samsung Captivate for 4 hours. Althrough charging your phone via USB runs extremely slow, only around 10% increase after 4 hours charging. So I think the USB Power-off charging won't help much unless they put more power in it just like the Gigabyte motherboard on my PC.
Usage condition: Browsing, chatting, PowerSmart on, minimum brightness (indoor use)

Is there much difference between 1600x900 on SA than 1366x768 on SB/3830TG/3820TG/[insert any 13" notebook here except Sony VAIO] ? i'm thinking about SA too when the SA arrives in my country.

 

Well, it's 37% more workspace. But everything is smaller. It depends on your personal taste. I would love a FullHD-Display in a 13"-Laptop, a friend of mine decreases the resolution on his device to 1024x600, because he likes it bigger. Unfortunately, Windows doesn't have any real dpi-switcher.

I just sent a big complain-mail to my online store, asking for a quick solution to my throttling/acer-problems. Sent them some notebookreviews as well, maybe they just didn't realise the size of the problem. Sending it in for 4 or 5 weeks is no option for me at the moment, as I need some mobile device on my holiday trip.

UPDATE: Just got a reply from Acer Service, concerning my mail where I was asking them to talk to my online shop. They just replied: "We can't do anything about a return. Go to your reseller." I used some harder words to tell them, that they SHOULD care, because it is a major problem and if the throttling is intended, it's just lying to the customers - which can, of course, never be their intention. Maybe that'll lure them out

 

I love my 3830tg, period. I played starcraft 2 and was happy with it, even played 4v4 on it. But playing on a laptop is weird because of keyboard config., affected my apm. Of course it gets hot as expected but didnt go beyond 80 deg.

 

If it didn't go beyond 80°C your NVidia Card wasn't properly enabled. With integrated graphics the temps stay mostly below 90°C, but the additional 35W of the Geforce make the CPU throttle after some minutes. No way to evade the throttling, even Acer tells us it's a feature ^^

 

how to check battery wear?

 

and what is the battery life playing video games?

 

Depends on many things:
- Which video game?
- CPU at Acer-Speed or running with ThrottleStop?
- GPU enabled?
- Brightness of the display?

If you're always using the most possible power (Crysis 2, ThrottleStop enabled with dual profile, GPU enabled, max brightnesss), I would say 2-3hours (haven't measured it yet).

EDIT: The tests on notebookcheck.com say 2 hours 33 minutes on gaming, while using around 80W. I compared it to the test of the 3820TG: it uses 67W max, but runs only 1 hour 37 minutes on battery. This sound amazing for the 3830TG at first, but I wonder how they did a 2.5hours-check without throttling. I guess it uses much more power on turbo, and less power while throttling.

 

I'm liking it so far, as I'm used to working on a 1920x1200 desktop. For browsing it takes a bit of getting used to on a screen of this size. For anything else (word/excel, CAD, etc.) the extra resolution helps a lot. It all depends on what you'd like to use the laptop for. You can always turn down the resolution in windows or tweak the font settings, although it won't look as good as a native 1366x768.

One drawback to the larger resolution is gaming, where obviously more pixels need more GPU power to run. I haven't tried running in 1366x768 to see how it looks yet.

I will stick to the SA, so far I'm very happy with the purchase and I think it will last me a long time (my last laptop Asus W3J I bought in 2005 ).

 

In general with the gpu 540, the brightness can be the minimum or average and cpu without any modification TSTOP, if it really works for 2.5h sounds really good, but for some reason to be slowing down performance without providing all the power, with the battery, not I can believe I have a big autonomy in all its power

that if you disconnect the power grid while playing, there is a real performance loss? while having a high performance profile with the battery but the problem=, you encounter this problem? I've seen Packardbell with this problem, not if you have solution?

I do not understand the Packardbell with the same hardware, only has a range of 4h-saving profile, which is the trick used by acer in TimelineX?

 

The trick: CPU running at 800mhz, Nvidia GPU disabled, probably bigger battery and a display using not so much power. With this settings, the notebook uses only 6 to 10W in idle mode.

 

3830tg = refunded. Picking up the asus U46 once its released. The constant throttling (using throttlestop all the time gets annoying), crackling speakers in-game and battery wear proved too much for my patience to handle.