Acer TimelineX 3830/4830/5830 T/G

lol.... another way to see it would be that only machines which won't throttle can actually be used as gaming machines

 

Well, it reminded me of a phrase an employee of a really huge store in Germany told me once: "The cover of the game says a PC is required. So of course it won't run on a notebook as it is no PC."

 

My 3820TG does not throttle playing Medal of Honor. B3 beta is released on the 29th so i'll let you know if it throttles then. I think that tech's comment is crap. You should ask him why Acer put an inadequate cooling system in the 3830TG, which IMO makes the unit defective. A properly designed system should not have to throttle to allow the CPU to perform in it's intended range.

 

Does anyone know if the new Macbook Pros are a safe choice now? I heard they also had throttling issues, which were resolved by adjusting some parameters.

 

I've been playing around with the Ubuntu 11.10 Betas and there are nvidia drivers available to download in the app center. And theres an app called Bumblebee or something that lets you switch between discrete and regular graphics. The only thing is I keep having boot problems and I can't really test anything.

 

Where is it in the BIOS? I already checked but I didn't see it anywhere.

Doesn't seem to be a distro issue... Why would we be getting less battery life with Linux vs Windows?

 

^did you disabled the nVidia ? I recall need to use acpi_call to disable it..

 

The 3830TG-6412 (i3-2310m, 4GB, 750GB) is going on sale this weekend for CDN$429 in Canada.

Couple questions. I did search the thread but I didn't see anything ... of course I suspect the search might not be working properly.

1. How is the i3 flavour of this laptop with respect to throttling? Judging by the Anandtech comparison of Optimus vs AMD switching ( AnandTech - Mobile GPU Faceoff: AMD Dynamic Switchable Graphics vs. NVIDIA Optimus Technology ) the i5 pegged at 2.1GHz performs quite respectably. If the i3 can be kept at similar levels it would be good.*

2. Has anyone got a source on US keyboards? The Canadian models come with the "failingual" keyboard with the defunct left Shift and Enter keys. Don't care about backlit vs non, just ANY US keyboard. Edit - MyMicro is getting some, but as it's a new model the cost is $39 + $15 shipping.

 

Because original drivers and power softwares are not meant for linux, so that you have to use less efficient replicas.

 

u hav 2 update ur bios..the stock v1.02 does not support disabling nVIDIA GPU in the BIOS

 

The disable-option came with 1.04, I think. I've used 1.05 most of the time.

A big store in our city is selling the 3820TGs now for 699 Euros. Two months ago, I would have wanted one in exchange for my 3830TG. But as Acer and my online store refuse to refund me and I might need to take a lawyer for that, Acer is no longer an option.

 

so, after many tests: the s/pdif is optical. as hardware, acer x830 will require a mini-toslink adapter. the optical output will not be active until is used in some way, also will not be active until the mini-toslink adapter is inserted (i used an adapter with metalic head).
set up the sound in windows 7, accordingly , setting s/pdif output as default (speakers will not work after this). the driver will allow recompression to ac3 (dolby digital) for any sound source, or passing stereo PCM - both suitable for music, for example. but when it's about movies and original soundtrack (DTS, etc) - the player / codec must be set to passthrough. i can confirm that stereo pcm up to 96khz, any ac3 and 5.1ch DTS 96khz will be sent over s/pdif just ok.

 

What's so bad about your 3830? Unless you're using it to play video games all the time, I think it's a great machine still.

 

Another new 3830 i5 owner here to join the club. Don't have too much to add, other than I got all the same issues as everyone else: Throttling, crazy battery wear on the Panasonic battery (12% after only a couple weeks), and a crap screen.

I'm able to game at around 20x in TS with the PC lifted off the table for airflow (although I've not really tried any true 4 core games like BFBC2 or GTAIV). So far I've OC'd the GPU to 740/935 (via Afterburner ... much better than NV system tools) stably, probably push it a bit further as time goes on. Other than the annoying throttling, battery wear, and the crappy screen, I'm really quite happy with this little unit, which so far I've only used for gaming and web surfing.

I'm also running the 275 drivers from lv2go, as the latest directly from nV caused my gpu usage to constantly fluctuate from 0 to 53% usage every second, which in turn caused the GPU to stay at full 3d clocks (and presumably voltage) at all times, even when not in use. Clearly this is far less than optimal, but the drivers from lv2go don't have this problem so I'm staying w/those for now.

So, the spdi/f is OPTICAL? That is really trippy, I've never even heard of a mini headphone jack doing optical out. As most people probably know, the best you can get out of an spdi/f connection is a compressed 5.1 signal, such as DTS or Dolby Digital, due to the bandwidth restriction.

In order to get better than that (Dolby HD, 5.1 PCM, etc), you have to use a cable w/more bandwidth ... obviously in the case of this machine, that means the HDMI out. But it's still nice to have the spdi/f option available for certain situations.

I do have a few questions for my fellow members:
1) What are the 'known to work' processor upgrade options on this machine, and has anyone successfully deployed a true SB quad w/HT proc in it? If so, which one, how much was it, and what are the temps like after the upgrade? Would you do it again?
2) Has anyone upgraded their screen to IPS (is that even possible?) and if so, where'd you get it, how much was it, etc?
3) Has anyone deployed a hybrid drive in their machine (Momentus I think they're called), and if so, what do you think in terms of the perf upgrade? Would you do it again?
4) One other (probably stupid) question: could a velociraptor be pulled from it's cooler and used in one of these machines, or are they incompatible? Anyone ever tried?
5) I've seen all kinds of talk of people attaching additional heatsinks to the heat 'pipes' on this unit ... does anyone have any actual before/after tests that show how much this helps or doesn't?
6) Is there such a thing as a portable, external USB 3.0 device that's a combination optical and HDD drive? One of those would be uber cool to grab for this machine.
7) Is an external USB 3.0 HD plugged into this machine fast enough to game off of without a bunch of lag? I've never used a USB 3.0 device yet, so I'm curious if the perf is good enough for that purpose?

Thanks y'all!

 

You're serious? I bought the machine to play games on it. This works for around 5mins, then the throttling makes the device useless. Every 300Euro-Laptop works faster.

It's like your saying: "What is so bad about a Ferrari running at 100km/h topspeed? You can go on a shopping tour without problems and it looks great."

 

if you had it less than refund days the store garuntees, than its your fault for keeping it, but if you didnt lawyer would help. but good luck going against acer =)

 

I disagree, this *should* be considered a manufacturing defect and thus, *should* be opposable to the manufacturer anytime you discover the said defect. Even after 3 months. But still, good luck going against acer

Not so sure about the words I've used here, sorry if this is not understandable ^^

 

All these people complaining about the throttling issue: What's so hard with getting a $15 coolpad?

I bought my 3820 in sig thinking I'll play some games at school or when on the go. I rarely did. The great battery life was well worth the $600 I paid for it though. Seeing how the 3830 costs only $450 though... I'm tempted to make the "upgrade".

 

Is there a link for this deal?

 

In fact, I did use a cooling pad - it had no real effect, delayed the throttling for about a minute. I might redo the whole cooling system, but I'm no engineer whatsoever. So giving it back is the only option for me.

You're telling me that throttling "is okay" without having experienced the real thing on the 3830TG? Get yourself one of these, then we'll talk again If I would have known how bad this device was, I would have taken the 3820TG (which costs the same in Germany).

I'm not going against Acer, as in Germany the manufacturer is not responsibly for its products, as long as no one is physically harmed. I'll go against my online shop. In Germany, shops need to keep their word. When it's written 2300mhz, I can complain as soon as I discover that the product doesn't have these. I can also get my money back for sending it three times to Acer service - even if they do not say its faulty. For the last 3 months, I thought of the throttling as an error, until Acer told me this week, that this is a feature. In my opinion, this is unacceptable. Whichever way I take, I'll get my money back. If I take a lawyer, it's 100% sure. If not, they might tell me more rubbish without doing anything.

Btw, in Germany the 3830TG still costs 700 Euros (944 Dollars).

 

I think you're getting confused with this laptop, am I right? I bought mine for $465 with $65 of coupons, I doubt they'd lower the price that much. Let me know though, I'd like to try to get my price lowered if that's really true.

STAPLES | BUREAU EN GROS

 

Repaste it, use throttlestop at x21/x17 (failsafe profile activated at 7DMT just in case), and just prop the end up and it will run forever. Overclocked the GPU to 790/1000 and it gets 10,000 3dmark06 points- even runs new games like DX:HR around 60fps vsynced with tesselation/ssao off at native res. Crysis 2 runs at 60 fps vsynced as well. Now that I've got it all sorted out it's quite nice.

 

What's with the search function in this forum? I typed in "battery" and "Panasonic" and "Sanyo" and it found nothing!!

How do you find what battery your 3830 has? I just found Battery Bar, tells me battery wear is 5.7% right out of the box. Still don't know which battery it is. Can you "condition" the "battery" like you would with a Macbook? That is, run it all the way down from a full charge, leave it set uncharged for a day, then charge it back up?


Mine will probably go back anyway as there's a dead pixel in the middle of the screen.

 

Search is more or less disabled. We grew so much that vBulletin that we use at the moment can't cope with indexing/searching.
It will be resolved when NBR upgrades to v4. As of now please use google to search the forum.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Bleh, and I was really looking forward to getting one of these. What a shame...


Guess I'll stick with my 4820tg until they work out the bugs.

 

I got the 3830 today and the battery wear is 7.8% on first charge. Is this something that I should be worried about? Should I get the laptop replaced? It seems kinda high for something out of the box...

 

my 3830tg started throttling this week. temps are still the same around 78c max but it never use to throttle before at the same temperature.....

it just locks my cpu at 1.2ghz which is not LEGIT. gonna use throttlestop and see whats up



and the 3830tg is 430 at staples today. doorcrasher deal. i bought mine at 550

 

Man, that pisses me off! That means I could have used my coupons and gotten it down to like $380 right? Or were coupons a no go?

 

Pretty sure you couldn't use coupons.

BTW Even if this 7.8% wear is true this battery is lasting a really long time. Batterybar keeps going up land down and it's 4:00 right now an 60% left. I'm positive it'd been at least like 1 1/2 hours - 2 hours since I unplugged it (no power save mode, I turned off sleep, screen off and screen dim and wifi on). I'm going to try doing what that person said on the other thread and try discharging it till it says battery low and boot it into bios and leave it there till it dies and recharge it all the way without turning it on. I hope this wear level is wrong (and my wear level doesn't go up).

BatteryBar is saying full runtime = 6 hours and 27 min (right now)

 

doubt u can use coupons with such a crazy deal.


after using throttlestop and forcing max multiplier (21 for 2310m) the temps went up to 83 but everything runs smoothly.

 

Found it on the staples.ca online flyer, copied below. It's an i3 for CAD$429.71. A great price.

 

Do you guys think I should try to get a replacement as BatteryBar says my batterwear is 7.8%? (Picked it up today at Stapes)

 

Oh, that makes me feel way better. Only a $35 difference, and I've had it for a bit now.

So, what tips and tricks are you guys using for Linux? Battery life still sucks...

My battery wear shows at 3.7% I think, had it for a bit now. Only used it like 2-5 hours off the AC though.

How safe is updating the BIOS on this laptop? Pretty safe or not really?

 

Amazing price.

 

I called Acer and asked them to send me a replacement battery (or service this) since it was 7.8%. They guy didn't know what Battery Wear (or BatteryBar) was and he said if the battery lasts 4 hours for email or 2-3 hours for movies/audio than the battery is fine. He said he'll keep that on tab and if it gets worse than call them back later... :|

I guess I could try returning it to staples, but a) I don't want to try to explain to them what batterybar/batteryware is and I don't want to risk getting a laptop with a stuck pixel (which would be 1000000000000000000x worse than this.)

Spoiler

[

 

try to charge to full and discharge the battery a couple more times and see if the wear increases significantly. if it does return it.

this is mine wear. my laptop is plugged in around 80% of the time but ive discharged the battery to 10% about 10times. i highly doubt the program works properly lol

 

I just got it... Ya, I'll try charging it and discharging it a couple of times.

 

Batterycare can detect the brand of battery.

 

as i said, all you need is a mini-toslink adapter (nothing more than a 3.5mm plastic jack, allowing the toslink cable to receive the light) and a toslink cable. s/pdif output will only work with the jack inserted and only when the s/pdif output is set as default in windows sound manager.
the output will be uncompressed stereo pcm or bitstream - usually dts or ac3, not exceeding 1536kbps. some decoders will allow also wma or mp3, but they are very rare. no, you can't pass dts-ma over s/pdif
for bitrates bigger than 1536kbps , hdmi output must be used. many amplituners today have hdmi bypass, etc.

 

you have 0% wear with Panasonic
damn it,i have to discharge/recharge my laptop then

 

I've discharged and recharged once, went from 5.6 to 5.78 wear. Another issue, anyone else find the screen gives a shade of pink where there ought to be gray? Like the border above, rather than being a shade of gray its a shade of pink.

Rebooted the computer, now says 5.15 wear. Says I'm down to 61463mWh which is what I think it said before. Metering isn't exactly accurate.

 

I just did a repaste in order to combat the throttling problem. So far I havnt experienced any throttling, even after hours in fallout new vegas.

I gotta say that repasting this one was a pain in the compared to my old m15x.

The thing is: Now when I turn it on I cant use the "P" button up in the right corner of the keyboard, and also the small LED's dont light up when I turn on capslock.
Im guessing I forgot to reconnect a cable. Does anyone have any pictures of the cable I forgot about? Also how much disassembling will it take to reatatch this one?
Im hoping I wont need to take out the entire mobo again:/

Thanks in advance

 

In Germany, we have to pay twice as much. Around 600 Euros for the i3 version without Nvidia Graphics.
The i5 with Nvidia costs 700 Euros.

 

My Panasonic battery came with 7% wear, reached a max of 9% and now is down to 1.5%. I unplug it to take it to school every day, but it ususally doesn't drop below 50%.
Guess I'm one of the lucky ones.

 

How long did it take to go down?

 

Just read that calibration becomes less accurate not more accurate as time goes on...so the first reading could be right, the next, not so much. Don't know if its true or not, read it here:

BatteryCare - Proper laptop battery usage guide

I'm inclined to believe the readings are totally inaccurate all around.

If you guys had one with a dead pixel in the middle of the screen, 5.1 battery wear (yeah, my wear went down), pinkish screen and throttling...but you paid $429cdn for it, would you keep it or take it back and get a refund? Thinking I couldn't even get a dedicated gpu with a i3 13" for this price so I might be just as well keeping it.

 

I'm probably going to get it exchanged/serviced (send it to Acer) not return it.

 

I would get a matte screen, use throttlestop and forget about the battery.

 

I've had mine for little over a month now, battery wear started dropping about 2 weeks ago. I really don't think it's that much of a problem.
Throttling seems to have gotten worse, not exactly sure why. I think I'm gonna take the little metal covers off the vents soom, and buy a laptop cooler. Right now I can play games at 17 multiplier, would like to bring that up to 19 or so. Although even on 17 I can play just cause 2 and BFBC2 on high graphics.

 

I did it and highly doubt it changed anything, except more dust may come inside.