Acer TimelineX 3830/4830/5830 T/G

Hi,

i´m thinking about buying me a 3830TG. But unfortunately I´m not sure about the throtteling question. I would like to use the notebook on the one hand for office and job applications (graphical designing, programming) and on the other hand if time is enough for games. So in the end i think i would need the maximum performance of this notebook. I read maybe the last 50 pages of this thread in order to find some answers to the overheating problem. What i understood (and i`m not a native english speaker) so far is that one option is to dismantle the hole thing and put some new heatsink paste under the cpu and maybe graphic chips. But in the end i guess this would cool down the hole thing at something arround only 3° in average. Could someone who did this write something about its success?
Another thing would be the installation of additional heat sinks above the heatpipe which leads to the fan. In case of the 3830TG i can´t imagine this would be very succesfull, because there seems to be some kind of plastic or ceramic envelope arround the heatpipe, which doesn´t transfer very much heat to an additional sourrounding heatsink. And if so could someone tell me about what amount of temperature (approx.) the notebook is cooled down aftwerwards?

What I personally thought now first that it might be possible to remove the hdd or ssd and put instead an additional fan inside its place, because according to the pictures i have, there seemes to be the graphic chip just underneath it, according to:
http://lh3.ggpht.com/-w9Ra1ehPAwo/Tiu7lgchfnI/AAAAAAAAEoI/RUSj2MIvYWU/3830TG-6431_Teardown_001_Screws%25255B7%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800
You could then boot the system from a usb 3.0 stick which still should be fast enough.
But the question would then be, if on the mobo is an additional connector to connect another fan.
Secondly I came to the idea that maybe this fan
STARTECH COMPUTER PRODUCTS - NBFAN - External Notebook Cpu Cooling Fan
could provide additional cooling support. But the question here is if the output slit of the notebook is big enough to install this new fan and if so, would it better the situation very much? Did someone try this fan already or would do it?

I´m very tense to hear your answers

 

Why is it so hard to find the 3830TG in the United States?

 

After reading several posts about the throttling problem, it seems that the 4830tg model fare better than 3830tg (most likely due to more surface area and such). Well going a step further, i have just ordered a 5830tg model, do any of you own a 5830tg, if so are there still problems with the throttling issue.
Also I heard that the 5830 has a longer battery life than other models and reviews consistently quotes it as 8 hours of web surfing use, 12 hours of idle, are these figures perhaps too optimistic? All in all, I'm pretty pleased with myself at the moment, hopefully it will stay that way.

 

The complete review from notebookcheck.net

 

key point:

 

SSD + HDD inside?

How can you have both an SSD and HDD in the 4830TG?


.

 

HDD caddy instead of an optical drive.

 

Where can you buy one of those that will fit the AS4830TG? I've seen them for Macbooks.


.

 

On ebay.
However, the Acer power management software is buggy and thinks the HDD is still an ODD. It keeps turning it off as soon as it's unused, parking the head and stuff. If you uninstall it, autonomy loses a lot. So I'm still looking for a good solution !

 

Has anyone updated the cpu in their AS4830TG yet?

Can it take an i7 quad core, and if so, which one would people recommend?

The i5-2430 is listed at 35 watts, while a quad core i7 runs at 45.

Finally, can the memory be expanded beyond the listed 8 gb? Is it relative to what the cpu itself can take, or how much the individual system is set up to take? Intel lists the i5-2430 as supporting up 16 gb of memory.


.

 

I have an i7 2720QM in my 3830TG, I would assume that a 4830TG would be able to take i7s as well.

 

Any problems w/heat?

I've seen a tear down of the 3830TG, but no 4830TG.

Thanks


.

 

Anyone know the average sustainable multiplier in throttlestop for the 3830 with the 540M and i3-2330M?

 

16-17 maybe. 10char

 

is there such a thing - like a secondary pci-e slot - in 5380tg? just thinking about this, without tearing apart the device by myself. has anyone checked this?

 

Has the service manual of 4830 and 5830 models been released?
Can someone share it?

 

I've set my multi at x19 temps seem okay when using prime95

 

Hey guys I've been a lurker for the past few days and I just picked up a Canadian 3830tg with and i3 and gt 540m. I swapped the hdd with a Corsair Force 3 and am in the process of reinstalling Windows 7. Ive done some of the basic mods such as the nickel and dime one on overclock.net posted by reflex. I even purchased some thermal paste in order to complete rbl's heatsink mod. However im quite scared of dismantling it since I tend to be quite clumsy. Any other mods or recommendations I should use to turn this little lappy into a beast? Mostly gonna just play League of Legends. Gonna go read through the rest of the posts later on tonight

 

Well guys, unfortunately this is not a story that ends well. My 3830TG would crash on a blue screen in the nvidia driver almost every time I tried to run a game (but not every time - quite confusing). I tried a clean install and all available drivers supporting the GT540M, to no avail. I'm pretty sure that the issue was hardware-related.

However I can confirm that there is no throttling on battery on this notebook, for whoever might be interested by this; so if you got a working one, gaming on battery offers the same performance as on AC power.

Anyway, I got fed up of looking for a small notebook with a decent discrete GPU which would fit my purposes, and after having returned an Asus N45SF and an MSI X460DX, I had to return the 3830TG as well.

I now got myself a used 3820TG for a decent price, just like in the old days.

Thanks to all who took the time to answer my many questions!

 

I just ordered an i7-2720QM for my 4830TG. I also ordered some IC Diamond T/C as well.

I don't want to disassemble my 4830TG any more than I have to, so I figure if I'm going to take it apart to re-apply T/C, I just as well replace the cpu now while I have it open, rather than later.

I wish there was a tear down of the 4830TG someplace, but I can't seem to find one. I'll try to get some pictures taken as I upgrade mine.

I've already upgraded my memory up to 8 gb, though I went w/1333 MHz. I'm going to pull that and return it for some 1600 MHz instead, since my new cpu supports it. This weekend, I also plan to upgrade my HD to a SSD.

Update: I updated the memory from that rated at 1333 MHz to 1600, and the system sees the speed. I just read here, w/a later posting, of someone running up to 16 gb successfully, so I might return my 8 gb and exchange it for 16 gb. I also purchased a 120 gb Corsair Force GT SATA3 SSD (555 mb Read/515 mb Write). It's noticably faster than the HD, w/the Windows Experience Index going from 5.9 to 7.9.

.

 

The only laptop that really beats the 3820TG for me is the Sony SA with i5 2430M and AMD 6630M GPU. Since the CPU does not throttle under load, and the GPU is generally overclockable to at least 6650 speeds, it's a bit faster than the 3820TG and has a 1600x900 screen. While it was going for $950 or more a few months ago, it's $799 at newegg now.

Backlit keyboard, metal chassis, 900p screen, decent GPU in a 13" machine are some of the nicer features of the SA.

 

Has anyone thought about removing the black paint from the cpu/gpu heatsink, especially at the radiator end? The paint can restrict heat transfer.

I've seen coins being added for more surface area, but have yet to see the paint being removed.

 

I haven't seen anything yet that tempts me to replace my 3820TG. You're right though, I would probably choose the Sony over the 3820TG if the GPU can be reliably overclocked and I was buying new. I find the Acer's excellent cooling system difficult to give-up.

 

Got the 4830TG-6450 from Amazon about a month ago. Ran Furmark 1.9.2 and yes, the CPU does throttle after a few minutes to ~1100 MHz or so.

Prime95 by itself does some slight throttling after the 75 C mark as well, but nothing that prevents me from leaving simulations running w/ full CPU utilization. My CPU idles at around 41 C.

That being said, I'm not a gamer, I'll be using the GPU to prototype/run CUDA code, so the throttling won't be an issue for me, as I won't be pushing the machine to its limits often. For anyone interested, NVIDIA Parallel Nsight 2.1 can debug CUDA code locally on this laptop.

As another aside, I was able to use 2 8GB DIMMs to get 16 GB RAM on this machine. I bought it from Newegg (Patriot brand had a rebate), now Corsair has an instant discount, go figure, haha... linky:

CORSAIR 16GB (2 x 8G) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333

Lastly, my other upgrade was a 9.5mm Blu-ray burner, a Mata (Panasonic) BD-RE UJ242 drive. I am convinced there are no Blu-ray combo drives available in a 9.5mm factor yet, or they are not in stock anywhere. Mine was a Lenovo branded unit... got it from eBay, shipped from China, took about 11 days via EMS. Last time I looked there were no US sellers for this item (or the UJ232, a very similar Blu-ray burner which also fits) I tried the Blu-ray burner out by playing a Blu-ray/DVD/CD on Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 and worked good.

The one caveat was that I was using the latest NVIDIA developer drivers (285.86) because I was using Parallel Nsight . WMP did not want to play DVDs and PowerDVD refused to play Blu-rays until I replaced these drivers with the latest consumer 285.62 drivers. It seems that the developer drivers do not identify that the laptop has an internal display, so it borks the playback. Nsight warns about the consumer drivers not being the right version, but they seem to work well to debug.

My final comment is about the Bluetooth module. I thought it was dead until I hit the Fn+F3 combo and that enabled it -- I had done a fresh install on a new 7200 RPM HDD and left the original Caviar Blue as a backup.

Lastly, link for picture of the Blu-Ray ROM drive features, and Windows recognizing 16 GB of RAM:
http://oi41.tinypic.com/8xrhqp.jpg

Edit: I installed Ubunto 11.10 today, along with ironhide -- I tried bumblebee but it complained about not finding the NVIDIA kernel module... ironhide worked at the first try, so stuck with that. The ironhide configuration suggests 2 profiles for the 4830TG, the one confirmed by most users unfortunately caused a kernel panic on my machine -- presumably because it attempted to disable/enable the card, but the second without this functionality worked flawlessly. I selected fb (framebuffer) mode when prompted for NVIDIA to Intel rendering.

The CUDA SDK examples that don't render to the display run correctly without any modifications. The graphical ones run fine when prefixed by 'optirun' -- that's how ironhide/bumblebee both work.

 

The SA/SB is a very nice machine, but with one caveat: the touchpad. The touchpad is not sensitive enough from my testing even after going through the settings, and you will notice this more in games if you use the touchpad, where you will find that you need to press down with your finger much harder to get a response, which can be annoying if you're going to be using the touchpad for long periods of time.

In addition, the touchpad buttons on the SA(Maybe the SB as well?) are incredibly stiff to my tastes, just something to try out for yourself.

As far as 3dmarks/dollar goes in 13.3 inch systems, I have yet to see a better deal than the 3830TG. 10k 3dmark scores when OCed in 13.3 inch frames=beast.

To provide stability data with the throttling on the 2310M, My 3830TG with the 2310M is game stable at a throttlestop multiplier of 19.

I chose the 2310M model with the Elan touchpad rather than the 2330M model with the synaptics touchpad as the Elan touchpad's surface has much less friction than the Synaptics.

 

Hey all, I installed a modded BIOS and in my idiocy attempted to disable the intel display driver. The IDE, i think?
So now there is no display, and I'm attempting to take it apart and reset the BIOS by removing the CMOS. Can anybody provide any assistance?
Such as any alternatives or what the CMOS even looks like?

Thanks!

 

An easier fix rather than clearing CMOS might be using an undocumented recovery procedure for the BIOS itself... see if one of these recovery techniques works for you:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/480992-acer-laptop-phoenix-bios-bios-mod-request.html
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/th...d.-Use-andy-s-tool-to-obtain-possible-names.?

Using Andy's Tool, the BIOS recovery filename (if the generic doesn't work) for the 4830TG is: P4LJ0X64.fd -- I just ran the tool to check it.

I only know all this because I was attempting to enable the GeForce 420M as discrete in my last Acer 5745G-7741, but even though I could modify the value and rebuild the BIOS, I got a black screen as well, but was able to restore mine with the mydigitallife forum post -- I had actually looked at it before I tried flashing the BIOS. Lesson learned, leave the BIOS alone.

Edit: Even more comprehensive instructions:
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/870-Bios-Recovery-Procedures?p=26249&viewfull=1#post26249

Edit 2: If all else fails, you could always get a new BIOS chip: http://www.ebay.com/itm/170516026488, but that could require soldering as in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZecyEGjoH4

 

Just a note before you buy the brand new SA (especially SA3), it does not support SATA3 & it's fan is much more noisier than 3830TG (and that's why it doesn't throttle). The screen is higher in resolution, but poorer in color, may be because of the matte coating. The battery life is also half on the SA, having secondary slice battery is a must.

My SA is overclockable up to HD6730M speed, no problem with that, it even beats the 3DMark score of the brand new Alienware M14x.

The one that I miss from the 3830TG (now having SA), is the touchpad gestures, there's no doubt the Synaptics has better gestures & smoother operation in gestures (to get the two-finger scrolling on the SA you have to get driver from other sources, it even can't go as smooth as the 3830TG), the 3830TG also has better acceleration, going from corner to another corner is done by little flick, and when you need precision, just moving slowly and the pointer moves slowly, that makes me sometimes forget that the touchpad on the 3830TG is rather small, may be that's why the SA has much larger touchpad, so there's no problem with the acceleration, just need some getting-used-to.

The sensitivity is configurable, my SA doesn't have any problem with that.

The button is definitely not better than the 3830TG, but it still acceptable, at least not as bad (and noisy) as my ASUS K43U.

Overall, these things may be a deal-breaker if you want to move from 3830TG to VAIO SA:
- Speaker is much worse, don't expect Dolby to work as good as the one on the 3830TG, think your iPhone's speaker, just made stereo here.
- Battery life is half from the 3830TG, only last 3-4 hours with Battery Care enabled. Battery Care stops the charging when it reached 80%.
- No SATA3 support, only SATA2 supported. I haven't tested the SATA3 vs SATA2, so I put it here to caution.
- nVIDIA Optimus, if you always switch between nVIDIA and Intel GPU frequently, you'll find the graphics switching on the SA is much worse, you have to wait for around 3-5 seconds for the switch, and you have to close all apps that uses GPU before the switching happens. However, I only switch once or twice a week so that's not a problem for me.

These things are not dealbreaker:
- Touchpad, you'll get used to in some weeks
- The fan is much more noisier, but that what's keeping the SA from throttling. If you want to make the fan less noisy, you can reduce the max CPU in the Power Options (no ThrottleStop needed here).
- Design, yes the 3830TG looks more eye-catching, but you won't get the 3830TG plasticky feel on the SA, so over time you'll understand it
- Price, the SA has gone down very low nowadays, you can get one from $899 for the i5-2430 model.

I recommend to get the Microsoft Store's SA instead of Sony Center's SA. The Microsoft Store version has much less bloatware, and includes the slice battery. So you don't have to do a clean install on the SA. The amount of bloatware is less than the one that is included on the 3830TG.

 

What I got my SA for is a portable workstation because I work from home, and the higher res screen was a big part of my decision. honestly, I kinda wish I'd gotten either the SE with 1080p screen or an HP Pavilion dv6 with 1080p or maybe even a Sager 5165 etc. However, I really do like the smaller form factor a LOT, so that's the compromise I made for size.

The color saturation and contrast are really terrible on the SA. I bought a $300 Toshiba L735-S3 series from Microcenter for an old friend for Christmas, and while it's of course 1366x768 and not 1600x900, in every respect except for resolution it has a superior screen. Much darker blacks, much better color saturation and so on. If I sit one next to the other playing the same show, the little cheap toshiba is the one to watch.

I get the feeling Sony gimped the quality on the SA screen so it wouldn't compete with the Z. And in doing so they may have lost more sales / money than they gained. If it had a really nice tn screen (75% color gamut or more and good contrast) it would be worth every penny of $1200 or so.

It gets worse on Linux, where there's no actual driver for it, and it's so damned sensitive to tapping that you basically have to just turn it off (sudo rmmod psmouse) to type on it. I use a trackball, so it's no huge loss for me, but if you're thinking of running linux on it that is one big drawback for some folks.

I agree that the slice battery is nearly a necessity. Sony claims a 7 hour battery life but I can't imagine getting that many hours. In linux I get 2.5 to 3 hours tops, in windows I can get about 5 in stamina with wifi off and screen at about 30% brightness. It's so bright to start with that 30% is still pretty bright.

Note that poor battery life in linux is a problem for all 2nd gen core i CPUs. It should hopefully get fixed with the new distros due out this spring.

As someone who spends a lot of my workday typing, the SA slaughters my old Acer 4820TG for keyboard quality. Sadly, I never really reached a point where I genuinely liked the Acer keyboard, it just became somewhat tolerable to me.

BTW, the white / silver SA was selling on Newegg for $799 until they ran out of them. Keep an eye out for refurbs in the next 6 months, I'm sure we'll see them for $600 or so.

 

So I'm probably going to get shot for asking this, but after creating cooling stand for my 3830tg with holes where the air intakes are and a 120mm fan blowing at those and another 60mm fan sucking at the exhaust I can now set throttle stop to 19x with an average temp of 76c and spike that max at 80/81c. I also removed the mesh stuff that was in front of the air intakes. But I think this may have resulted in the internal fan thinking it can turn slower every now and than which is totally not desirable so I was wondering if you know anything that can manually control the fan's speed. Cause after several hours of using all my google skills I couldn't come up with anything.

Also I would like to thank everyone in this thread that was trying to control their 3830, you were the ones that prevented me from giving up on gaming on this thing all together.

 

Hi there
I have just picked up a 3830 to trial as a laptop to us for a very intensive large library program, for use on the road.
It takes about 60 second to load on my 2 year old desktop (intel quad core 2.4 ghz, SSD windows performance score 7.0) The thing is basically indexing about 8 GB of data, and then searching etc
This means it want balls to the wall performance from the CPU for a short burst time, then it has some time to to cool while I read or work with the results.

My questions (yes I have read most of this thread - apologies if I missed something):

1) Am I right in thinking I DONT want to install the 1.7 bios update as it will limit the cpu from going as hard in short bursts which is my application- or is it smarter than that?
2) On cooling...the issue is getting the heat out of the case..has anyone tried fabricating an aluminum bottom cover to replace the plastic one? This might mean the extra heat sinks/coins might do more? Then the heat really would have a chance of exiting the enclosure instead of building up in the MB area.
3) Has anyone tested with the bottom cover off and a fan blowing on the guts...I read somewhere there is a cover switch you would have to defeat to try this...it might be a first step at seeing if the aluminum bottom idea is a starter/nonstarter.

 

Why don't you increase the multiplier in ThrottleStop?
May be when the CPU runs over 90c (by increasing the multiplier in ThrottleStop) the fan will run faster.

 

I keep my laptop connected to a usb powered notebook cooler, however when I put the laptop to sleep the usb power stays on and keeps the cooler running.
Has anyone tried to disable the usb ports when the laptop is in sleep mode?
I've looked at the bios and didn't see any options for usb. Also the power management is set to allow the laptop to turn off usb power.
Thanks!

 

Well I want to try to keep the temps bellow 80C to prevent the solder from melting and hardening too often so I won't have to resolder (if that is even possible) my gpu in a years time.

 

I think it is standard on every laptop. All my laptop the USB always powered when sleep/standby, you can just unplug the cooler to prevent it from running, if you concern about the USB port wear, you can unplug the one between the cable and the cooler, instead the one between the cable and the laptop

 

I've been doing some overclocking, and I've got mine game stable at 850/1700/975 with a 17x multiplier, and temps reach a maximum of 83C.

I can't get 3dmark06 to complete with those numbers, though. The below image shows the highest I can get 3dmark06 to complete with, 850/1700/956 with a 18x multiplier. 9253 3dmarks without any mods.

 

AMD Radeon HD 6730M (O/Ced sony SA) : 23075 / 15492 / 7918 / 3752

NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M (regular m14x) : 26417.7 / 18199.3 / 10453.2 / 4847.1

So, it can even be o/c as well, and I guess it has an i7 instead of the i5...
I think you're confused about something here, Sony SA, even o/c to its limits, cannot compete with any alienware, even the 11" one.

 

Thinking about getting a 3830TG (i5-2410m, 4GB ram, GT 540M, 120GB SSD) or 4830TG (i5-2410m, 4GB RAM, GT 540M, 750GB 5400 rpm HDD) and just want to ask a few questions want a few quick reviews/opinions. Would you recommend this laptop?

The 4830TG has USB 3.0 Ports right?
Does this overheat quickly? and if so does it get really hot?

Its either one of these two laptops/MSI x460dx/Lenovo E420 which I will probably be getting so just trying to decide.

Thanks!

 

I hate to steer you away from the TimelineX, but the MSI X460DX-008US looks pretty sweet! Walmart has it for $718, and MSI has an $80 rebate valid for 'All Resellers' http://alimcomputer.com/images/jan_2012_msi_rebates.pdf

And yes, the 4830TG has 1 USB 3.0 port. It throttles, but the notebook overall does not get that hot, at least in my experience.

I'd bite if I hadn't with my 4830TG already. =) I also saw your post in the x460DX thread, haha.

 

Hey guys, what is the maximum amount of ram the 3830TG can support, and at what MHz? I'm thinking of upgrading as long as I've got all these screws off.

I saw somewhere someone upgraded to 16 GB ram? Is this possible? I don't want to spend a ton of money for it to not work.

Thanks!

 

That might have been me. I have 2 8GB DIMMs in my 4830TG, I assume that you should be able to do the same with your 3830TG.

This 8GB DIMM has a rebate now:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233216

 

Which CPU do you have? I was under the impression that core i5 2nd gen could only do 8 and core i7 2ng gen could do 16. it would be pretty cool if 2nd gen core i5 supported 16

 

Hi, thank you for you response

I would actually be buying the MSI laptop in Australia, so slightly different specs and different price: i5 2430m, 4Gb ram, 640GB HDD, GT 540M/2GB VRAM

and for about the same price as I can get the MSI for, I can get a 3830TG (i5 2410m, 120GB SSD, 4GB RAM, GT540M) or the 4830TG (i5 2410m, 4GB RAM, 750GB 5400rpm HDD, GT540M, it is also a bit cheaper than the MSI or the 3830TG)

So would you still go for the MSI over two acer and if so, why?

 

Have the one that comes stock with the TimelineX AS4830TG-6450 -- an i5-2430M. No need for i7 for 16GB

For what it's worth, I tried the 8GB sticks on an older 1st gen i3-370M Acer AS5745G-7671 and even though the BIOS detected it fine, Windows rebooted with a BSOD and Ubuntu kernel panicked when doing a RAM test from the OS. Memtest also rebooted the machine, so that experiment failed, ha.

Edit: I did a second experiment, with an Acer AS7741G-6426, this one has an i5-480M, also 1st gen. Windows rebooted w/ BSOD in the same way, as did memtest. Seems like only 2nd gen processors can handle more than 4 GB of RAM per slot.

Welcome =) Ah, got it, I missed the AUS part. Do you intend to game on the laptop? If so, I'd steer towards the one that doesn't throttle -- the MSI. Otherwise, it's a matter of personal opinion and/or what you want to do with the system.

Another thing to consider... do you care for an optical drive/spare bay or not? One thing to keep in mind is that the optical drives for both the MSI and 4830TG are 9.5mm in height, which is fine, you can get caddies for an SSD/HDD or a Blu-ray burner upgrade if you desire, but I haven't seen any Blu-ray combo drives, as I mentioned before.

Also, keep in mind that I have not seen the MSI in person, haha. I just wasn't aware of it until I saw your post. If it was me I would have gone with the MSI w/ 2GB of VRAM just 'cause it'd be useful to have the extra RAM for CUDA simulations, but for the average gamer that won't matter.

I don't have an SSD in my 4830TG, I might upgrade in the future once prices go down or I snag a good deal for one as a primary drive, but with a 7400 RPM drive I got for it (kept original for backup purposes) it seems to run pretty smooth in both Ubuntu 11.10 and Windows 7. Hope that helps!

 

As for the gaming+throttling issue, I'd still heavily consider the 3830TG-you're almost guaranteed scores of 8000+ in 3dmark06 along with the corresponding performance that provides. Overclocking gives scores of 9-10k. The only requirement is dialing down the cpu performance with throttlestop to stay within the thermal limits, but once you've got that you won't think twice about it.

 

Is the throttling issue a real hassle (as in is using throttlestop a hassle?). Is it easy to do and is it really only when your gaming that it is necessary? And how big a issue is the battery being built-in, is it easy to open up and replace the battery in case, it stops working (outside the warranty period) ? And how is the sound from the fan etc?

 

Hi guys, i come back here with a little problem...

Has any of you manage to send HD audio stream (like DTS HD or Dolby trueHD) from a 3830TG to a home cinema amplifier with bitstream (to let the amplifier decode the stream)...

When i plug the computer on the amplifier (which is a Onkyo TR-607) the audio panel tells me that the amplifier can only decode standard DTS or dobly digital...
But the amplifier manages HD audio streams without any problem, i tested it with my other computer and my multimedia player...

I'm guessing it's a driver problem but i can't find any newer drivers than the one i have (conexant HD audio 8.54.1.55)

Maybe some of you will have an idea for me... It's the first problem i get with this computer (except heating) which is imo a very good computer!

Thanks in advance...

 

Maybe if you try feeding the audio through the hdmi port it will work, to do this your receiver will have to be able to pass trough video though.

 

I didn't say it but i used of course the hdmi port to test this.

EDIT : i may have found a solution on another website...

It seems the problem comes from hdmi drivers. Someone syas that manually installing hd audio drivers from intel in place of the standard microsoft one works, i'me testing it right now and letting you know if it works...

 

8.54.17.51 Conexant drivers -- see if those resolve the issue -- they were on Acer's support site for the 3830TG:
http://global-download.acer.com/GDF...p3=ASPIRE 3830TG&OS=ALL&LC=en&BC=ACER&SC=PA_7

I don't remember if the Intel video drivers had an HD audio driver, so here are the latest ones for those:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...g&OSVersion=Windows 7 *&DownloadType=Drivers

Lastly, here's the latest NVIDIA drivers, which might also make a difference -- pick the 64-bit if you're running Windows 7 64 bit:
64 bit: http://www.geforce.com/Drivers/Results/39066
32 bit: http://www.geforce.com/Drivers/Results/39065