Acer TimelineX 3830/4830/5830 T/G

Guys, i plan to replace my WLAN card (Atheros AR5B97) with the Intel one. I am looking at Advanced-N 6230 and Ultimate-N 6300, which one you recommend (any other brands also welcome)? I dun have much knowledge in this, appreciate if anyone can enlighten me =))

 

Intel 6230 is a two stream (300mbps) card that requires two antennas and has a Bluetooth module on it. 6300 doesn't have BT and is a three stream card (450mbps and three antennas required).

Both are dual band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) but for 6300 to make sense you'd need to buy and install third antenna in your notebook and use a three stream router (which are quite expensive)

 

Your i5 2540m is ES CPU, any problem so far? I am interested in getting it since you mentioned it is faster and less heat generated (after pasting and all that). But i am worried since it is ES...

So i guess it is better to go with 6230 one then...any impact on battery life (worsen/better)? since it comes with BT

 

On battery life- not really but buy it only if you need BT.
There were many cases where 6230 had severely reduced Wi-Fi throughput because BT shares the same antenna. It happened even when BT was disabled.

It's hard to tell if it was a random issue or Dell-related (mostly Dell users reported it) but it's still slightly hazardous to buy one. If you don't need BT got for 6200/6205 otherwise 6230.

 

i installed a 6300, even i don't have the third antenna (pretty nasty job to install it). mostly because i could use it in the future, with acquiring of a 450mbps capable router (or an 802.11ac one) or another laptop, but also because timelinex already have bluetooth 3.0.
as about the power consumption - no problems, intel drivers have excellent power management.

 

on 5830tg (modded .10 bios, no vbios modifications) i found that Intel Rapid Storage Technology reports an unused internal port. without suggesting teardown of my notebook to find - anyone could tell me what could this be?

 

Thanks for the info!!!

 

I have a 4830TG-6808. Recently, I've been having problems turning on my laptop. If it is unplugged, the power light and on light on the front will turn on, I'll hear a click, and then the lights will turn back off. If it is plugged in, it repeats the cycle. I've been able to get the laptop to start up normally by using a paperclip on the battery reset hole, but the problem keeps coming back. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

I haven't encounterd any problems so far and I've been using my laptop more like a desktop as I have it sitting on a cooling pad and connected to an external monitor and have all the following devices plugged in: 4x external hard drives + mouse/keyboard + Xbox 360 controller + USB HD camera + External Super Multi DVD Drive + 1x USB stick and running it 24/7 and I mostly run virtual machines (usually 2 at a time) with 30+ tabs in the browser. I also use it for gaming when I'm not working and my gaming sessions vary from 2 to 8 hours :|

With the rate I'm torturing this laptop, I doubt it will last more than a year xD

 

Thanks for posting those service manuals. I took the liberty of editing first post of the thread and adding both links- I hope the OP doesn't mind.

 

Thanks a lot. This is useful. So far I could not remove the motherboard. I guess I got stuck at the wireless.

 

Is the 4830tg supporting the new mobile Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. Some the quads in this line have 35 W TDP. otherwise I am thinking to put a 45 W Sandy Bridge quad .

 

Thanks for the guide! I have been searching for it. The most i found is from Chinese website (need google translate)
ºê³žAS4830TG ºê»ùacer 4830TGÏêϸ²ð½â ¸ßÇåÃÀͼ·ÖÏí¡¢¹Ø×¢µÄÎÊÌâͼ½â_acer 3830TG 4830TG 5830TGÂÛ̳
ºê³žAS4830TG Acer 4830TGÏêϸ²ð»ú¹ý³Ìͼʾ£¨ÇåÀí·çÉȻҳ¾£¬²ðж¹âÇý£©_acer 3830TG 4830TG 5830TGÂÛ̳
ºê³žAS4830TG Ô­´´½Ì³Ì:4830TG²ð»úÉý¼¶CPU.ÄÚ´æ.SSD.ÎÞÏß+À¶ÑÀÄ£¿é.¹âÇýλ¼Ó×°µÚ¶þ¿éÓ²ÅÌ+ÆÀ²â_acer 3830TG 4830TG 5830TGÂÛ̳

 

No. You're stuck with sandy bridge.

 

Well. I can live with the Sandy Bridge quads as well. I do not really use heavily 4 cores, but I do need the extra cache and beside there is very good turbo boast and the speed lost from the dual core to quad core should be bearable, though I am a little worried that motherboard will burn. The dual cores are rated 35W, while the quads 45W.

 

Mobo won't burn but using 45W CPU with high GPU load on a notebook with known throttling problems might not be a good idea.

 

Just use throttlestop and lock the quad at 1.5 or 1.6, but it seems like a real waste. I've been seriously pondering getting rid of my 3830tg for a similar package with IB quad and keplar graphics. The reduction in thermal output along with increased performance seems worth it.

 

Very nice review. ;-)

Diablo III - Laptop Graphics (Shows Acer3830TG performance)

AnandTech - Laptop Graphics Face Off: Diablo III Performance

 

Wow, that Clevo/Sager torches the competition. Do you think the major improvement from that laptop is based on the GT650M or the i7 (I know they both contribute, but wow that's impressive)? I'm curious how it would do with the i5 in benchmarks.

 

It's mostly due to GPU. GT630M is just a re-badged GT540M although in this particular case OCed by 20%.
If you compare 3830TG with Core i5 and 540M and Asus N56VM with Core i7 and 630M (540M +20%) you will see that Asus is roughly 20% faster which means this game is not that CPU dependent (or at least that CPU in 3830TG wasn't slow enough to be a limiting factor)

 

Hello,

I have some programs which are running quite slow on the dual because of smaller cache.

 

Exactly why I want keplar

 

Clevo laptops are also heavy and noisy and the battery is jut enough to move it from one room to another.

 

w110er does not seem that noisy ingame (more on that in few days ), pretty quiet on cpu-only load, and silent at idle.
It's not that heavy either, less than 1.8kg. Looks like a great machine, and guess what, in 11" it doesn't throttle hehe

 

Has anybody tried putting in a 2629M or 2649M processor? They have a 25W TDP, wondering how much the 25W TDP helps with the temps

 

I am sure that if those cpus are compatible with the laptop they will make a big difference in temperatures and battery life. What about the i7-2677M which has 17 W power. I am curious how games will run with this one. Half TDP is a good reason to change it.

 

Anyone else getting hard crashes after installing new verde drivers? (running .85v v10 bios)

 

Yes, the 301.24 is crashy. Avoid.

 

Glad it's not just me, thanks.

 

somebody already asked this but ill ask too

When you first turn the 3830tg on the fan speeds up to 100% for a second or two which seems to have a lot of cooling power. When running games the fan speed never reaches that speed and it definetly seems that if we can find a way to ramp the fan speed to 100% when gaming we would not have these heat issues anymore!

anybody know of a way to change the fan speed? somebody has to know!

 

I should note that it's the .42, the WHQL which has been giving me problems. Rolling back to 296.xx now, hope it fixes it.

 

hi guys, just asking, because i might get a 3830TG replacement for my 3820T.. is 3830TG able to run diablo 3 without any problems?

 

Yes, you'll just have to reduce the CPU speed to 1.5-1.8 GHz with Throttlestop to avoid throttling.

 

I have an 4830tg. A similar model but a little bigger. I have an i7 and the temps can go up to 100 C and still not downclock. The catch i to get an i7 or an i5 cpu. Those 2 cna operate without problem up to 100 C for longer time, while the i3 will downclock when it gets at 75.

 

^You mean 85C, not 75C. I have the i3 model.

How did you guys manage to get your USB3.0 port to work? I've installed the chipset driver, USB3.0 driver, and USB2.0 driver and I'm still getting the same speeds from my USB3.0 port as my USB2.0 port, with a USB3.0 drive and USB3.0 cable plugged into the USB3.0 port.

 

well, i obtained ~22MB/sec on usb2.0 and ~55Mb/sec on usb3.0, using an WD Passport Essential, 500GB, USB 3.0. you?

 

50MB/s from both the USB2.0 and 3.0 ports, with a USB3.0 drive and USB3.0 cable. I've installed all the relevant drivers so I'm not sure what's going on.

 

Speed depends first on device, then on port.
Maybe your hdd just can't go higher.

 

well, basically you can't obtain 50MB/sec from USB2.0... its maximum theoretical speed is 60MB/sec and it's shared between all devices; from experience, sustained speed (even on SSD-based USB2.0 devices) varies around 30MB/sec, and for large files it will drop to an average of 22-25MBps (all tests mentioned here are about writing speed; reading speed is 25%-35% bigger)

 

I'm not using the built in Windows copy dialogue to measure the speed, since it can be wildly inaccurate. I'm using teracopy to measure the speeds, which is much more accurate, and I'm getting 50MB/s through both.

 

Hi Nedemai,

Thank you very much for this modded BIOS. I'm keen to undervolt and hopefully get closer to solving the heat problem.

I have a 3830TG-2414G12 currently on 1.04. Are there any differences between my model and yours that would prevent your mod working on my machine?

The official 1.10 version has a EC file with it aswell. Is it worthwhile flashing the official package before your mod to gain the benefit from the EC update?

I read there are often problems with trying to rollback Insyde BIOSes to older versions. If I need to return the computer to Acer in the future I will of course have to flash an official 1.10 (3-year warranty included cos the line is about to be deleted ). Do you imagine this would incur the same problems?

General questions to the community:

Do you recommend flashing from within windows using InsydeFlash or from a bootable disk using Flash it? Why one over the other?

Lastly, will the Insyde Crisis disk technique work with our machines? If so what does the filename format need to be for the official binary (P4LJ0110.bin (default) or something else)?

I have tried searching for forum but the function seems to be broken ("invalid_search_string" on every query).

Thanks for your assistance.

Alex

 

as i know, teracopy (and windows commander) are bypassing some windows api, write caching for example.
let's make some test using something more basically - a portable linux distro and hdparm -tT /dev/sd_ (sdb if second drive, sdc if third). will give you a clear result for read speed
otherwise, some extensive tests within windows, using hd tune (pro)?

 

Randomish question:

What are currently the best video drivers for the 3830TG?

I tried the most recent 301.42, and as others report, they are rather glitchy. (also low power states would not properly engage, but that is another issue entirely)

I was using 295.73 before, with less than stellar (albeit, non-gltichy) results.

Now i am back to 267.21 (latest from the ACER site), for no particular reason. Problem here is that many games do not run well with them (namely BF3)

So if anyone has a suggestion as to the 'best' nvidia driver, please let me know.

Thanks

 

I've been using 296.10 for a while and have never experinced any problems. I play lots of Skyrim and Halo 2 but I dunno about BF3.

 

what about battery life?

have you noticed any differences between drivers?

 

Since I use the laptop for some heavy work, I have it plugged in most of the time. But on occassion when I take it with me to school it lasts about 5-7hrs browsing the internet and stuff.

If the battery drains very fast when unplugged, restart the laptop AFTER you unplug the AC adapter. It seems to work for me.

I didn't notice much of a difference between drivers though regarding battery life.

 

You could get more than 9 hours if you make a power plan in which you do not allow the cpu to consume more than 5% of the total power.

 

I noticed this too.

If i just uplug it and keep using it, i will get about 4.5Hrs on a charge.

If i unplug, restart, and then use it, I can get like 7. weird stuff man.

 

Does this work on a 5830TG?

 

New Acer slim line is out : Aspire V5 with ULV dual core and Nvidia 620M GT.

Starts at 399 euros with a 17W entry level pentium and intel HD

Very good price but the 620M GT isn't a monster though, barely on par with the 540M GT

Acer: 15,6"-Ultraslim-Serie Aspire V5 ab 400 Euro - Notebookcheck.com News