The Official Arrandale Timeline Thread

Any new info on a release date yet?
I'm getting a little antsy.

 

I still think we have a ways-to-go here in the US. Esp for the 3820TG with higher specs.

Patiently waiting.

Bronsky

 

I don't remember where but somewhere it was stated that the benchmark was done with wifi on and 30%brightness. (bt off)

 

the reviews with the new timelineX that we have seen in this thread already confirmed the 8+ hours battery. The battery is the same for all the timelineX series afik.

 

Has anyone tested anything other than the I5-430 in a Timeline X?

 

well, but that's CPU related, not manufacturer related. Acer can't make miracles, an i7 will obviuosly consume more than the i5.

 

Reviews of 4820TG...
more than I expected...


http://acerbbs.zol.com.cn/37/218_366566.html

 

most if not all the important pictures were blocked

 

The images on the review loads fine on my place though....

 

yeah the website images work perfectly fine for me. The scores are making me drool! I want to buy one NOW. The combination of its sleakness and power makes this perfect for me.

 

Loads fine for me too. Awesome review.

 

Wow, over 10000 3DMarks? I was not expecting such a huge performance boot over my P310 (~6000)...

 

Nice finding!

Wow, over 10k is pretty high. But the 5650 seems overclocked there.
But anyways, seems to be a nice notebook. NOt so much glossy, high performance when you need it, battery life is good too when you need it.


Damn it, only it misses e-Sata/USB 3.0 and it would easily beat the Asus N82 and is offered at a lower price!

 

3dmark06 is heavily CPU based, the review unit has a core i7 which just confirms that. BUT, timelineX is a beast, no doubt on that, specially the 13,3'' with its small form factor.

 

near the end of the review he overclocked to 5730 specs said the highest tempreture it got to was 79C o_o .. google translate works wonders sometimes.. lol


im so excited that is the exact model i want!!


CMON ACER PLEASE RELEASE SOONER THAN MAY!!!

 

The screenshots seem to show SDR for the 5650 again, instead of DDR. I thought that most cards now a days had DDR memory?

EDIT: "very little fan noise at full speed " This is awesome to hear!

 

Can someone inform me very exactly how much the i7 will hurt battery time in comparasion to i5 540m? cause with a 10.000+ 3dmark06 points i'm starting to incline to the i7...


UPDATE: just found the answer:



so now my question is: how much faster will the i7 be in stuff like video converting, and etc?

 

Also...

"Price is equivalent to RMB 7000 ~"

http://translate.googleusercontent....&twu=1&usg=ALkJrhh3K1SaNC1eWFlbRsVNlhbJ9vYGHw

Found that in another thread posted in those forums. That's about 1025 USD$. That just sounds lovely!

 

Google translate....his GTA IV comments were full of win

"This man's dialogue is very yellow, very violent, sure to be translated into Chinese river crab "

 

The I7 has significantly higher consumption. Depends on the reviews you read, but the range is 10-25%. My theory is that you can never have too much power.

Bronsky

 

is it 10-25% faster?

 

Pardon my math-retardedness but
if i5 can run 8hrs then an i7 with 15% more power consumption = 6.8hrs ?
so better performance for 1hr 12min ?

 

By the time these are out in the US, you might as well hold off for the Arrandale refresh coming this summer. It will be worth it:

 

a refresh this early? why and what for?

 

Doesn't matter much, its still going to be an i5/i7 with a beast ATI 5650 in an aluminum chassis. + 13.3" <3

 

Intel after launching a new chip lineup at the beginning of the year usually refreshes it in late Q2/Q3 for back to school, then in Q4/Q1 launches a new lineup.

 

i don't believe the i-7 is completely responsible for the gap between a 7k score and a 10k score by itself (as noted by others) we are talking about mostly the same hardware as
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3631/acer-aspire-as5740g-6979-budget-priced-gaming

i believe as far as games and 3dmark and that chinese forum review, it is Mostly gpu core and gpu memory-speed bound (i reckon mostly gpu memory speed bound since it is 128 bit gpu memory bus, with G(?)ddr3 and not gddr5), and the substantial overclock for gpu/memory from 650/800 to 760/1160 is what is mostly responsible for the increased 3dmark score from 7k range to 10k and fps. i am pretty confident in saying the 540m would get a close score not far behind maybe 9500-9700 3d mark or so, if you overclock the 5650 to the same levels. (also the 540m and other core-i chips can be overclocked as well, since we are on subject of overclocks). pricing and availability will probably force peoples decision here for the i-7 version is my guess

the memory on the gpu is not sdr, but G(?)ddr3. gpu z has not been updated to detect it correctly hence the funny screenshots. not sure of reason, but the italian site linked 20-30 pages back in this thread has a screenshot of a monolithic board the 4820 uses, and showed the 5650 welded into it, witht the vid memory welded on as well so no mxm here, making it a "non-standard" "integrated" 5650 board....hope this does not impact having to have custom drivers from acer for ati card...

 

yes, since we have not seen any i5 540m in the timelineX they will probably be released much later... and yes, I will not wait for them and will go with the i7.

 

But look how slow the current Arrandales are being pumped out by Intel and actually being distributed into machines that you can buy now.

Even IF Intel refreshes over the summer, Q2/Q3 of this year, I don't see those types of laptops becoming widely available till Q2/Q3 of 2011. That's a long wait.

 

Except this won't happen. Sure Core i processors are in high demand right now, but by summer Intel should have things under control, and by July/Aug the refresh will happen. Q2/Q3 Sandy Bridge's Huron River platform will be here and Arrandale will be a distant memory...

 

520m will be very close perf to 540 and 620 for gaming as well. ..if there are delays with the i-7 version i might buy into the 520m. since turbo has the same binning between 520 and 540, diff of stock speed 133 mhz is academic at best and 35 $ chip price premium is irrelevant either up or down
if you ask me the chip refresh/update is needed just to get the mobile product tiers in order for core-i, nevermind culv issues. the entire non culv/ulv i5/i7 mobile lineup of Arrandale goes from 220 to 320 $(5 chips, meaning 20 dollar tiers of performance over a range of 500 megahertz..it's a joke if you ask me). for gaming performance delta is 5% between low end 430 and high end 620, not corresponding to 50% price delta ...in the end, we the consumers seems to win somehow--looks like even buying the lower-end spec, will be relatively inexpensive with good performance to boot.


refresh looks like will take 6+ months indeed with actual hardware we can buy in q4/q1..
http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/17668/35/
http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/17710/35/

by then i think we will be asking "oh when will the sandy bridge timeline-? with ati 6650 be available for sale"

 

Exactly! That's why all of us need to make a decision on how long we are willing to wait for a new model then make a purchase no later than that date, no matter what is coming down the pike.

I want to purchase no later than the end of May/beginning of June. The 3820TG should be available in some configuration by that time. If the price is not outrageous then Acer will have a buyer... Intel too with the X25-M 160GB SSD!

 

around 1g $ you can almost afford one every year, making that decision a hint easier....5 years ago paying 4k every year for a laptop that can game was out of the question now things changed and it's almost a possibility

the real hurt now is the ssd....by q4 we will be able to buy intel 300gb for same price as the 160 today

 

Why does the RAM memory score is so low? I think that the 4 Gb DDR3 1066 Mhz should get at least 7.0 points.

 

I think 5.9 is quite good... it would probably be close to 7 once you put in the maximum supported RAM... 8gb? 16gb?

The Alienware M11x scores around a 5.4 with 4gb 1066 ram.

From MS website:

Memory subscore. System memory can be a major factor in performance. This subscore is based on the amount of random access memory (RAM) in your computer, not including any memory reserved for graphics.

 

Wow, I thought the new i5's provided better battery life. I guess not. Now I'm interested in this refresh....

 

And wow I'm surprised at the gaming capability of this thing, plays Command and Conquer 4 almost flawlessly at high settings. Very nice.

 

AND WOW! DOUBLE POST!


hahaha jk

yea im so excited too this laptop is gonna be so insane!

 

I'm super excited about the 3820TG as well. Whats going on? there's too much talk here, get straight to the point, will the 3820TG be delayed or what?

Anyway, someone should post the overclocking guide for the ati 5650 here.

 

Is there any store selling the 3G enabled version of TimelineX?

 

@helderlima, not yet as far as I know. Maybe in Singapore though.

 

The battery life and performance figures are looking damn good, and it looks like Acer has actually done a pretty good job with the cooling.
It's shaping up to be an m11x killer, and in many respects a VAIO Z killer; however, Acer needs to offer high-res screen options to really compete with the Z. 1600x900 an option on most of these TimelineX models would've been very nice.

If they adapted things a bit, they could probably make a 15" with a higher-end graphics card and switchable graphics (a GDDR5 card, probably the Mobility HD 5850, would be best), decent res (1600x900, most likely) and then I think they'd have a lot of gamers drooling as well; it would definitely catch the Envy 15 with its pants down. However, considering the month until we see TimelineX models, I'm personally angling towards better gaming performance and better screen res and compromising a lot of battery life, which puts me on the MSI GX640.

 

There's no reason it should be delayed much past this month. I would expect to see it released in the U.S. in May, the same as the U.K date. That would also line up with the German release, which according to the German websites, is around 4-5 weeks from now.

 

ALthough it's quite a different type of "notebook", I really like the GX640. The GPU should be a real performer. If it didn't have the red accents, it might have even made it into the board room. I can see the execs now, all playing MW2 or BC2 instead of pretending to read excell spreadsheets. Have they started to ship the GX640 yet?

Bronsky

 

It looks like the GX640 is shipping now, yeah. I'm waiting for other people to be the guinea pigs before I buy one myself ^_~
Here's an interesting question about the Arrandales in the TimelineX series - what clock speed are they running them at on battery? I suspect aggressive downclocking is a big part of the strategy Acer has used to get so much battery life, but I wonder how much.

 

Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG-434G50Mn - Core i5 430M 2.26 GHz - 14" is in stock and shipping in several norwegian webshops:
http://www.multicom.no/PartDetail.aspx?q=p:2907858

Acer Aspire Timeline 3820TG Intel i5 430 13,3" HDLED 4GB 640GB HD5470 BT WIN7HP64 is also shipping:
http://www.netshop.no/aspx/produkt/prdinfoVnet.aspx?plid=144811

There are also some i3 versions shipping, but no higher end versions. Hope they get a version with ati 5650 soon. I'll get the first version with it as I'm perfectly fine with i5 if the i7 takes its time coming=)

I asked in an e-mail to netshop.no of they would get these i7 models a few weeks ago and a representative answered that these models had not shown up on his radar yet from his supplier but maybe it would after easter he hoped. I am hoping that within a week or two we start seeing signs of them!

 

How can the MSI GX640 compare? It doesn't have a 13.3" or 14"... :l only the 15.6" of the Timeline X will count for that battle.

Good to see it in shops!

 

I agree... > 3kg X 1.8kg

 

The GX640 is actually ~2.7kg, not >3. It's comparable to me, and probably to some others as well, because while I would prefer a 14" @ 2kg or so, I'm willing to accept that level of weight to get high-end performance, and get it soon instead of a month from now.

 

Yea, I'm glad to see the 3820TG shipping too. Hopefully, within a month, I'll have mine.

Bronsky

Waiting patiently.