Acer TimelineX 3820TG Owners Lounge. Info, benchmarks, tweaks, mods and upgrades

[luffytubby]

Personal opinion I guess. Depends how fussy you are. I'm a little fussy. For me my 3820TG screen has better color and brightness than my P6831fx next to it.

View angles are fine, not wonderful. But good. After tweaking the display its good. While its no Sony Vaio screen. I'm 100% happy with it and it is better than I expected. Like you, I expected a super dull 0% view angle screen reading the reviews.

On the downside it is reflective as hell, like all glossy screens.... So dont try use it outside.

The keyboard is acceptable in my books. A little flex but ok. Its no thinkpad keyboard. I would give it 7/10. Takes a little to get use too. 10 being the best thinkpad keyboard you can get.

, then I lose no matter what.

I've been doing a battle between 3820 and Vaio Z, for a long time now.

The major goal, was to find a 13'' With powerful graphics, and power, that would still be mobile, and allow me to do video editing, and type a lot.

"The low weight and good battery life is pleasing for daily mobile business. It wasn't possible to keep the Timeline 3810's record-breaking endurance qualities, but it's still within a good field. The only thing in the way of an unlimited mobile use is the contrast poor, too dark and reflective display. Thus, outdoor use shouldn't be considered.

The workmanship and material quality have a high quality, but then again, it's dimmed by the yielding and coiling keyboard. Nothing for frequent typists." - Notebookcheck: Review Acer Aspire 3820TG Timeline X Notebook


The Vaio Z in comparison has a good keyboard and good screen. It also costs three times as much.

Vaio Z gets very hot, it has in-removeable SSD's in Raid that I don't care about, their driver support is horrible and limited to their non-Optimus graphics solution making GPU driver updates something horrible. It also has a full HD display on a 13'' Which I think is downright silly.
I have to pay a horrible sum of money for features I don't care about.

But it's the only other powerful Subnotebook in the world. Every single 13'' has a Nvidia 310 GPU, which is basically useless. Vaio Z's 330m is downclocked by 20%.


That's why it annoys me that Acer have not been able to get these basic things right. Couldn't they have spent a little bit of money on making something that is just a bit useful? What's the point of powerful graphics if the screen is to dark and reflective and you can't see what is going on?


sigh... frustration.

[oddsock]

I'm having some trouble connecting my 3820TG to my Sony 52W5500 LCD TV. HDMI connected, I get the desktop on the TV, and the TV says it gets 1080p input, but there is a black (actually green-tinted) border around the image (about 75 pixels on both left and right side and about 40 pixels on both top and bottom). There is nothing cropped from the desktop image. It's just not filling the entire screen. The desktop settings are at 1920x1080, so that resolution is basically crammed into something like 1770x1000, and it does not look good. Worse, the image is washed out with grayish blacks. My girlfriend's Asus UL50VT (and the UL30VT that I owned for about a month before I sold it) both work with no problems over HDMI. The picture is fantastic with brilliant colours and deep blacks. (Huge difference! Just connected the UL50VT to compare, using the same video clip.) I also briefly had an Alienware M11x, and that worked with no problems as well, so this is definitely not a problem with the TV. Anyone have any idea as to what might be causing this? (I'm using the dedicated Ati 5650 GPU, by the way. HDMI can't be used with the integrated GPU.)

UPDATE: Using clone mode (same on both laptop screen and TV, at 1366x768) the image on the TV looks better, with deep blacks and all that good stuff. But it fills the exact same area as the 1920x1080 resolution does, ie. about 1770x1000. This is really annoying me now. If I can't get this to work, I'm returning the computer ASAP.

UPDATE 2: Using only the TV as display, setting the resolution to 1776x1000 also makes the image look better, but the black borders and reduced resolution are of course not acceptable.

Ok, so I updated the BIOS to v1.13. That seems to have fixed part of the HDMI problem I was having. The picture looks good now (no more washed out blacks), but it still does not fill the entire screen. However, HDMI output works fine on my Benq 24" monitor at 1920x1200. It did also before I updated the BIOS.

Next I updated to the latest graphics card driver as explained in the first post of this thread (set dedicated graphics in BIOS, install driver, set switchable in BIOS). Also, before I installed the Catalyst driver, I uninstalled the one that was already installed. Should I not have done that? You see, after setting back to switchable, I checked Device Manager, and I had a yellow exclamation mark at the Intel Integrated card, saying the drivers were not right. So I uninstalled the drivers for the integrated graphics and got the Intel VGA driver from Acer's driver download site. When I ran the setup, it told me it was installing Intel Turbo Boost driver. (I thought that was a little weird.) After installing and rebooting, the integrated graphics card is only listed as "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter". I can't switch graphics. (Switchable graphics manager used to be available when right-clicking on the desktop. Not anymore.)

Before I did any updating, I noticed that the Intel graphics card was listed in device manager as using the same driver as the Ati card. I thought that was a little strange, but I guess it has something to do with the switchable graphics capability.

I obviously must have done something wrong. Hendrickson, could you explain in a little more detail just how you installed the Catalyst drivers and got back to switchable graphics?

[etcetc]

I was wondering how well would this laptop handle pcsx2? I am pretty sure the gpu is good enough but I am not sure how good the i5-520m is consideirng pcsx2 is very cpu intensive. I am guessing i-5 580m would be great for pcsx2

[bl33ch0r]

1. Set discrete graphics in the BIOS
2. Uninstall all ATI Drivers/utilities
3. Install the original driver from Acer
4. Install the 10.5 version over the original one
5. Set back to switchable in the BIOS

It's also useful - maybe even necessary - to have the BIOS version 1.13 installed!

In order to get rid of the black border you have to get rid of ATI's overscan correction. You can find it in the Control Panel->Desktops & Displays->right click an the TV-Screen and Configure. There is an option - I don't remember how it is exactly called, but I think it's on the third chart - in which you can reduce the correction to 0%.


Edit: The i5-430m is even slightly faster than a Core 2 Duo E8200, so pcsx2 should run perfectly.

[mmmw]

, then I lose no matter what.

I've been doing a battle between 3820 and Vaio Z, for a long time now.

The major goal, was to find a 13'' With powerful graphics, and power, that would still be mobile, and allow me to do video editing, and type a lot.

"The low weight and good battery life is pleasing for daily mobile business. It wasn't possible to keep the Timeline 3810's record-breaking endurance qualities, but it's still within a good field. The only thing in the way of an unlimited mobile use is the contrast poor, too dark and reflective display. Thus, outdoor use shouldn't be considered.

The workmanship and material quality have a high quality, but then again, it's dimmed by the yielding and coiling keyboard. Nothing for frequent typists." - Notebookcheck: Review Acer Aspire 3820TG Timeline X Notebook


The Vaio Z in comparison has a good keyboard and good screen. It also costs three times as much.

Vaio Z gets very hot, it has in-removeable SSD's in Raid that I don't care about, their driver support is horrible and limited to their non-Optimus graphics solution making GPU driver updates something horrible. It also has a full HD display on a 13'' Which I think is downright silly.
I have to pay a horrible sum of money for features I don't care about.

But it's the only other powerful Subnotebook in the world. Every single 13'' has a Nvidia 310 GPU, which is basically useless. Vaio Z's 330m is downclocked by 20%.


That's why it annoys me that Acer have not been able to get these basic things right. Couldn't they have spent a little bit of money on making something that is just a bit useful? What's the point of powerful graphics if the screen is to dark and reflective and you can't see what is going on?


sigh... frustration.

Hendrickson said the screen was alright, not the best but decent, not "bad". If you choose to interpret that as something that is not even "just a bit useful" and that it is "dark and reflective [...] can't see what is going on" then I think it's not Acer's fault you're so damn picky. We have at least two 3820TG users in here posting their experiences and they haven't complained much about the display.

[mmmw]

Ok, so I updated the BIOS to v1.13. That seems to have fixed part of the HDMI problem I was having. The picture looks good now (no more washed out blacks), but it still does not fill the entire screen. However, HDMI output works fine on my Benq 24" monitor at 1920x1200. It did also before I updated the BIOS.

Next I updated to the latest graphics card driver as explained in the first post of this thread (set dedicated graphics in BIOS, install driver, set switchable in BIOS). Also, before I installed the Catalyst driver, I uninstalled the one that was already installed. Should I not have done that? You see, after setting back to switchable, I checked Device Manager, and I had a yellow exclamation mark at the Intel Integrated card, saying the drivers were not right. So I uninstalled the drivers for the integrated graphics and got the Intel VGA driver from Acer's driver download site. When I ran the setup, it told me it was installing Intel Turbo Boost driver. (I thought that was a little weird.) After installing and rebooting, the integrated graphics card is only listed as "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter". I can't switch graphics. (Switchable graphics manager used to be available when right-clicking on the desktop. Not anymore.)

Before I did any updating, I noticed that the Intel graphics card was listed in device manager as using the same driver as the Ati card. I thought that was a little strange, but I guess it has something to do with the switchable graphics capability.

I obviously must have done something wrong. Hendrickson, could you explain in a little more detail just how you installed the Catalyst drivers and got back to switchable graphics?

Intel has it's own drivers iirc. You can get them from the acer europe site.

[luffytubby]

Hendrickson said the screen was alright, not the best but decent, not "bad". If you choose to interpret that as something that is not even "just a bit useful" and that it is "dark and reflective [...] can't see what is going on" then I think it's not Acer's fault you're so damn picky. We have at least two 3820TG users in here posting their experiences and they haven't complained much about the display.

I read it as he was agreeing/not disagreeing with what is being said in the review. Perhaps spoken in a more damage-control, way.

I'm just venting out of frustration, in the hope that maybe someone had another suggestion, or opinion.

[rikoyako]

omg i just installed cod modern warfare 2 on my 3820tg i7 620m 5650 hd and its entirely disappointing! i get dizzy by just looking at the screen more so when you move and shoot! would that be acceptable under this machine? i thought it would be able to handle pretty heavy graphics but i think i am mistaken. however, i used the AMD GPU Clock Tool and checked for the set clock rate of the card and its showing below 100/200 mhz! is that the reason why im lagging pretty bad? and also, when i rated its WEI, it was only 5.5 considering its an i7 procie. could it be because the usable ram out of my 4 gigs is just 2.30gigs? not really an expert when it comes to overclocking and tweaking so if you could help me out with this, i would really appreciate it! thanks a lot!

[Vaio Z Power]

it works worse than in this vid?

430+5650 stock
YouTube - Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on Ati Radeon HD 5650 gameplay:Heart Of Darkness_Intro

rec the video low fps obvious

with your i7 and with a little oc, should be playable cool

your graphycs driver updated? and new bios?

[rikoyako]

^ yeah it is much worse than that! its even laggy with dirt2 and nfs shift. not sure if the driver is updated i think it is the stock driver used. ill check later coz im at work and the lappy is not in front of me. would you mind giving me links for the updated driver? and screenshots for overclocking the gpu/procie if its not too much thank you!