Acer AS5552G-7859 Laptop Sale - Good VS Bad?

My younger brother is considering this laptop and is on a tight budget.

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His intentions are to game and use it for school. The benchmarks for the "ATI Mobility RadeonHD 6470" look decent for gaming (everything playable @ low and some medium) , however I'm unfamiliar with the CPU. Since it's a Quad-Core, how good is it compared to i7-1st/2nd gen? On top of that, how's the cooling? I assume it's not that good considering the laptop's price?

Thoughts? Both good and bad, please.

 

The link does not work because I don't live in Canada, so I cannot really tell what the specific specs are. For schoolwork, I would prefer something with a long battery life, yet with enough muscle to play games at decent framerates. This laptop is ok for gaming, but in maybe a year or so it will struggle with new games. As for the quad core, it's pwoerful enough for most tasks but it may drain the battery quite quickly. Just my two cents on the subject

 

I beg to differ on gaming capabilities- Radeon HD5650/6650 ot nVidia GT540M are required to actually enjoy gaming (and I don't mean serious Full HD gaming- just medium/high settings 720p resolution)

Also AMD Phenom (the mobile one at least) is not to be compared with Core i7- it's actually somewhere between Core i3 and Core i5 being the fastest one only occasionally when a game engine supports 4 cores- which is still rare.

BTW- I can't see the specs either so my response is based only on your post.

Consider something with a Core i5 and HD6650 or GT540 as an alternative.

 

For gaming, the dual core athlon at 3GHz and the 6650 equipped 5552G is a much better choice.

 

OR Find an Acer 5739G for 300-500 and upgrade the Graphics card and cpu like mine.
I get 28-38 frames in MAFIA II 1980X1200 FULL HD MAXED 2X AF NO AA