Acer Aspire V5-122P Owners' thread

I just want to add a word about SSD lifetimes. The SSD storage industry shot itself in the foot when they first started talking about "wear leveling" and write cycle lifetimes. It's irrelevant now but people still bring it up as a disadvantage. It is not. Any SSD drive that any of us bought within the past five years will significantly outlast the life of any conventional hard drive. I work with SSDs that are constantly being written to and erased several times per day and at the advertised MTBF the drives will be ten years old before they are predicted to fail.

I have never had a hard drive last more than seven years. All of the SSDs I own are predicted to last at least ten years.

 

Now SanDisk warrants that you'll get a minimum of 10 years with their Extreme Pro.

SanDisk Extreme PRO Solid State Drives (SSD)

 

That's pretty awesome. I should be getting my third Acer V5-122P tomorrow and will be decking it out with an SSD.

 

Third, wow. And I thought I was a laptop hoarder.

 

Did you ever get Miracast to work?

 

I have an Acer Aspire V5-122P laptop and I keep getting the automatic repairs message anytime I restart my pc . The problem is never able to be fixed and the only solution to get it to boot properly is to select "disable driver signature enforcement" . It's very annoying especially if I have to restart it after installing a program or updates . What can I do to stop it ?

 

I just bought a V5-122P-0600 (hasn't been delivered yet) and I am so glad to have found this thread. After about 10 minutes of reading, I've had almost all of my questions about this laptop answered already. But I do have two questions for folks who already have this model:

1) I also bought an 8GB dimm in the hopes of upgrading to a total of 10GB. Can anyone tell me if this looks like it should be compatible: Crucial 8GB Single DDR3 1600 MT/s (PC3-12800) CL11 SODIMM 204-Pin 1.35V/1.5V Notebook Memory CT102464BF160B. I THINK it should work based on what I've read, but I'm not 100% sure (for instance, I'm not sure about the voltage).

2) Has anyone had any luck using a USB 3 universal docking station, and if so does it seriously affect performance? I'm looking for a solution that would provide at least VGA and gigabit Ethernet which I would be running at the same time (as an example of how I'd use the Ethernet - I often RDP to my work machine). additional USB, HDMI, and audio ports are welcome but not necessary. I don't want to buy the Acer mini CP converter cable because I don't want to encourage them. I'm a bit irked that they made the mini port semi-proprietary and that their converter is overpriced.

I haven't read through all 56 pages of this thread yet, so I apologize if this info is already out here - in which case, just let me know and I'll find it myself

Thanks!

 

I can confirm that the "Acer Converter Port" is compatible with Mini DisplayPort (MDP). I have tested this laptop with MDP to HDMI, MDP to DVI, and MDP to DisplayPort adapters and cables and all work as expected.

I'd like to hear from people who tried to use other Mini DisplayPort cables that did not work for them. I'm seeing them work just fine with these Acer V5-122p models as well as an Acer V7. For your external monitor I recommend using Mini DisplayPort instead of USB 3.0 because USB requires CPU power to run. See www.plugable.com for more info on that.

Thunderbolt is another story. I cannot say if these laptops are fully "Thunderbolt" compatible because I don't have a USB or Ethernet adapter but I would be willing to bet that they are also compatible with this laptop, as the Acer 3-in-one looks like one of many Thunderbolt combo devices to me. I suspect that the Acer Converter Port name is used by Acer as an indication that Acer has tested that adapter to be 100% compatible in a good-faith attempt to cut down on customer support calls from users having problems with badly designed generic Mini DisplayPort cables.

 

Well that's encouraging - if MDP cables and converters generally work, I guess it's not as proprietary as I thought. I also didn't realize until this morning that it ships with a VGA converter cable - part of my desire to get a universal docking station was that I didn't want to have to buy multiple converters, but I already have a USB to Ethernet cable somewhere, so I guess I'm all set!

 

Anyone have the latest chipset driver for this laptop?

 

The mDP on the V5-122P (and other Acers with AMD hardware) or Acer Mini CP, is actually AMD DockPort. I took this shot of my V5-122P a few months back and noticed the Texas Instruments HD3S2521 DockPort controller:



http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/slas941a/slas941a.pdf

Its just missing power and USB 3.0/3.1 for now, but the Acer Mini CP 3-in-1 adapter is a DockPort product or very simple "dock". I'd say it is technically not proprietary, it is part of the VESA standard.

DisplayPortâ„¢ Adds DockPort Extension to Royalty-Free VESA Standard | VESA

Most mDP adapters will work just fine since its still mDP, with the exception of some of those 3-in-1 video adapters that are mDP-to-HDMI, VGA, DVI, or DP if you try and use them all at the same time for multiple simultaneous video outputs. I am going to buy and test this adapter and confirm if we can use up to 3 external display at the same time all from one mDP.



I have the Acer Mini CP 3-in-1 adapter (VGA, Fast Ethernet, USB 2.0) and it works great and has never given me any issues. It is a quality piece and neat adapter and it may seem expensive at first but it just works as expected and I recommend it for the time being. It will be nice to see how DockPort docks evolve and add functionality. Remember, were suppose to see USB 3.0/3.1 and power added to mDP.

Thunderbolt is not the same as DockPort. Thunderbolt has PCIe combined with mDP. I suggest you read this:

http://semiaccurate.com/2013/05/24/amd-finally-puts-dock-port-on-a-device/

Also, check out this as it shows what I'd call a more complete DockPort dock is capable of:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2FDockPort-Dockingstation-von-BizLink-und-Notebook-von-Acer-2216317.html

 

I have a few questions regarding upgrades for the V5-122P-0643 (w/ hidden menus available in BIOS) that I'd love to know.

CPU - from what I'm reading in this thread, the A6-1450 APU is soldered to the motherboard? I checked my own, which appears socketed rather than soldered. If I can take it out, what other APUs can be used in place of it. I'm probably mistaken though...

RAM - What is the largest RAM module that can be installed for the single slot? Does lower latency RAM make any difference due to the soldered 2GB module? I'm guessing that CL11 is good enough & the maximum speed is 1600MHz.

WiFi - what is the best 802.11ac card to get? I know that it has 1 antenna, but I do see that people are having success with 5GHz. What specific details must I know regarding pin 20 that I see mentioned here?

Overclocking - I see that the GPU can be OC'd with MSI Afterburner. What's the max it can be pushed to? Can the CPU be locked to always work at 1.4GHz instead of it being a turbo boost?

 

I think we were pretty clear that we doubted that this a Thunderbolt port.

From the data sheet it would seem likely that DockPort is a port with two MUXed data ports. One is a MUX for USB 2.0 and HPD. The other is a MUX for DisplayPort and USB 3.0. The "HPD" is the Hot Plug Detect feature.

Since PCIe is missing it's not Thunderbolt but a nice standard that supplies high-speed USB 3.0 and 2.0 lanes.

I have a few questions: Do you mean that the Acer v5-122p implementation is missing USB 3.0? That would explain their 3-in-one only have a USB 2.0 port and no video. They could do video with USB 2.0 but it wouldn't be satisfactory and I bet USB 3.0 CPU usage would be unacceptable, hence the lack of USB 3.0 on this particular DockPort. If I'm not mistaken, USB 3.0 is still hamstringed by CPU power.

What is the model of that other adapter you pictured? Do we know if it's Thunderbolt, DockPort, or a multi-screen DisplayPort device?

 

i gave up on the wifi adapter it came with (Broadcom) and got a little usb wifi adapter (TP-LINK TL-WN725N Wireless N Nano USB Adapter) for $10. it's working great.

 

CPU can be set to always work at 1.4GHz (at least in Linux, by setting Performance mode; I guess there is some similar feature in Windows). But there is very little reason to do so, as it will dynamically clock to the highest frequency on demand. Perhaphs a much more important note is this: turbo boost only works for all 4 cores after you've done a sleep/resume cycle. Again, this is for Linux, but I can see at the link below that Windows has a similar issue (see Chippy's comments):

http://www.umpcportal.com/2013/05/amd-temash-a6-1450-performance-acer-aspire-v5/

 

Good to know & thanks for the info. I'm currently running Windows 8.1, so I'll have to see if I can toggle the performance mode on & off when I need it most. I have had success with the GPU OC w/o reducing the resolution for games.

 

Crimson, can you let me know, do you experience this issue of all cores reaching 1.4GHz only after sleep/resume? I wonder if this was ever fixed in newer Windows or perhaps AMD driver versions.

 

I cannot confirm the v5-122p implementation lacks USB 3.0. I think it might need an external powered dock to connect to.

Here is the adapter:
Free Drive 3in1 Cable Mini DisplayPort Thunderbolt to DVI VGA HDMI Mac Adapter | eBay

Not sure what id call this but it might be able to display 2 or more external displays at the same time (including the internal display). Otherwise useful combination of display outputs.

 

Has anyone tried the mini drive or other similar products to "hide" the microsd adapter? Does these work on the v5 122p?

 

What extended battery did you have for your V5 122p? I've been looking everywhere for a long time to buy a extended battery for this laptop. The laptop's ability to accept a extended battery was one of the key features that got me to buy it and I haven't had any luck.

 

So, what is the best, most hassle free WiFi card to use in in the V5-122p?
I've seen mentions of AR9280 and AR5B22. Will they both work out of the box? They seem fairly cheap and readily available on ebay.

My WiFi reception on this laptop is so weak I'm wondering if the antenna might not be connected. Even sitting right next to my router I will often only get 4 bars in Win8.1. Is this normal? I'm not using any Bluetooth devices or anything..

Also, is there anybody out there who doesn't have the screen retention issue on their panel? I got my first one swapped, and the new one is just as bad, though they managed to fix some of the light leaks. I'm wondering if I should send it back a second time, or if I will only get a third panel with the same issues..

 

Guys,
Not sure if people are getting any Event Viewer errors here or not but I was hoping someone could clear up an issue I keep getting on mine. Looking in Event Viewer I see the following error: -

A multi-touch device reported inconsistent contact information. Event 264, Win 32k.

Anyone know a fix and what might be causing the issue?

 

This is the post you need to see for the Acer Aspire v5 122p.

Well I bought the Acer Aspire v5 122p and have used it long enough. In short, buy it if you like slow frustrating computers. First off I can't understand why they would make a relatively new model and sleek-looking computer and put a 1 ghz processor in it. You don't really feel any accelerated processing or notice offloading to GPU, speed or performance out of this as it claims to do.

I bought this because I needed a quick upgrade from the painfully UNGODLY slow Acer Aspire One d260 netbook. The 122p turned out to be only a slight improvement. Friends this is a do one thing at a time computer. If you want responsiveness you'll get it only when there is nothing open and nothing running. Even then the internet browsing is still slow and frustrating. You can't even get the mouse wheel scroll until the full page and all the ads are loaded, very irritating.

There is very little to no multitasking on this unit without diminishing performance greatly. For example I can only start one download with my download manager and the rest of the computer functions have to wait until it is finished. With me I do work on my website, such as maintenance and eBook writing. So I often need a few heavy programs open like Dreamweaver, Microsoft Word 2007, Filezilla FTP client, Outlook, a dictionary/thesaurus, photoshop, and a number of folder windows. This is all necessary but when this computer is in this state you can forget internet browsing. It will take literally minutes to navigate the internet and open pages. And when my mind is juggling all these tasks I need quick responsiveness to keep holding my thoughts. I have to literally take brief naps, take my hand off the mouse and lean back, leave the room and make a sandwich, or stare at the screen frustrated while I wait for an average page to load. Speaking of Microsoft word the 122p has the same problem as with the Aspire One netbook. If you have a word document open with pictures in it and you want to quickly scroll through and spot check your documents it hangs and catches as it goes past the pictures. P.S. The processor toplines on the CPU graph frequently when multitasking.

Not only this, but this computer isn't even powerful enough to use google and youtube's search suggestions while you type. You have to peck type really slow or letters will get omitted. It is extremely angering especially if your a fast typer. I had to download google toolbar and turn off the search suggestions as I type. Facebook messenger typing lags a lot also. Youtube videos are sometimes catching and sticking and loads slowly.

By the way I went ahead and upgraded the RAM to the max hoping in the back of my mind it would make a difference but knowing it wouldn't. The RAM is not the problem it's the slow processor. Upgrading RAM only helps if it is being maxed out and you're getting messages saying your running out of memory as with the Acer Aspire Netbook 1gb factory memory.

There is no overclocking on this model and I mean no! Believe me. I've googled for days looking for alternatives. There is only two things you can do. 1. Go into the windows power settings and set it to high performance. 2. Download actual booster and use its set processor priority automatically to foreground process. That's just about it. And you will still get acute performance lags.

I never believe or carryout any suggestions from people who say to speed up your computer by turning off all the graphics settings and set windows to classic, or stop this service or stop that service. I don't see the point. I am not going to strip a new computer down just for it to work like it should. It is like a waist. So the moral is just buy a fast computer to begin with. After using this computer, from now on I will not purchase a computer with even a hz less than 2 gigahertz processing power. I've got my sights on the Acer Aspire 571.

The touchpad is klunky and rattles as your finger moves around on it because the lower end is not anchored to the casing. I had to superglue it still. I prefer the touchpads with the separate buttons not one big button/touchpad combo. Sometimes I need the cursor to stay in one place while I continue to tap the select button. But if you use this as your clicking down the touchpad as a button the cursor jumps around a little sometimes losing it's delicate position.

Windows 8

Microsoft is one checkbox away from making Windows 8 successful. The checkbox that should be in personalization that allows you to choose between Metro interface and the previous Aero translucent glass theme. The flat dull metro windows on Windows 8 looks like old 8 bit Atari graphics. It is a drastic downgrade from the Windows 7 Aero theme. People including myself are saying they will not upgrade their OS until they bring back the Aero theme. Windows 7 Ultimate is now the best OS, not Windows 8. In windows 7 they give you the choice in personalization to use the classic windows theme, a major scale back option if you want it. That is all Microsoft has to do to sell W8, give us the options to use Aero theme and classic and I would use W8. But with the 122p Microsoft, probably in an annoying attempt to force us to use Windows 8, didn't supply any drivers for Windows 7 for this model. The Windows 8 drivers work on W7 but there are a few glitches i.e. cannot adjust the screen brightness slider. It is stuck in one place and there is only one brightness setting. And the screen is blank after downgrading. Just push Fn+arrow left, the brightness controls, buttons to turn it on. The SD card slot is faulty, the message says 'cannot read from source disk'. The SD card is fine because it works on the Aspire One. Also the Card reader slot sucks because it doesn't click into place with the card fully inside the housing. It sticks out easily yanked with no secure hold.

I would not suggest buying this computer for any reason

 

@alphacat1
I agree on some of your points, like this computer being CPU bottlenecked. I do feel this is the main problem with this laptop and I think just a little more power would have given us a much more usable laptop. On battery I think it's borderline useless for all but the most basic tasks. Have you tried the let the computer sleep/wake to get it to run in 1.4Ghz mode?

That being said, your post reads like a long rant, and I suspect isn't really that useful to anyone.

 

This is the issue with ALL AMD notebooks. OEM's choose a way underpowered CPU than what the system could actually handle. Part of that is probably attributed to Intel's paying off OEM's and vendors for using Intel CPU's over AMD's. If the V5-122p came with a 25W APU like the A6-5200 it would have been a much more robust overall solution. I use it now mainly to stream videos and check email and other basic tasks while on my treadmill.

 

My apologies if that post came off as rant like @Stamfar says. I didn't mean to vent all that frustration in here. My intention was to try and submit a most thorough review. Nevertheless I'd have to stand by it since this laptop cannot do much more than a netbook. I kind of feel it borderlines on false advertisement in the part of the title "accelerated processor." Although I know this refers to it's ability to offload to the GPU it contains there's little to no acceleration noticed by me.

Loading heavy internet pages I found out does require fast processing if you want them to load fast. I know because I used another laptop a Toshiba running at 2.7 ghz and it get pages fully loaded right away. My target for loading pages in a laptop is 5 seconds. In that time in an ideal laptop I expect everything including all ads bells and whistles to be loaded.

It's not only the images and ads loading but again I have no scrolling or selection ability until all the ads are up. By the time they are I've completely lost interest in the ads and features and they become the symbols of the annoyance rather then potential explorations since they were what I have to wait minutes on, not worth the wait. In facebook I come across many trending feeds which interest me but with this laptop I don't even bother to click them anymore knowing it will take a long appetite-killing time to get there so I overlook them.

To correct my last long post, in a nutshell the biggest let downs of the and frustrations v5 122p are inability to use the search suggestions as I type because it's too slow at processing such a large index after every character or letter in the search field, slow page loading, and limited multitasking ability.

Can I say anything positive about the v5 122p? The windows directory navigations and folder loading are acceptable speed wise. The touch screen is neat but I have no use for it on a laptop. I downgraded to w7u for that reason. I do like the aluminum finish.

How long do I leave this sleep before I wake to indulge in the 1.4 ghz and how long will that last?

 

For the price and specification I don't really know what you expected. It is designed to be an easy to move netbook like device with as many features as they could cram in there for as cheap as possible. An AMD APU capable of light gaming (I've run the new Tomb Raider game) and an IPS display, a touch screen, a backlit keyboard. Relatively, these little things are spec'd higher than most mid range laptops.

My v5-122p is in use daily, the best thing you can possibly get for it is an ssd. This changes everything. Also, when you start using programs which can utilise all 4 cores, the little APU, (not much bigger than my little finger nail) does quite well for the power consumption. Acer haven't miss sold anything.
Windows is also another big killer, windows 8.1 however boots extremely quickly compared to Windows 7 (it will be slower than 8.1), I don't find myself waiting for many things at all. Web pages are plenty quick to load providing I don't have 70 tabs open in Chrome.

As an aside Linux is rapid in this little machine, make yourself a USB live boot Pendrive and go googling to find your favourite distribution.

It sounds to me as if you expected an ultra book for peanuts. Obviously you aren't going to get that, ever.

Acer have done themselves proud in my eyes.

 

No worries @alphacat1. It just seemed like just that, you were venting your frustrations more than giving an unbiased review.

You just close the lid and make it wake up again to initiate the 1.4ghz mode. Note: this only works when running on mains power, not battery.
Why it's like that I have no idea. Seems like a bug, but I don't know why it hasn't been fixed in a bios or driver update.

The best thing you can do if you want a slightly more pleasant experience is replacing the HDD with a SSD. But don't expect miracles.
I did. After upgrading my dads old 1.8Ghz single core Athlon64, s939 area desktop with a SSD, and it really coming alive, I was expecting the same for this laptop when I popped in a SSD.
It got faster, but still slower than I would like. I was amazed that this laptop seems to have a slower CPU than a single core CPU released in what? 2004 or something.

The main pros of the V5-122p are: the IPS screen (my main reason for getting this laptop), backlit keyboard and relatively nice build quality on a relatively cheap laptop.
However, there are many cons as well, like: sluggish performance, very weak WiFi reception and short battery life.
I'm basically using my laptop in the same way @HTWingNut describes, watching movies, listening to music and reading emails. It works well enough for those simple tasks.
I'm doing photography, so I'm also happy about being able to calibrate the screen and see images close to how they should appear. I can't stand the TN panels on cheap laptops.
I don't do any editing on this machine though. It's way to slow.

If *I* had the money right now I would bite the bullet, get rid of this laptop, and get a more capable ( and more expensive) laptop with an IPS screen.

Edit:
Tl;dr: The best way to get better performance is getting a SSD, doing a fresh install of Win8.1 (not that recovery stuff)
and making sure it runs in 1.4Ghz mode at all times.

 

That explains it then @Avora. I have a v5 122p-0408 which is a dual core only and no backlit keyboard. I'm sure those extra 2 cores and a6 processor instead of a4 you have are making all the difference. My mistake when I purchased it was trying to judge the computer performance by the hard drive size. I assumed that if they were putting 500gb into this thing then it must a decent performing machine. I can't see why they would put so much space and lousy performance. Just the same as I can't see why the 1gh processor even for a subnotebook. The even slower aspire one d260 netbook was at least 1.6 ghz!

When I want something real bad I tend to cut corners which is going to stop especially where it come to computers. I did the bulk of the research on this one while it was in mail transit.

Just now I was running a file sharing program with inbound and outbound dl's and ul's that the computer has to process. I see it in the cpu graph. uTorrent does that also. And I've had laptops that can process file traffic while running the other functions. I had to shut it down to get a tolerable page load for this forum and facebook in the other tab, hence, a one thing at a time laptop.

I'm making sure I research the aspire 571 thoroughly. The reports are that it has excellent performance like that of an ultrabook for lower price. comes with intel i7 2.2 ghz up to 3.2 ghz turboboost. A 1 tb hard drive. That's more like what I need. I want to be able to keep applications open and sitting in the task bar instead of closing them down and reopening something else going through the whole splash screen and wait times to load. If only I had known to try to get the a6 quad core instead...

 

Oh! You have the two core version. That one does not support the 1.4ghz mode AFAIK, and seems to be a real dog when it comes to performance.
I would suggest you start looking for a different laptop if your financial situation allows it. I don't think you will be able to get the A4 processor to perform at an acceptable level no matter what you do. SSD or not.

 

D'oh!!!!!!!!!!

 

I'm still wondering if someone with better knowledge than me could help shed some light on replacing the WiFi card. I've seen mentions of taping a pin. Anyone can tell me how this is done? What kind of tape do I need? Is this something something that needs to be done regardless of which WiFi card you choose?
And what ultimately would be the best card for this machine? Any insights on this issue would be much appreciated.

I'm sitting just two meters from my router and alternating between three and four bars of signal strength. There is not a whole lot of other networks around here, so that's not the issue..

 

I will. And when I get the new laptop that does what I need it too I will use the v5 122p as a diagnostic only computer. For example if something went wrong with the main computer this one's internet can be used to acquire drivers or programs.

 

The main issue we've been having with using alternative non-OEM WLAN cards is the fact that as soon as you boot to the desktop the WLAN card appears to be disabled and no matter what you do within the OS you cannot enable it. The WLAN card device drivers will install correctly without any issues and show up in the device manager too without and problems.

The one way so far to bypass this issue has been to apply a tiny piece of tape on pin 20 of the backside of the WLAN card and the next time you boot into the desktop your WLAN card will be enabled and ready to connect to a WiFi network. You can use clear tape and cut a tiny piece just small enough to cover the copper contact, pin 20. The downside to this method is that you won't be able to control the WLAN BT card or Air Plane Mode using the keyboard function hardware switch, in our case "Fn + F3." When I did this I think my "Fn +F3" did still work, but i cannot remember at this point anymore so you'll have to try for yourself and see. You can however still disable/enable the WLAN card using the OS switches in Windows 8.1 or Device Manager. Windows 8.1 will automatically install the WLAN card device drivers. Windows 7 probably won't so download the WLAN card device drivers prior to switching out the cards.








I did find or try out one WLAN card that did not require taping pin 20. The Broadcom BCM4352 BCM94352HMB is a 2x2 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WLAN card. The Broadcom BCM94352HMB card i used came from an HP ENVY ROVE AIO 20-K014US and was meant for HP computers part number 724935-001 or 724527-001. It didn't require taping pin 20 but it still had an issue with showing up as disabled upon first boot to the desktop. It showed up as being disabled just like all the other 802.11 ac WLAN cards and the device drivers were installed correctly. I found that by simply putting the computer to sleep, then waking it up, enabled the WLAN card! After the sleep and wake trick, similar to the "1.4 GHz sleep and wake trick," the card became enabled and ready to use. I then connected it to my WiFi router and it began working just fine. I couldn't test AC 5 GHz band though as my WiFi router doesn't support that feature. Even the "Fn + F3" keyboard hardware switch worked, disabling and enabling all radios or Air Plane Mode. Remember though, that first you must sleep and wake the computer in order to enable the Broadcom card. After that it will operate as usual. If you Hibernate, Shut Down or Restart the computer you will have to sleep and wake it once again in order to enable the WLAN card.

So that is all i have at the moment and that Broadcom card was actually a decent alternative to the Intel 7260 AC card. Since I don't have 5 GHz AC band I decided to go back to the OEM Acer WLAN card for the time being. The Broadcom card was actually for my HP EliteBook 725 G2 J5N82UT, and it works perfectly.

Good luck!

 

@davidricardo86 Hey! Thanks for the very comprehensive guide/post. Seems like there is no 100% painless solution then. But the cards are dirt cheap on ebay so I might just buy one and see if I can live with the tradeoffs.

 

What sub-model is it? I have two different versions of the Aspire V5-122P, both of which use the AMD A6-1450 quad-core processor and they both work very well for watching videos, Minecraft, Microsoft Office, and many other daily tasks and multitasking.

I just read on and saw that you have the dual-core version. From what I experience using the quad-core version I can see where the dual-core would not be suitable.

Speaking of the AMD A6 architecture, I just noticed on the Wikipedia article something I didn't see before: that the Jaguar microarchitecture in these laptops does not actually use clustered multi-thread modules. This means basically that quad-core does have four cores, four integer, and four floating point and not half the integer and floating point modules as I had previously thought. At this price point and power, that would have really killed performance.

 

I would like to see Acer refresh the v5-122p or similar with a 1.2 GHz (2.2 GHz Turbo) AMD A10 Micro-6700T (4.5 W TDP, 1333). I have to say I am very satisfied with my 1.0 GHz (1.4 GHz Turbo) AMD A6-1450 (8 W TDP, 1066) performance but Mullins brings performance comparable to the Kabini AMD A4-5000 (15 W TDP, 1600). If they can shoehorn a 2.0 GHz (2.4 GHz Turbo) AMD A8-6410 (15 W TDP, 1866) then I'd buy that right away. Just make sure to keep all the positives about the v5-122p and fix the negatives.

If Acer can keep the external battery connector that would allow me to continue using my Acer external battery. It didn't ad much more weight/mass but instead raised the laptop from the rear to give it better air intake and heat exhaust as well as providing a more comfortable keyboard typing angle. I've had my v5-122p for over a year now and Its been a great experience. At first I was a bit reluctant to buy another Acer product but this changed my mind and I look forward to the next rendition.

What Acer should keep:
-IPS 10 input touchscreen
-backlit keyboard
-external battery connector
-DockPort
-quality design and build

What Acer should add/fix/replace/improve:
-add at least one more USB 3.0 port for a total of two
-make the SD card slot fully flush so that the SD card does not stick out
-1080p webcam
-better touchpad
-multi-brightness backlit kb
-DockPort with USB 3.0 and power
-built-in Gigabit Ethernet, maybe
-3000-4000 mAh internal battery
-4GB soldered RAM plus 1 sodimm slot
-M.2 PCIe connector for SSD, NVMe possibly, along with 2.5" SATA SSD
-M.2 PCIe WWAN
-PSP enabled for use

 

Acer is selling refurbished V5-122p's for $359.99 Acer 11 6" Aspire WIN8 Touch Laptop AMD A6 1450 1GHz 6GB 500GB V5 122P 0681 | eBay. That's more than most of us paid for them new.

 

I bought this notebook. (A6 1650, 6GB RAM, backlit KB)
By the way, it has BIOS ver. 2.12! Does anybody know the change from previous 2.10?


Overall, I am satisfied, but ...

I replaced the HDD for SSD. I have noticed a big difference in the performance of the SSD disk, if the laptop is on AC power or on battery.
I attach screenshots.



Is the SATA controller part of the CPU? Or where could be the problem? Processor speed during test was 0.6-0.7 GHz (battery), 1.2Ghz (AC).

The second situation: copying a large file from an external USB 3 drive to SSD.
As can be seen from the pictures, when AC power is, the copying speed was 110MB/ s, utilisation C: drive (SSD) was about 33%. The external drive was busy at maximum.

On battery power, decreased speed. Copy speed only 64MB/s. The C: drive utilization to 100%, external drive was bored ..

What the hell does that mean?




If anybody has a SSD in this notebook, you can verify the performace?
Try to run the benchmark on AC power and then on battery. Please, let me know the results.

Thanks.

 

Hi everyone,

I have a the quadcore version of the v5-122p and im worried that my fans are not working.
My laptop was getting really warm lately so i installed SpeedFan and HWmonitor, but both do not detect any fans.

Has anybody else tried to detect the fans of the V5-122p with software and did you succeed?
I think i can actually hear the fan spinning when i listen very closely, but i am not sure.

btw. SpeedFan shows me the following temperatures, how does this compare to yours?

HD0: 37C
Temp1: 68C
Temp2: 45C
GPU: 67C

 

Don't worry. My notebook - the same. No fan detected.
At the other side, the cooler is quite noisy and you must feel the warm air leaving from left side - near USB3.

Try some CPU stress test, (ie. Prime95 or superPI) to heat the CPU to the maximum. After few seconds, the cooler, (if it's working) starts turning to the maximum. And there is no way, that you can not hear this or doesn't feel the hot air.

 

My v5-122p-0600 gets up to 94*C at times when I'm pushing it real hard. It does so while maintaining a CPU clock of 1.4 GHz and GPU clock of 495 MHz and Memory clock of 533 Mhz. Surprisingly it doesn't throttle while playing Minecraft on a 1080p external display too. This A6-1450 is a beast!

 

maybe palemoon (firefox browser fork) optimized for the AVX instruction set (supported by AMD Temash CPUs) shows noticeable performance improvement on V5-122P ?

See Browser Based On Palemoon Source Optimised For AVX Processor

anybody has tried it ?

 

What it is the advantage of using AVX instruction set for the browser in comparison to other instruction sets? My Kaveri supports AVX too.

 

here are some numbers for benchmarks with or without avx (on a different CPU) : SiSoftware Zone : Benchmarks : Intel Sandy Bridge CPU/GPU: AVX Performance

people in the avx palemoon thread ( Browser Based On Palemoon Source Optimised For AVX Processor - Page 2 ) say they also notice performance improvement ....

 

Greetings all and thanks for this fantastic thread. I am an owner of this excellent piece of kit and have read the entire thread from front to back. Question for anyone with the miniCP network adapter: does this interface strain the CPU as a USB network adapter does, or less so? That will weigh heavily on whether I spring for one since they are relatively expensive and I already have a usb2 to ethernet dongle. Many thanks!

 

I can test this for you since I own the Acer MiniCP (aka DockPort) adapter. I've never done such a test so If you wouldn't mind telling me how I would go about doing so I would be more than happy to let you know the results.

 

Maybe someone here can help me.
I was given a V5-122p-0889 off of a friend and decided to a clean install on windows 8.
But it keeps telling me that i'm missing device drivers for the hard drive to install windows onto.
Diskpart shows no drives.
I've spent the last two days doing nothing but trying out new drivers but i can't get anything working.
any ideas?

 

I would suggest you try out my guide and install Windows 8.1 with UEFI from a FAT32 formatted drive.

How-to clean-install Windows 8.1 on your Windows 8 Acer Aspire V5-122P and activate using the genuine OEM Windows 8 Product key in the UEFI

 

Thanks davidricardo! As was mentioned in post 7 of the thread, I guess the easiest way would be to transfer a large file over lan with each network adapter all other conditions being equal and checking cpu utilization (just task manager). The usb network adapter would need to be usb2 100mbit I think because usb3 gigabit is not a fair comparison with the minicp 100mbit.