Aspire 5552G Questions (and some advice needed)

After much trouble with searching and purchasing a new laptop, I finally picked Acer Aspire 5552G. Not because I prefer Acer, but because it was the best deal I could get in my country, for it's price.

It's speccs are:
AMD Phenom II, X3 N850 2.2 ghz, ATI HD 5650 with 1gig Ram, 4gig DDR3 ram, 500 GB HDD, 6 Cell battery, 15,6 inch, 3x USB 2.0 ports, DVD-Super Multi DL drive, 2MP webcam ...

I will be using this laptop for schooling and gaming (Diablo 3, Civilizations 5). However, after running 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage, I am not too sure anymore. (I also ran these programs to see if everything was functioning properly.)

• 3DMark06 (versions 1.2) results: Score: 7202 3DMarks. According to their histogram, my laptop performed as it should (according to other laptops with similar speccs)
  So my laptop should be able to play Direct X 9 games in full detail etc.
• 3DMark Vantage (Version 1.1) results: Score: P3365 3DMarks, and according to this histogram, my laptop is actually in the group who're better than the rest.

However, there are some difference in their results. 3DMark06 recorded the processor clock at 2196 MHz, while Vantage only recorded a 1597 MHz clock rate. I did the '06 test before the Vantage, perhaps it was over-heated? And, both state; "Physical/Logical processors 1/3" despite having 3 cores; does this mean that I have to somehow configure my laptop to use all three?

At many online "check if your speccs meet game requirements" sites, (such as Yougmers.com) my laptop is good enough for most of the latest games that have been released so far, but test results on upcoming games such as FEAR 3, the graphics card fails. Is there a way of tweaking it? Drivers? (you guys know the massive driver site/forum for laptops and their graphic cards?)

I tried using the newest 3dMark; 11, which uses Direct X 11 (which, apparently my graphics card does as well) - however it could only run it's Demos, and would be stuck on "Please Wait" while trying to load the benchmark tests... I will try to get on 3DMarks' forums for this. However, my laptop will most likely perform very poorly on it's tests.

But anyways, from these tests I think that the hardware of the laptop is working properly. Well, except for the battery. How could I test it? I tried to "recaliberate" it, by fully charging it, then disabling the power saver options and letting the battery drain. However, at 5%, the laptop hibernated, and I couldn't find out where I stop it from hibernating at 5% (only sleep, turn off & dim display).

Regarding the software, I ran pcdecrapifier, did a full windows update, going to install Comodo Internet Security and other applications.

You guys think that my new machine will be able to run Diablo 3? I paid 3500 dkk for it, and a week later they put it up to 4,444 dkk (657 USD and 835USD respectively) and was the best I could get in this expensive country, for the price.

Anyone have some comments/answers to the many questions I've included in my post? Or perhaps someone is interested in this laptop (seeing as there is no sign of it on this site) and have some questions for me? =)

Cheers,
Ktadie

 

3DMark detects CPU speed as it is at the moment which because detection is made before benchmark is run is often not the highest possible.
No need to worry.

As for 3DMark11 it should work so make sure that you're using the most recent version, that your Catalyst drivers are up to date (visit AMD website for that) and that DirectX is up to date.

 

Sorry what?

 

All modern CPUs vary their speed according to the current load of the computer. If your machine isn't working hard when 3DMark checks for processor speed it will think you have a slow CPU because at that moment the CPU will be downclocked from it's maximum frequency. For instance right now my core i5 460M which can go up to about 2.9GHz is running at 1.2GHz at idle.

 

Cheers cheers. So I don't have to enable all three cores?

And regarding ATI drivers, what do you guys recommend? I heard Acer has made it quite hard for users to do it themselves?

 

An update;
Went on amd.com, filled in my laptops speccs and got the 8.861 driver. So if anyone is speculating on how to update without using Acer's drivers, then you can do it there.
It also increased my 3dMark Vantage score to 3417