Aspire V5-552G?

I can't find ANYTHING on the internet about this, except for some really blatant fake reviews and blogspam. Is Acer's marketing really this bad?

Newegg.com - Acer V5-552-X418 Notebook AMD A-Series A10-5757M(2.50GHz) 15.6" 6GB Memory 500GB HDD 5400rpm AMD Radeon HD 8650G
Newegg.com - Acer V5-552G-X414 Notebook AMD A-Series A10-5757M(2.50GHz) 15.6" 6GB Memory 750GB HDD 5400rpm AMD Radeon HD 8750M

Attractive chassis, light, powerful.
It looks amazing for the price, except for lack of 1080p. But for a weak gaming laptop 1080p would just get wasted anyway.
Atheros wifi in some models for linux support

The only review on newegg at least indicates the GPU can be overclocked and performs swimmingly for such a thin machine.

The only thing I can't find out to save my life is...Crossfire support in the dGPU+APU model (2nd link).
the 8650g and 8750m look about evenly matched, so I cant really see the point of adding the dGPU if there's no crossfire support there to double up on performance.

 

A couple of important points.

These machines are fairly new and the model numbers seem in flux. Right now Newegg has this Acer Aspire V5-552G-8632 for $529. Not a bad deal. Their current A10 model is $729, which is simply far too much for a machine with such moderate horsepower and a 1366x768 screen.

A decent 1080p screen isn't just higher res, it's usually brighter and has better color reproduction. As an example. My Asus N56DP I got for $599 at Microcenter has an IPS 1080p matte screen that gets around 95% sRGB coverage which is about average for a most low end 1080p IPS screens nowadays. The glossy 1366x768 screen Acer uses on the V5 series is typically much less bright, has lower contrast, and shows glare much more. Typical sRGB coverage is in the 60% range. I have an older HP dv6-6135dx with a 1366x768 screen, and my Asus' 1080p IPS screen simply blows it out of the water for things like movie watching.

The 8750 is likely a decent overclocker. My 7730 in my Asus is quite overclockable, getting within a few % of 7770M clock speeds. The fact that the 8750 will have DDR3 RAM means that the memory speed will likely limit performance anyway, but it'll do for medium detail settings on most games.

The AMD A10 is a good but not great CPU. Performance is in the 3rd or 4th gen core i3 to lower i5 range. Multi-threaded applications will definitely do better than single threaded ones. The A8 is a very close second to the A10. While the older Llano APUs were overclockable, it appears the Trinity APUs are not. Keep that in mind. If you are playing a game that's lagging due to a maxed out CPU, you aren't going to be able to do any overclocking to make it better on an AMD Trinity APU. For all out maximum performance in multi-threaded apps, an intel core i7 quad core is about 2 to 2.5 times faster than an A10.

If the Asus N56DP shows up as a refurb on newegg for quite a bit under $600 (what I paid for mine new) then I'd look at that. Great sound, great screen, backlit keyboard, 8G RAM, 1TB HD, and a similar performing GPU makes it well worth the cost.

As for Asymetric crossfire or dual graphics mode as AMD is now calling it, it's mostly a gimmick. It can add on a few fps here and there but there are still some mild microstuttering issues (they're a lot better in Trinity than they were in Llano) and further, if the game you're running is CPU intensive the dual graphics mode can actually slow things down by making the CPU and iGPU fight over memory bandwidth. An absolute requirement for decent dual graphics performance is having two memory sticks in your machine. The Acers look like they come with a single 4G so you can just buy a second one and have 8G in minutes.

Hope this helped.

 

The 700 dollar model includes a touchscreen and 8GB of ram and looks fairly kitted out.

I can certainly tolerate a TN 768p screen, even @15". More DPI than my main monitor.. I've seen TN panels get close to or beyond 95%, and i've seen IPS panels with crappy color reproduction.

At least the one review calls the screen in these pretty good, and while I can't speak to that guy's standards, 'good enough' is often great.

That Asus is utterly beautiful and if I ever see it close to 500 I'll probably bite.

Not sure on DDR3 GPU. It will definitely hold it back for max res and anti-aliasing, so gaming on 1080p HDMI screens might suck. But for 720/768p while traveling it looks to hold its own. Even the APU's GPU looks to hold it's own.

I'm a fan of what AMD is doing with their APU tech. The only thing that gets close is intel Iris pro, and this laptop costs as much as that entire intel chip.
The A8 looks good but I cant find it any cheaper than the A10.


For mobile linux/dev/gaming I can't fault it, for the price and everything viewed as a whole.

For anything else I have a 660Ti to offload CUDA/OpenCL computing tasks to.

Overall I think these could be popular at the 500 dollar price point if acer could just market them better and not get lost in the flood of everything else.

Worst case I'll just gift it to my parents since their hardware is getting ancient and pick up the Asus

 

Let me know what you think of these laptops, I'm within the same budget more or less (around $500 or less) for a gaming laptop. Mostly RTS and RPGs (Total War series, and Skyrim).

 

So, I picked one up. (X414 model)

Quick review:
keyboard will take some getting used to. I keep palming the touchpad and ing up. keys are standard acer. Not much depth or feel, but they work great.

LCD is pretty damned good for TN. There's a tweak in the ATI driver that makes it look amazing ill post later.
LCD feels flimsy, i can push on it and bend it rather substantially.

audio is acceptable for a laptop.

Stock windows 8 install is loaded with crap. whats new.

GPU's do seem to support crossfire with eachother. Not much gain from it though. Next catalyst driver should fix stuttering.

So far runs skyrim and new vegas great on the dGPU.

Doesn't boot from SD, which is something most any acer used to do.

Upgraded to 12gb ram and SSD i had laying around. Internally there is no mSATA, just one SATA port cable and one PCI-E port for the wifi.
Pretty high quality internals from looking at it. The AC jack is seperated by a cable so there'll never be desoldering issues there.

Everything inside is easily replaceable. (except the apu/gpu, those are soldered down. but the mobo would be an easy swap)

Overall it's blazing fast for what it is. I'd be happy with just the APU but i wanted more power. lol

 

What do you guys think of buying this $530 laptop to play Diablo 3?

Acer Aspire V5-552G-8632 Notebook AMD A-Series A8-5557M(2.10GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory 500GB HDD 5400rpm AMD Radeon HD 8750M

Newegg.com - Acer Aspire V5-552G-8632 Notebook AMD A-Series A8-5557M(2.10GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory 500GB HDD 5400rpm AMD Radeon HD 8750M

Too much laptop, or not enough? Good value for the buck?

Thanks for your opinions.

 

It will run D3 on high settings pretty snappy (see also the newegg review on the X414 sub model confirming that too. same GPU.)

 

Hey can you do a video review of it? I'm thinking of purchasing this as my first budget gaming laptop mainly for sims.. It is a demanding game and I wanted to be prepared for sims 4 but can I play modern upcoming games if it were possible? Like GTA IV?

 

I got the 552g for my son's birthday, it's not until the 14 so you guys will have to wait then. I have booted it to test it out. It nice looking thin, the down side is the back is one solid piece so no fast ram up grade.

 

Hi All!:hi2:

I am new to the forum, and notebooks as this is my first, and I like it alot but I'd like to pick some of your brains (and WEI scores if
you have this notebook). I am above average on tech, but nowhere near stellar.

I just got the 553g-8632 and I am torn on if there is a problem with the GPU or if this is accurate performance.

I know that the WEI isn't too reliable of a benchmark, but I read that A10's without dedicated graphics were scoring 6.7 in Win 8.
With the 8750m, I am scoring around 6.3 gaming, only 4.6 aero. Something seems terribly off. This has Vram, and a higher clock than
the 8650g. I tried it in World of tanks and I have to go medium low on the graphics, that is not the most demanding game.

I have updated all of the drivers to the current AMD and no changes (13.8 & 13.10). I also played with single and dual settings in vision
control center. No difference. The computer does show the GPU, although 3dmark couldnt name it, Maybe because its newer?

As new as this notebook is there isn't a whole lot of info to compare mine to, but alot of the reviews said they were gaming on more
demanding games in medium to high range. I got this for a steal on shell shocker, and would like to believe this is nonperforming and can be remedied. I guess I could live with medium low, but I swore this would outperform 8650g, game-debate has it above with more bandwith and TMU's and frequency

AMD Radeon HD 8650G compare AMD Radeon HD 8750M 2GB GDDR5 GPU

HELP . Any comparisons or advice would be greatly appreciated!:thumbsup:

 

Hey, the WEI just uses your iGPU for a score, it doesn't check the performance of the 8750m. Your iGPU score is so low, because you have 4 GB in Single Channel, if you upgrade your RAM to 8 GB Dual Channel, your score will be 6.7 gaming and ca 5.8 in Aero, so your machine is absolutely normal.

As for World of Tanks, it's a very CPU intensive game and actually it's also a very GPU demanding game because it's unoptimized, you need a High End Videocard for high preset http://www.notebookcheck.net/World-of-Tanks-v8-0-Benchmarked.83065.0.html

But to make sure you are using full power: Is your CPU running on max performance? Is WoT using your dedicated 8750m instead of the iGPU? Switch to high performance in Windows, in the switchable graphics option for WoT (switches to 8750m if you add WoT.exe and choose high performance) and in the option "Powerplay" (very important to make sure your GPU is clocking full speed). Also plug in the AC. I also recommend to disable Dual Graphics to make sure the system let you choose between the two GPUs, WoT can't use Dual Graphics (Dx9) anyway. Last thing you could do is a ram upgrade to 8 GB (2x4 GB dual channel) that really brings double the performance for your iGPU.

 

WEI is worse than useless, it is often inaccurate as heck. Download one of the later model 3DMark benchmarks and see how you compare to other laptops similar to yours.

 

It has backlit keyboard?

 

Has anyone downgraded this to Win7? I don't see any win7 drivers on the acer site for this laptop.

 

Yes, it has. That surprised me too!

 

As a New owner of a 552G-8632 I can vouch for blacks review on this laptop. I've also thrown in an 8 gig stick bumping the system up to 12 gigs in addition to an 840 EVO SSD and this thing is impressive. You may only be gaming at 720p but it can handle most modern games on Medium - High settings while still being a ultrabook style machine!

 

How did you upgrade the RAM? For a ram upgrade, you normally have to remove the battery from the system so that the mainboard has no energy. How do you did that on the Acer? Afaik the battery reset hole just resets the battery, but it doesn't cut it down from the power system. Also, do you think my 4 GB HYNIX 12800S, 1.5 Volt(?) and 800 MHz would work? Thanks!

My CPU performs worse than it should, 6.8 on WEI instead of 6.9 and only 1.8 points in Cinebench (normally it should have over 2, and my old machine with a amd a6 3400m performed, overclocked to 2 ghz, 2.35 points.) Any solution? Maybe it's the single channel RAM? It's in high performance mode.

But otherwise, I have no problems with this machine, I really love it and I recommend it highly!

 

Thanks so much for the reply dampflokfreund,

You are absolutely right, WEI only grades the iGpu so for anyone confounded by why the scores are low, its memory bandwidth. This is easily remedied by going dual channel as I found out when I added 4gb of ram. You will effectively double your bandwidth. My Aero and Gaming scores both immediately went up to 6.7. Also right on D.

This is handling games on medium like a champ, and some on high. I liked this notebook before fixing it, now I am really liking it. I added 4GB ram and a 500GB SSHD, and it really flies. Its easy to change both, there
are 17 screws that you need to remove and the whole back plate removes. Easy access to the one RAM slot. There is only one 2.5 Sata bay, so you have to pick the drive you will stick with. I wanted space and speed, and
didn't want to invest the $$ in a 256GB + SSD, so I went with a 500GB SSHD, and I am impressed with the hybrid drives performance in the things I use most, while still having some space. One note on changing the HDD, I actually
made the recovery drive on a 16GB USB drive in ACER's system tools, put the new drive in and recovered from the pen drive. This wasn't a problem for me because I did this very close to new, so I wasn't going to loose much. I recommend
making the pen drive anyway so you have a recovery tool handy.

Anyone on the fence about this book, I'd go for it, and bank on upgrading the ram, and while your in there, may as well change the slow spinning HHD with an SSD.

I will agree with Blacks review as well, and how cool is it to game on a machine this thin and light!? This laptop is a great bang for the buck!

 

Hey mewoq, originally I did a clean install of win7 but after searching for all of the required drivers i figured it would be easier/make more sense to just suck it up and use win8. Did a clean install win win8 and installed (StartIsBack) haven't had any issues so far.... works just like win7