Benchmark Matchup: 8204 vs. Dell E1705

Hello everyone. If you have been following this Acer forum, then you may have read how I ordered an 8204 as a replacement for a Dell E1705 that was supposedly delayed until the end of May (ordered March 8th!). Long story short, the Dell somehow shipped the same day as my Acer, so now I have both. Dream situation, right? Wrong...I'm not wealthy enough to keep them both. So my misfortune is your best chance to get a head-to-head benchmark comparison of these two killer systems.

Before I go any further, I just want to note that my Acer laptop does not seem to have any of the reported problems talked about on this forum. I played FarCry for about an hour today and I never heard any buzzing noises, and the fan noise was the same as the Dell's. The display is not as bright as I would have liked it, but I made it about 30% brighter using ATI's Control Center. I have the lcd display that other's have complained about, but I can't tell any difference between it and the Dell's. If I had found any of the problems that others have had, I would never have run these benchmarks. No level of performance makes having a troublesome laptop worthwhile. For those of you who have had troubles, I hope you get them sorted out with Acer. For those of you thinking of getting the 8204, you won't be disappointed.

Computer Specs:
Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi with standard specs (no upgrades...yet)
Round 1: Stock Round 2: Updated Bios (v3312) and GPU (8.231)
Dell E1705, T2500, Go7800, 2 GB 667 RAM, 80 GB 7200rpm HDD, XP Pro SP2
Round 1: Stock Round 2: Upgraded Bios (A01) --no GPU u.d. avail.
All non-essential apps were closed down and both machines had been running for about 1 hour previous. Benchmarks were run on each machine simultaneously.

Benchmarks:
Everest Ultimate Ed. 2006 Eval 2.80.534
HDTach 3.0.1.0
3DMark05 1.2.0
SiSoft Sandra Lite Unicode 2005.10.10.69
Far Cry (subjective)

Results:

http://home.comcast.net/~peddlar/Benchmarks.rtf

Review:
Out of the box, in Round 1, the Dell's faster hard drive and memory show their muscles on all of the Everest and HDTach benchmarks. The biggest difference was shown in Memory Read speed and HDD Average Read speed. However, on the 3DMark05 and Sandra tests, the Acer shows how it can outperform the Dell even with "lesser" components.

After the updates for Round 2, the Acer became even more efficient, winning almost all of the Everst and HDTach benchmarks. The new Acer bios really improves overall component performance. On the other hand, the Dell's new bios seemed to cause it's hard drive to slow it's Average Read and Long Random Access speeds.

Best of all, the Acer's 3DMark05 score took a HUGE leap of 353 points! This can easily be attributed to the raising of the x1600's core and clock speeds to 473/468. Thank you Christopher H. The Acer's new video driver also helped extend it's advantage over the Dell in the Sandra tests.

As for the subjective FarCry tests, I felt that the Acer ran more smoothly. The Dell had horizontal striping patterns at multiple resolutions and performance settings. Also, the game runs smoother on both computers at lower resolutions, but the Acer looks better at native resolution simply because it's easier (1680x1050 vs. 1920x1200). Running FarCry on the Dell at native resolution looks noticeably slower.

You may notice that I have not made any comments on the CPU performances in 3DMark05. Honestly, it's because I don't understand what the numbers mean. Please feel free to enlighten me if you know the answer.

Comments:
I've had a really tough time trying to decide between these two excellent laptops. On one side, the Dell has top notch specs including one of the best displays I have ever seen. The speakers are VERY good for a laptop and the Dell Media Direct really shines (especially if you have to run XP Pro for work instead of Media Center). On the other side, the Acer offers better performance, security, and connectivity (including a REAL port replicator) for about $500 less than the Dell.

Before today's tests, I was set to keep the Dell because I thought it had the whole performance package (minus PC Card and port replicator). Now I know that the Dell somehow wastes it's component advantage with unnecessary bloatware and poorly optimized bios and drivers. I would not have believed it if I hadn't run the tests myself.

I think it's fairly safe to say that I'm keeping the Acer. It's faster, sleeker, lighter, and fits MY work and play needs better than the Dell. For play, I dabble with HD video editing (go AVIVO!). So how do I plan to live without the Dell's bright display, great speakers, and multimedia enhancements? Well, I have a 20" widescreen lcd at work which I can use as my primary in a mirrored arrangement or an extended desktop. I can get portable speakers to use with my ipod and the Acer for when I travel. A great set of headphones is always a better option for me anyway. And recently, I found that CompUSA has a presentation remote that works with WMP and stores in the PC Card slot. It's a perfect combination with the Acer because it uses it's IR port right in front.

 

Ohh yea another reason to keep a Acer. the other was a Dell
If the E1707 was a 15.4" you could of taken it out and put it into the Acer. Swap the screens round.. No one would ever know