Why is my Aspire 5112 performing worse than my 5024?

I had an Acer Aspire 5024wlmi which was having grave cooling problems, after having it "repaired" a couple of times it was finally exchanged for an Aspire 5112wlmi. This one has now been used a while and I am generally pleased with it, but there is one big flaw: When I play 3D-games my new computer performs much, much worse than my old computer with the same settings! Things runs smoothly until there is a lot of smoke, or blowing sand to be displayed, then the frame rate goes down below playable. Can anyone here think of a reason why this may be? Below are the specs of the two computers.

5024wlmi

• GFX: X700 256mb
• Processor: Turion 64 1800mhz
• RAM: 1gb
• OS: Win XP

5112wlmi

• GFX: X1600 128mb (512 hypermemory)
• Processor: Turion 64 X2 1600mhz
• RAM: 1gb
• OS: Win Vista

As far as I can see, the 5112 is superior in everything except gfx-memory. Could it be that that has such a big impact? I also read somewhere that the 5112 only has a 64bit memory bus for the gfx-memory, could that be it? Of course I am using the very latest drivers.

Can anyone here shed any light on why the new computer can't handle games as well? Or is it simply slower?

Thank you for any help and ideas!

 

The X1600 is way quicker than the x700. From what I can find the X1600 score twice as high as the x700 in 3DMark06.

Josh

 

That is exactly why I can't understand why I can't play the same game (GTA San Andreas) as well any more. Could the 128mb less gfx impact that much?

 

Don't compare 3D Mark 06 Scores as X700 is PS2.0 and X1600 is PS3.0
3D Mark 06 has PS3 scenes and X700 doesn't even render them. So there is a different way of calculating the score.
3D Mark 05 is fully compatibile with both of them and there is no way X1600 (12pipelines) can be twice as fast as X700 (8 pipelines).

And to answer the first question- the amount of memory does make a diference but the reason your new machine is slower is that it has 64bit videro memory bus (X700 has 128bit memory).

I thought of replacing my 5024 with 5112 but when I saw 3D Mark scores...
My overclocked 128MB X700 scores around 2800 in 3D Mark 05 with Windows Vista and I really doubt 5112 can beat that...

 

The problem there is Windows Vista, it is a real power hog, it is far slower than XP in the same hardware. Note that the RAM amount is the same in both machines and that seems to be one of the strongest points in Vista performance.

EDIT: Vista alone demands about 1GB to run at an acceptable speed (compare that to the 256M/128MB XP is 'happy' with).

Joe.

 

The problem with the unit is windows Vista... kills the performance on most units... i wouldn't run it unless i had two gigs of ram... even then i didn't like vista.

 

I'm really fed up with this Vista whining :/

Aspire 5112 XP 3D Mark 05 score: 2425 3D Marks (GPU 472Mhz, RAM 750MHz, 12 pipelines)

from here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=82471

Aspire 5024 XP 3D Mark 05 score: 2867 (GPU 400MHz, RAM 780MHz, 8 pipelines)

Both 1GB RAM, both 128MB dedicated video memory.

Now guess, where 64bit video RAM can be found?

 

3d mark isn't the be-all-and-end-all of system performance... i get a higher score with 3d mark on my system when using vista; but its the overall responsiveness of the system thats important to me; i felt that vista wasn't for me just now.

i actually like the athetics of vista and i'm not gonna say vista its crap because i actually think its a good piece of work. all i'm saying is that i see a lot more acer customers complaining that their system is "really slow" when they run vista, and its usually because the system running it is inadequate for the required spec of vista.

 

The question was why the games run slower on 5112 compared to 5024.
As you can see 5112 is slower also when running XP.
So Vista is not the reason.

It's obvious that 64bit memory has poor bandwidth not to mention the fact that mentioned 5024 had 256MB compared to 128MB of 5112.
So 5024 had two times the memory of 5112 with twice the bandwidth and you guys blame it on Vista.

That's not even funny...

 

Thank you all for your answers. I was sent this 5112 as replacement for my broken 5024, nice replacement when I can't play the same games on it. We'll see if Acer agrees with me (I think they will be reluctant to send me yet another model), and I really don't look forward to having to reinstall everything again. Which Acer-model would be a suitable replacement for the mentioned 5024?

 

The definitive test would be to test the games under the SAME conditions, I mean, under Windows XP.

 

I've called Acer support and asked them if they had any idea why my new computer was running slower in games. They said it was because of Vista for sure. Still, I doubtful as my new computer is slower still when I have reduced quality/resolution etc.

 

We told you man, Vista is a load of crap. You could convince yourself trying the machine with Windows XP.