AMD C-50 CPU and 6250 GPU performance(Acer 522 review)

If Windows 7 Starter was written to be limited to 2GB of RAM, then I doubt you can use tricks to bypass it, unless MS locked it in a way that could be bypassed.
PAE is nothing more than a gimmick.
It's a way for Windows to SEE more than the programmed RAM limit, but NOT use it.

x86 Windows will not be able to use more than 3 or 3.5GB of RAM due to the 32bit code limitations.
x64 on the other hand doesn't have such a low limit and goes WAY up.

My advice would be to simply install Home Premium x64 on a machine with 4GB RAM.

 

Anyone try adding a Bluetooth Module to the AO522 sold in Canada? Or a D255?

I'm curious if the kit for sale for the D255 will also work in the 522...

So far I've installed my 4GB of RAM and Win7 Home Premium x64 and I am very happy with this Netbook! Anyone hesitating to do the RAM upgrade and 64 bit OS ought to go ahead with it, seriously improved performance!

I use my AO522 primarly as a media player while traveling. I play 720p and 1080p MKV files, (via MediaPortal and MPC-HC with native codecs and or FFDSHOW) Hulu and YouTube. I also stream my MKV files over wifi at home and have never had any issues. CPU is never above about 40% and battery life is about 4 hours.

I have a D255 US keyboard coming (Canadian bilingual keyboard is terrible!), and some 65w generic e-bay chargers are also in the mail. I'll update as to their performance when I receive them since they were very affordable.

 

Just curious, why are you buying new chargers?

 

Just to have extras, I do not expect any benefit in charging times etc... I want one for my office, one for my home and one spare for traveling.

 

I doubt I'll ever buy more than my current 4gb of memory for this netbook. So apart from having access to a little bit more RAM (3.5gb to 4gb approx.), what would upgrading to a 64-bit Win7 really do? Is it worth it?

 

anyone ever get a fix for that lines glitch that comes across the screen? I installed Win7 64bit 4gigs ram fresh install and it happens.

 

what lines glitch?? that sounds like a hardware failure to me

 

I'm not 100% certain that I know what it is myself, but I think I have seen it recently on my AO522. Every so often a white line will appear on the right hand side of the screen about half way down the screen. It is always in line with another object on the screen (such as the title bar or progress bar of another application) and is only a flash, very brief.


In my experience this appears to be a driver issue related to certain applications. For example, when I use FireFox and have the download window open I often see the issue, but I have never see it while playing full screen video. I also think I tend to see it when applications have a progress bar or some other peice of data that is updating regularly but NOT streaming video. This all makes me suspect it is a driver issue and not a hardware issue.

I am running Win 7 x64 with 4GB RAM and the ATI drivers 11.2 (11-2_vista64_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl)

 

I find that odd and disappointing. From the wall my AO522 draws the full 40W (so like 2.16A) when charging. I expected it to be able to pull more to charge faster with a 65W or 90W charger.

Read the posts near the beginning and middle of this thread and you'll get a full description. I think we've pretty well determined it is most likely a driver issue. And unlikely a hardware issue. It is definitely not a screen issue.

 

so no fix for it Enzo? It didnt happen at all to me last night when I was working on it but during the day it did it. Totally random horizontal lines.

 

can i install windows 7 professional 32 bit on this machine or do I have to buy the upgrade kit?

 

yes. I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit no problemo. Just gotta track down a couple drivers.

 

does it run better with 32 bit version or 64 bit version?

 

dont think it makes a difference. mine runs great on 64 bit with clean install and 4 gigs ram. 64 bit allows you to use all 4 gigs of ram and 32 bit lets you use 3.5 gigs (I believe thats the amount). Thats one of the big things with 64 bit it allows you to use as much ram as the motherboard can handle where as 32 bit only uses 3.5 gigs max.

If I am wrong I am sure to be corrected.

Running Photoshop CS5 with no problems on it. Havent done any heavy editing on it yet but so far so good.

 

Alright, so I plugged mine into my HDTV using HDMI and it's not fitting the screen correctly, the borders cut off some of the icons I have on my desktop (recycling, firefox, etc).

How can I make it fit correctly?

The resolution of my TV is 1360x768.

 

just change the overscan options in the ati control panel

edit:
WOOT 1000th post...TIME TO PARTY

 

@Texanman

your avatar already looks like it needs to stop partying lol

 

Greetings from Germany,

i saw the Aspire 522 on the Cebit in Germany an was blastet from this tiny Netbook.

Ill get it for 299€@ Amazon.de.
First of all i was thinking to get a Aspire 521 because of the k125 Neo which has more power than the c-50 but the GPU was (HD4225) was not the best.

So i have the Aspire 522 and i upgrade to Win 7 Ultimate 64bit. Today i change the memory to 2GB because the 1GB is a bit sluggish.

My aim is to overclock to get at least the cpu perfomance of the k125 neo.

First thanks of the uploaded vids of Gaming i save alot of time if i dont have to get on my onwn.

Thanks (specially Shadowfate!) and keep up good work.

 

I've looked through the settings in Catalyst Control Center but I can't get it to work.

 

Your Welcome

Although I still dont know where or how to OC it. If you find a software that works kindly share

 

Must work!

Our C-50 has a FSB @100. I think withe Setfsb i could be eays to raise it to 117 Mhz.

Look here a man oc a Zacate from 100 to 117 Mhz ---->

Gigabyte Fusion E350N USB3 Motherboard Review - Benchmarks - Overclocked

 

They didnt say what OCing software they used. I think Gigabyte allowed it to be BIOS OCed. ours does not allow that

 

They oced by bios.

So we have two ways.

Contact Borg Number One to mod our Bios ( a bit risky) or try Software.


Greetings

 

Iam in contact withe abo the Author of setfsb to find a way for Overclocking by raising the fsb.

So this means if we have a border @117Mhz x10 =1170 Mhz not much but for the start

 

Acer didn't put any heavy dudty cooling on the AO522. Just watching videos causes the left rear bottom side to be quite hot. This is at default speeds.

Also if you plug anything into the 2 left hand side USB ports when the AO522 is working hard it seems to cause more overheating than when the ports are not in use. When I remove a wireless mouse dongle it is very hot.

 

Well if somehow can do it why dont you shar it

Well I'll first just chekc what are the current temps that a 522 gets hen OC bit by bit . getting an additional 3 C shouldnt be much of a problem

 

I will share if i have the solution, iam working on it

Cooling Pad ? Iam overclocking Notebooks and Netbooks in the last 5 Years. Every person who do oc must know it is on own Risk. But thats not the Topic.

We will do

 

Hy, I just bought this netbook and upgraded it to 4 gb of RAM and installed Win 7 Professional 64bit. I must say that it's performance is very impressive.......so far I'm very pleased with it. Here (Romania) it doesn't come with bluetooth (not even optional), and the only available colour is green (like this one http://www.netbooklive.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/aod522.jpg).
I get an average of 5 hours battery life.
I installed some games on it just for curiosity and it runs pretty well, but if you really want to play games on it you should try OnLive - Metro 2033 runs really smooth
The only problem I have with it are the temps - it goes as high as 93 degrees Celsius (200 F), when using intense GPU or CPU load. While playing OnLive CPU usage is 0-1% but the temps are really high ( => only GPU load). Otherwise at normal usage it stays around 65 C (150 F).

 

I think the temps are high too.

Do you notice when you first turn it on that the cooling fan for a second or two spins much faster?

I wish there was a way to get it to spin faster on demand when playing a long gaming session.

So far this chipset/cpu is so new there is very little software to customize the fan RPM based on temperatures like in Catalyst software for PCIe GPUs.

 

That is high i think TJ-Max is 90 C°

see here specs ---> http://products.amd.com/en-us/NotebookAPUDetail.aspx?id=4&f1=&f2=&f3=&f4=&f5=FT1+BGA&f6=&

 

At 93 C° the image get distorted and lines appear on screen - maybe soon I'll open it up and change the thermal paste with AC MX-4 - this should help a little

 

Nothing perminant but rebooting until the issue disappears has worked for me. If the issues doesn't occur shortly after booting up, it never occurs for me.

There are not vents at the bottom of this netbook. If you took the time to notice that. Actually, the cooling could be improved with holes drilled into the bottom for the fan. If I take off the bottom plate, my temps drop by 10*C on idle and load.

Good to know.

@ No.23, read what I said above about holes in the bottom for vents. It would improve cooling a lot more than better thermal paste.
If you do decide to do the thermal paste, post the results. I'd like to see how much difference you get.

I've also looked at the heatsink. This notebook is the same as the atom but they (Acer) applied the fin mod to the heatsink themselves.

 

Enzo If I take off the bottom plate, my temps drop by 10*C on idle and load.

Then try out to drill some hole in it.

 

Finally took the time to play Monday Night Combat on the 522... works like a charm on lowest settings and native resolution... I can go online and just play it! yet minecraft lags like no tomarrow

 

Hey guys, just picked this up for $250... Wondering what would be recommended as the best 64-90GB SSD for this thing? Needs to be under $150, preferably below $100.

Thanks.

 

I prefer intel drives for stability but that is just me

edit: tried out onlive on this little netbook and I say if this little netbook is the highest end machine I owned I would use the service in a heartbeat! the images come in compressed so its like watching a 480-720p youtube video but its fine. Tested it with world of goo (free from humble bundle) and a demo of aliens vs predator

 

I testet Fallout 3 @ native Solution and medium settings....it works smoth. Before i tryed withe 1GB no way!

 

Hi again everyone!

So far, I'm very happy with this little netbook. With the 4GB of RAM, it's fast enough to work (even do light Photoshop work, perfect to touch up a Powerpoint presentation or a Word document), and I'm still very impressed by the video decoding.

However, I noticed that some h264 files do not get accelerated, while others do (using Media Player Classic Home Cinema, I get to see the "Playing (DXVA)" status when it's accelerated - and anyway I notice quickly when the playback is not accelerated.

I haven't installed any codec pack, I only use VLC and MPC-HC in their most recent flavor. Any recommendation to tweak the files that do not get accelerated (they tend to be Matroska files), or is it an encoding option (profile, bitrate) that is not directly supported in hardware?

In another side topic, I really wish I could overclock this little guy to 1.2 or 1.3Ghz, I feel it's the "just enough" treshold sometimes (especially for games, even though it's not the primary purpose of that netbook).

 

Those files were not encoded properly so the GPU does not accelerate them. I don't know the details about that though,

 

try adding the ati encoder to MPC

 

What sort of temps do you guys get with this netbook? I just loaded it up and it seems like I'm getting near 70C according to HWMonitor just surfing the net.

 

That's the normal temp it can get up to 90C when gaming

 

I've been thinking about buying this little machine for travelling and studies. Will it ever be possible to overclock it?

 

Nothing yet. Still waiting though

 

Any recommendations regarding what type of RAM to use and what kind of SSD?

Putting one of the newest SSDs into it might be overkill or?

 

Yeah sata 3.0 would be over kill and you wont be able to utilize full performance of the drive. I recommend any sata 2.0 SSD with a Sandforce controller. This will allow you to use max potential of your SATA connection.

 

the 522 finally starting to appear here locally in... same with asus 1015b... i wonder which one to get... i'm nitpicking i know...

 

the asus uses the faster yet slower c-30 (single core)

 

actually the one being sold here is the same 1.0ghz c-50 for the asus along with ati radeon 6250 so the same as acer 522...

but 1024x600 on the asus though, acer's reputation here is a bit of concern because of the many mishaps as reported by local forums... although haven't heard of bad incidents about the 522...

 

Would 40GB be enough for W7 and various files? I might go for 60gb, hmm... And will 2,5" fit in the 522?

And which ram would you suggest? How much mhz and which cl?