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

After debating the HP Dm1z and the Lenovo X120E, I grabbed the Acer 522 off Amazon, had a nice gift card so it came down to $179 shipped. Overall I'm satisfied with the capabilities. I added a 2 GB Patriot RAM stick (PSD32G13332S), not before marring the area around F4 key a bit when installling it. I guess a new keyboard might be in order later on

But onto the machine. I removed all the bloatware and left only what I deem essential, feels snappy, and wireless works great. It weighs 2.58 lbs, lighter than what the specs say.

A few things I've noticed regarding video playback:

- Plays YouTube 720p fine, but 1080p struggles with some vids, this with Catalyst 11.3 and Flash 10.2 in Google Chrome. Anyone know if Catalyst 11.2 had better performance?

- Also struggles with 1080p mkv movies, not sure if its the size of the movie or the bitrate that makes it cough a bit. Was using MPC-HC with CCCP. Also tried Windows Media Player.

- Can't play AVCHD .mts from my GH1 camera, I guess the bitrate is a bit too high, they play like a slideshow. If I transcode them to MP4 they play fine.

- How can you close the lid while not making it going to sleep? (want to listen to mp3s with the lid shut).

- What's the best way to adjust the screen size on an HDTV in Catalyst Control Center?

 

for the mkv problems.... Something must be causing bad FPS drops. I play 1080p videos well using 10.4 preview

for the lid- power options-in the left side -choose what closing the lid does-change the setting

for the HDTV screen size- I just right click on desktop -screen resolution- show only on HDTV

 

Did you download and install the kazaa codec pack?

 

Thanks a lot Shadow....... I read all 60+ pages a few days ago before making my decision. Can any of guys recommend me a sleeve for it?

 

I have the latest CCCP, they work fine in older computers. The movie I can't play is Aliens 1080p, which is around 15.8 gb.

 

WOW read 60+ pages!!!! i hope my thread has answered most of your questions :S

Doesnt your purchase have a free one?

I used K-LIte codec pack

reasons

it can display Subtitles correctly CCCP has problems last i tried it.

as for the Aliens... it may be because of the bitrate.. though i am not entirely sure. I only played 1080p music videos(Shakira's waka waka to be exact)

 

you should be able to play 1080p just fine.... What media player are you useing and driver?

 

Yeah that's what I noticed, short length 1080p files play perfect.

You mean the white one? Or was I supposed to get a leather-ish one?

 

I have a leatherish one.

 

Nope didn't get one. Wondering If I should write Amazon about it. But I'm thinking about getting a waterproof sleeve for it, as I will be taking mine on boating trips, to be used as a live GPS tracker with Google Earth.

Gonna try different codec packs, see which one works best.

 

For large HD movies or files, I find that VLC player works best after having the right codecs in place.

 

where theres the problem... vlc is bloated like no tomarow... try using media player classic and ad in the ati codic

 

I dunno just yet. I haven't taken the opportunity to search for a later ENE card reader driver than the one (January 7, 2011) on the Acer AO522 support page (I gotta life!).

And your card, Plume, is a Class 10, eh? Well, strike that (faster than Class 4) possible solution!

Perhaps there's a lead in here: Acer 2011 ServiceGuides SG AspireOne 522 BOOK 20101224.pdf. I inadvertently stumbled across the Service Guide doing a different search on Google!

Regards,
Harry

 

These are my startup programs on my Acer 522 after removing what I considered non-essential programs.
The are still some hidden system ones but I got it down to 42 processes after having 65+ plus on first boot.

 

you can uninstall epower... it doesnt do anything really

 

Alright, gonna give it a try.

Also, tried my 15 GB 1080p movies on Splash Lite and they play perfect! I guess hardware acceleration helps a lot, I couldn't find that option in MPC-HC.
I can't believe the power in this little machine

 

if you go to external filters in the options menu in mpc you can add the ati codecs

 

Guess Im gonna keep MPC for flv files, Splash lite doesn't seen to support them out of the box.

 

If you ever try it, I would really be interested in the story of your experience.

The heat is still a serious issue. I'm going to try a better piece of copper between the heatsink and the CPU before trying to make my own heatsink for this thing using bent aluminum and a copper plate from another heatsink. If it becomes necessary, I can replace the fan with a more powerful one I have on an old radeon 8xxx series video card.

 

in MPC- click view- options- internal filters-then on the right side click all the check boxes that has (DXVA) on it's title

 

hello guys, I just bought this netbook today and I need some help with it. First of all I think its a great netbook overall. The screen is beautiful, the design is very nice.
It has 2 major problems in my oppinion. The first is the battery life is only about 4-5 hours MAX in normal usage, and probably closer to the 4 hour mark. The second issue for me, the biggest one IMO, is the bloody temperature at the bottom of the netbook is off the charts. I used HWID and found the idle temp was 70 degrees celsius!! It went up to 77 with some 1080p youtube, and now Im too scared to try out a game. Also Ive heard alot of people say that the c50 is flawless with 1080p video, but that is wrong. It is a slideshow with 1080p mkv video on youtube.
I am thinking about returning it, but im not sure since I can tell this netbook IS a cut above my older atom n280 in terms of performance. If you guys have any solutions to any of my problems, please let me hear it. Thanks

 

For regular tasks I havent noticed any major heat issues with the 522. Yeah, HWMonitor does report the temps to be higher than what you would generally expect but I havent noticed any major overheating issues. As far as the flash video is concerned a recent update to flash player or ati driver seemed to break hardware acceleration on both of my fusion based systems. An update to one of those two should fix that issue. It should play any non flash 1080p file just fine.

 

The first problem is not really a problem. 4-5 hours is normal for this netbook.

2nd one is also not a problem 70C is again normal. I played SC2 , L4D nonstop for 3 hours no overheating.

1080p mkv video needs hardware acceleration.

If you think 4-5 hours is too short for you then better return it

 

Does anyone know if there is a working Win7 x64 driver for the webcam? I just installed x64 ultimate and can't seem to find a driver for it. I forgot to copy over the OEM Acer Crystal Eye cam software

 

you can use any of their laptops webcam drivers.. just find a laptop on their site that has it

 

Thnx, I think I was trying to treat this as a laptop and not a netbook. Also with wifi on and light browsing, the battery lasts about 7 hours which is decent. About this update for hardware accelaration or whatever, where can I get it? I guess this will improve my 1080p mkv video watching? Also does a 2gb ram upgrade help much in anything? I think the major issue with the heat is that both the cpu and gpu are on the same chip so the heat is culmulative. Hopefully with the next generation AMD can solve this issue.

 

You will want to upgrade to at least 2gb of ram.... and you will need to update ati driver and use a compatible media program/codecs to play hd fine

 

Download CCCP codec for the hardware acceleration

 

Here's a short vid I did of 720p and 1080p playback via HDMI out to my Sharp Aquos:

YouTube - Acer Aspire One 522 1080p Test with Splash Lite

 

It was more than just enabling DXVA filters in MPC-HC, had to change the output renderer to EVR Custom Press and blocking some other ones. Here's a guide that I found useful:

Watching H.264 videos using DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) >> My collection of short anime reviews

Did all the steps outlined there and now my 1080p vids also play correctly in MPC-HC.

Onto the final task: are any of you able to watch the Big Buck Bunny 1080p in YouTube? It's slow as hell even if pre-buffered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSGBVzeBUbk

 

^

Hmmm i may be using the easy route lol since I just checked the DXVA filters lol

IF I were to encounter performance issues in the future, the site would prove useful

also

I have a small urge to see the WHOLE Desktop of the screenshots taken

 

While my Acer was already snappy, I disabled all the visual candy in Performance Options / Visual Effects, only left Clear Type enabled.

Great improvement, specially when right clicking programs such as Google Earth, menus appear instantly.

 

So if anyone is interested about the heating problem:

My AO522 was overheating when running prime95 and furmark at the same time. The graph became a sawtooth due to the throttling as soon as it hit 90*C. Idle was in the high 50s and low 60s. I tried different thermal pads to no luck.

The solution? A piece of copper I cut from the cooling in another laptop. about 1" by 1/2" between the die and the heatsink with MX-2 thermal compound between. It was a bit thick, so I had to be careful not to tighten the screws too much but now my idle goes all the way down to the high 40s in a 20*C room and does not pass 81*C on load. Goes up to 66-72*C playing HD movies with hardware acceleration. Heavy normal use seems to go between 56*C and 62*C

For reference purposes, the thermal limit where this APU begins to throttle to protect itself is 90*C.

It's a bugger to take apart though. You have two options:
1. Disassemble the whole damn thing without a manual (I did this the first time. Very time consuming) and maintain your warranty (ie, before sending it in for warranty, put the old thermal pad back in and say you never touched it)
2. Snap a small piece of plastic preventing you from removing the HSF just from the bottom of the unit. It's above screw #1 and isn't structural but will be obvious you forfeit your warranty (I did this the second, third and fourth time)

On a side note, if anyone has issues with youtube HD, ensure you are at 1GHz not 0.8 and ensure you have the latest version of flash player and CCC (11.3 currently)
I, myself, used to be able to play the buck bunny youtube video at 1080p but I cannot anymore for some reason. 100% CPU usage and no hardware acceleration. Chrome, firefox or ie9

 

damn it you'd think acer wouldn't have cheaped out on thermal equipement, baastards

 

How can I make sure it is running at 1 ghz and not throttled down?

 

check the ati control panel you can control the cpu clock from there

 

Anyone else notice constant HDD activity when a card is inserted in the ENE Technology card reader?

I insert an SDHC card into the reader, the HDD activity LED goes on. I pull the card, the LED turns to normal operation (occasional bursts of activity). Repeatable symptom with different cards, factory OS, W7 Ultimate, change of RAM, &etc.

The first time I noticed the symptom was with a freshly configured ReadyBoost card. That time Windows just remained in the "shutting down" screen, until I pulled the ReadyBoost card, at which time is shut down immediately thereafter. However it happens with ANY card inserted, ReadyBoost or not.

I'd like to find out whether this problem is common to all AO522's or just a small sample of them. The guy in India suggests it's a hardware problem, wants me to send in my AO522. I'd rather not.

Please reply whether you do OR if you do not see this problem.

Thank you!
Harry

 

No problem with here with a 16 GB SDHC and a 2 GB SD card, the leds only momentarily turn on, and I get no errors after removing the cards.

 

Just got one of these and like others am having a few hiccups on getting all hardware acceleration running properly.

First off, used eRecovery to burn off DVDs of restore partition and then blew the whole thing away starting from scratch with Win7 Home Premium SP1. Installed all appropriate drivers off of Acer's site (except for video, used Catalyst 11.3), so good to go. EDIT: Forgot to say, I did update to 2GB of RAM.

However with YouTube 720p and 1080p I have been unable to get hardware acceleration working under Firefox 4 and Chrome 12. CPU spikes to 100% and videos are definitely not smooth. Oddly enough though, IE9 does happily accelerate properly. Flash 10.2.153.1 plugins for both browsers are installed. Is this a Catalyst problem or a Flash problem? Would Catalyst 11.4 Preview help? Would Flash 10.3.180.65 beta plugin help? Back on my previous AOD250, when I added a Broadcom Crystal HD to it everything just "worked" lol.

And as far as H264 MKV playback, I think I have it running correctly. Although I have been a huge supporter of CCCP for years now, I instead installed Haali and MPC-HC separately using the guide from Watching H.264 videos using DXVA (why, I don't know...just figured less codecs to cause problems). Things seem to smooth out after a while but initial playback can be spotty at first and would like to hear if other people see this and what their CPU utilization is like.

 

I have this in my 522. I have the HDTune results posted somewhere around page 20. It's really a sold investment even though HDTune doesn't show it.

 

I agree. HDTune won't show it because the files it uses to time read access won't have been written to the Momentus XT's 4GB SSD. However frequently accessed files such as OS and applications will be placed in cache rather quickly. As karmatose suggests, it really works to speed up disk access.

If you have a Momentus XT hybrid drive freshly installed you'd see shorter start times, certainly by the third boot. I can't quote numbers; be that as it may search for reviews; there are plenty around with numbers.

 

What file systems do you use on your cards?

I just observed a Sandisk Cruzer USB stick which I had formatted exFAT had its activity light on almost constantly, even when there were (to my knowledge) no reason to access the USB stick. The same Sandisk Cruzer USB stick does not exhibit that behavior on faster laptops.

I mounted one of my SDHC cards in a USB reader. When inserted there was no indication of hdd activity. The SDHC card has no activity light as does the Sandisk Cruzer so I couldn't tell whether it had activity. The same SDHC card inserted in the card reader the hdd activity light goes constantly on.

Curiouser and curiouser......

 

hdd activity allways on with sandisk ultra 8gb class 4 also, i got 4gb ram, but never did pay attention to this i dont think it affects anything

 

For those experiencing playback problems: My own system has nothing special (no codec packs), and I still can play Big Buck Bunny or the Planet Earth trailer (Youtube 1080p footage), without a problem.

I use either VLC (v1.17) or Media Player Classic Home Cinema x32 (latest version). No problems with subtitles either. Windows Starter 32bits (been too busy/lazy for a whole system reinstall), 2GB RAM, Catalyst 11.2, Flash Player 10.2. Only codec I installed is the CoreAVC Codec 2.5 I refered to previously, but I'm not even using it (disabled it in favor of DXVA direct acceleration instead).

Files tested for local playback: various movies in MKV, 720p x264 format and various Quicktime in h264 ( Rango 720p and Avatar 1080p trailers if you must know , Youtube. The occasional DiVX file might make the C-50 sweat a bit if it's 720p, but usually just fine.

Only thing I haven't tested is the HDMI simultaneous output on a larger screen - maybe that makes playback choppier.

Hope it helps,

+Logozo

 

Did you play the 1080p videos on youtube in full screen? I can play Big Buck Bunny on 720p fine and 1080p as long as it's not full screen.

 

I hooked the AO-522 to my 24" LCD (through VGA, my 24" doesn't have HDMI in...), and tried few things. Planet Earth stutters a bit on "majestuous scenes" like the flock of birds and the waterfalls, but Big Buck Bunny worked fine in fullscreen. Both from a 1080p Youtube feed.

However I can play local files in 1080p without a sweat, so I suspect it's the Flash/Web combo that adds overhead compared to Matroska or Quicktime files.


+Logozo

 

For some reason I've tried the Big Buck Bunny on 1080p streaming again and it's working better now.

I hooked it up to my 50" TV and everything ran smooth except for 1080p on full screen. It was bit choppy but not too bad. Haven't tried a local file on it though so I'll give that a shot next.

 

Wow, the HDMI out overscans pretty bad. Any idea how to adjust this?

 

wow just tried my Cooling Pad and my temps are around 35 for hdd and 60 for gpu with browser open and playing poker , used to be 41 for hdd and 77 for gpu, nice

 

That doesn't make sense since there are no vents in the bottom for the cooling pad to blow into.