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

It really depends on what apps you're using. Web surfing, reading, writing, 'rithmatic, Win 7 starter's likely adequate. It'll use 2 GB RAM and the AMD 6250 video will take its 256 MB out of the remainder. If you monitor your RAM (Windows Task Manager - Performance tab) you'll see for those apps the OS consumes maybe 1.25 GB physical RAM, hardly ever more.

Some apps & games will want more memory. Windows uses a "virtual memory" architecture. If it needs more memory than what is physically present, it'll grab disk space, write the excess to the file pagefile.sys, and "page" memory data back and forth between physical RAM and pagefile.sys as required. You'll see a noticeable slowdown; the paging process is orders of magnitude slower than purely electronic memory. Windows Task Manager will show this, too.

If your apps need a RAM environment greater than 2 GB, you must upgrade away from Win 7 starter, which is limited to 2 GB physical RAM.

Harry

 

Granyte,

(1) What heavy overhead of Ultimate do you refer to?

(2) What do you mean "using your cpu to render windows instead of your gpu"? Would you elaborate?

Thank you,
Harry

 

i read about some one saying that win 7 ultimate was slower then starter wich is possible on a system with verry limited ressources (or i just read wrong)

when running window 7 starter aero is disabeled so your cpu has to draw every single pixel each time you move a window or create one wich tend to slow the system down to a crawl

i'm currently runing a netbook with an atom cpu and window 7 starter( until my lappy in my sig come back from repairs) and i can tell that the main thing i got against it is that there is no gpu acceleration on anything so the cpu can get overloaded simply because it has to draw 3 windows and then you decide to move one of them game over it's gonna surrender if the gpu was used the netbook would feel a whole world snapier
(for exemple when i disable aero even my alienware strugle at keeping a snappy feel and it has a quad with 8gb of ram)

 

I had 4gb and Starter for a while, then I upgraded to Home premium. I have not noticed any major differences. It is not really faster now. Home premium with its visual effects on by default even feels a little heavier at first but I got used to it. In my opinion, this memory limitation on Starter is still the only serious reason to upgrade to Home Premium, it is worth it but not at any price.

 

Comparing the two operating systems, Starter and Home Premium, you won't notice much difference in performance with 4 GB of RAM. True, Starter's limited to 2 GB. However the operations of the operating systems only, without apps running, consume around 750 MB of RAM.

Even adding the usual reading, writing, 'rithmatic, and web browsing apps will only bring the total RAM used to about 1.25 GB. Again, no big difference in performance between Starter and Home Premium.

However, if you use applications capable of using the available RAM, then you'd notice a difference in performance.

Harry

 

I have to agree that the difference in performance is through applications when you have access to the extra ram.

For example, Fallout 3, before the operating system and ram upgrade, from 2 to 4 gig, was stuttery at mid settings and was prone to crash under certain scenarios in the game. After the upgrade to ultimate, with the 4 gig of ram, I can play at mid settings smoothly, with no noticeable lag. Also, COD 4 has improved drastically. In regards to design applications, corel, photoshop, I have noticed a smoothing out of the interplay with no sense of drag when being utilized. Essentially, access to 4 gig of ram is through the operating system, therefore upgrade, as the operating system can be made lean, even in an aero state.

 

i cannot play 1080p youtube videos on fullscreen! IE9 seems to work better than chrome, have not tried firefox
(720p fullscreen plays fine)
i have 4gb ram, win7 64bits, ssd harddrive , latest ati catalyst 11.3
lan disabled



i can play .mkv files fine using dvx media classic home player using hardware acceleration

also, how do u get full 1080p through HDMI out to your HDtv set? i only get the max netbook's resolution

my battery life seems low too, only getting 3 hours left at 89%

on power saver mode, maximize battery life using ati catalyst software

 

well first of all windows is confused on how much battery life is left... use batterybar as it is a much better at battery life... 2nd of all if you havn't reinstalled windows with a clean copy to get rid of acers crapware then I would do at asap!

as for youtube that is weird i should play youtube fine... have you updated to flash 10.3?

 

i have flash 10.2 i think, i don't think 10.3 is out yet

fresh windows 7 ultimate 64bits install , youtube runs better on IE9 than chrome(more stuttering)

 

ah.

that's why.

chrome uses it's own version of flash. Also make sure you put hardware/gpu accel on if you're using flash on chrome

 

you can use the flash beta (10.3) by installing it, then disable chromes version.... flash works perfectly for me with 10.2 and 10.3

 

how do i accelerate the flash on chrome? i thought u only accelerate HW when using video players like media classic home or VLC

using batterybar im still getting only around 3:37hr left at 87% , seems maybe i got a dud battery? or the 4gb RAM and SSD use up MORE battery power

granted i paid less then 230cdn for this brand new

batterybar 3.51
percent: 83
capacity: 39.583mWh of 48.263mWh
discharge rate: -5.682
battery: 3:12(discharging)
full lifetim: 3:56
a/c: disconnected
battery wear : 1.2% of 48.840 mWh

windows battery bar is saying i have 6:25 hours left???

now batterybar says: 4:02 at 79%

im getting confused!

holy cow, when i play a 1080p youtube file in full screen that EATS up the battery like hotcakes!!! my cpu % spikes up to like 90% and batterybar life goes way down! is that normal?

 

Flash is GPU accelerated. The latest RC version of flash works in most cases to accelerate flash. I havent tried in chrome yet but works fine in ie9....
Download Adobe Flash Player 10.3 Release Candidate - Adobe Labs

As far as the battery is concerned that seems to be normal. Remember that instantaneous battery status shows the amount of battery life possible given the current power draw. So running something intensive as flash would naturally bring that down. but it should climb back up once you have run the flash video.

 

Acer Crystal Eye Webcam - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com


can someone link me to the latest crystal eye version? thanks

also is there a 9cell battery for this AO522 netbook?

 

it takes a few days before battery bar learns the charging habits.... after the few day break in period i would trust it more then windows

 

to hardware accelerate flash, right click on a flash video or flash anything, go to the settings and turn on hardware acceleration.

It may already be on though. so *shrugs*

 

its already on by default from the flash 10.2

anyone find a battery for this netbook on ebay? i can't find it
*still can't play 1080p youtube fullscreen! its getting on my nerves!

here's a screenshot of my a522 when i bootup to windows 7



5:38 hours at 99% is perfectly fine?
cpu temp according to coretemp is 60celcius and im running a cooler too
ssd drive is not too fast, only 100MB/s read according to HDtune

 

who knows which is right. I've come across a few computers lately who have completely inaccurate windows battery times (hello envy 14 CTO 1200 series and your "1 hour of battery life"

They last for roughly 4 hours but some bug with the motherboard or bios or something causes windows to report the wrong power drain (55,000 whr instead of like 15,000 whr)

 

my laptop always say 1h left these day cause it report 55 whr power drain and i can't be sure if the thing is real cause when it reach 0 the laptop shutdown but if i reboot the laptop it got like 1h left but the battery still say empty


edit also note windows cut a safety 11% of it and don,t dare removing it caus it would kill the battery pack

 

are you on the default acer install still or did you reinstall?

 

i ran my battery down to 6% , its weird how it doesn't go into sleep mode? it took around 5hours to get down to 6%, with just google page open on chrome
around 10-20 cpu %

i will try to time how long it takes the netbook to charge fully( hit the blue from orange)

 

the current netbook i own got a 5% crit state and a 7% reserve amount

5+7 = 12% when the computer actualy got to sleep or hybernation but it won't tell you there are 12% remaining only that there are 5

 

Anyone try Portal 2 on this thing yet?

 

^

I'll just be testing portal 1

 

i tried it, while running on battery; all medium/low setting @720p gets me 30fps on screens without that much to do, most closed enviroments run at 20fps, but i have a feeling when I hit later levels its going to drop to 'completely unplayable' territory. ill have to play around with the setting and see what i can do. note: all tested when running off battery.

 

I get about 8 and a half hours battery life when browsing the web with 1 tab open. Start watching youtube then battery life hits 5 hours. Try lowering the brightness, dl the latest amd catalyst driver to maximize battery. In CCC you can downclock the cpu to 800mhz while running on battery to improve battery life.

 

it doesnt seem that all local 1080p movies will work on this netbook. Some work while others struggle like crazy

 

they work...you just need the correct codecs installed

 

I have two mkv video files both are 1080p, one plays smoothly while the other stutters like crazy. I have cccp installed and working.

 

working in a gpu accelerated way?

 

Request: wPrime 1.55, SuperPi and 3DMark06.

 

i'll do a superPi run on this netbook when i get a chance... i still cannot play 1080p youtube videos fullscreen

 

are you still on the acer starter image or did you do a clean install? Do you have 2gb+ of ram? latest ati video driver (11.3 or 11.4 beta?), updated flash to 10.2 or 10.3 beta?

 

I just bought my acer 522 with 1 gig of RAM and I want to upgrade to 4GB of RAM. But the seller told me two things :
First : It can't hold 4GB. Only 2GB
Sec : I have to use special RAM designed for NETBOOK. Not the regular sodimm for NOTEBOOK.

Is that true? Please help me. If I have to buy special RAM, which one is compatible with my acer 522?

Thanks for helping.

 

It has only 1 slot. So, as long as you use a 4GB stick you can upgrade to 4GB. But do remember that Win 7 Starter that comes preinstalled has a limitation of 2GB. If you install other versions of Win 7 you can make use of 4GB memory.

It uses regular 204 pin SODIMM DDR3 memory @ 1066(PC3 8500).

 

Considering the 4 GB SO DIMM doesn't cost much more than the 2 GB SO DIMM, there's actually a benefit to using 4 GB memory with Win 7 Starter, which is the AMD 6250 video will grab what it needs from the remaining 2 GB.

Harry

 

Sure, but you still end up wasting a lot of memory for an artificial limitation considering that the gpu reserves only ~256MB. Depending on usage 1.7GB vs 2GB isnt that big of a difference.If someone goes through the trouble of installing a 4GB stick they might as well update the OS to one which can make use of it.

Of course, if there are other concerns (budget etc) then there is nothing wrong running 4GB with starter.

 

I forgot who but someone alfready used a 4GB RAM on a Win 7 starter and AFAIK he/she had no problems

 

Got (bad) news for Overclocking with Setfsb
The developer said to me

---> The clock generator might use PLL in the chipset. I will need a lot of time though I will develop it.

Unfortunately, I cannot support it now.


So for now no way!

 

Some video files are not encoded properly to take advantage of video acceleration. I have two on my desktop (of like 100 from various sources) and can only play them on my desktop for that reason.

If it doesn't say "Playing [DXVA]" in the bottom left of media player classic home cinema, then it is not using hardware decoding and is running full on the CPU.

 

flash 10.2159 or something
win 7 x64 ultimate, clean install
4gb ram, ssd

check my sig

as for super pi 1.5, i got slow 1min 20s time with 1M test

 

It's slow, but it's a netbook. Gives me something to compare to my Atom N280.

 

but the fact that he is working on it is still GREAT NEWS!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the update

 

Does any body have the choppiness in the HD videos they watch online? it plays fine when the quality is , but when i try to play 720p on yourtube or HD on netflix, its like watching a slow slideshow.

i upgraded to the newest flash and have catalyst 11.2

i have 4 gb ram and a 120 gb SSD from OCZ, i thought i would have a quick netbook and yet, it fails to satisfy HD video.

 

There are still software issues either with flash or the drivers. If you use the latest RC release of flash (10.3), 11.4 drivers & ie9 some flash will get accelerated & will play 1080p just fine. However, its still a bit flaky. I can play the same youtube videos at different times & it might accelerate it the first time & doesnt the next.

 

ya, ie9 seems the best to play youtube 1080p videos in fullscreen

720p fullscreen is no problems at all but 1080p FULL is the problem!!!

1080p .mkv files are a breeze with this machine using windows media home classic player with the correct divx codecs

battery seems to drain fast(fast leak?) on this netbook, i have another netbook and the battery doesnt drain much( when netbook is powered off and not used in few days)

 

i use firefox,

try playing this YouTube - Big Buck Bunny animation (1080p HD)

in 720p or 1080 and full screen it, thats the most important part, it plays fine non- full screen

 

tested in both chrome and ie9, smooth and no dropped frames. 720 and 1080 @ full screen (720@25fps, 1080@15fps) and on battery. using catalyst 11.4 and flash 10.2. rest of netbook's specs in sig

 

This was mentioned in another thread. There appears tobe an issue with youtub videos & flash acceleration. There are threads in the youtube forums about this
Accelerated video rendering is no longer working - YouTube Help

Some of the suggestions there is to use a greesemonkey script for FF4 or chrome which would allow gpu acceleration of youtube videos. Alternatively, another option until this is fixed is to immediately play the video in full screen before the video loads. This enables gpu acceleration. I have tried the latter method using ie9/10.3rc, chrome 12/10.3 & FF4.01/10.2 and selecting to play at fullscreen before the video loads enables hardware acceleration and therefore smooth playback!

Tried this on both the aspire one 522 & dm1 connected via HDMI to my TV and they play it fine as long as the video gets gpu accelerated.

 

really? but for me its for Netflix too, not just youtube, anybody else have this problem?