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

WOW Was I shocked at the results!!!!!!!

I think I made a mistake on the last one...

Either at Full screen or normal the video will only play at around 20 FPS and there are quite a number of FPS Drops. Lowest I saw was 8 FPS....

I am currently using Palemoon as my browser. I didnt think the last time I played was at 720p.

 

Nice! Btw we got the same notebook cooler lol

 

lol. It's the same even at 480p.

 

cdrking???? LOL it isnt even working anymore... I just use it as a stand.

hmm i'll try 480p next

Anyway I tried using this on my 1440x900 LCD to see if it can replace my DEsktop when browing and Downloading things.

Looks like the performance of the CPU is enough for basic things. It showed it can do those things easily.

Anyway I just tried 480p and it seems that this was the one i played last time. 24-25 FPS average.

 

I bought a 522 last week too. It was my first Netbook and I'm quite pleased with it. Some things I noticed:
- Good screen, better than the usual 1024x600. But the angle of view is not great, even a few degree off and you loose contrast. Difficult to see full contrast on the whole screen at once. I don't like glossy but it was not a choice.
- The C50 is not really fast but it's a true dual CPU and sometimes it comes handy when multitasking.
- 1Gb of RAM installed but only 747Mb available. I don't like this, nowhere it's said that you'll loose about 256Mb for the graphics card. OTOH I found surprising the performance of Windows 7 with such a low amount of memory. I also exchanged with a stick of 4Gb (Corsair DDR3 PC8500) and I have about 3.5Gb left for Windows. Nice.
- Hard drive is OK. I replaced it with a 500Gb 7200rpm.
- Battery life is good. About 5h when working on it with screen brightness at highest. 10-11h when idle with the screen at the lowest brightness. My T60p with a extra capacity battery is not able to top it.
- Wireless is good. First time I have a N laptop, I get transfers of 4Mb/s on a DIR-655 router. I streamed a 720p video over wireless and it was very smooth.
- Software pre-installed is of course junk. Most of them are "free" for a short period of time. Deinstall McAfee if you don't want to kill the performance.
- Build quality is OKish. It's not easy to upgrade the laptop, you have to fiddle with removing plastic parts that are not screwed like the keyboard. But in the end I was happy that the 4Gb stick of ram didn't have any compatibility issue.
- I don't like the mouse pad. It maybe nice visually but it's not comfortable to use. The scroll doesn't work well either. I don't like the glossy top: too much fingerprints visible after a while.
- Video playback is surprisingly good. 720p mkv videos that my old P4 2.4Ghz would have issue to playback well are a piece of cake for this small netbook.

I didn't try 3D games yet as I'm not really into that.

I was glad to get it for 299$ in Canada. For the price, there's nothing better. Anything cheaper were single Atoms processors with low-res screens.

 

You can try the games i tested. They have DEMOs. Of course dont count on this as a gaming laptop. It can play games but dont play competitively just to have fun.

I installed l4d and was happy that it can play it at least 20 FPS which is playable for me. Having 4 pcs that can play l4d is fun.

SC2 Demo is also playable. SP missions are quite easy enough to handle on normal difficulty.

I got mine pre-installed with 2GB of RAM which is just right.

BAttery life for me was tested by playing games. It lasted about 3 hours nonstop gaming of left 4 dead and SC2.

 

Did you get it from bestbuy too? how do you upgrade the ram?

 

Search for "acer d255 ram upgrade" the D255 uses the same housing as the 522. The instrauctions are similar: remove the keyboard, unscrew 4 screws, remove the bottom cover. It was not easy because you fear all the time to break the plastics. I put the maximum right away. No need to come back later. And 4Gb is rather cheap: 49.95$ (canada).

EDIT: yes I got it from Best Buy but it was not on display, they preferred to sell their old stocks apparently. I ordered on-line and picked up it in store.

 

@akop

where did you find the drivers?

 

what resolution of L4D could you play on 522?

 

OEM folder on C drive.

 

800x600 and 640x480

The higher resolution is playable for me at 20 FPS AVG lower is 25 FPS. I think when you are not the host you can egt more FPS specially once zombies come at you.

Thanks

 

I'm so glad you bought this and started testing it out with 3D games. I was impressed with the specs (except the 1 GHZ CPU clock) and was looking for reviews.
I don't know if this makes a difference but would loading Windows XP make a difference in speed? I know some people claim it runs faster than win7 on netbooks.

 

Your welcome.

It can handle most of my everyday tasks quite well with only a few slowdowns.

I am already giving away my Turion II x2 to me brother since it has little use now.

Well If everything was idle it can consume as little as 10%. I dont think XP will give you more FPS in games but maybe more response time but not by much. (That is just my presumtion)

You may also have some driver problems if you have XP. I dont know whether the drivers are compatible with XP.

 

Oh gotcha.
Yeah, it seems like it would do web browsing, video, music, word processing, etc, all really well. I've been looking for a system that is portable yet can do everyday things without a hitch. Looks like this is the one.
Yeah personally, I'm looking to play League of Legends. And seeing how you were getting pretty good results with games like SC and L4D, I'm really confident this is going to work out well. Can't wait til my next paycheck. Lol!

 

Oh and how do you add a sig? It's probably right in front of my face but for the life of me I can't find where to edit it!

 

Uhhh as much as I think L4D and SC2 is playable for me. I dont think you should bet on LOL to be "competitively" playable.

There are FPS drops and you'll be stuck at low resolution. You might want to buy a E-350 APU and not this.

Torchlight for me was playable but I can only pay it at 800x600

ALso

check USER CP

 

Mmm, that's a bit disappointing but understandable.
Well, regardless, I think this is a huge step forward in computing. To think that a netbook is able to even run these programs at all is impressive! I never would have even imagined this when netbooks first hit the market.

 

I think you should buy the E-350 although I havent seen anyone testing it yet.

 

I just purchased the Acer 522 myself, and was also hoping to upgrading the RAM. However, I'm concerned about what the maximum allowed amount of RAM is. I know that many chipsets in netbooks allow a maximum memory of only 2GB. Is that true also for the 522? Since it uses the new AMD C-50 chipset, it strikes me that it might allow for 4GB.

a522user, could you confirm in your BIOS that your system is recognizing all 4GB of memory that you installed? No sense in me paying for 4GB if it will only see 2GB. Thanks!

 

Hi. Thank you for your quick review.

I am french and i am waiting this netbook to arrive here ( february/march for me ... Sad :/ )

But before i buy it, i want to know one thing :

Can you please try to play killing floor on it please ? I dont get entirely performances, sometime it looks good, sometime not enough...

If you can try it, thank you

(ho, and can you try left 4 dead 2 too ? I read that you tried left 4 dead 1? maybe the 2 works better ? Thank you )

 

Ill try Killing Floor.

As for L4D2 sorry but I always get CTDed in it so i returned it.

 

Doesn't Torchlight have a netbook mode? I am not sure what the settings are but how does it run on that? Does WoW run (if you play), if so under what settings/res?

 

@czar

yes it has a netbook mode but i was definitely playable 25FPS+(drops when explosions happen) but even when in normal mode it still delivers the same FPS.
Not to mention you cant use AA in normal mode.

@Curtiss
Killing Floor was surprisingly playable. you can play it at 800x600 or 1280x720 depending on how you tolerate FPS drops.

NOTE: take note that what I deem as to be playable may not be playable to other's standards.

Since fiddling around with KF's setting I happen to find out that. y6ou can set AA with almost no FPS drop increase!!!!!!!!

I tried it on DIrt 2, L4D, Torchlight and of course Killing Floor. All of the pics below have AA

Killing Floor


KF was definitely playable at 30 FPS AVG(can reach 60FPS) at 720p on closed quarters map but on open areas you may need to run it at 800x600 for less drops but even if you dont you can still get around 20-25 FPS AVG

The game may run better if you are not the server since once the wave starts FPS drops occur

Left 4 Dead


18-23 FPS AVG at 640x480 when you begin moving and shooting. It does not really bother me sometimes when FPS drops below 10(when i get surrounded). All in all it was playable.

Oh be sure to ue the shotgun firing using SMG was a bit hard since aiming is kinda hard.

Dirt 2


running at 640x480 Dirt 2 was playable at 19 FPS AVG. I dont recommend this as a gaming ultraportable but if you are going away and want to at least play something I think this would be a good game to pass the time.

I personally use this as a extra PC when my cousins come over to play L4D and now maybe KF

 

Ok, thank you ! That's really good ! Now i wait it !

 

On the safe side you might want to get the more powerful sibling of my APU instead for this model.

I dont want you to hate me when you buy this and you find it unplayable.

 

No problem with that, with the computer before the one i am writing with, i was used to put every game to the lower graphic level, if i can play it with 30fps stable, it's not a big deal

By the way, i am watching the lenovo X120e x) i will decide, if it is more than 100€ more than the aspire one 522, i think it is not good price.

Thank you one more time

 

Your Welcome glad to help.

I was also looking at Lenovo but since it was still nowhere to be found I decided to get this instead. (There is also a chance that I can get a E-350 once OCing APUs become available)

Just played it again it was really playable at 720p with some slowdowns.

 

Hello ALL,

i have in plan buy this netbook, but i need one information , is there SPDIF out (in earphone out ?) could you please somebody who own this netbook check it ?

many thanks

 

I dont see any SPDIF in the manual. Just HeadPhone and microphone out.

NOTE; I really like it when my post/thread is always on the 1st page in google

 

Hi is the screenshot with 2X AA or 4XAA?
so is better to run at 640X480 AA than 800X600 no AA?

 

2x AA.
Ill check 800x600 no AA although AFAIK there was almost no performance hit when using 2xAA

 

Hmm just found out something

NOTE: I was running several things in the background

Ok

It seems that playing in 800x600 would just decrease FPS by .5

The AVG wer

640x480 no AA= 23
640x480 w/ AA= 22-23
800x600 no AA= 22
800x600 w/ AA= 21-22

And that 1 FPS drop would not be noticeable most of the time.

 

Do you´ll try games of the 2007 and below like farcry, HL2, DOOM3, GTA San Andreas, Ghost recon AW, call of duty 2... that must be playable at full settings

 

I think that shows how much the 6250 is underpowered by C-50, consider the performance difference between resolution and AA is very minimum

 

Ill be downloading FEAR Demo and maybe some other DEMOs from that time.

Yup that test showed it.

 

For changing ram and HDD do you need to take keyboard out?

 

Yes.... For me though 2GB is enough and I'll just buy an external

NOTE: Currently PLaying Dead SPace 2 sooo FEAR DEMO will have to wait

 

But does it actually recognize more than 2GB ??

 

I know the previous Acer 521 support 1X 4GB DDR3, I think this one only support 2GB max

btw Shadowfate can you please try dynasty warrior's online and see can you play @ 1280X720 smoothly? Dynasty Warriors Online - First Free Online Dynasty Warriors Game at Aeria Games

 

I think this is your answer Of course you will need to upgrade the Win 7 Starter to 64bit to let it read all 4GB

Ill try this later I'll do FEAR Demo now

 

Tried FEAR Demo is was playable at mid settings.. although the FPS would be around 25-30+ ot will sometimes drop to 18.

WIll try again later to check again

 

Ok, it's just that in every specs i've read, it just says "up to 2GB" ... so, i was wondering !
by the way, thanks for the thread, it's very interesting ... especially for me, cause in france this netbook isn't out yet, and no review yet available (besides yours) !!

another question ... i've seen that you're thinking about overclocking the cpu and the gpu ... are you sure the ontario is just an underclocked version of the zacate ?
if yeah, what's the point of the zacate ??

 

a522user should post again so we could be 100% sure that 4 GB is usable(although I think it is pretty much common nowadays).

Yes

Checking the specs and die size of both they are equal. 75mm^2
E-350
AMD E-350 Notebook Processor - Notebookcheck.net Tech
C-50
AMD C-50 Notebook Processor - Notebookcheck.net Tech

And checking the GPUs as well confirms this

a 6250 is just underclocked to run at 280Mhz, 6310 runs at 500Mhz. They both have 80 stream processors.

And AMD just released the SDK for the APUs so it will still take Devs a while to release OCing tools for this. SO when they are done I'll be glad to OC the CPU at least 1.3Ghz(I dont want the case to get very hot)

The point here is they have Ontario for ultraportables that has a longer battery life than Zacate of course they need to underclock it to achieve those results.

@only review

It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to own/test(C-50 APU) something that major sites havent even benched yet This also explains why there are a lot of views on this thread

@ntsan
still downloading Dynasty

it might take a while

 

I picked up a 522 from BestBuy here in Canada on Wednesday. I agree with both reviews posted in this thread so far.

For an ultra portable, the screen is fantastic. More usable than any netbook I've used to date. So far I've upgraded the RAM to 2gb (would have gone 4GB but was unsure it was possible) and have ordered a US English keyboard to replace the awful French Canadian one. I also have a Seagate Momentus XT (ST95005620AS) 500GB drive on the way for it.

The default install of Starter edition was far too bogged down with crapware, so I installed a copy of Win7 Ultimate. I found all drivers to be available from acer.ca's website. After installing the new OS, drivers and my RAM, this little machine came to life. It's very capable, but some overclocking options (even 200MHz) would really help it out.

My end goal for this machine was to watch tv in bed with MediaCenter and DVBLink Network Pack. It does the job quite well. It's interesting that it can handle some light gaming as well. I'll try out Starcraft 2 later in the day and plan to download some Steam titles such as Portal as well.

Anyway, that's my two bits. This is one hell of a machine for $299.

 

@karmatose
Actually I think this is the only one(few ones???) that has a HD screen

Looks like we like to watch it in bed too haahahah.

Oh forgot to add that in the first page.

The drivers are in the OEM folder

Thanks to akop for finding that out. You have to view hidden folders to see it

 

I've already deleted the OEM stuff.

But here's links to the drivers:

Audio
http://global-download.acer.com/GDF... One&Step3=AO522&OS=722&LC=en&BC=Acer&SC=PA_4

Card Reader
http://global-download.acer.com/GDF... One&Step3=AO522&OS=722&LC=en&BC=Acer&SC=PA_4

LAN
http://global-download.acer.com/GDF... One&Step3=AO522&OS=722&LC=en&BC=Acer&SC=PA_4

Touchpad (Synaptics)
http://global-download.acer.com/GDF... One&Step3=AO522&OS=722&LC=en&BC=Acer&SC=PA_4

Graphics
http://global-download.acer.com/GDF... One&Step3=AO522&OS=722&LC=en&BC=Acer&SC=PA_4

Wlan (Broadcom)
http://global-download.acer.com/GDF... One&Step3=AO522&OS=722&LC=en&BC=Acer&SC=PA_4

Launch Manager
http://global-download.acer.com/GDF... One&Step3=AO522&OS=722&LC=en&BC=Acer&SC=PA_4

 

On sale now for $270.
Where did you order the keyboard from? I'm guessing it uses the same keyboard as the 255? Also not a fan of the bilingual setup (and we have no options to choose otherwise )

 

Thanks for the heads up on the price drop.

Just do a search on ebay for aspire one 522 keyboard. You'll find it.

 

What sorts of speed improvements are people seeing from changing the stock 5400rpm drive for 7200 drives? I looked at the Momentus XT also but the price was a bit steep.

I'm heavily considering installing a new OS but unsure if I should install Windows 7 x64 or 32-bit... (I get free copies of MS products). Anyone have any insight into this? I finally got rid of most of the bloatware but still want to format to get away from starter.

We should keep a list of ram (with manufacturers part #'s) that people have used to successfully upgrade. I'm also anxious to hear back about anyone else trying 4GB modules and if they actually recognize as 4GB in the Bios or only recognizes 2GB.