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

I tried some games too. Cause i use my tablet more for work and only have an 32gb ssd i just tried smaller games

Gta San Andreas, runs nice
Angry Birds, works perfect
Anomaly Warzone, not fluid but playable
Flight Control HD, works perfect
Fruid Ninja HD, perfect
UT3, not playable. Was starting it over network, lot of reload.
World of Goo, runs nice.... bigger levels bit slow
Atom Zombie Smasher, runs nice
Mechanarium, runs nice
Crayons Physik, perfect even with 500mhz
Zooma Delux, works perfect

Good Programm to test Gpu and Cpu is "Gpu Caps Viewer". You can test openGL with Cpu and Gpu. Of Cause Gpu is doin a way better job

 

yeah, you can

 

I think I have the same tablet as you... for now my games are installed on the SD card but I'll be getting a 128gb mSATA SSD to replace the stock one as soon as funding permits.

 

right.. the w500
I bought a 32gb sd card but noticed some higher battery drain even sd card ist just in idle.
3.65Wh idle without card and 4.1Wh with card in the slot. Not sure if this is a problem with sd card or the tablet(inc. software doing background stuff)

The internal 32gb is fine for office. For the rest i would like to have a faster and bigger one. But waaay to expensive this days.

 

I bought the netbook too. I can even play Portal 2 on low settings with 1gb ram. Love this small netbook

So I have a question regarding the RAM upgrade. Does any DDR3 SODIMM RAM work in that netbook? I am looking at buying A-Data AD3S1333C4G9-S.
It is DDR3-1333 204Pin SO-DIMM Unbuffer Non-ECC Memory 4gb stick.

Also any updates on OC ability?

 

Great thread and information, everyone. I've spent the past few days going through it and will use many of the tips to make my 522 zippier.

Now about my 522 or AO522-BZ436 in particular. I got it at Best Buy (Canada) for $200 (well I used coupons and traded games for it). This BZ436 variant seems to be some kind of mutant version of the 522. Screen is 1024x600 and APU is C60 as identified by CPUZ and AMD's own system utilities. I indeed see clock speeds of 1.33ghz from time to time on one core.

The specs sticker on the box, the BB website and indeed the sticker on the laptop itself all identify the machine as having the C50 APU. Search redflagdeals.com and you will find others with the same experience with the AO522-BZ436.

I bought an AO522-BZ623 back in June for my dad and this was the C50 version with the higher res screen. My other laptop is a Thinkpad X61s with a C2D 1.6ghz and SSD. The little $200 522 compares very well to it in day to day use (browsing, office).

I bought the 436 because they didn't have one on display in BB and I wanted to try it out. I need something light with reasonable battery life (6h). I'm considering the Asus UX21 at $1000. But then for a fifth of the price that does 90% of what I do on a computer (of any description), the 522 is a great machine. I think I'll keep it, get 4gb and not worry about a $1000 laptop in my bag when I'm cycling around.

 

That's very nice I'm still waiting for the Samsung 3 series with E450 to show up, some retailers tell me that it should be available later this month (I'm from Poland). But can't wait infinitely, also when is the Ontario/Zecate successor coming out anyone knows?

There seems to be some overcloking tool available for AMD A-Series maybe it can somehow work with E and C series processors too ?

 

I've witnessed this behavior before (I'm an IT admin) where the manufacturer "slipstreams" a higher end CPU (e.g., C-60); the supply of the older CPU ran out and there's no announcement of the change. It's simply cheaper to do the substitute.

On a different front it shows the C-50 and C-60 are pin-compatible. Still it makes no sense for an end-user to replace the C-50. It's surface mounted on the circuit board.

 

Surface mount soldering isn't that hard as long as extreme care is used and with the proper tools. Do you have a pin-out diagram? Or at least know how many pins there are?

 

Nope. Check the AMD website yourself.

 

413 pins on a 1.9cm x 1.9cm ( 0.75" x 0.75" ) area. All C, E and G series use BGA413 sockets.

The proper tools you need cost alot. ( I think you need x-ray machine too to check if all pins are connected ).

 

If they use the same number of pins, does that mean we can install an E-450 into our motherboards? It would be cheaper than buying a whole new laptop is we can get a supply for the CPU's

 

I think that entire C and E series are soldered into motherboard, you can't actually get just the processor you have to buy motherboard with this processor.

 

In theory you can. But it would be cheaper to buy a new netbook.
The APU is soldered to the motherboard. Also you would need to create a new BIOS to support the new APU/CPU.

 

How do you get Age of empires 3 to play well on high settings, In the campaign, I have 1024x600 resolution and v-sync on, everything else is set to off or set to the lowest setting and I only get between 10 and 20 fps, But in the main menu I get a constant 60fps I just cant understand it.

P.S I Have no start up programs and I am using the latest video drivers (11.9)

 

Also I have the acer 522 and it has windows 7 professional x86 on it with 2gb ram.

 

are any of you backrev'd to Windows XP on these machines, and if so are you seeing better performance than with 7 ?

 

i dont have winxp on it, but i have win7 32 and 64 bit on separate partitions simultaneously. 64 bit is much smoother, and more consistent overall. games run much smoother as well, less hitching when loading in assets.

i find that alot of games work. i even have rage running. but they run just under really playable fps. i get around 13-25 fps on most games, but on average 14-20fps on newer games. it feels smoother than it is, but when you plug in a game pad and try to aim in most shooters its a mess. i wish there was a way to squeeze 1.3ghz out of this chip. im sure it would bring a nice 3-5fps boost in most games. giving a 16-30fps and an average of 18-25fps.

games ive played on the ao522:
silenthill 3 good hd patched
halo smooth 30 fps
halo 2 good on low settings
gta san andreas good at hd on lowered settings
fear 3 smooth but sound and gameplay stutters
doom 3 wildly variable framerate on high, but good on low-med
rage smooth 10-13fps on any setting
virtua tennis 4 smooth hd
worms runs great
splinter cell chaos theory runs great hd
gears of war smooth 14-20fps hd med-high settings
halflife 2 smooth hd high settings
need for speed underground smooth hd patched
fallout3 smooth 14-18fps hd
angry birds smooth hd

right now its just not worth it to game on this netbook. my ps2 is a better gaming experience. the cpu is just crippling on this thing.

ps. i've attached a pretty good icc profile that calibrates the screen for the ao522 with the 720p screen. its not perfect, but much more accurate gamma, grayscale, and colour profile than out of the box. unzip and go to color management in windows and choose this profile. dramatic difference.

 

Agreed they really have crippled this little machine with this cpu, 1.3ghz would be much nicer

 

Isn't c-60 have turboboost to 1.33ghz?

 

ya c60 does, but its temporary. i dont think it maintains that speed. probably for thermal reasons. but with brazostweaker i think its just another pstate, meaning it can be pushed on permanently as another cpu state. if the temps are ok im sure it would be stable. but i dont have one to test. i had to downvolt my c50 about 0.30v to get good temps and stability. i dont think the c60 has as much leeway when it comes to undervolting though, especially for a turbo state.

 

But, is it really true that c60 turboboost only activated single core? Does that mean that turboboost should make the performance slower?

 

To Sjac89 in regards to Age of Empires 3. I was able to run the game at full
resolution, though, I did manipulate the graphics in some way. So, perhaps I was too cavalier to state "high settings", as there was some tweaking in place.

I took it off my computer, so, I can't remember the setup. I got a new external harddrive , so I will reinstall and post what I did.

Thank

 

Thanks Plume, I'm nearly certain that its the processor dragging the frame rate down to the teens and occasionally single digits, My previous netbook had the intel atom n570 and the gma 3150 and that could give me a constant 20fps even in the campaign, Its weird right?

 

Adhiofawkes I believe that the c-60 is just an overclocked c-50. It also appears that in order for us to overclock our machines to 1.3ghz like the c-60 we need to have an unlocked bios (which we have) and an overclocking module (which we don't have yet) hopefully someone is working on it for us

 

More observations about this weird Acer AO522-BZ436:
- The supplied RAM is DDR3-1333, whereas the other one I bought was DDR3-1066
- The HDD is a WD2500BPVT rather than the Toshiba ones in the other AO522s

All in all I'm enjoying this little machine for web browsing, watching BBC iPlayer, netflix.ca and NHL Gamecentre Live. I put 4GB in it, only 2gb seen by Win7 Starter. I'll see how I feel about it, but it might be time to take the SSD and Win7 Professional out of my old Thinkpad.

 

I also thought I'd post up some upgrade tips/pics using a chopstick!

You can remove the battery and then poke out the keyboard using the chopstick.

Here's the hole just next to the battery contacts where my finger is poking through (the laptop's base is at the top of the picture):



Here goes the chopstick! (As seen from the base of the laptop)


Here's the view from beneath the newly freed keyboard:


Now undo the screws marked "1" as per other guides.

And this is the hole through from the top to the base. You poke out the base using this.



I don't check this thread very often, but the answers to other questions and howto upgrade RAM are in this thread, I just didn't remember seeing any pictures, so I hope these help. These apply to other Aspire One's (257, 521 etc).

 

Sjac89, I have yet to reinstall age of empires 3, but, here is what I have noticed in so far as the 522's ability to play games. I think it comes down to the way each game is programmed. For example, Devil may cry 4 plays perfect for the 522, though with higher resolutions, get ready for a hot netbook. So, if the game is made to draw most of it's operations from the graphics card, then the game plays great, if it's cpu intensive, the game sucks. doom 3 is a good example. It is an older game but struggles at times.

At the same time, Oblivion plays perfect, almost like magic to be playing it on the 522. I am sure this forum has expressed the gpu vs cpu intensive nature of games and whether they are essentially "optimized" for this apu.

Oh, just bought call of duty 2 and it plays great! , they suggest at minimum 1.4 ghz pentium. So, it's how the game is programmed. I am no programmer so this is my assumption.

With windows 7 64, 4 gig of ram, ssd drive, amd catalayst tweaked for total performance, some games squeeze through nicely.

One more point, many , many salutations and flowers to the individual who created brazostweaker. I can play Oblivion without the 522 turning into a hot plate, it will stay luke warm to the touch, slowly heating up, but not becoming a concern and staying within acceptable temperature limits.

Yes, there will be c-60's c-70's on and on, but with the threat of a cooked mother board less likely, led screen, ssd drive, this little netbook could last for quite a long time.

 

Just managed to buy one of these for £178 (im UK), ordered 4GB, got a spare 64gb ocz sdd thats going in.

Has any body got this fully functional with windows xp yet?

Having read this thread and seen the common answer as being why?
-I like a desktop back ground and dont want to pay £50 for it
-Its simple and im used to it
-Can use the 4gb

Anyway I see roscoojam got the furthest with all but wifi, touchpad and camera installed. Any advances?

 

Hi Iant888, It is possible to get windows xp to work but its a pain in the backside getting it to run properly, This is how I did it first download an msdn copy of windows xp with sp3, Use Win2Flash to put it on a usb stick, Then find the wireless or wired network driver for xp and move it to the usb stick. Then reboot and go into bios and change boot order to the boot usb stick first then look for the option to change scsi to ide (unless you can find a driver) save and reboot, follow instructions to install xp, install network drivers and then hunt for the other drivers, I know you can get wireless, wired, video card, audio card drivers just look for them, Also I forgot to say when installing xp it took 3 hours to do the copying files part, Its an nightmare to install but it is possible, In the end I uninstalled windows 7 professional from my desktop and put xp on it (all xp drivers were on dells website) then I put windows 7 pro on the netbook, Took 10 minutes to install, My advice would be to stick with windows 7 starter and find a way to change the wallpaper and enable aero

 

While this may be true "cripple" seems a little harsh; the C-60 simply wasn't available when the AO522 entered production.

 

I'm not actually having a poke at acer lol, I just would of liked it to be a bit more balanced, maybe a slightly better processor but a slightly worse graphics card would've been better, I still think its a smashing wee netbook though

 

sjac89, ok will give windows starter a go with one of the wallpaper hack tools. I guess its better than lots of faffing with xp.

 

You could try aero enabler, I believe it also unlocks wallpaper changing, Search for it on google

 

Just tried gothic 1 it runs fluent on the highest settings, Great game

 

this thread is dying....after 100+ pages

 

It can't die!

I just bought this netbook from Buy.com for $200 refurbished.

So far I am VERY pleased. Right out of the box it is quite zippy. Can't wait to make my upgrades.

Thank you everyone for the awesome information in this thread!

 

I've been keeping an aye on this thread for quite a while.. really hoping that somebody figures out how to overclock the C-50. Right now, running Win 7 64, 4 GB RAM, and a 7200 RPM HDD, it's pretty decent, but could use a bit more pep.

 

We just need to find someone who knows how to make the overclocking module for the unlocked bios (And maybe we give him a small donation), Anyone know the best forum to find someone?? Or maybe the guy who makes brazostweaker can implement it???

 

As in many people who try OC E-350:
"It's too complicated"

 

Just do it! you overgrown muppet . Actually there only seems to be hard coding of fsb at our disposal if I'm not mistaken. Someone skilled enough to do it ?

 

Well it is nearing the end of the year already and if I remembered correctly I started this thread after I bought my Acer 522 last January.

I am actually quite happy it made it this long

 

Wonder if there is even anyway to bring the gpu up to 400mhz even, with a video bios flash maybe?? that would be nice

 

How come they can over/underclock A Series so easily and it can't be done for c/e series what's the difference?

 

Llanos (A-series) I believe all came with unlocked multipliers, that's why overclocking them is so easy.

 

I guess you're right, A6 is really sweet deal for overclocking it can go near i5 performance for much cheaper price It's shame though that you don't see any 13" or 14" laptops with it, at least in Poland.

Update. I've found this video on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuhrN0cmZQ0&feature=related seems like there is modified bios for overclocking 1215b further research required!

 

Does anybody know how to get stereo mix working?

 

Anyone try Skyrim on this thing yet? :laugh:

 

MW3 Works on E350. Let's try on c50......

 

QUESTION for you guys that have seen/owned/used both C50 and C60 models.. is there any real distinction? reading the notes here and elsewhere, I'm not seeing thrilled raves about the C60.... where's the love?