Disappointing (for Acer) comparo between SZ120 and Aspire 5672...

Well,

I had the opportunity to compare another Duo Core notebook with dedicated graphics... I can tell everyone here that I am seriously disappointed with Acer from what I saw and even happier with my Sony now...

A friend and I were playing games and comparing notebooks so we both installed Black and White 2 (supposedly optimized for ATI Graphics cards) on our units. The units compare as follows:

Sony
T2400 Duo Core (1.83GHz)
2GB (I upgraded)
100GB 5400RPM
DL DVD+/-RW
128MB Geforce 7400
13.1" XBrite Screen
4.1lbs
Bluetooth

Acer Aspire 5672
T2300 Duo Core (1.66GHz)
2GB stock
120GB 5400RPM (2x60GB)
DL DVD+/-RW
128MB X1400 (with another share 384MB - total 512MB)
15.4" WXGA Screen (with XBrite-type technology)
6.6lbs
Bluetooth

One thing is for sure... The amount of bloatware that comes on a Sony cannot hold a candle to the amount that Acer loads on their machines... Also, the Acer unit seems pretty speedy out of the box booting up. Once you get to the desktop prepare to wait a little while...

We set his machine up by disabling everything not necessary in startup and MSCONFIG. We installed the game. It literally took longer on the Acer to install than on my Sony (we started the install at the same time).

Once you get past the cinematics of the game intro then you can see the difference. I had the Sony running at Medium quality and the Acer at Low quality. When you run a game at any resolution lower than the native resolution on the Sony, then it will screen stretch to fill it in... The Acer does not do this. At 800x600, there is a 2 inch black border on the LCD panel and the screen looks absolutely puny. In the Sony there is NO lag during game play, i.e. all the Aztecs running down the hill... Unfortunately on the Acer this was not the case. It slowed to an unplayable 1FPS at times... How disappointing is that? In any case my friend and I were completely awestruck at the performance difference between two seemingly similar units... We are going to spend some time installing some BETA drivers for the Acer, hoping it is just a driver issue, if things get better for the Acer I will report back.

For anyone considering these 2, I hope this helps. For all the Sony SZ owners out there... rejoice...

Don

 

Tell friend to change video setting in ATI control panel to stretch the resolution.

 

There have been _alot_ of people reporting scores of around 1600 for their x1400 in the acer 5762 seeming it should be around 2000 according to ati it must be something wrong with acers design.