Any opinions on Acer?

[doopy]

I saw this deal for an Acer laptop... (http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?ref=performics&tabtype=pi&product%5Fcode=301697&pfp=external#moreinfo)

Seems to be pretty nice, but I'm wondering how fast exactly a 1.3 Ghz Centrino set-up would be... Anyone know what it would compare to, as well as if this laptop would be a good choice? (I'm looking for a bit more batt life than Sager for use in college)

Thanks

[Adam@PCTorque]

Very solid built laptops. A bit pricey for the overall performance, but with good portability.

[doopy]

Any idea how well this would perform with games? Like...splinter cell, etc... I'm kinda wondering how good the 1.3 ghz would be.

Thanks

[AlbertWesker]

I'm sure it could play games out pretty decently, but I wouldn't expect it to contend with newer games come out with higher min requirements. (Doom III, Etc) A good example of this is C/C Generals. It has extremely high minimums. Acer seems more like a laptop oriented for the light portable crowd, but that's just my opinion though.

[Redundant]

Originally posted by AlbertWesker
I'm sure it could play games out pretty decently, but I wouldn't expect it to contend with newer games come out with higher min requirements. (Doom III, Etc) A good example of this is C/C Generals. It has extremely high minimums. Acer seems more like a laptop oriented for the light portable crowd, but that's just my opinion though.

John Carmack himself on videocards and the ability to run Doom III. “The slowest cards will be the 64 bit and SDR ram GF and Radeon cards, which will really not be fast enough to play the game properly unless you run at 320x240 or so.” (If anyone wants to know, I am still using a Geforce2MX, so I am a low-end guy!)

The following is from: http://doom.axlegames.com/article.php?cat=techdetails&id=5

John Carmack -- Feb 11, 2002

"Last month I wrote the Radeon 8500 support for Doom. The bottom line is that
it will be a fine card for the game, but the details are sort of interesting."

"A test of the non-textured stencil shadow speed showed a GF3 about 20% faster
than the 8500. I believe that Nvidia has a slightly higher performance memory
architecture.

A test of light interaction speed initially had the 8500 significantly slower
than the GF3, which was shocking due to the difference in pass count. ATI
identified some driver issues, and the speed came around so that the 8500 was
faster in all combinations of texture attributes, in some cases 30+% more.
This was about what I expected, given the large savings in memory traffic by
doing everything in a single pass."

"Do not buy a GeForce4-MX for Doom."



With this in mind I would say the following hardware would be a safe bet:

Pentium 4 / Athlon 2ghz
GeForce 4 TI4200 or ATI Radeon 8500
512megs of RAM
5.1 surround sound audio card.

I will update this estimate as soon as more information is released.



Written by zaq
Last Updated January 27, 2003

This seems to be an estimate of the minimum/maximum performance configuration ( playable ). Now, the Pentium-M is alot like the Athlon in that it is more efficient than the Pentium 4, so that a Pentium-M is about 1.6 times as efficient as a Pentium 4. Therefore a 1.3Ghz Pentium-M is worth about a 2Ghz Pentium 4...

I think that most notebooks will fail on the sound card front, but as always the biggest stumbling block is, of course, the GPU. The M9/GF4200Go ( like they said, no GF4-MX(Go) as they only support up to DirectX 7 ) are likely to be the level of minimal playability. Of course, when the GFFX5600Go/M10 are available...

So, the Acer will likely do an okay job with DOOM III... If you want better than that then get a 3Ghz CPU w/ GFFX5600Go/M10 and 3d positional audio capabilities.

Redundant

[dankirk]

I took advantage of that deal, and am using my Travelmate 800 LCi to post this reply. It is a great deal when you consider that everywhere else only offers a $100 rebate, and it comes with 512 Mb of ram and not the standard 256 that normally comes in this model. It does come with the Home version of XP and not the Professional version, which didn't matter to me. I love this laptop, it is very thin and portable, it gets great battery life, and the built in wireless works great. I ordered it on a Friday and it was delivered the next Wednesday. So far, I am very happy with this purchase.