Acer Aspire 1710 Review - Page 4

Adam- any good news about options, new models, or custom units from ACER

This new BIOS is GREAT news. I'm going to hang onto mine in that case. I'll try to do some pics for you tonight Shaolin. It's a great laptop except for the pause. Here's a few quick impressions in comparison to my desktop.

My desktop is a AMD 1800+, 1GB RAM, GeForce 4 TI4200. The graphics on the 1712 far surpass the 4200. Textures I didn't know existed show now, lighting is amazing, and everything just looks so much better. I'm getting around 40-50 FPS in America's Army and 100 FPS in Jedi Academy. All details set to highest at the highest res. It runs very smooth (except for the pause from HD).

The screen is amazing. I have one dead pixel but I'm going to be exchanging it as soon as they have more in stock. Screen is very bright. A little bit of banding at the top from the LCD lamps I imagine (but it's not bothersome). Screen is huge. Much bigger and brighter than my 17" Dell CRT.

It's built very solid. No noticeable keyboard flex. I think it looks pretty nice as well. Solid silver casing. I haven't experienced and heat issues. The warmest it's gotten so far is 48C and that's after 5-6 hours of gaming. The vent on the right hand side blows warm air onto my hand when I use an external mouse. It's not very bothersome though. If you're left handed you'll definately appreciate this. It would be nice if they had the vent on the left, but it's no biggie.

It's not too loud but you'll definately notice when all the fans are running. It's still quieter than my desktop.

I generally hate touchpads but the touchpad on this is not so bad. I use an external mouse but I notice myself drifting to the touchpad after a few minutes when surfing the web.

Those are my initial thoughts. I benchmarked it with 3dmark2001 and Aquamark. I dont have the exact results in front of me right now, but it was something like 11800 for 3dmark and 24000 for Aquamark.

Thanks a lot Ransaak,

I will wait the continue of your review with images.

In extremetech review is written that the "desktop version" standard clock for go5700 is 450 cpu /600 mem.

Can you test it and increase only the core clock to see how it is compared to the others 9700 benchs ?

I am interested in to know if is possible use the go5700 like a 9700 used in 8790 (similar fps I say) to use all (very all) at 1280 x 1024 at minimum 25 fps and not lower.

At soon.

I'm exchanging this unit because of a dead pixel (close to center screen). So I don;t want to overclock anything until I get the unit I'm going to keep. The settings for desktop and performance are located in the Nvidia control panel. All my tests were run in Desktop mode.

In trying to stop the pausing I tried different hard drive access times all the way to once every 100 milliseconds and the pause still happened. A friend of mine set his ibm laptop hd to spin down every 2 minutes and the program kept his from spinning down. I guess the acer's problem is different and i'll just have to wait for the bios update to fix the problem.

I wonder if caching on the drive is ensuring that the platters on the drive don't get accessed. Why not change the program to create and delete a dummy file. You still shouldn't see a performance hit, especially if it is run only every 2 minutes or so, and at least you are guaranteeing that you aren't just reading data from a cache, but accessing the drive platters.

Just a thought,

-Peter

I was thinking that too psynang. Sounds like the BIOS update wont be far away though. It's not a very hard thing to do. It uses the Phoneix NoteBIOS and it's just a matter of enabling the option in the CMOS. I could do it myself in 10 minutes if they released the current BIOS.

Call me stupid, but I can't seem to find where I can change the settings to "performance" or "desktop replacement." Can you please describe how you get to those settings? Thanks

Where are you all ?? Why disappeared ??

News ?? Reviews ?? Opinions ??

And your images, Ransaak ??

Pics of my acer

Here's some pics. I threw a pack of smokes in there to give you some size reference.

Sorry I can't contribute with a review or any new info...I'm still waiting for my 1712.

Sigh...it's been over a week now and no tracking number yet from PCTorque...

Oh well...I guess Acer is still ramping up on the production of this unit, so I'll remain patient...I'm confident it'll be worth the wait!

Still waiting on word for my exchange

Yeah I'm exchanging this one because of a dead pixel. We're going to cross ship as soon as Acer gets them back in stock. No word yet here either.

Besides the hard drive pausing issue what are your final thoughts on this monster and what kind of case are you pu;ling it around in ?

A matter of fax has it for $1764.64 (shipped price)
It was between this or the new HP.

How do you rate the gaming ? Would u purchase it again ?

hi...
I´m about to order a 1714 but first i have some questions to make to you guys.


Is there any information about the upgrade for a RADEON 9700 ???

The hard drive is a normal desktop hard drive?

The 5700 clock is only 350 mhz? i´ve heard that it was 450mhz...

And finaly what can you say in comparission with a p4 3,2 ATI 9700 64mb, in performance???

I hope that shortly i will be one more lucky guy with this fabuluos machine.

Greatings from Portugal.

I was just going to ask where you were going to pick up one of the 1714's but I take it that it isn't in the states..

The 5700 in the 1712 is set at 350, it looks like the 5700 in the new HP is set to a default of 300.

It is my hope for an upgrade to the 9700 in the future which is pushing me in the direction of the 1712.

maybe they will release the 1716 in the US with a 300gb HD, 1 gb ddr 400 ram and an ati 9700 256mb

What ??? 1716 ???

But is only a your dream for the future OR is a news that you have from some channel/acer friend/retailer/... and is a sure thing ????

Just wishful thinking

Answers to questions....

I got a Targus TLE400 case.. fits it perfectly and has some nice side compartments too.

I would buy it again, but only if the hard drive issue is fixed. I haven't heard anything from Acer directly on fixing it, so I'm just trusting the boards at the moment. If it gets too close to my 30 day time limit and still no word.. this thing is going back.

The clock on the video card can function in both modes. One is for extended battery life (makes no sense to me) and the other is 450mhz for optimal performance. If you're only gaming I'd get a notebook with the 9700 in it. If you use any 3d design apps (Max, Maya, Lightwave) I'd go with the Nvidia for the optimized Open GL.

The hard disk is a desktop disk.

For gaming it's amazing (except for the hard drive pause which makes it unplayable for 2-5 secs every 10 minutes). The screen is HUGE and I prefer it to a widescreen personally.

Are you getting artifacts at 450 ?

I couldn't tell from the pics but does the 5700 have just a heatsink on it like the new HP's ? The new HP's are getting artifacts at about 400.

I want the Laptop for work but I also want to be able to play games on it. Honestly The screen and Heat, is more important to me at this point. The dead pixel issues are kind of turning me off of the Sagers, the impression I have gotten is that all of their screens are defective (even if they are not visually noticeable). From that poll I stand a 45% chance of getting one of the Visual buggers.

So It is either the New HP with the better Res wide screen or the Acer, the Acer seems to have the heat issue licked mainly because of its size .

The Desktop replacement component replacements and the future possibility of a 9700 is just another Plus....

But...

Like the HP wide screens you really can't visualize how big these things are until you pick one up. I really do wish I could see one of the acers first hand but that doesn't seem possible. I do a lot of RF Propagation work laptop comes with me and leaves with me every day...

Weight is not an issue but is this laptop sturdy ? Are the hinges going to blow off after a couple months ??