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Acer Aspire AS8942g-5688


^nox

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Hey folks !

So its been a few fridays since i had my old hp9548us sitting on my desk. It has been sent in for motherboard replacement in its first year the last 2 years it could barelly keep up with my new demands, although it served me as a good testing ground for overclocking on portable computers as you can se in the overclocking section of this forum. So today im gonna present you the 18.4" Acer Aspire 8942g-5688 (the lower end version).

Specification:

Processor Brand: Intel Core™ i3-330M 2.13GHz 1066MHz 3MB L2Cache

Memory 4GB expandable to 8GB DDR3

Storage/Drives 500GB 5400RPM

DVD-Super Multi Double layer Burns DVDs: Yes LightScribe: No

Display Size: 18.4"

Expansion USB 2.0: Yes, 4 Serial Bus: Yes, IEEE 1394 DVI (digital video interface): No HDMI: Yes Internet/Networking Ethernet: Yes Wireless: Yes, 802.11b/g/n Dial-up Modem: No

Graphics/Video Video Memory: UP top 4091MB (1024MD dedicated, and up to 3067MB shared) Video Memory Type: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650

Software Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition

Accessories Mouse: Touchpad Speakers: Yes, built-in Webcam: Yes

Dimensions Height: 3.1/4.4cm Width: 44cm Length: 29.5cm Weight: 4.6kgs

General Features Additional Features: 4800mAh 8-cell Li-ion battery pack

UPC: 099802785178 Manufacturer's Part Number: LX.PQA02.015 Product Warranty: 1-year

Big Pros:

First of all i have to say this machine is trully a masterpiece in terms of design and all its little nifty tweaked buttons and such. Im a huge fan of the back-lit keyboard function (that can be disable through combo anytime). The touch button for turning of the screen is also something i find very usefull. Media controls are even more fun to play with and there is soo much more. i3 processor along with ati 5650 (ddr3) card makes this think satisfy all my current demands. The sound is crisp from the 6.1 built in theater (its output is more than above average). There is als space for improvement : up to 8 gb (ddr3) ram and extra caddy for another sata2 hdd.

The negatives:

Since i was only get hands on the lower model here in Canada i was left with no BluRay player in my case. The laptop only came with a Mutli DVD mechanic which i found very strange since it has a 18.4 inch full 1080p HD LCD display. The second and pretty much unimportnat thing to me but not so much to others is the lack of bluetooth (The touch button is already built into the keybord but the bluetooth device is misssing which i find very strange as bluetooth is fairly inexpensive piece of hardware). The only thing i could reason out of the above mentioned dissadvantages is the cost of 945.00$. Acer is trying to make these above average gaming laptops available to a wide scale of cosumers.

Assessment:

Ive had this laptop for about 3 days and ran an initial 3d mark benchmark and did windows assesment as well. Below you will find few pictures that can give you some idea on what this machine has and how it performs. I will be updating this review as i get more familliar with this machine:

1004548d.jpg

1004551.jpg

1004549.jpg

1004553.jpg

1stbench.png

acerinfo2.png

acerinfo.png

temperatureoverclocked7.png

Ive had the chance to fire up Crysis and was very pleased that even with stock clocks i was able to play this game in 1440*900 setting high to very high and get fluent gameframes ! Which signifies that most other games like l4d, l4d2 are gonna run even better. Another game i had chance playing was Starcraft 2 Beta, again most setting set on high/ultra with a native resolution gave a reasonable gameframes (considering its beta) 40fps average. Modern Wardare is playable in native maxed.

One last thing is a the choice of ATI card. Since 1999 i have been a heavy geforce/nvidia user until few days ago. Ive been using tech savy apps like Rivatuner, EVGA Preccision and such for a while. It took me time to figure out proper overclocking schemes and tweaks for nvidia based cards so switching over to ATI was a hard turn for me but i wanted to experiment. As far as with most laptops video cards overclocking capacity seems to be restricted by the manufacturer, as ATI Tray Tool literaly crashes the computer if you try and launch it, and there usut isnt that many other good overclocking programs for ATI based cards. The only software I found that works wit my current GPU is AMD GPU Clock Tool (only a certain version). I will be probably trying to update my video drivers to the latest catalyst and see if anything changes then.

When it comes to laptops the most important factor during overclocking is temperature. With my HP laptop i was constantly hitting high 80s or low 90s "Celsius". Well this seems to be over as with the stock and even overclocked to 700/900 the highest temperature reported in GPUz and even HWmonitor was 62.5 degrees for GPU and 60 for CPU. So there is lots of room for improvement. Although i have to mention that i have a 2 fan cooling pad underneath and the laptop is slightly lifted at the end to attain a better air flow.

If you guys have any suggestions tips or tweaks please let me know as im completelly lost when it comes to ATI based cards.

All the best

BTW: Price 902$ Canadian !!!

Edited by ^nox
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