Acer Laptop - 15.6" Trinity A8-4500M + 7670dgpu Dual GPU Crossfire, 4gb, 500gb - $499 @Newegg

polishdreamer said:   Great deal, this is a nice Lappy & Newegg is a good egg. Green for OP.

So why is this AMD laptop a good deal and this one not?

polishdreamer said:   GudSpellur said:   polishdreamer said:   Great deal, this is a nice Lappy & Newegg is a good egg. Green for OP.

So why is this AMD laptop a good deal and this one not?

$130 + ~$35 tax = $160 less, 7670 G video card in this one is far superior to the 7670 G.

But in the other thread you wrote:

"Change the title to AMD first, so we can spare ourselves from reading this."

Which makes it obvious that you do not like AMD CPU's.

GudSpellur said:   polishdreamer said:   GudSpellur said:   polishdreamer said:   Great deal, this is a nice Lappy & Newegg is a good egg. Green for OP.

So why is this AMD laptop a good deal and this one not?

$130 + ~$35 tax = $160 less, 7670 G video card in this one is far superior to the 7670 G.

But in the other thread you wrote:

"Change the title to AMD first, so we can spare ourselves from reading this."

Which makes it obvious that you do not like AMD CPU's.

This as a total package makes it a hot deal, yes I do not like AMD but this computer will really rock for the dollar. That's why this is called hot deals & not medium deals.

In for one, thanks. This will actually be my first laptop....never even used one. Went straight from PC to tablets, and still have both.....I guess it's time to see what the fuss is all about, lol.

I am surprised that no one know this Frys deal(since last frieday).
$479.99 Lenovo Z585 ,AMD A10-4600, 15.6" Screen Display, Notebook With 6GB memory, 750GB Hard Drive, W7 Home Premium

http://www.frys.com/product/7162082?site=sa:adpages%20page:P1_FR...

Don't forget to get the "amddriverdownloader.exe" from AMD web site.
I can run "Borderland 2" game smoothly in 1920x1200 resolution with A6-3400m Gateway notebook.

I have purchased a number of Acer laptops in the past few years for home use and work use (myself and others). They have all been great. I am working on a V3-571G-6602 now as a desktop replacement. It is a great laptop. I would definitely consider this one if I need a machine.

Garhart13 said:   Newegg is selling them on fleabay for the same price as well. Might allow you to save some money on tax.Ebay link

Newegg's eBay policy:

"Seller charges sales tax for items shipped to: CA(7.25%), NJ*(7.0%), TN*(9.25%).
* Tax applies to subtotal + S&H for these states only"

However, I think Newegg.com only has 1.5% CB on laptops. eBay does 2% in eBay bucks. Might be worth it if you shop there a lot.

Needless to say, the title Apire is wrong， Acer only own it's product line with Acer Aspire/

Just bought a Lenovo Z570 with 8GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 3000, 750GB HD for $459. How does this compare? I figure the extra RAM should help boost the performance a bit but not on the video card comparison.

As for the screen, yeah, it's very tempting to get 1080p. Once you had high res in the past, you can never go back.

Yes, very helpful, thanks. I'm not a gamer but I do ocassional photoshop so not sure how much a benefit I will get from the Acer.

I find a lot of the touchpad and button almost unusable. How are they are this laptop? Specifically, do you get get jumps and are the buttons hard to press? The buttons on my Z570 you need to press it hard and almost to the point hurting.

How would you rate the screen? Even with the same resolution, I see some screens are better than others in terms of brightness and sharpness.

chris431 said:   If you intend to do any type of gaming, return the Z570. There's simply no comparison. The A8-4500M iGPU alone is significantly faster than the Intel HD3000. In crossfire with the dgpu of the Acer, you're probably talking 3-4 times faster than the HD3000. At bottom, you're unlikely to be able to 3d game much on the HD3000. On the Acer you should be able to play most modern games with no problem.

4gb vs. 8gb is still, to this day, debatable for standard usage (internet, office work, gaming, basic photo & video tasks). For the most part, 4gb is still more than sufficient. Besides, ram is cheap. You can get 2x4gb (8gb total) of DDR3-1600 for $30-40 (which I recommend anyone buying the Acer do so that the unit runs in dual channel mode which gives performance a huge boost and DDR3-1600 which also provides a nice boost due to the nature of the APU sharing memory bandwidth between the CPU and APU).

At bottom, the Lenovo offers fine office task & day to day computing performance - as does nearly any modern PC (CPU's are mostly overkill for most tasks at this stage). However, the Lenovo will be limited to such tasks as the Intel HD3000 is just ill-equipped to handle any type of minimally demanding 3d gaming. OTOH, the Acer has no such limitations. In addition, the AMD APU/GPU is more future proof as it supports a new trend in coding to offload certain tasks (other than standard 3d rendering) to the GPU resulting in performance that a CPU simply can't touch (google opencl if you are interested). The Intel will not support this.

For both units, replace the hard drive with an SSD. It'll make both systems significantly more responsive (& quieter b/c the hard drives are the loudest component in most laptops - except the Lenovo I had (2 of them) which had horrible fans that were quite loud (not sure if that applies to your Lenovo b/c Lenovo uses different types of fans for different laptops).

Hope this helps.

optical said:   Yes, very helpful, thanks. I'm not a gamer but I do ocassional photoshop so not sure how much a benefit I will get from the Acer.

Check out these benchmarks comparing photoshop using OpenGL (gpu) vs. standard. The AMD A8-4500M APU blows away the Intel i5. Disregard the keys in the charts - they are switched around (as evidenced by expectations as well as the discussion in the text. There are also other programs compared so it gives you some idea about the potential benefits as more programs begin to take advantage of offloading to the gpu.

The OpenCL benchmark comparisons are equally revealing in demonstrating the significant advantages to offloading certain processes to the gpu. Link here.

If it weren't for your good deal description, I would have skipped this over soley based on the A8-4500M processor. The whole AMD vs. Intel is very confusing because it's not apple-to-apple comparison so I often think AMD is more inferior in general but a bit cheaper. I really want a higher resolution bad but I don't want to spend the $ and even at the $800 mark, you still lack other features so it's a constant struggle.

You almost convinced me enough to pull the trigger but don't know if I should wait it out for BF deals. But then again, BF laptop deals are always the base models.

Should I pull the trigger???

chris431 said:   optical said:   Yes, very helpful, thanks. I'm not a gamer but I do ocassional photoshop so not sure how much a benefit I will get from the Acer.

Check out these benchmarks comparing photoshop using OpenGL (gpu) vs. standard. The AMD A8-4500M APU blows away the Intel i5. Disregard the keys in the charts - they are switched around (as evidenced by expectations as well as the discussion in the text. There are also other programs compared so it gives you some idea about the potential benefits as more programs begin to take advantage of offloading to the gpu.

chris431 said:   optical,

Thanks for the kind words. I would pull the trigger. I've looked over the Black Friday ads & see nothing comparable for the price. It really is a solid deal for a very versatile laptop that meets a wide area of needs (which is what AMD is targeting with the APU - the dual graphics is just icing on the cake). If I didn't have the HP, I'd have bought this unit immediately. Even with my HP, I'm almost regretting not returning it.

This laptop will be last an extra year on the versatility of the video card, extending a typical trade-up cycle.

bettle said:   Take note, the resolution is 1366 x 768.

Seems to me, this is a gaming laptop. People who game on their laptops are either:

A.) On the go, having a quick game or
B.) Having a good session, with monitor, gaming KB/mouse and other peripherals attached.

Just... from my experience. As a long time gamer, with 2 gaming laptops.

The resolution means little, the laptop screen is for your quick fix.

$500 is a complete steal for this type of power, adding a total of 8GB of ram will make this a rocking machine. It all depends on use but man it's really good out of the box, you can handle 95% of all game play immediately.

If you need a gaming laptop, this for the dollar is nearly unbeatable today for the dollar.

I've got an i5-3210M /w Intel 4000 graphics, while i don't plan to play alot of games on it, I don't want it to be out of the question, I'm thinking this A8-4500M cpu /w crossfire makes the battery life very very short am I right?

optical said:   OK, I'm trying to put all this together. So, the laptop is only really fast with certain games like Crossfire that uiltizes the AMD's graphic architecture? Looking at the WEI with non Crossfire, the score is rather weak and even lower than my Z570. Does apps like Photoshop utilize this like crossfire?
I get that everyone says this is an all out gaming laptop but I'm trying to justify this for my use as well. I'm looking for an all-around laptop with strong graphic capability that's not necessary for gaming.

WEI isn't a much relied on benchmark. AMD has recently begun focusing on its mobile drivers (see Read about that here.. Alas, 95% of this article has nothing to do with crossfire (AMD APU + AMD dGPU) but rather switchable graphics (Intel CPU w/igpu + AMD dGPU); nonetheless, it evidences AMD's attention to this sector). This includes enhancing crossfire on a greater range of games without having to have particular crossfire profiles. Shoot Many Bots is a great example of this. It does not have a profile by AMD. Rather, it simply utilized the base video driver to achieve significant performance increases via crossfire. I'm not sure why 3dmark05 shows such little difference esp. when it actually has a profile. It may just be the way that 3dmark05 operated.


tdavis5432 said:   I've got an i5-3210M /w Intel 4000 graphics, while i don't plan to play alot of games on it, I don't want it to be out of the question, I'm thinking this A8-4500M cpu /w crossfire makes the battery life very very short am I right?
Incorrect. It basically shuts the dgpu when not in use. With a 9-cell battery, I get 7.5-8 hours of just browsing, office, etc. With a 6-cell I get about 5 hours. During gaming, crossfire definitely eats into the battery. But, if you're conscious of that and traveling, you can disable the dgpu so that the game only uses the APU. You'll thus gain battery life and have a better gaming experience than the HD4000 could provide. With the AMD w/crossfire, you at least get that option. With the HD4000, you're stuck with the HD4000 (slower than both the APU and the APU/with crossfire).

Matrim33 said:   It is $550, free shipping no tax. 15in screen with 3rd gen i5, 6gb ram, and Win8.

It is for my mother-in-law. She uses internet and MS Office mostly. I am looking for longevity performance, not gaming performance. Would an i5 w/ 6gb of ram be better for this?
For her purposes, the i5 is the better machine if you're not looking for gaming performance and do not really care about potential current and future benefits of OpenGL and OpenCL (although most browsers (IE9, Firefox for certain) now use GPU acceleration that the i5 will not benefit from). To be honest, for her uses, she wouldn't be able to tell the difference between an i7 overclocked (made faster than default) and an A8 underclocked (made slower than default). Both machines are overkill for her use. If that's the max budget, I'd say get a lesser machine than both that is $100 less and install an SSD into that machine. She will definitely notice the improvement between an HDD and an SSD.

I'd check back. Newegg fluctuates their pricing based upon demand/time. Alas, still a good deal for $530.

clamonte3 said:   Thanks Chris. Could I get your opinion on this Acer vs this Dell?

Intel Core 3rd Generation i5-3210M Processor (2.5 GHz 3M Cache, up to 3.10GHz)
750 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
6.0GB, DDR3-1600MHz SDRAM 2 DIMMS
AMD Radeon HD 7730M 2GB

The 7730M will be slower than the A8-4500m + 7670dgpu in crossfire. Discussion of subject matter here. However, it will be faster than the A8-4500m APU alone when the crossfire is not functioning or providing much assistance. But, I've read conflicting reports on the speed of the 7730M so I can't really provide a good answer. It's a close call that likely tips in the favor of the i5/7730M depending on primary usage & price difference.