Acer Aspire TimelineU M3: Life on the Kepler Verge
by Dustin Sklavos on March 13, 2012 5:56 PM ESTConclusion: A GeForce and an Acer Both So Close
With the Acer Aspire TimelineU M3, we're really talking about and reviewing two different products: the ultrabook itself and the shiny new NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M. There's a certain poetry to the feeling that these two products are both worthy of the same conclusion: excellent on their own, but both need to be able to stretch their legs.
The GeForce first: without being able to reveal details about Kepler it's difficult to say if the GeForce GT 640M is shader heavy, but it is most definitely memory bandwidth bound. At the M3's low native resolution the 640M is a fantastic GPU that demonstrates a lot of the progress that we want to see; it's not just about being able to play games, it's about being able to play them well, and the 640M does provide next-generation performance in what seems to be the same power envelope as its predecessor. We also continue to see Optimus performing as well as it should. Jarred is big on eventually having GPUs idle so low that we simply don't need this kind of graphics-switching technology, but until that day comes, Optimus remains a stellar value add for end users. This is one place where AMD is lagging woefully behind and needs to get their act together, because right now the 640M is going to be preferable to pretty much any other mainstream mobile GPU in terms of both performance and power consumption.
Meanwhile, the TimelineU M3 has a generally beautiful aesthetic, fantastic battery life, and Acer has finally and truly done away with the floating island keyboard. At just under five pounds I'm sorely tempted to split hairs over its "ultrabook" status, but as far as the dimensions are concerned, this is really the form factor we'd like all mainstream notebooks to eventually hit. There's a convincing case to be made between the M3 and the Dell XPS 15z that notebooks just don't need to be particularly bulky anymore unless they're trying to cool high-end graphics hardware; with Ivy Bridge in the pipe even the CPU side of the equation is less and less likely to need extensive cooling. I'm also a big fan of the inclusion of both an mSATA port and 2.5" drive bay, allowing end users to enjoy the best of both worlds.
Unfortunately, the M3's design trips up in a couple of key places. The touchpad is difficult to use and is one more case against unified touchpads in PCs; it's a bit worse than the Dell XPS 13's was, and I have yet to test one that was anywhere near as convenient as the time-honored touchpad and discrete buttons combination. Having almost all of the ports on the back of the M3 is inconvenient as well; at least one USB port needs to be on a side, along with the headphone jack. While I can't really complain about the inclusion of the DVD+/-RW drive, I'm also not entirely sure how essential it is. I can't remember the last time I've needed the optical drive on my Alienware M17x R3, and I've never missed not having one on my ThinkPad X100e. And finally, the SSD controller built into the mSATA SSD in the M3 is capable of SATA 6Gbps speeds, but the mSATA port limits it to SATA 3Gbps, thus leaving some performance on the table.
With all that said, I remain optimistic. The GeForce GT 640M is a worthy mainstream GPU that improves substantially on its predecessors and one I hope to see wide adoption of, while the Acer Aspire TimelineU M3 is the first Acer notebook I've tested that I ultimately felt pretty positively about. If the M3 can hit a reasonable price point it's going to offer an awful lot of value for the money, and I'm pretty sure we can count on Acer to make that happen. I've been trying to find an inexpensive gaming-ready notebook to recommend to a friend lately without having to dip into Llano territory; if the M3 can hit $800 or lower, it's the one. [Ed: Sorry, but you're not getting a 256GB SSD for under a grand, and even 128GB is asking a lot. In fact, with the discrete GPU and i7 CPU, I'm guessing this particular model with go for closer to $1500. Hopefully we'll see a variant with an i5 but still with the 640M GPU, and maybe a 128GB SSD targeting a price closer to $1000.]
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Exchequer - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
It is clear you are NOT a gamer... I hace combined my gamign rig intentionally with a 1680x1050 screen, why? Because it MATTERS for your framerate.1024x768=768k
1280x1024=1.2M
1680x1050=1.76M
1920x1080=2M
1366x768=1M
Your talking about is 5M
That is pure madnes... Even if you go from 1M pixels to 2M pixels, this mean your framerate will drop down 50%... E.g. if you had 50 fps before it will end up near 25 fps. To talk about 5M pixels means you really have absolutely no clue about gpu's and games...
Of course you can lower the resolution of your game but, as anyone that ever tried this will know, if you move away from the native resolution screens become very ugly. Your better off playing native on a lower resolution than picking this resolution on a higher res panel.
kmmatney - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
When you have pixels that small, things actually scale quite well, so going to a lower resolution for a game is no big deal.I agree that a 1680 x 1050 screen is great for mainstream gaming - it's a good compromise between having a nice big screen, and not too many pixels to push.
airmantharp - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Did you seriously just say 1680x1050 for gaming?That's great, if you can't afford a video card, and I'm aware that not everyone can.
But let me tell you, gaming on a 30" 2560x1600 IPS screen is something to behold. Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, The Old Republic, all look and play amazing when driven by a pair of HD6950 2GB cards.
Exchequer - Saturday, March 17, 2012 - link
First of all we are talking here about mobile gaming... Even if you get an insanely expensive laptop with sli/crossfire you still wont have enough fps for a 30 inch screen with that resolution...Furthermore crossfire results in microstutter so thats not an ideal solution, it pretty much ruins the game.
On pc gaming I once bought an 8800 GTS 640mb for 320 euro when it was just released (probablyt wrong priced should be 450 euro), 6 months later the 8800GT was introduced at half price. Since then I learned my lesson and got the gtx 260 for 140 euro (and got 90 back for the 8800gts), after that a gtx460 hawk for 165 euro. If you stick with your 1680x1050 panel you can run all games with AA without any problems for at least a year for about 50-60 (because each time you get 90-100 back for your old card). If I want to play bf3 on 1920x1080 I have to upgrade to a 560ti which would cost me 220 euro while resulting in the same detail settings and fps...
Bols - Thursday, March 15, 2012 - link
But you are so very wrong (and angry), young padwan.The beauty of a 2880x1800 screen is that it scales perfectly down to 1440x900, which would allow it to be driven by a mid-class GPU for fast FPS-games, and you will not be able to see that there is any scaling going on. (There isn't - every pixel in the 1400-domain is just shown as four pixels). For serious use, you can cram in four times more information and text in the 2800-resolution. If you working with text, like programming, screen estate matters.
And you should ease up on the assumptions. I am an ex-fps-junkie, but I still care about framerate.
Finraziel - Thursday, March 15, 2012 - link
Double the pixels is half the framerate? Right, and there we stop taking you seriously... You read Anandtech yet you don't know there are lots of different possible bottlenecks and they are not all affected by resolution?Aside from that I agree, scaling isn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be on a proper high resolution screen. I've regularly done it both on laptops and on my 24" 1920x1200 display and if you can live with lower res I don't see how you can be so picky to whine about a bit of blurring from the scaling. Maybe if you play text-heavy games, but those tend to be less sensitive to framerate, so it works out nicely.
Exchequer - Saturday, March 17, 2012 - link
It is... I have an old Philips 17 inch TFT (25ms from 2003 so 9 years old!) as secondary monitor with 1280x1024. My main monitor is a samsung 2253BW (2008, 2ms), which is regarded as a high quality monitor. If I put the 2253BW on 1280x1024 (including black bars) you get about the same screen surface. The 17 inch is 27 cm height and the 22inch is 30cm. However the image quality is a LOT worse. If all you can run is 1280x1024 (gpu limited) than you are 100% better off with the old 17inch 5:4 panel as compared to downscaling the modern 22inch panel.Besides gaming it is of course personal preference. Back in the day you could get a 1680x1050 22 inch or a 1680x1050 20 inch, or a higher resolution 22 inch. However this results in very small text on your OS forcing you to use larger icons which (in the old days) were not as pretty ^^. Small icons get annoying pretty quickly. Anyone that has been wearing contact lenses for some years will know what im talking about:D.
Exchequer - Saturday, March 17, 2012 - link
"Double the pixels is half the framerate? Right, and there we stop taking you seriously...´`Maybe you should not only visit anandtech but also take a look at techpowerup...
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_G...
2560x1600 48 fps
1680x1050 85 fps
1280x1024 109 fps
If you are talking about 5M pixels (the post that I replied to then I can assure you that you will be gpu imited and that scaling will be completely lineair...
ps since sandy brige its hard to be cpu limited with a single gpu ^^.
JojoKracko - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Yes, disgraceful. I have to agree. Lets hope that Apple also forces a return to the infinitely more logical 16x10 format for laptops. 16x9 is simply cost saving BS which I equate to skimping on the quality of the screen.Make it 16x10, IPS, and I will gladly, GLADLY, kick the vendor an extra $150.
If they can put a 2560x?? IPS panel in a $500 iPad (not 3) then they can damn well do the same in $900 and up laptops.
All we need is ONE manufacturer to set the example, (and do it well for pete's sake, don't skimp on the keyboard to compensate), and the HUGE SALES will show all of the others that this is what they should have been doing all along.
If they would have put a 1600x1000 quality TN panel into THIS laptop, I would have been a buyer for $100 over list price. As is though, it is useless crapola to me.
Props for the mSata SSD and the EMPTY drive bay. Although, I'd prefer two fullsized bays and the ability to buy my own SSD and install it along with the crap HDD they would include.
JojoKracko - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Hey, if Asus can put a 1080P IPS Matte screen in an $1100 UX31A, then every other laptop maker sure as heck better start doing the same. It is just crazy that it has taken this long for the first quality laptop display to appear.Let me say it again.
1080P IPS Matte Screen
Just do it!
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-to-release-the-Z...
This one, or hopefully a G75 with a similar spec'd screen, is something I'm looking forward to buying in the near future. Not things like this acer with the low res, low spec screen.
Review the UX31A next please Anandtech.