Acer Aspire V3-571G-9435: The Value Proposition
by Jarred Walton on July 4, 2012 4:25 AM ESTAcer V3-571G Gaming Performance
Next up in our test suite are our gaming tests, which we discussed in our 2012 Mobile Benchmark Matrix. We conducted all of the 1366x768 testing with the internal LCD and connected an external 1080p display for the Mainstream and Enthusiast test results. Our Value settings are generally very easy on the V3-571G while the Mainstream settings can sometimes be a bit much and the Enthusiast settings (shown in Mobile Bench) are typically beyond the capabilities of the GT 640M. One of the disappointing decisions Acer made with this laptop is the choice to go with slightly cheaper DDR3 memory for the GPU; while GDDR5 isn’t as necessary at the native LCD resolution, it certainly would have helped with gaming on an external LCD. Of course, we would have liked both GDDR5 and a better LCD, but we tend to be greedy.
Value Gaming Results
We won’t say too much about our Value settings, other than the V3-571G is more than capable of running all the test games at these settings without difficulty. Civilization V was initially the odd man out, with performance coming in just shy of 30FPS at 28.3; however, the just-released-yesterday 304.79 beta drivers have improved Civ5 performance by around 15%, pushing Civ5 up to 33.4FPS. I still feel it’s possible the current NVIDIA drivers aren’t optimized very well for mobile Kepler, but how much more performance they can eke out with driver updates remains to be seen. The previous generation GT 555M in the Razer Blade is still 10% faster than the GT 640M, and AMD’s A10 Trinity chip is nipping at the heels of what should otherwise be a much faster GPU. The GT 650M in the W110ER also comes in a whopping 65% faster (with a core clock that’s only 18% higher), so something is certainly odd with the current Civ5 results. The V3 breaks 60FPS in nearly all of the other games, Battlefield 3 being the other exception (though at 47FPS it’s certainly fast enough for multiplayer gaming).
Note that in all of these games, the Clevo W110ER with the faster clocked GT 650M (but still with 2GB DDR3) easily outperforms the GT 640M, suggesting that at least for our Value settings memory bandwidth isn’t a bottleneck. The GT 555M GDDR5 on the other hand trades blows with the GT 640M, winning several matchups but falling slightly behind in others. In terms of compute power, the GT 640M should win out by roughly 20%, but the GDDR5 memory gives the GT 555M nearly 40% more bandwidth, with the result being a pretty even fight. Let’s see what happens at our more demanding Mainstream settings.
Mainstream Gaming Results
With the increase in detail levels and resolution, performance drops are pretty significant. The V3-571G manages to stay above 30FPS in all of the titles, with the exception of Civilization V, but frame rates are low enough in BF3 that we’d recommend using lower settings for multiplayer. The Razer Blade likewise continues to trade blows with the V3, indicating we’re still pretty balanced between memory and shader requirements. Of course, outside of gaming on an external display, no one would actually be running at our 900p Mainstream or 1080p Enthusiast settings, so we put together another table with our recommended settings and the performance you can expect.
Recommended Gaming Settings and Performance
|
Acer V3-571G-9435 Gaming Recommended Settings for 1366x768 |
|||
| Detail | FPS | Notes | |
| Batman: Arkham City |
Very High + Normal PhysX + High FXAA |
34 | You can run either DX11 or PhysX at decent frame rates with the GT 640M, but PhysX in my opinion looks better than DX11. FXAA is basically "free". |
| Battlefield 3 | Ultra + 1xAA | 37.8 | Single-player is fine at these settings, but multi-player might need to drop down to high or even medium settings. |
| Civilization V | Low (“Value”) | 33.4 | Unless NVIDIA can further improve Civ5 performance with a driver update, stick with our “Value” settings (though you could turn up a few knobs). |
| DiRT 3 | Ultra + 4xAA | 32.4 | If you’re a stickler for maintaining >30FPS frame rates, you should probably disable AA. |
| Portal 2 | Max + 4xAA | 79.3 | Portal 2 is one game in our suite where you can basically max out all settings without any concern for performance. Have fun! |
| Skyrim | Ultra + 4xAA | 34.9 | Skyrim also plays quite well at the Ultra defaults, though we recommend setting AA to 4xAA instead of 8xAA. |
| Total War: Shogun 2 | Very High | 38.5 | Maximum detail works fine for this game, though you may need to edit the INI file to specify VRAM in order for the Very High preset to unlock. |
Most of the games in our test suite run fine at close to maximum detail at the LCD’s native resolution. You can read our testing notes from above, and the only games that need lowered settings are BF3 and Civ5 (surprise). I also ran a test of Diablo 3 (Nightmare difficulty, midway through Act 1) and found that even 1080p at maxed out settings (with the newly added “High (Smooth)” shadowing enabled) was playable on an external LCD, with an average frame rate of 38FPS over 30 minutes. During that period, there were only four dips below 20FPS, with frame rates staying above 30FPS 91% of the time and above 25FPS 99.5% of the time. Of course, if you play on the integrated laptop display you won’t have any issues with frame rates whatsoever. [Ed: Battle.net lag on the other hand….]
The short summary of the gaming results is that the V3-571G definitely has sufficient performance for running any modern game, though not always at max quality. If you prefer gaming performance put into perspective, today’s mainstream GT 640M is generally faster than the GTX 285M from a couple years back, and it consumes less than half the power. It’s also a pretty good match up against the Radeon Mobility HD 5850 and GTX 460M—again, while using substantially less power. With GDDR5 memory, the GT 640M would likely outperform both of those cards.
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3dgeneralist - Thursday, July 5, 2012 - link
Regarding the resolution. Its also dumb to think everyone uses higher than 1440x900 res on a 15inch laptop. Can barely read the text and icons higher than that on a small screen. Even on my 23inch monitor I am using 1440x900 because I'm on it for more than 10 hours a day working on graphic software. Eye fatigue is worse when reading small fonts and images.seapeople - Thursday, July 5, 2012 - link
This has always puzzled me. Does it really help your eyes to be looking at large, fuzzy text all day (LCD non native resolution) versus looking at smaller but perfectly sharp and clear text?This is of course assuming you are unable to increase DPI due to application incompatibilities, otherwise you're just being silly.
3dgeneralist - Saturday, July 7, 2012 - link
Its not really fuzzy looking at 1440x900 with text 110% dpi and adjusting cleartype settings on my 23inch monitor. The comfort gained is huge compared to setting it to 1920x1080 which in 8 hours looking at the monitor seems like my eyes would just drop and my head hurts.Remember the less effort you put into something that should be automatic, the less strain you experience.
antef - Thursday, July 5, 2012 - link
Jarred, I will be in the market for an even cheaper laptop soon (~$600), and I'm not sure I like Dell's offerings. I hope you are able to review some even cheaper Acer machines in the near future (with Core i3/i5 CPUs, possibly no discrete graphics, etc.).Meaker10 - Thursday, July 5, 2012 - link
Much like the 5935G then, the cable connector looks like it could just support enough extra lines for a second LVDS channel but its not like the old connector where you could slot extra wires into place, it's an extremely fiddley connector and would require VERY VERY fine soldering skills. I killed a mobo trying.Thats assuming the extra spaces are for an LVDS channel and the chip on the motherboard supports two.
Kill16by9TN - Thursday, July 5, 2012 - link
"The only complaint I have is a minor one: the “merged” Enter and Backslash keys. We’ve seen this on a few Acer laptops in the past year, and I don’t know what purpose the non-gap layout serves,"The answer is probably rather simple: globalisation.
There are some keyboard layouts I know of, German for example, where 'Enter' occupies the additional space of the US KB's 'backslash', while the left-hand 'Shift' key in turn is shortened on its right side to make room for the now relocated key.
Acer's design choice therefore accommodates for US-style and European-style keyboard layouts.
BTW, I couldn't agree more with your criticism of those insane highly glossy 'piano' finish surfaces, no matter if with laptops/notebooks or monitors/TVs. It just majorly sucks. When will this nonsense finally face extinction?
Burticus - Thursday, July 5, 2012 - link
My A8-3500 Gateway 17" was $550 with blu-ray 7 months ago. Spent $20 to get it up to 8gb 1333. Nothing in that price range can touch it. On the other hand, while it doesn't weigh a ton it is pretty big. Trinity is faster and the same price or cheaper. I think the display on it is pretty decent for 1600x900 but it does have some contrast issues. Those only come into play when watching dark movies though: which my wife does constantly and complains constantly. I told her to buy her own laptop if she didn't like mine :-)This is interesting for budget power with that i7 and the Kepler video, but it seems an odd compromise... you would think someone would go down $200 to get Trinity, or go up $200 to get something a little better build quality and better display. I don't think you can score an ultrabook for a grand though (and those don't have optical drives which slays me).
karasaj - Thursday, July 5, 2012 - link
Assuming there aren't any major major compromises, you can get an Acer TimelineU M5 for a pretty nice 800$.Piss poor screen though, which might be the biggest compromise that is probably a dealbreaker for some. I would consider it though since it's so much less expensive than other ultrabooks (or thin form factor specs) like the Vaio S and Vizio. Or SS7. And build quality is hopefully more ultrabookish and less Aspire V3ish.
Ipatinga - Thursday, July 5, 2012 - link
When you thought manufacturers couldn´t screw you more... you face a "chiclet" keyboard everywhere.Damn... do engineers really use what they make? (Yeah, dumb question...) :P
PubFiction - Friday, July 6, 2012 - link
There seems to be some sort of stupid idea that chiclet keys are better.The form a key has nothing to do with its quality, in fact chiclet keys are most known for being implemented in cheap shit. The physical properties are what make a keyboard good or bad regardless of weather it is chiclet, island or anything.
Most chiclet keys are not as good as the keyboards they replaced, they are mushy, unresponsive and are flat lacking qualities designed for accuracy.
It is fine if you prefer chiclet, go ahead and state that but done gloss over all the other properties. The pictures clearly show that these keyboard is flat, lacking the concave nature or a real good keyboard.
You can also see that this keyboard exposes the underside of the keys slightly meaning things can easily get in there such as crumbs dust and such, wholely defeating one of the biggest advantages of chiclet. The spacing appears to be close which means that you are likely to trigge another key if you miss.
Finally there is not mention of the quality of key rollover.