The Acer Swift 3 SF314 Notebook Review: Swift Gets Swifter With Ryzen 4000
by Brett Howse & Andrei Frumusanu on May 5, 2020 8:00 AM ESTWireless
Acer has fitted the Intel AX200 Wireless adapter in their Swift 3, and for good reason. Intel’s wireless networking adapters have been the cream of the crop in the PC space for some time, with rock solid stability, and excellent performance. The AX200 is the new Wi-Fi 6 adapter, adding 160 MHz channel support and higher QAM orders to provide much higher peak performance than Wi-Fi 5, while at the same time offering better congestion control as well.
The Acer Swift 3 has very good networking performance from the 2x2 networking solution, hitting over 1.1 Gbps transfer speeds on our TCP test. We are using the ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 router, and if you’d like to check out more about the new Wi-Fi 6 testing, please check out our overview.
Audio
The Acer Swift 3 features DTS Audio with stereo front-facing speakers, and dual-microphones for Cortana support. Although the speakers are forward facing, they are on the bottom of the notebook, so can be obstructed depending on the surface the notebook is on.
Sound quality is quite good, with reasonable bottom end response for a notebook of this size. The speakers do not get overly loud, measuring 75 dB(A) one inch over the trackpad, but the sound was free from distortion.
Thermals
Thin, light, and performance. The holy trinity of laptop design. It is not always easy to achieve. Acer has a thin and light laptop, with a new 7 nm AMD Ryzen 7 4700U onboard which should help them out, but to see how the laptop responded it was run through an extended stress test of the CPU, with the GPU kicked in near the end.
As with most modern CPUs, the Ryzen 7 quickly ramps up well past its target thermal design power, hitting around 30 Watts draw at the start, but as the test goes on, that value falls back to around 18 Watts. But the power line shows several spots where it dropped back due to thermal capacity. A perfect result here would be a straight line for the CPU frequency but struggles to maintain its boosted frequency. The laptop does not seem to find a sweet spot where it can maintain temperatures either, it instead bounces from maximum power draw to minimum. The GPU also is not consistent when it is turned on around the 2300 second mark.
As this is a full stress test, it can be unfair since you are unlikely to run into a scenario where you use the system at 100% load for such an extended duration. To see how the laptop performs in a more real-world test, it was again tested using Far Cry 5 as a load source.
If anything, the results were even more disappointing. The laptop really struggled with its thermals, dropping the framerate into single digits often. The device attempted to run at around 18 Watts of power draw, slightly over the 15 Watt TDP, but in fact only averaged around 8 Watts during this run.
The laptop does not get overly loud during this load, only hitting around 45 dB(A), but clearly the included cooling system is inadequate for very heavy loads, such as gaming. Far Cry 5 is a demanding game, especially on CPU, so the SoC is even more taxed trying to balance the CPU and GPU, but overall this is a very poor result.
Software
Acer includes a few utilities which are useful, and a few that are not, such as some Norton Antivirus with a short trial period. But it is worth looking at a few pieces of software and included utilities.
The AMD Radeon Settings gives you control over the GPU settings, including disabling Vari-Bright, and seeing the system settings. It is a nice looking utility, but other than providing a few options to enable or disable, but it would be nice if you could use it to manage driver updates for the GPU rather than just copy the version numbers.
If you do want to update drivers, you can use the Acer Care Center, where you can also manage recovery media creation and support requests. This is now a standard feature on all notebooks, and Acer’s implementation is attractive and easy to use.
Acer includes a couple of links to e-tailers like Amazon and Booking.com, which are easily deleted, but also are a quick reminder that margins are thin when prices are this low.
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LaMpiR - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
So, a 649$ laptop costs in Europe 890$. How is this possible?neblogai - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
Something was probably wrong with the sample Anandtech got. Here is a video of FarCry5- Swift 3 4700U temps stay at nice and cool ~69C even in the long and action packed scene: https://youtu.be/8A2XFdAZLPQ . There is also another test with a 4500U model from the same channel- no temperature issues there either, nor in any of the ~20 games tested. Other channels, like Dave Lee, also say that cooling is just so capable and quiet, that Acer should have upped cTDP higher.Oxford Guy - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
Maybe it's just me, but the whole article seems very deceptive.The headline should be: "The Acer Swift 3 SF314 Notebook Review: Swift Gets Slower With Kneecapped Ryzen 4000"
The little TDP graphic should be 8+ watts, not 15.
neblogai - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link
It is just you. Acer would not be wrong to call Intel models 'Swift 3', and AMD models - 'Swifter 3'.watzupken - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link
The throttling is to be expected when you see a 1.2kg laptop. Where can they cut in order to lose few hundred grams, when the battery size is the same? Surely its got to be the cooling solution. If you are looking for performance, these ultra slim laptops are not for you. The same problem plagues Intel based laptops as well. As PC maker/ manufacturers go crazy about cutting weight and size of laptops, a lot of these thin laptops suffer from thermal throttling, poor upgradeability and missing port convenience.In this case, I think there may be something wrong with the fan curve and should be resolved through some software updates. The cooling solution looks normal to me after cracking open a few of these laptops with low power processors. Only observation is that the heatsink is getting thinner over the years, which will certainly impact cooling. Mid end models should have a longer heatsink with slightly bigger fan to cover the longer heatsink, while high end models may end up with dual heatsink and fan cooling solution to get around the slimness.
Oxford Guy - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
Yes, it's "just me" because apparently 8 watts is "Swifter" than the 15 it's supposed to run at.At least the 15W graphic appears to have been removed. That's something.
Oxford Guy - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
"The throttling is to be expected when you see a 1.2kg laptop. Where can they cut in order to lose few hundred grams, when the battery size is the same? Surely its got to be the cooling solution. If you are looking for performance, these ultra slim laptops are not for you."I don't buy this excuse.
When a company sells a product it shouldn't be a bait and switch deal.
If Acer wants to post "8+ watts" as the TDP of the CPU in a prominent place that's one thing. If it lists 15W and/or just the CPU model then that's not good enough.
Moreover, it should be made clear to the consumer that the CPU is throttled to get to that 8 watts, not that it's just so efficient it can function at 8 watts to do the equivalent of what should take 15 for the same CPU because of something special about the machine's design.
If the machine can't handle a 15 watt CPU then it should be throttled to what it can handle and that should be the spec sold to consumers, not the spec it can't handle.
ReallyBigMistake - Sunday, May 17, 2020 - link
"Key to this is a much-needed jump from GlobalFoundries' 12nm process to TSMC's class-leading 7nm process"I am calling it but GF days are numbered.
Cirecomputers12 - Sunday, June 7, 2020 - link
What you guys don't get is the internals are great at the price of a very CRAP display. Just look up the srgb and the Adobe rgb its terrible. The brightness nits are 250 which is pretty much as dark as you can go with laptops. SO if the display doesn't mean that much, this an awesome deal. If it does all the power in the world isn't going to make that Display any better. It's also made out of plastic......It's up to you ......AdriaticAdrian2 - Tuesday, April 27, 2021 - link
Does someone know if I charge it with anything lower than 65w through USB-C? I have it but I don't want to buy anything that will not work