The Acer Aspire M3400: How Much Does $649 Buy?
by Dustin Sklavos on August 5, 2010 3:45 PM ESTAcer Aspire M3400 User Experience and Performance
Okay, so it's clear we're not going to get a whole lot more out of the Acer Aspire M3400 than what we've got (at least not without spending $50 or so on a better PSU). How does that fare at least? In terms of noise, the M3400 is at least fairly quiet, but that's to be expected given the reasonable 95W TDP of the processor and the quiet cooling on the Radeon HD 5450, a card which in and of itself barely draws any power and thus generates very little heat.
One of the benefits of the rapid increase in performance of desktop hardware is the ability of the processor and memory to handle bloat. Microsoft did their share in mitigating it in Windows 7, but Acer's machine doesn't feel sluggish despite the amount of software it comes installed with. OEMs are often able to hit their low prices on desktop machines by being paid by software vendors to include trials on their machines, and the M3400 is no different.
Acer's $649 desktop comes packed with the usual suspects: McAfee, intent on taking over the antivirus market using any means other than actually producing quality software, is of course accounted for here. Norton even makes an appearance with their Online Backup software. The desktop also comes littered with icons for Microsoft Works, a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office 2007, Nero SmartStart, MyWinLocker (which starts in the tray and can't be disabled or exited short of closing it in Task Manager), and then Acer Games, Acer Registration, and even icons for eBay and Netflix. There's Acer Arcade Deluxe, which impressively has nothing to do with games but is instead a way to organize photos, videos, and music. And there's Acer Games, which does include a couple of casual games as well as a virtual storefront for buying other ones.
Honestly, the bloat could be a heck of a lot worse and again, it doesn't really affect the user experience. Dell's software on the Studio XPS 7100 just loved to pop up and intrude at random intervals, and the software on the Samsung N210 netbook I recently reviewed was even worse (due in no small part to the Atom's utter inability to handle even the most minimal of system bloat). The Aspire M3400, on the other hand, is fairly reasonable once you rip McAfee Internet Security's beating heart from the system and show it to its children before setting it on fire and consigning it to the abyssal hellscape from whence it came.
Our performance figures largely reflect that. The only other system we've tested recently is the Dell XPS 7100, which has a six-core processor and an HD 5870 GPU. It also costs twice as much. Outside of graphics work, though, the M3400 certainly holds up well.
| General Performance Overview | ||
| Dell XPS 7100 | Acer M3400 | |
| PCMark Vantage | 6740 | 7601 |
| Cinebench R10 1-CPU | 3596 | 3252 |
| Cinebench R10 x-CPU | 16140 | 11553 |
| X264 720p Encode Pass 1 | 77.29 | 60.58 |
| X264 720p Encode Pass 2 | 24.79 | 18.25 |
The Phenom II X4 820's extra cores help it overcome competition from the Intel Core i3 and i5 dual cores that dot this end of the price spectrum, and we're comfortable saying the processor can handle pretty much any task you throw at it. The 820 is a solid value. If you want a look at how the 820 stacks up against other CPUs, look at the results of the Phenom II X4 920 and the Athlon II X4 630 in our Bench database; the 920 will be slightly faster, and obviously the GPUs are different, but overall it's a decent processor.
| 3DMark Performance Results | ||
| Dell XPS 7100 | Acer M3400 | |
| 3DMark Vantage Performance | 15533 | 1283 |
| 3DMark Vantage Entry | 30856 | 6639 |
| 3DMark06 | 18209 | 3720 |
| 3DMark05 | 22312 | 6645 |
| 3DMark03 | 69538 | 9381 |
Of course, the Radeon HD 5450 couldn't possibly be asked to pull its weight in graphics heavy applications. DirectX 11 or not, it's just not adequate for anything but the most basic of gaming, relegating it to the HD decoding duties the on-board 880G probably would've managed just fine on its own. Certainly you can play any modern game on the 5450 and it's about twice as fast as the 880G, but you're going to be running most games released in the past two years at low resolutions (1366x768) and low settings.
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strikeback03 - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
Unless it really is just an internet and email machine for the grandparents, in which case you could use some flavor of Linux or other free OS. Of course you also wouldn't need a quad-core CPU or a discrete GPU then either.ImSpartacus - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
If I wanted a more fair comparison, I would drop that 460 in a heartbeat. That frees up $200 right there.If you are comfortable with using the double upgrade method (legal and supported by MS), you can get a copy of Win7 Home Premium for under $100.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
There's also a ~$30 HD5450 just to be fair. The integrated graphics would work fine for most people.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
$600
-200
+100
+30
=~$530
I'm sure you could find a mouse and keyboard for $100, eh? :)
I can't wait for a good budget article! Too bad you can't freak out the readership with a few combos and some coupons. /That's/ how you can really get the price down!
Lunyone - Saturday, August 7, 2010 - link
Well you could look like this:combo:
$185 - $20 MIRc = $165!!
AMD Athlon II x3 445 3.1 GHz
AMD 4670 1 GB GPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.asp...
Combo:
$100 + 13 shipping = ~$113
Asus EVO AM3 mobo
Antec 300 case w/1x120mm & 1x140mm Fans
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.asp...
$51 shipped!
Antec NEO 400w PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
$89 shipped!
GSkill CAS 9 (at stock voltage) DDR3 1333 mHz RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
$55 shipped!
SAMSUNG F3 Spinpoint 500 gb HD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
$19 DVD Burner
LITEON 24x DVD Burner
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Total $512 shipped - $20 MIRc = $492!! Now that is a good solid budget gamer build. You can find more savings if you shop some more, but this gives you an idea on a good starting (budget gaming) build.
ImSpartacus - Saturday, August 7, 2010 - link
I think my 500w PSU is comb'd with a free DVD Burner and my harddrive is about$10 more for the famous 640GB Caviar Black. I also suggest losing the 1GB on the 4670. It's money down the tube. Its 128-bit bus really only needs 512MB.I also suggest reviewing your choices for combos with similar RAM. I almost always find a good combo with RAM. While making my build, I actually found a different pattern of combos that allowed me to use EXACTLY the same items and save about $30.
Newegg is just cool like that. :)
Lunyone - Sunday, August 8, 2010 - link
That was just a quick example where you can save some $ and still have a good budget gaming system. As I stated, you can get better deals with some extra time and work.Dustin Sklavos - Sunday, August 8, 2010 - link
That sounds like a challenge, Jarred. ;)And I do so love a challenge.
Lazlo Panaflex - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
"McAfee, intent on taking over the antivirus market using any means other than actually producing quality software, is of course accounted for here."Man, that made me LOL! Two thumbs up, sir ;-D
Mercury Joe - Sunday, August 8, 2010 - link
The RS880 chipset supports Hybrid CrossfireX.Is seems to me that you can enable that and use both the IGP AND the HD5450 in a Hybrid CrossfireX and get some ok graphics out of this. You never said if it was enabled or not.
The posters here seem to want to slam this machine because it can not play high end games. People who buy machines like this are LIGHT gamers and internet browsers/e-mailers.
If I was a betting man, they have the HD5450 to support Flash hardware video acceleration for You-Tube. It is the cheapest and lowest powered solution to provide hardware acceleration. It also nicely complements the Hybrid CrossfireX solution.
Dustin Sklavos - Sunday, August 8, 2010 - link
I admit I could be mistaken, but it's my understanding Flash hardware acceleration runs off of the decoder hardware and not the shaders. If that's the case, Flash wouldn't see any improvements from going with the 5450 vs. the 880G.The 5450 just doesn't make sense in this build. The light gamer would be better served with a 5550 or 5570, and everyone else would be fine with the 880G.
pbr35586 - Sunday, August 8, 2010 - link
Last year right before Windows 7 came out. I bought a Dell Inspiron 546 MT for $346.00 on sale. It came with a Phenom 9650 quad core, 4 GB of ram, 500gb hard drive. I also got a free upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium 64 and free shipping. I added a $60.00 GB ATI 4670 card free shipping. Runs fine on my stock 300 watt power supply. It also came with a keyboard and mouse. This system may not be all that to some of you. But i can play COD Modern Warfare 2 @1920x1200 4 a/a. For light gaming and general computing this thing is fine and it was way below $500 including the sales tax i paid to Dell.