Acer Aspire TimelineU M3: Life on the Kepler Verge
by Dustin Sklavos on March 13, 2012 5:56 PM ESTApplication and Futuremark Performance
While we've said before that Intel Core i7-2637M performance is pretty much a known quantity, Acer's TimelineU M3 takes things in a different direction. This is a 15.6" notebook that has dimensions comparable with Dell's XPS 14x and 15z, and a GPU that's at least theoretically well beyond either. At this juncture it's now worth seeing if the i7-2637M is a huge hit compared to, say, a standard voltage i5.
PCMark skews happily and heavily towards the reasonably fast SSD in the M3, despite that SSD only running at SATA 3Gbps speeds. The Computation benchmark also skews towards Intel's QuickSync, and it appears some of NVIDIA's drivers used to defer to the IGP during PCMark7. Let's see what happens when we shift the focus entirely to the CPU proper.
Unfortunately things just aren't so rosy once standard voltage CPUs are added to the equation. The i7-2637M doesn't perform poorly, but run-of-the-mill i5s do produce a good lead on it, and anything with four cores demolishes it as expected.
On the other hand, 3DMark approves of the GeForce GT 640M's substantial shader power. We don't have any systems with the GT 540M on our chart, but given how the 640M is nipping at the M14x's GT 555M's heels, it's reasonable to assume the 640M is able to largely demolish its predecessor. What's interesting is seeing how the 640M's 384 CUDA cores compare to the GTX 460M/560M in practice, both of which have just 192.
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mschira - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
You call this compelling?Trackpad sucks. COME on. That is one of the most important usability items on a laptop.
If the trackpad sucks the notebook sucks.
Screen resolution? 768P on 15.6" are they joking?
Also ditch the optical drive. I have a Lenovo 420s and replaced the optical drive with a second battery. I have the optical drive somewhere but I am not sure I would find it if I ever needed it.
Great move with the GT 640 absolutely. Also great move with the mSSD and harddrive bay.
But else?
M.
nateclind - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
How about showing a little class and respect. You can definitely disagree, but go about it in a more constructive way.snuuggles - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
The tone of the op was somewhat ascerbic. The tone of -your- post is just weird... How, exactly, are they not being "classy?!"Try to be specific (as the op was).
weiran - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
His points are perfectly valid and constructive.In the recent Dell XPS13 review, it had almost the exact same faults as this laptop and yet this one is somehow "compelling"? The trackpad and screen are two of the most important parts of a laptop, yet the poor screen doesn't even get a mention in the conclusion. Is the rest of the laptop good enough to overlook those deficiencies?
The author also seems to base his final judgement on a retail price of around $800, I'll tell you now there's no way it will be close to $800 a decent sized SSD and i7.
mschira - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Hm, I didn't even get far enough to appreciate the price. 800 would be a good offer, but a 256GB SSD, and i7 and a Kepler GPU for 800?Sure.
And the next iPad will be sold for a benefit price in Africa.
M.
nissangtr786 - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
I reckon this has 20-50% less power then the full gt640m 2gb card as the 1gb gt640m is the LE version 15-20w card vs the 2gb gt640m 25-30w card.http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-gr...
See that forum and see the list of graphics cards and you will se it is pretty impressive for a 15-20w card.
Gideonic - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Nice ME3 reference ;)kallogan - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Kepler seems indeed to be a big step forward...flensr - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
My wife is complaining about her laptop again and this is exactly the form factor she likes (thin and light but with optical drive) but the screen is so awful that I'm going to have to give it a pass. Almost everything else about this is awesome (6GB ram max is pretty weak but the mSATA SSD + 2.5 HDD is a great choice) and having an ethernet port and optical drive is a requirement for me, but the screen simply must be better than this or it's a complete waste of money to purchase.I bought a lenovo T420s which is remarkably similar to this thing (thin light with optical, 14") but after receiving it and seeing how terrible that screen was, I'm going to hold out until either the laptop screens improve or tablets improve to the point where I can switch over completely to tablet use. That T420s is the last laptop with a crummy screen I'll ever buy.
Laptop manufacturers are going to lose their customers in a BIG way in a year or two when tablet hardware is capable of running a "real" OS, unless they can figure out a way to put nice screens in their laptops. I would have happily paid an extra $400 for my T420s for an upgraded screen, and I won't buy a replacement with a TN screen at ANY price. If that means I wait until the ipad 8 or whatever microsoft comes out with in a couple of years when their tablets are not much different than tiny desktops/laptops, then that's better than using one of these horrible screens.
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Doesnt the 560M have just half that many cores? And it is faster? What is going on here?