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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trajan2448 - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
For me thats a hassle.trajan2448 - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Im traveling internationally and its much easier to buy a disc.Death666Angel - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
I would have thought that it was a hassle carrying around a few DVDs on your travels. Also, you can just rip it as an .iso or .img and VLC usually plays it just fine, no need to encode it. Little 64GB USB stick (they go cheap these days) and you have 8 or 10 movies with you at all times. But, your call of course. :DMichaelD - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
It's b/c PC manufacturer's (Apple not included here) continue to put out so-so products like this, that I've been sticking with Netbooks for the past three years. Six years ago I had an Acer laptop. It was top of the line for back then. It still works. It has a real touchpad and two separate mouse buttons. The screen is washed-out now, but back then it was vibrant and responsive. As someone above stated "The touchpad and screen on a laptop are EVERYTHING. If those two suck, then the laptop sucks." I couldn't agree more. I'll stick with my Netbook for now.chrnochime - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
When is the embargo going to be lifted? Just waiting to find out if it's worth waiting for the GK104 or go with 7870.bji - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Full stop, straight to the comments to enjoy some commiseration about the state of laptop screens. I never read an Anandtech notebook review article past the word "768p". Ever. If you want my readership and page clicks Anandtech you'll have to start shipping those substandard notebooks back and asking for something more worthwhile to review. Maybe the manufacturers will finally get the hint.fic2 - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Totally agree. I think any laptop "reviews" with a 768p screen should begin and end with the the sentence:Laptop XXX would have been reviewed but since it only has a 768p screen we did not feel it was worth our time to review and our readers time to read such a review.
Recommendation: wait for higher resolution laptop screens.
Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
At that point we might as well just not review notebooks. The fact remains that 768p is the standard that has been forced upon consumers. All we can do is review what's available and continue haranguing manufacturers to fix the problem.Visual - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
No, you silly clueless writer.At that point, laptop manufacturers get a clue, and release a good product for a change.
Review sites do have that kind of power, didn't you know?
Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
And as a sidenote, how does boycotting us help change the industry? We've been actively campaigning for better screens in notebooks since we started reviewing notebooks, I'm not sure how not supporting us is going to help the situation.