The Acer Aspire S7-393 Review: Broadwell Comes To Acer's Ultrabook
by Brett Howse on October 5, 2015 8:00 AM ESTGPU Performance
Broadwell brought along some major changes to the GPU architecture, including more execution units and less execution units per subslice. The total of EUs went from 20 in Haswell to 24 in Broadwell, but each subslice only has 8 EUs rather than 10 on Haswell to reduce some of the bottlenecks. The i7-5500U model is an Intel HD 5500 branded GPU with a frequency range of 300-950 MHz. This is the maximum before Intel moves into their Iris branded products.
As with the system benchmarks, the second generation Acer S7 with Haswell is included to give a reference of where we have gone in a year or so. Not all of the tests were run on it, but some of the 3DMark test scores are available.
The other note about GPU performance is our one gaming test that was decent to run on integrated graphics has been significantly changed. DOTA 2 was recently updated to a new version of the Source engine which has changed everything pretty dramatically. While we work out a good way to benchmark it again, it will be left out of this review. Any scores we obtained would not be comparable with the older benchmark.
3DMark
FutureMark’s 3DMark has a list of different tests which go from very difficult to very easy. The Broadwell S7 on Windows 10 does very well here with pretty much the highest scores across the board, with the exception of Ice Storm Unlimited Physics which is more CPU bound and the faster CPU in the X1 Carbon surpasses it. For light gaming, the S7 should be able to hold its own.
GFXBench
GFXBench is basically a mobile benchmark, but it has also been released as a DirectX benchmark as well in the Windows Store. Once again the Core i7-5500U does well against its Ultrabook brethren.
As far as performance, with the amount of systems we have seen with Broadwell there are not a lot of surprises left. Skylake should make some nice changes here and we should see devices with Skylake very soon.
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webby7 - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Any chance of a HP Spectre x360 review? That along with the XPS 13 seem to be the ultrabooks to beat.MykeM - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
I can understand picking an Acer 2 or 3 years ago but now Dell presents a much more compelling choice if you're looking for Windows premium sub-notebook. Is there a reason to pick this over the XPS 13?Michael Bay - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
XPS has been reviewed to death already.Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
anandatech woke up just now thojohnny_boy - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Not surprised by the crappy display. My budget S3-391 ultrabook has one of the worst displays I've seen, though obviously good enough for what I use it for--word processing, pdf viewing, and web browsing. I wish it was easy to test battery longevity. My Acer's battery ended up at 33% of its capacity after just under two years. I've since dropped in a new battery, but who knows how long it'll last. Also surprised by noise, since my machine howls during even light activity. Then again, I paid a fraction of what the S7 costs, but it's not instilled much confidence in me as regards Acer products.sharath.naik - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Not sure if its only me but that silver keys on a silver body annoys me to no end.sibuna - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I actually have one of the earlier models of these, its not a bad ultrabook but the keyboard is fing horrid. I also have a Samsung ATIV book and its keyboard is worlds better then the on on the acerflyingpants - Monday, October 12, 2015 - link
Cool. Why isn't the keyboard as large as the new Macbook?Mr. Pedantic - Tuesday, October 27, 2015 - link
I bought the 392, and the things that annoyed me the most when I bought it are things like the keyboard, but also that the power cable connects to the laptop very flimsily and at times can just fall out. I am very happy with the performance, and I never expected it to be a powerful machine given that it weighs so little, but the things that make me think I should have bought a different Ultrabook are things that can't easily be measured.Ethos Evoss - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
Best looking ultrabook on the planet