Acer 4402

Hi, guys

I am looking at Acer 4402 and MSI 1029 for a while.

Acer 4402 has a ML CPU and 64M X700
Msi 1029 has a MT CPU and 128M X700

My question:
1. How is the heat issue in an Acer 4402, any owner of it give me some comment? The fan turn on all the time?
2. How much is Acer 4402 now in the market?
3. MT CPU has less power consumption(less heat and longer battery life), except this, any performence advantage?
4. 128M X700 should be better than 64M x700, but how good is it? I mean is it worth to pay more for 128M instead of 64M?

Thanks a lot

 

1. The heat isn't that bad, but it gets uncomftorably warm on the underside and on the touchpad. A cooling pad helps a bunch.

2. I think the Acer TM4402 is about ~$1,100 - check some online stores - buy.com, newegg.com, zipzoomfly.com, etc.

3. There is no difference in performance between the MT and ML Turion procssors.

4. Absolutely!!! If you are planning on playing games, the 128MB GPU is a must. I had the TM4402, and the 64MB X700 really hampered it - couldn't put anything higher than an XGA resolution and medium settings. The 64MB X700 manages about 1,100 points on 3DMark05, whereas the 128MB version will get around 2,450.

There is a review of the MSI-1029 on this site, I recommend reading that. You can also read the review of the TM4402 - I wrote that one.

 

"I found that I could run Far Cry very smoothly in "High" quality mode, keeping the textures on medium and the filtering on "Bilinear" for best performance. Battlefront runs at the highest setting beautifully as well. I use the recommended settings for HL2 and CS: S, as they seem to work the best. It auto-selects "High" for all of the options except for Anti Aliasing and Antistrophic Filtering. You can enable AF in CS: S if you want though, I haven't had any problems. In the source video stress test, at a WXGA resolution and 8X AF enabled, I got an average of 56.7FPS!"

I think this is good enough. I play flight simulator and fifa 2005, need for speed most wanted only. Any problem with these games by this 64m card?

 

Well, I said that a 128M card would be better- notice that those aren't the newest games when I reviewed that laptop. FEAR has problems with 64M cards, you'll only be able to run on the lowest resolution and settings.

Think about it - a 64M card doesn't have much of a gaming future, since nearly all of the new games require 64MB cards.

 

yes you are right, since the price of MSI 1029 is the same with Acer 4402, I think I will go with MSI. And I believe the MT will run quieter and cooler than ML

My only worry now is, Is MSI is good in making laptops, I mean they are good at making PC components, but what about the comments of MSI laptop, any other forum and user opinion available on other sites?

 

MSI makes a great notebook, superb build quality - they make the chassis out of aluminum. The displays are also good looking. You can find a review of the MSI-1029 right here , I recommend reading that. Good comments on build quality.