Acer Unveils New Notebooks at CES Discussion

Acer launched its new Aspire 5253, Aspire 4253 and Aspire One 522 notebooks and netbooks priced at less than $500 and equipped with the latest AMD Fusion processors.

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15.6" and 14" Brazos notebooks? Are they crazy?

 

Companies would've sold 14" and 15.6" Atom notebooks if Intel would've let them.

Just because some people don't need more than netbook power doesn't mean they don't want larger than netbook screens.

 

Does anybody know how this new 1ghz Apu compares to an atom n550 (which is 1.5 ghz). The higher resolution in this acer netbook is a big plus, so is the ability to play smoother video content, but if it has very weak processing power the anoyance of waiting all the time for loading things might not be worth it to me.

I'm also curious about the graphics power of this apu, (what games will be playable? for example: Wow, rome tw, etc?).

 

C-50 vs N550 Review

 

You hit the nail on the head about video being the big thing here. The Brazos platform of APUs might not be the most powerful CPUs/GPUs available for notebooks, but they offer a lot of bang for the buck (particularly as far as video playback and basic/light gaming is concerned.

I haven't tested these Acer notebooks and netbook in our lab yet, but when I tested the E-350 testbed system at the AMD campus last year I was running Left 4 Dead 2 at 1366x768 resolution with "medium" film grain, "very high" shader detail, "medium" effect detail, and "high" texture detail settings.

I was pretty impressed because the game was "playable" and the E-350 probably would delivered even better frame rates with film grain off and either lower shader or texture details.

These were the gameplay framerates (excluding the high frame rate jumps when you're not playing and just watching a cutscene or in the menu):

 

The issue I'm seeing is that they'll have to compete against budget SB Celerons, Pentiums, and Core i3s down the road, and they don't stand a chance against those.

 

Brazos will be less expensive. Costing less always ups your chances.

 

Yeah, but a 15.6" is going to cost at least $349, and it's highly possible that a Celeron-based notebook could be within $100-150 of that.

 

But, then at that point it may come down to, do you spend a bit more for a faster cpu, and gpu that isn't as good(compared to Brazos) or do you take some cpu hit and get the better gpu. Kind of how it was with 11-12in ION2 device vs intel dual core ulv devices of the same price.

 

That's the thing. In terms of performance, the Sandy Bridge IGP should match the 6310 quite easily, though the 6310 will have better gaming drivers and the games will look better. Brazos lacks a definitive advantage over any SB-based CPU.

 

You sure about that? I read that is suppose to be on par with the likes of ION2. And beside this is being geared as an Atom competitor not ULV i core devices, no?

 

The HD6310 should match the IGP on full speed Sandy Bridge, but C/ULV Sandy Bridge will likely have a downclocked, lower performing IGP to save power.

 

I wasn't talking about ULV, since those will be expensive as always. I meant the slightly underclocked one that will be in Pentiums, Celerons, and i3s.

Anyway, at first I thought the 6310 had lower clocks than the 5450, but now I see otherwise. My bad, though the difference still won't be all that big, which is my concern.

 

The price point is important, current Acer ALREADY has a lot of cheap systems, I dare say that Brazos will not be a value for money system from the test reviews.