Acer Aspire 7540G (LX.PPP02.093) in the test
With the Aspire 7540G, Acer has a notebook in the offering, which is AMD’s Turion Ultra II and an ATI Mobility Radeon driven 5650th Because of the 17.3-inch displays, it is suitable as a desktop replacement. ZDNet has been testing the device.
Acer Aspire 7540G has with a 17.3-inch notebook with AMD CPU and DirectX 11 graphics on offer. ZDNet has tested, which makes the device.
Outwardly similar to the 7540G many other Acer notebooks and netbooks hp pavilion dv2000 battery. On the high gloss lid leaves touching visible fingerprints. Frequent polishing is required. The area around the keyboard is made of gray plastic, which is provided with small depressions.
The 7540G is uniquely positioned as a desktop replacement: The 17.3-inch widescreen, 3.9 kg weight and dimensions of 44 times 29.5 times 4.4 inch mobile, it can hardly use common sense – at home all the more better.
Acer has accommodated thanks to the large chassis with a keyboard number pad. The layout to the small arrow keys and the only one to find fault line are high enter key. As with other notebook manufacturer of the keys have a little distance, and seem to float. The comfort when typing due to conviction of a neatly defined attack and a rich sound.
The nice large touch pad, which consists of the same material as the palm rest controlled, multi-touch: Two finger scrolling allow the spreading of the fingers zooming.
Interfaces and display
On the right side of the case a USB port, Gigabit Ethernet, and the DVD burner can be found, left three more USB ports (running as a USB / eSATA combination). External analog monitors can be controlled digitally by using VGA or HDMI and DisplayPort.
The 17.3-inch widescreen 16:9 format solves 1600 by 900 pixels. It shows a sharp image with vibrant colors. Unfortunately the display is provided with a glossy coating. This is known to go hand in hand distracting reflections, which are already at maximum backlight clearly visible. Dims the backlight is, for example, to save electricity, content can be read only with difficulty. When you look from the side of the screen shows a pleasing color stability, from the top but you have to make compromises. This can vgp-bps8 battery be explained by the change of slope around but simple.
In the upper display frame lies a webcam, the video conferencing in HD resolution (720p) allowed. It also offers less than ideal lighting conditions, even a decent quality.
Equipment and power
The CPU comes with the Turion Ultra II, the latest generation CPU AMD out of the house used. The chip with the model number is M620 clocked at 2.5GHz and features two processor cores. Regarding performance, he must go by a comparable Intel Core i5. The enormous advantage in the AES encryption is due to its hardware acceleration.
Besides the CPU, the notebook 4GB DDR3 RAM (1066 MHz), a 640-gigabyte hard drive, gigabit Ethernet and 802.11b/g/n wireless for on board. The drive operates at 5400 revolutions per minute, which is only average. Especially for a desktop replacement hard disk with 7200 revolutions per minute would be desirable.
For the graphic provides an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 with 1 GB of private memory. The 5650 is one of the first notebook GPUs with DirectX 11 support. In terms of performance just short of the Nvidia Geforce 250M GTS, which comes in 8940G used.
In 3D Mark Vantage (DirectX 10), which also includes the CPU lenovo ideapad y450 battery power that brings the Acer only 3097 points. That’s about 500 points less than the 8942G, the same GPU, but uses a Core i5. Resident Evil (DirectX 10) is performed with 30 to 50 frames per second if you choose the native resolution 1600 by 900 pixels. The DirectX 11 game "Colin McRae: DiRT 2" brings it on the other hand, only 16-27 pictures.
The ATI GPU renders not only 3D games, but can also be harnessed for other tasks. For example, for the video conversion with Cyberlink MediaShow Expresso: The conversion of a two-minute clip AVI to MPEG-4 format with GPU support lasts 61 seconds. The processor GPU without the need for 142 seconds. One can easily imagine what tremendous advantage of the technique of converting longer videos offers.
However, the GPU acceleration is not enabled by house, as the pre-installed drivers do not support the function of December. Only one supplied by AMD preview version of the Catalyst 10.3 driver it turns freely.
Software
The Aspire 7540G is running Windows Home Premium in seven of the 64-bit version. The 4 GB of memory are thus fully utilized. Notebook manufacturers like Acer, it can not take to equip the OS with all kinds of gifts, mostly of dubious quality: The desktop is adorned with several icons that lead an example for Acer accessories store to Ebay or on Acer registration. Even the Norton Online Backup has experienced a prominent placement.
Are pre-installed 60-day trials of Microsoft Office 2007 and McAfee Internet Security Suite. The latter calls for a very short time in penetrating to the registry. The Acer Updater helps with their own warnings that drivers and software stay current.
The criticism of the software features of the Aspire can now be transferred to most consumer notebooks. Given the price pressure, it is understandable that the OEMs throw in a tool such as McAfee Internet Security Suite like to earn a few euros. For the end user makes the matter but not better.
In the not too demanding tasks of 7540G only a slight noise is heard. Under full load, but it is clearly audible.
The removable 4800 mAh battery lasts while surfing the net via WLAN with dimmed backlight around two and a half hours. In idle mode at maximum display backlight and WiFi turned on the laptop requires 23 watts under full load, 50 watts.
Conclusion
The Acer Aspire 7540G (LX.PPP02.093 VGP-BPS9/B) is a solid desktop replacement with good performance, affords no real weaknesses. The ATI GPU offers a true high performance and DirectX 11 support, many games can not still be running in native display resolution.
When and at what price the device hits the market in Germany is not yet known. The information will be added as soon as possible.
