Acer Aspire AS7551G-7606

I haven't seen any threads here yet about the "Acer Aspire AS7551G-7606" so I thought I'd post some info as a new owner Mods.. if this post is in the wrong place please feel free to move.

I recently purchased this as an "Open Boxed" item (in new condition) for just over half the current asking price of $500 on Newegg. I have to say after just a few days with this thing, if your in the market for a quad core gaming (of the casual variety) this could well be the machine for you.

Specs:
17.3" LED LCD Screen
Quad Core AMD Phenom II 2.2Ghz
4GB DDR3 RAM (Just ordered 8GB DDR3 $35)
500GB (Actual 452GB) Hard Disk 5,200RPM
AMD/ATI Radeon HD 6470M dedicated card with 512MB RAM
Windows 7 Home Premium
DVD burner, 6 cell Li-ion battery, stereo speakers.
VGA, HDMI, Mic/Headphones, 3 USB, 1 SD Slot, LAN, WiFi etc

General use this thing is excellent for the net, word documents, power point, movies etc it's very responsive. Gaming which I don't do much of anymore but I wanted to see what could be done and was very surprised.

3DMark 06 reports a score of 6,400.
Windows returns a rating of 6.9 CPU, 7.2 Memory, 6.2 3D and 5.8 Data and if anyone really cares 5.1 for Aero.

I did load up and test out a few games for the sake of it. HL2 runs perfectly at the max, COD MW2 perfect on medium, COD Black Ops perfect on medium, Battlefield 2142 perfect on high, team fortress 2 perfect on max, GTA4 runs lol!.. good on low settings and slowly on medium. All games were run in lower resolution of around 1280x720 and with AA off. One important thing to note about the dedicated graphics is when attempting to update to the latest driver I get an error. Long story short from what I understand AMD/ATI does not support this card! Graphics drivers are dated October 2010. I was however able to update catalyst by downloading a "HP" branded driver.

The screen is very bright, clean and crisp. Maximum resolution is 1600x900 quite reasonable at this price point. Speakers are not the best and sound hollow but this is a laptop after all and that can be corrected with a good set of headphones. Keyboard has a number pad which is a big plus, keys are well spaced out but I've found them difficult to get a response from at times when typing now that could be just me. I should mention that there isn't any LED indicators on the keyboard for caps lock, numpad or scroll lock. Those functions are provided on screen so be careful what you uninstall when removing bloatware. Touch pad is decent, very responsive. It is just off center which for me at least keeps it out of the way when typing. Webcam works very well providing clean images in "HD" quality. Battery life so far (I mostly keep it plugged in for performance) has been around 90 minutes doing general office/internet type tasks. This isn't a machine you want to game on unplugged!

This machine did come with the usual bloatware but was quickly and easily removed. All in all general performance feels close to my quad core desktop which is surprising! I would highly recommend this machine and I'd have happily paid full price for it too if I knew what I was in for, it's a bargain for what is offered. I've seen it listed out on Newegg and Amazon under the Acer brand. I believe HP also have a version out there with slightly higher specs and at a higher price point.

 

http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/yy158/aidan80/AcerLaptop.jpg