Acer 5551G: AMD's Budget Gaming Laptop

A couple months ago, we looked at AMD's quad-core P920 processor and HD 5650 GPU combination (with HD 4250 switchable graphics) courtesy of the Toshiba A660D/A665D. The combination wasn't without promise, but we walked away with a few concerns. First, we didn't think the Toshiba notebook was the best-built system on the block, with its glossy textured plastic. Then there's the issue with the CPU: the Phenom II P920 may be a quad-core processor, but the slow 1.6GHz maximum clock speed can be a serious bottleneck. And while we like the idea of switchable graphics, Toshiba garners two more marks against their offering: first, they don't participate in AMD's mobile driver program (you can get around this by downloading the drivers on a different laptop from a vendor that does participate, interestingly enough); second, they take the Radeon HD 5650 and clock it at 450MHz instead of 550MHz. Combine all of the above with a minimum price of $800 and we walked away without a clear winner. Here's our wish list from the conclusion of the A660D review:

Frankly, it just doesn't seem like anyone has yet come up with an ideal AMD-based laptop—not that they can't, but more like they won't. So to help, here's what we want. First, give us more than a 48Wh battery—look at ASUS' U-series laptops with 84Wh batteries for inspiration here. Second, keep the CPU clock speed above 2.0GHz, because when Intel's i3-330M beats a quad-core 1.6GHz part in virtually every benchmark you know there's a problem. Third, give us a decent GPU (5650 or faster), but don't force us into 16" and larger notebooks; P520, 5650, and a 63Wh battery (at least) should all fit in a 14" chassis. Bonus points for the first laptop to provide all of the above and not use a cheap LCD (and we'd even pay an extra $50-$100 for such a display). Considering the competition on the Intel side of the fence, realistically all of this needs to fit into a budget of under $800, since an extra $100 brings Core i5 parts into direct competition.

Besides the above, we also had to question whether P920 made sense with the 5650—a higher clocked dual-core processor seemed like a better overall gaming solution, given the dearth of games that truly benefit from having more than two cores. Not long after that review, AMD contacted us and asked if we'd like to look at the Acer 5551G-4591, a laptop that at least meets several of the above wish list bullet points. Now, we haven't been particularly kind in our comments on some of the Acer/Gateway laptops of late, but that doesn't mean they can't fill a niche. We still think the keyboard is one of the least desirable options for a notebook (which is putting it kindly), and they're not likely to ever win an industrial design competition, but one thing Acer tends to do better than anyone else is to pack some decent performance options into very affordable offerings. So just what does the 5551G-4591 bring to bear? Here's the spec rundown.

Let's get the have-nots out of the way first: no switchable graphics; a small 48Wh battery; no USB3.0, FireWire, or ExpressCard; no high quality LCD. There aren't any surprises in that list, but the haves are a bit more compelling: a 2.3GHz Turion II P520 processor, a 550MHz HD 5650, a modified design that isn't quite as bad as the last-gen Aspire "bulbous cover", and a price starting at just $630 online. We can throw sticks and stones at the keyboard and chassis all day, but the fact is many users aren't nearly as demanding as we are. If you want a great keyboard experience, we would look elsewhere, but if you're willing to live with the "floating island" keyboard—or perhaps you even like it?—then a price that's only slightly more than the better netbooks and the cheapest ultraportables will help you get your game on.

Before we move on to the actual user experience with the 5551G, let's make sure we set expectations appropriately low. The Toshiba A660D managed battery life of nearly four hours, but it included switchable graphics. With the same size battery but discrete-only graphics, the 5551G will be hard pressed to break the three-hour mark in our best-case scenario. It's a shame Acer doesn't toss in something like the 84Wh ASUS U-series battery, because the difference between three hours and five hours could easily mean leaving the power adapter behind while you head out to a day of classes. Also, the LCD is another 768p model, and like so many others it utterly fails to impress. It will show you content as well as the speakers will play music (which is to say, not that well). But again, the price lets us excuse quite a few complaints…if only we could still buy it!

In typical Acer fashion, a notebook that is less than two months old is no longer available online at the time of writing. Perhaps the price was too good, or maybe Acer is counting on unsuspecting users buying the 5551G-4280 thinking it's the same as the 5551G-4591. Well, it's not, because the 4591 comes with a 5650 while the 4280 drops to a 5470, and the standard 5551 (no G) only uses integrated HD 4250 graphics. Arrrgh! But all is not lost, as the 5551G-4591 might still be found on store shelves at Costco, Walmart, Best Buy, Sears, Office Depot, or Office Max—try giving your local store a call. Or you can look at alternatives from other companies; the only Athlon II dual-core + 5650 we know of right now is the HP Pavilion dv6z (which will start at $700 with the 5650).

The Acer 5551G Experience

So before we get to the benchmarks, let's take a moment to discuss the Acer experience. We've used quite a few laptops and things actually appear to have changed since the last time we tested an Acer system. Unfortunately, the changes aren't all for the better.

Starting from the top, the initial setup of the 5551G takes a very long time. After creating a user name/password, there's a about a three minute delay. Then Windows logs in, finalizes the setup, and an Acer application launches that proceeds to install 26 applications and utilities. Some of these are useful (power management, touchpad drivers, web camera drivers, etc.), but it appears that Acer installs some drivers multiple times—or they install multiple driver sets rather than customizing according to what hardware is actually present. As an example, I saw two different touchpad installs go by in the list, and at least three WiFi utilities. There are also other applications that aren't nearly so useful, like Windows Live Essentials and Windows Live Mail (yes, two separate installs that need to be updated via Windows Updates when you're finished). Works 2009SE is another questionable application, but if you don't have MS Office and you're not willing to use the free OpenOffice.org, perhaps it can be of use. What's more, the installer takes almost 30 minutes to complete. Why couldn't all of these applications and drivers be rolled into the original disk image so that the customer doesn't have to wait? The last Acer laptop I recall testing only took about 5 minutes from first-boot to usable, so this is a clear regression.

And let's talk about bloatware for a minute. Once the whole install process is complete, you're greeted by a "clean" system that boots with no fewer than 65 running processes. Desktop icons include Acer Games (Wild Tangent), eBay, McAfee Internet Security, a 60-day trial for Office 2007 (what, no Office 2010 Starter?), Netflix, and Norton Online Backup. Yeah, all of those can go as far as we're concerned, so plan on another hour or so uninstalling unwanted applications. Good times! Our uninstall list also includes Google Toolbar for IE, Norton Online Backup, MyWinLocker Suite, and of course the big one: McAfee Internet Security Suite. Depending on your view of their usefulness, you might also uninstall Acer Backup Manager, Acer eRecovery Management, Acer Games, Acer Registration, Acer Screensaver, Acer Updater, eBay Worldwide, eSobi, Identity Card (Acer), Welcome Center (Acer), and Windows Live Essentials/Sign-In Assistant/Sync/Upload Tool. Since we want a clean system, we removed all of the above. Leaving on the Acer Power utility, we still drop down to a much leaner 45 running processes when we're finished.

So that's the bad news: we have another bloated OEM configuration that takes far too long to get running. From first boot to cleaned up installation, we're looking at about two hours of work. If you have a Windows 7 DVD, you could easily do a clean install, download all the necessary drivers and updates, and be using your new laptop far quicker.

What about the good news? There are a few definite improvements over previous Acer laptops. The chassis ditches much of the glossy plastic and you get an aluminum palm rest, the LCD lid no longer has a curved/bubble design, and the palm rest has near-right-angle corners compared to the more rounded design of the previous generation. We're pleased with all of those changes, though opinions on aesthetics naturally vary.

Unfortunately, we're greeted by the same old keyboard layout with the "floating island" keys—a poor take on chiclet in our view, and we don't even think good chiclet designs are the best. Dustin and Vivek can't stand the keyboard; I'm a little more lenient, but I'd definitely recommend trying it out in person because there are people that will hate the keyboard. Also, and I know this is going to come as a shock, the LCD is a typical 768p glossy display with poor black (gray) levels that result in a mediocre contrast ratio. What's more, once again the only glossy plastic is on the LCD bezel. I suppose there's some nice symmetry in having a glossy panel with a glossy bezel—if you like fingerprints on the bezel at least.

Expansion options are generally limited; oddly enough there looks to be a second spot for a mini-PCIe card in the top-left corner under a small hatch, but there's no actual PCIe connector. The rest of the internals are under a larger cover, providing easy access to the HDD, RAM, and WiFi mini-PCIe adapter.

Overall, I don't generally have a problem using the laptop; the touchpad is fine if unremarkable, and all of the necessary features worked without a hitch. If you're not a fan of previous Acer laptops, it's doubtful you'll be any happier with the 5551G. It's still plastic, there's some keyboard flex, the keys on the keyboard don't have very good action, and the LCD is at best average. The good aspects come in the form of the internal hardware, where you get AMD's dual-core Athlon II P520 coupled to an HD 5650 GPU. Perhaps even more surprising is that even at full tilt, the 5551G runs very quiet and temperatures remain reasonable.

So, we're here today to see what this hardware combination can do for AMD's mobile sector. We complained that the quad-core P920 clocked at 1.6GHz was simply too slow at times, and we wondered if a dual-core P520 wouldn't be a better fit. Lo and behold, that's what we have in the 5551G-4591 and if that's not enough to pique your interest, the price comes in at a svelte $600 at the time of writing. We can complain a lot about build quality being sub-par, or the keyboard being horrible, or tons of bloatware…but when the price is $50 to $150 less than any comparable laptop in terms of graphics performance, we're willing to forgive quite a lot. It would be great if Newegg or someone else can get more of the 5551G-4591 in stock; but even if you can't find this unit, other laptops like the HP dv6z have similar specs (albeit at a higher price). Availability concerns aside, let's look at how the 5650+P520 combo performs.

Application Performance: AMD's P520 in Perspective

We'll start with the usual suspects and look at application performance from the 5551G. With a dual-core 2.3GHz AMD processor, we expect significantly lower scores than the Intel competition, at least in applications. However, the more interesting question is going to be how the P520 compares to the quad-core P920; outside of heavily threaded benchmarks, the P520 could be the better choice.

The story isn't quite as clear as we'd like. P520 wins at PCMark05 and single-threaded Cinebench, but it places below the P920 in PCMark Vantage and all of the remaining tests. Granted, single-threaded Cinebench is actually a very good representation of how many applications feel (as well as general Windows use), and the 5551G also places ahead of the MBP13 in most of the tests—a laptop that many a Mac user has claimed is plenty fast. So the P520 is competitive with Core 2 Duo P8600—even with a 100MHz clock speed deficit, it beats the P8600 in most of the application results. The catch is that Apple provides a ton of battery life compared to the 5551G, and they do it in a far more attractive package. The other catch is that we're also not so enamored with Apple selling two-year-old hardware in a "modern" laptop when they could easily fit Core 2010 processors into the mix. For now, AMD doesn't have something clearly better—we'll need Llano and Bulldozer offerings before we see an AMD laptop CPU that can hope to go toe to toe with Intel's mobile CPUs.

Decent Mobile Gaming

Where the application performance of the 5551G is nothing special, the gaming prowess is far more pronounced. Yes, NVIDIA has some compelling options with their 400M Optimus enabled laptops, but if all you want is the ability to game at 768p and reasonable detail the HD 5650 will suffice. It typically goes up against the GeForce GT 420M/425M and wins in as many titles as it loses, but where you only find NVIDIA in Intel-based laptops costing upwards of $800 these days, AMD has partners like Acer and HP shipping HD 5650 in sub-$700 notebooks with AMD processors. In most cases, the P520 processor is enough to keep the 5650 fed with data, so this is a reasonable up-to-date look at how AMD's midrange GPU compares to the latest 400M NVIDIA chips; the exception to this is low detail gaming, where the CPU is often the bigger bottleneck, and that's where we start.

Bad Company 2 is clearly CPU limited, as you can see by comparing the low score with the medium result below. That's the only title where the 5551G clearly falls short of the competition, and with the HD 5650 there's really no need to run at minimum detail. Interestingly enough, BC2 is also the only title where the A660D surpasses the 5551G, so it's the rare game that manages to leverage quad-core processing. (We assume the latest Medal of Honor would also qualify, given it uses the same engine.)

Everywhere else the P520 + 5650 is right in the thick of the GeForce GT 330M/335M/420M/425M results, with a slight edge in DiRT 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and STALKER: Call of Pripyat. Even StarCraft II, a game known to be quite demanding of your CPU, runs quite well—the 2.3GHz CPU clock ends up putting the 5551G 47% ahead of the Toshiba A660D in that game (though it appears the GPU clocks are also a factor). Besides the above results, we also ran Mafia 2 and Metro 2033, both of which can kill midrange laptop GPUs. Mafia 2 manages 36FPS at minimum detail, but Metro 2033 is a demanding slug and checks in just shy of the 30FPS barrier with 28.6FPS; you'll have to drop to 720p to get Metro above 30FPS, but it's not that big of a loss considering any of the STALKER games rates as a superior experience in my book.

As we move the settings up to our "medium" standard, the 5551G stays about the same in BFBC2 with 33FPS, it holds a clear lead in DiRT 2, ekes ahead in Mass Effect 2, falls to GT 330/335M in STALKER, and splits the difference in L4D2. StarCraft II is the one title where 420M/425M hold a clear lead over the 330/335M, as well as the 5650. We're not sure how much of the lead is CPU and how much is GPU, but it looks like 400M is far more optimized for StarCraft II than 300M. Anyway, the important metric is that the 5551G is playable at medium detail in every title in the above list. Adding in our other two titles sans graphs, Mafia 2 also squeaks by at medium detail with a result of 31FPS but Metro continues to drop and is now at 26FPS.

High Detail Gaming and 3DMarks

With a 768p LCD and HD 5650, native gaming at high detail settings is potentially viable in some titles. We've got comparative results at 900p, with the 5551G 768p High settings also listed.

First off, let's get this out of the way: 900p isn't playable in most of the games. 900p is 37% more pixels than 768p, and that's often enough to push the 5650 from playable to stuttering—and realistically, medium detail settings make the most sense for this sort of mobile GPU. Out of the tested games, only DiRT 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Mass Effect 2 break 30FPS at 900p "high". If we drop to the native 768p, STALKER joins the 30+ group and the other titles run a bit faster. Note that getting 30+ FPS in STALKER and DiRT 2 requires you to run without the DX11 effects—which is sort of interesting, as DiRT 2 actually runs faster in DX11 mode at Low and Medium settings. Anyway, about half of the games can run at our "high" settings and native res while the others require "medium" (or 720p and "minimum" for Metro 2033).

3DMark

As usual, we've got our 3DMark results tossed in here for those that want them. We're only showing 06 and Vantage charts, though the Entry Level Vantage run isn't really that useful. If you'd like the other scores, we measured 19942 in 3DMark03 and 12270 in 3DMark05. Connecting the 5551G to an external LCD and running at the standard resolutions, 3DMark06 (1280x1024) scores 6242 and Vantage Performance gets 3086.

Battery Life

We've run our usual gamut of battery tests, and here the 5551G clearly falls short of the competition. Toshiba and HP both have AMD laptops with switchable graphics, and shutting off the HD 5650 dGPU on the Toshiba A660D looks to improve battery life by perhaps 18% in our best-case result. That's actually not as large a gap as we expected, but the results that really hurt AMD all come from Intel laptops—with or without dedicated graphics. Here's a look at some of the latest laptops and how they compare to the 5551G.

Idle battery life is the optimal result you can get, and we've even removed "unnecessary" applications and utilities so we're running a clean setup with no firewall or anti-virus software. In such a configuration, the 5551G nets just over 3.5 hours of battery life. That's not horrible, considering the paltry (but typical) 48Wh battery, but the problem is with Internet usage—a far more realistic scenario. Here the 5551G drops to a bit more than 2.5 hours, and for movie playback it just misses the two hour mark. It's not the end of the world, but without the use of AMD's IGP we're certainly not going to catch Optimus-enabled laptops.

If we compare with the older Acer 5740G (which was likewise discontinued far too quickly for our likes!), battery life is generally a wash. The 5740G had slightly lower idle and Internet battery life but tied in x264 battery life. As another comparison point, Dell's Studio 14 with an Intel CPU and a discrete GPU (granted, it's a slower HD 5470 GPU) manages five hours of idle battery life and 4.5 hours of Internet use, though it also suffers in the x264 test with a result of just 2.5 hours. If we account for the larger 56Wh battery in the Studio 14, Intel's platform with HD5470 is still leading the AMD P520+5650 by 18-49% depending on workload. How much of that comes from the difference in GPU? It's tough to say for sure, but we suspect Dell may have spent a bit more time optimizing for battery life.

Ultimately, when we factor in the much higher CPU performance that Core 2010 offers relative to AMD's processors, it's easy to see why most laptop manufacturers aren't keen on shipping us AMD-based laptops. If you want performance, Intel's Core 2010 parts win easily; Intel also dominates in performance per watt (ULV) and pure battery life (Atom). But then, AMD wins with a better IGP and typically far more affordable prices (outside of Atom netbooks, which we're not too keen on anyway). Hopefully all this will change when we start to see the next generation CPUs from AMD—all those Bulldozer, Bobcat, Zacate, Brazos, Ontario, Llano, etc. codenames we periodically discuss. Where will those solutions fall in the pantheon of laptops? We'll have to wait and see, but with power gating and other enhancements we should see much better battery life from AMD next year.

Temperatures and Noise

Temperatures are quite good, with both the CPU and GPU topping out at around 65C—well within margins for mobile chips. The hard drive likewise stays at a consistent temperature. Again, we don't know exactly where HWMonitor gets the power information, but it's interesting to see a maximum power draw of 20W for the P520, with a minimum power draw of only 3.15W. That's quite good and would make for much better battery life; unfortunately, the chipset, discrete GPU, and other components appear to be consuming the lion's share of the power. At idle, the laptop bottoms out at around 13W of power use, which is almost 3W higher than the Dell XPS 15 with Optimus.

Noise levels are actually very good for a midrange 15.6" laptop—some of the lowest we've measured. Idle noise measures 33dB and load noise topped out at 55dB. Considering the temperatures, the low noise levels are even more impressive.

The LCD: Yawn

After a couple great LCDs in the Dell XPS 15 L501x and the Clevo B5130M, the standard Acer laptop LCD comes back and makes me a very sad panda. Sure, it's not the worst LCD we've ever encountered, but it's nothing worth writing about. Here are the numbers and we'll leave it at that. Mediocre contrast, moderate brightness, and slightly better than average colors define this panel, but variations among budget panels like this mean that you could see better or worse from other AU Optronics B156XW02-V2 LCDs.

Conclusion: A Great Price for a Laptop You Can't Buy

So throw out all the standard warnings regarding Acer laptops: they don't have the greatest build quality, consisting almost entirely of a plastic chassis; the keyboard is at best tolerable and at worst an object of pure hate; quality control and customer opinions on Acer usually fall on the "you get what you pay for" side of the fence. All of that is a given, and the 5551G-4591 doesn't do much to change those assumptions. I personally think it looks a lot better than the Aspire designs from the past couple of years, but that's not really saying much.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the 5551G-4591 is that you can't buy it right now. Maybe it will come back in stock, and maybe it won't, but after our experience with the 5740G I suspect that this was a limited run laptop. Now that we've seen an attractive Athlon II P520 CPU paired with a good midrange GPU in the form of HD 5650, all at an amazingly low price, we can't recommend it—not because we don't want to, but because it's not in stock. Ugh. Of course, I wish the 5740G with 5650 would make a comeback as well; then you could choose between a $630 AMD setup and a faster CPU (but generally similar gaming performance) Intel system for $750.

Given the availability problem, let's look instead at the AMD dual-core platform. In terms of CPU performance, the single-threaded speed is way up relative to the quad-core P920, and it actually looks to compete quite favorably with old Core 2 Duo CPUs on a clock-for-clock basis. Looking at the MacBook Pro 13 figures, the P520 wins some and loses some in the CPU benchmarks relative to the P8600. The problem is that P8600 launched a full two years ago, which means in the mobile market AMD remains way behind if we only look at their current products. Without apples-to-apples comparisons (i.e. Core 2 with 5650) we can't say for sure who leads in battery life, but really the comparison is pointless as Core i3/i5 has been shipping for almost a year with improved performance and similar battery life relative to Core 2 Duo.

At present, the AMD mobile CPUs have a tough time competing with Intel; there's not much else we can say. They're "fast enough" and will handle most tasks fine, but if you switch between even a basic Core i3 laptop and an AMD laptop you'll notice the Intel CPU is more responsive. For gaming, though, it doesn't matter as much. Outside of a few titles, the GPU is the far bigger concern, and here we can at least give AMD props: the HD 5650 continues to put out good numbers, often beating NVIDIA's new GT 425M (provided you're not CPU limited). So AMD's eight-month-old architecture gives NVIDIA's brand-new 400M a run for the money, particularly in the midrange. NVIDIA continues to play the Optimus card, and if you have any interest in battery life it's definitely a winning technology; it's unfortunate that Acer didn't enable switchable graphics with the 5551G, but HP at least provides the feature in their Pavilion dv6z line.

If you're looking for similar laptops you can actually find online, the HP is one of the easy to find alternatives; you'll pay an extra $70 or so once you add in the HD 5650. On the other hand, that $70 gets you 6GB RAM, the newer P540 processor (2.4GHz instead of 2.3GHz) and better battery life, so $700 (with the current instant rebate) is easy to recommend. Another option comes from Acer-owned Gateway, and the NV53A36u is going for an unbelievably low $550 right now. Personally, I give the 5551G the styling advantage, but if you don't mind the look of the Gateway NV lineup the price is amazingly affordable. You also get a 2.1GHz tri-core N830 and switchable graphics thrown in for good measure.

Looking to the future, AMD's Brazos should do fine competing against Atom/ION netbooks, and it might even encroach on ULV territory, but without (laptop) hardware in hand we can't provide any final determination of where AMD will stand in another six months. For now, AMD can't get an outright win in most mobile categories, but the one area where they do very well is pricing. For under $500, you can find many AMD-based laptops; sure, $50-$100 more gets you an Intel setup, but while CPU performance and battery life may improve the graphics side is still generally in favor of AMD—and let's be honest, a 15% or larger price increase can be significant if you're on a budget. We just wish we could get a bit more TLC from manufacturers for AMD's platforms: better build quality, use their switchable graphics, and give us something larger than a default 48Wh battery and we'll be a lot happier (provided the price doesn't climb into the $800+ range, though there's flexibility depending on what else you get).