Product Listing

Acer Aspire Timeline X 5820TG - Timeless Classic

By Aloysius Low - 8 Mar 2011
Launch SRP: S$1398

Performance Benchmarking

Performance Benchmarking

Loaded with a dual-core Intel Core i5-430M, a measly 2GB of memory (comparatively speaking) and discrete graphics in the form of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650, we're expecting the Acer notebook to fair reasonably in our benchmark tests. Whether the performance will match the price value, well, that's what we'll find out in the next few pages. For comparisons, we've lined up our other recently tested multimedia notebooks that are priced not too far off from the Acer machine in review today.

Specifications / Notebook Acer Timeline X 5820TG Samsung RF510 Lenovo IdeaPad Y560 Dell XPS 15
Processor Intel Core i5-430M
(2.26GHz, Turbo: 2.53GHz)
Intel Core i7-720QM 
(1.60GHz quad-core with 6MB Smart Cache)
Intel Core i7-740QM 
(1.73GHz quad-core with 6MB Smart Cache)
Intel Core i5-460M
(2.53GHz quad-core with 3MB Smart Cache)
Chipset Intel HM55 Intel HM55 Intel HM55 Intel HM57
Memory 2GB DDR3 6GB DDR3 4GB DDR3 6GB DDR3
HDD 500GB SATA
(5400 RPM)
500GB SATA
(5400 RPM)
750GB SATA
(5400 RPM)
640GB SATA
(5400 RPM)
Video ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 NVIDIA GeForce GT 420M ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 NVIDIA GeForce GT 420M

 

PCMark Vantage

Thanks to the higher clocks of the dual-core Intel Core i5-430M processor, the Acer unit scores very well in our general usage benchmark. Bear in mind though, the quad-core notebooks listed below will definitely do better if a program has support for multi-threading, and you can expect such programs to allow those other notebooks to perform much better despite the PCMark Vantage scores. If you're the sort who needs to run AutoCAD, 3D Studio Max and other such intensive content creation programs, you can bet that the quad-core multimedia notebooks would have a much bigger advantage.

Still the PCMark Vantage results do indicate that despite being a cheaper notebook, the Timeline X 5820TG still manages well for everyday usage and then some.

 

3DMark06

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 isn't a slouch, and our 3DMark06 benchmarks result show that the Acer notebook's score of 8091 3DMarks means it's able to keep up with some of the quad-core notebooks equipped with lousier graphics hardware. A score of 8091 3DMarks also means that you can expect the Acer machine to run almost any game but more intensive ones would require light to medium game quality settings for them to be playable. To bad we could not run newer 3DMark benchmarks as the screen resolution of the notebook is inadequate.

 

Far Cry 2

In a "real world" test like Far Cry 2, the discrete graphics of the Timeline X indicate it's definitely capable of handling the game pretty decently; on medium settings, we're seeing a vast improvement that verifies our earlier speculation on the notebook's capabilities. Avoid the high/very high settings and you'll have on your hands a notebook that is quite capable of being a solid gaming machine.

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9.0
  • Design 8.5
  • Features 7.5
  • Performance 9
  • Value 9
  • Mobility 9.5
The Good
Very Affordable
Excellent battery life
The Bad
No outstanding features
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