Acer AS7560-SB416 w/Quad Core, 4GB, 500GB, 17.3" $320 refurb BUY.com. Videos inside.

[funboy6942]

http://www.buy.com/prod/acer-aspire-...231044198.html

Linkage

A super great laptop that plays recent games, and everything else as well.

Website says it has a Nvidia chip gpu in it, it doesnt, its a APU AMD Chipset.

And now it is $320 shipped.

*****VIDEOS*****

BF3 NSFW due to cussing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT4_3iggIqg&feature=youtu.be

GRid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfokHhqaLgY&feature=youtu.be

DiRT Showdown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thwHGa5wJvs&feature=youtu.be

 

[SunnyD]

Yeah um, A6 APU has a built in AMD GPU, not a nvidia gpu.

 

[funboy6942]

Well I got mine today and I am impressed. It still had the plastic coatings on it, looks like new without a single scratch or dead pixel. Ive thrown FEAR and Bioshock on it at max settings and played them without any noticeable frame drops and thats with v sync on. Installing Half Life 2 on it now and will try that game out maxed at 1600x900. But so far it looks like I got me a new desktop game replacement. Sure it prolly wont do GRiD or Dirt 3 but thats fine, Ill fire up my desktop for those games.

But Im happy. Got a $700 laptop for under $400 with quad core and decent graphics. One of the best laptops I have yet to own that didnt cost an arm and a leg.

EDIT
I just got done testing HL2 on it and like the others it played great. Are there any games some of you want me to try. If I have them Id be happy to.

Only thing I havent figured out is how to enable Turbo core to go from 1.4 to 2.3 ghz. If anyone knows, LMK so I can push this thing even faster.

 

[funboy6942]

Plays DiRT 2 and GRiD I found out today. Not at highest settings but good settings at 1600x900 in each. Going to try DiRT 3 and Showdown tomorrow.

 

[Nunya]

Which seller did you buy from?

 

[funboy6942]

Which seller did you buy from?

I bought mine from Tiger Direct because I had to use bill me later. I called and asked them to price match it but they couldnt, so I asked what their best price would be and it was $382 + $8~ to ship. Granted Newegg right now has it even cheaper but they have much higher shipping charges, plus I had to pay tax, and they dont take bill me later, so it all pretty much broke even if I bought it from newegg. Buy.com is a few bucks cheaper then both with shipping. If it matters, mine showed up in a Acer labeled box, not a plain brown box. Of course no cd/dvd came with it or manual, but Im a guy and can figure it out. It does have the COA sticker on the bottom which is all I need if the OS should get messed up and I need to reformat and install again.

All I can say though is if you dont want to buy from Buy, then call tiger direct, ask to price match newegg, and when they tell you they cannot, then ask for their best lowest price if they want you to buy from them, and they will drop the price over the phone. I think my total with shipping and no tax was around $391~, and in my opinion well worth every penny. So far every day I been amazed at what all this thing can do, and the games it will play vs my desktop, which I have had off now for the past 2 days for this is playing everything I throw at it so far. Not to mention my electric bill getting a chill not having the desktop running with all its overclocked goodies, 850 psu, 2 gpu's, and a overclocked bulldozer.

I can deal with a little less eye candy for the screen is much smaller then my 27" Catleap which I can tell the diff between the candy when turned down vs this laptop at 1600x900.

Just got done playing Quake 4 little while ago at max settings without a hint of lag or slowdowns. Trying Tomb Raider Legend in a few minutes as it is downloading off gamefly's free pc games. Then DiRT3 and Showdown. Im bound to find atleast one game today that will not run on here even when I turn down the settings. If not, yeah for me and the desktop can stay off for some time.

Found out it turbo cores on its own when needed and prolly the reason some of my "newer" games, like GRiD is able to work on it. Also in the description is says 256mb of memory for the gpu, when the sticker on the unit says 512mb of ram dedicated for it.

 

[funboy6942]

Well to my surprise DiRT 3 and Showdown both play on this thing. 1600x900 at medium settings. I thought for sure it was going to choke but it didnt and Im out of "newer" games to test on this to find its breaking point. Im sure it will play BF3, if I had it I would test that too, but right now all I can say is wow. I may have to sell my desktop and just use this :O

I will say, one thing it needs, and bad, is more memory. 4 gigs is just not enough. Cant do many things at the same time. Like dl off steam and install a app. It chokes then and things slow down. I found some spec mem made for this laptop, 4 gig a stick, for $28 shipped so I ordered 2 of them to max it out. Should make a huge improvement in multi tasking on it. Thats about all I can find bad with it. Though its a "refurb" I would never of known it had it not said that.

Again if anyone wants me to test something on it, if I have the means I will do so. Other then that Im done. Did all I can think of if someone was on the fence and was looking for a good laptop and game machine.

 

[funboy6942]

Found the laptop refurb at Walmart, thought Id pass it on.

 

[Sonikku]

APU's don't offer much savings in performance or power savings in desktops, but they sure are nice in laptops. Most laptops in the $300 range only have integrated video, but you have them put a cheap $80-100 low end card in the laptop and suddenly they want like $600 for the thing. APU's only seem to add like $50-100 to the cost of the laptop, which is fair if you want just a basic gaming rig for wow or whatever on the go.

 

[Lean L]

Well to my surprise DiRT 3 and Showdown both play on this thing. 1600x900 at medium settings. I thought for sure it was going to choke but it didnt and Im out of "newer" games to test on this to find its breaking point. Im sure it will play BF3, if I had it I would test that too, but right now all I can say is wow. I may have to sell my desktop and just use this :O

I will say, one thing it needs, and bad, is more memory. 4 gigs is just not enough. Cant do many things at the same time. Like dl off steam and install a app. It chokes then and things slow down. I found some spec mem made for this laptop, 4 gig a stick, for $28 shipped so I ordered 2 of them to max it out. Should make a huge improvement in multi tasking on it. Thats about all I can find bad with it. Though its a "refurb" I would never of known it had it not said that.

Again if anyone wants me to test something on it, if I have the means I will do so. Other then that Im done. Did all I can think of if someone was on the fence and was looking for a good laptop and game machine.

Sounds more like a hdd/cpu limitation. No way are you maxing 4GB by downloading and installing something at once. Most likely hdd.

 

[slightlyhuman]

ffffff.

so tempting. if this didn't have a 17" screen i think i'd be all over it. trying to get away from my beast of a laptop(17").

hmmmm

 

[funboy6942]

Sounds more like a hdd/cpu limitation. No way are you maxing 4GB by downloading and installing something at once. Most likely hdd.

I had this same thing happen in my desktop when it only had 4 gigs of ram and went away after I upgraded to 8 gigs of memory and it has a 7200rpm hdd and a 8 core amd cpu. Also I have just now stuck in my 8 gigs of memory and Im able to do what ever I want without any slowdown, so it had to be the lack of memory. I am able to surf, download games off steam, and download off gamefly without any problems. Plus before I installed the memory task mgr said I had no free memory, now I got over 4 gigs. 8 may have been overkill, but thats fine with me, the memory was cheap and now its flying.

 

[Lean L]

I had this same thing happen in my desktop when it only had 4 gigs of ram and went away after I upgraded to 8 gigs of memory and it has a 7200rpm hdd and a 8 core amd cpu. Also I have just now stuck in my 8 gigs of memory and Im able to do what ever I want without any slowdown, so it had to be the lack of memory. I am able to surf, download games off steam, and download off gamefly without any problems. Plus before I installed the memory task mgr said I had no free memory, now I got over 4 gigs. 8 may have been overkill, but thats fine with me, the memory was cheap and now its flying.

You have way too much stuff running in the bg or a memory leak in one or two programs. With win7, I use around 3GB with unneeded services disabled + browser with 10 tabs + steam + origin + music + paused video + torrent + jdownloader. That's no light load for just idling but 4GB is enough for it (I only use more than that when I have a game running or when I use an application that takes up a lot of memory such as encoding or benchmarks) While 8GB might not be a bad idea if this will be your main pc, there is still something amiss if you're out of memory doing those basic things.

Did taskmon say you were out for this laptop? It might just be cause of the slow hdds in laptops.

 

[funboy6942]

You have way too much stuff running in the bg or a memory leak in one or two programs. With win7, I use around 3GB with unneeded services disabled + browser with 10 tabs + steam + origin + music + paused video + torrent + jdownloader. That's no light load for just idling but 4GB is enough for it (I only use more than that when I have a game running or when I use an application that takes up a lot of memory such as encoding or benchmarks) While 8GB might not be a bad idea if this will be your main pc, there is still something amiss if you're out of memory doing those basic things.

Did taskmon say you were out for this laptop? It might just be cause of the slow hdds in laptops.

Well if there is something amiss I took care of it for Im installing a game, downloading a game, and surfing and its not hanging up or being really slow anymore. Maybe I had a bad stick of ram in it?

Also if anyone cares to know, it has a boost to go from 1.4ghz to 2.3. Its automatic and does it when it senses 1.4 is not enough for it. I thought there was something in bios before I got it, but after getting it and doing some research trying to find out how to oc it to 2.3 I found its automatic which is probably why I can run my higher end games on it with no slowdown. There is a few youtube videos that show how you can go ahead and overclock the cpu to 2.3 all the time if you should want to do this. Plus there is a setting in CCC that will allow you to set it to 1.4 all the time. If you leave it alone it will set itself to 800mhz and run at that for lite tasks like internet or watching a movie. But if you want to oc it to 1.4 all the time you can though CCC, or watch the videos on youtube and set it to 2.3 all the time. Doubt the battery will last long if you do either though.

Going to install fraps on it later today just for shits and giggles to see what frame rates Im actually getting when I play DiRT 3, GRiD, and Showdown. See how much farther from 30fps Im getting.

 

[funboy6942]

DiRT 3
28-34 FPS at 1600x900 settings at medium with crowd off.

Showdown
29-38 FPS at 1600x900 settings at medium

GRiD
27-35 FPS again at medium settings and no crowd 1600x900.

Bioshock
32-45 FPS with graphics MAXED out at 1600x900

Dead Island
32-40 FPS at med/low settings 1600x900

FEAR
30-60 FPS 1600x900 MAXED out

Far Cry
48-60 FPS at HIGH setting 1600x900. It will run it at ultra setting BUT it takes forever to load.

Half Life2
36-60 FPS at MAXED settings 1600x900

Left 4 Dead
28-60 FPS almost maxed out 1600x900

Not to shabby if you ask me for a sub $400 laptop running some graphic intensive games.

 

[Tdavis5432]

Should have bought an SSD instead of the extra memory! BTW does it have two HD bays or just one? Also have you played games on it for extended periods of time? I'm wondering if the laptop will overheat or lockup at all? Can you run a looping futuremark overnight or something and see what ur max temps read ? Good way to pressure test the system too!

I had this same thing happen in my desktop when it only had 4 gigs of ram and went away after I upgraded to 8 gigs of memory and it has a 7200rpm hdd and a 8 core amd cpu. Also I have just now stuck in my 8 gigs of memory and Im able to do what ever I want without any slowdown, so it had to be the lack of memory. I am able to surf, download games off steam, and download off gamefly without any problems. Plus before I installed the memory task mgr said I had no free memory, now I got over 4 gigs. 8 may have been overkill, but thats fine with me, the memory was cheap and now its flying.

 

[AlexAL]

DiRT 3
28-34 FPS at 1600x900 settings at medium with crowd off.

Showdown
29-38 FPS at 1600x900 settings at medium

GRiD
27-35 FPS again at medium settings and no crowd 1600x900.

Not to shabby if you ask me for a sub $400 laptop running some graphic intensive games.

I'm impressed. The APU has 256Mb memory, whatever that means. Does anyone know if it should have any trouble running Sleeping Dogs which lists 512Mb video ram under minimum requirements?

 

[funboy6942]

I'm impressed. The APU has 256Mb memory, whatever that means. Does anyone know if it should have any trouble running Sleeping Dogs which lists 512Mb video ram under minimum requirements?

Actually the sticker on the machine says 512mb of memory. Most of the websites have it listed wrong

 

[funboy6942]

Should have bought an SSD instead of the extra memory! BTW does it have two HD bays or just one? Also have you played games on it for extended periods of time? I'm wondering if the laptop will overheat or lockup at all? Can you run a looping futuremark overnight or something and see what ur max temps read ? Good way to pressure test the system too!

One hdd bay. And Im disabled and sit here all day, and if Im not surfing the web looking at useless shit Im playing games, mostly the three I tested and I have yet to hear the fan kick into high gear or lock up. Thats for over 12 hours a day I sit here doing something on it. I can run 3dmark 2001 all night tonight and let you know if it locked up, restarted, or shut down. Couldnt tell you what the temps would be for I dont know how to check that though.

This laptop was originally $699 when it come out about 1-2 years ago, and again Im impressed not only with the price I paid, but with what all it can do. It does everything my main rig does, at lower res of course, but it plays all the games I usually play on it and havent found one game I own or off Steam that has made this thing stutter.

*****EDIT*****
After getting the question, and seeing a review at walmart I checked and it does indeed have 2, yes 2, HDD sluts in it. So you can run the one that come with it and a SSD one in the other! I totally missed seeing it when I was installing the memory. Man this thing is bad ass

 

[AlexAL]

Are they both SATA or one SATA and one mSATA. I assume this is just SATA2, not SATA3.

 

[funboy6942]

Are they both SATA or one SATA and one mSATA. I assume this is just SATA2, not SATA3.

They are a sata of some sorts. I pulled my hdd out to check and they are both identical in size. So what ever the 500 HDD is, will fit in the other side.

Im sorry but I dont know if they are MSATA or just SATA, but like I mentioned, they are both the same.

****EDIT****
According to newegg's site, in its description, it just says SATA, not MSATA or SATA 2 or 3.

 

[AlexAL]

Well, I bit. $354.99 shipped for the Acer Aspire AS7560-7183 from newegg.com. My present lappy and main computer started abruptly turning off by itself last few days when I move it, so that sealed the deal. The only thing I wish for is 1 USB 3.0 port, but I'm just getting greedy.

If the drives are identical, then they must be SATA, not mSATA. That is good, because Intel wants to do away with mSATA starting with the Haswell platform.

Do you mind putting up a link for what is good, cheap 2x4gb memory for this laptop? I imagine I'll do this upgrade sooner or later. Is the RAM in there 2x2Gb?

Thanks for saving my butt with this cheapie. I can delay upgrading to something beeffier at least one more year.

Was going to ask if you can try playing the Sleeping Dogs demo on Steam and let us know the FPS, but I can do the same soon.

Added:
This probably qualifies for the windows 8 Pro upgrade for 14.99? At least the Acer website is encouraging in this respect.

I know nothing about AMD APUs, but Catalyst 12.9 just came out so if it can use that driver you might want to dig it up.

 

[AlexAL]

Walmart.com must be mistaken. It lists this laptop as:

Connector Type: 3 x USB 3.0

Funboy, do you know if the accurate model number for this is 7560 or 7560G. Don't understand Acer's nomenclature, but these are different on the Acer site.

 

[funboy6942]

NP DLn the demo now for Im wondering myself how good the game is and if it is worth getting. As for the mem I got it from ebay so I cant link to it, but I paid a few bucks more for it, $26.99 shipped per 4 gig stick, for I wanted to be sure it was going to work with this laptop. If you want the same just put the model number of the lappy in the search bar and you can find the memory that way.

There are 2 sticks of 2gig each. The bottom one is kinda a pain to change. Had to use a screwdriver to pry up a little and unclip it to pop it out. But I got it done with no damage.

 

[AlexAL]

There are 2 sticks of 2gig each. The bottom one is kinda a pain to change. Had to use a screwdriver to pry up a little and unclip it to pop it out. But I got it done with no damage.

Thanks.

A Newegg review for the Acer Aspire AS7560-7183 says that it has SATA III.

EDIT:
Pics showing the innards of this laptop.
http://www.jdhodges.com/2012/05/upgrade-acer-as7560-memory-ram/