Acer Swift 3 with AMD Ryzen mobile

[NumLock21]

When AMD announced their Ryzen mobile cpus, only HP has released a product out to retail featuring that CPU. Now it's Acer, with their announced Aspire Swift 3, also featuring AMD mobile Ryzen processors. There are 2 models, R8PP and R6J9. R8PP comes with Ryzen 2500U and R6J9 with Ryzen 2700U. Both have a 15.6 inch IPS display at 1920x1080, with 8GB of DDR4, Bluetooth, WiFi AC, USB ports, including Type C, 256GB SSD for the R8PP and 512GB SSD for the R6J9. 2500U runs at 2.0GHz and turbos to 3.8GHz, 2700U comes in at 2.2GHz and it also turbos only to 3.8GHz. On the 2500U, its mobile VEGA graphics has 8 compute units and 2700U's VEGA has 10 compute units. MSRP for the Acer Aspire Swift 3 with 2500U is $750 and $950 for the 2700U.

 

 

 

 

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/model/NX.GV7AA.003

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/model/NX.GV7AA.004

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12174/acer-adds-ryzen-mobilebased-swift-3-laptops-to-lineup

 

[GDRRiley]

those look like they should be great for the money but we still need more benchmarks for ryzen mobile. 

[Fetzie]

Pending benchmarks, those could be two very attractive products. What should be a decent amount of power, that thin Form factor and 2.2 kg.

[WMGroomAK]

They're really interesting, I just wish that they were offering more than 8 GB of RAM in them...  Also want to see how the R5 compares to the R7 on the graphics benchmarks and battery life tests.

[TheGlenlivet]

How does 8 and 10 compute units compare to Intel HD 630?  

[Bananasplit_00]

1 minute ago, TheGlenlivet said:

How does 8 and 10 compute units compare to Intel HD 630?  

well they are up agains the MX150 rather really, which beats the HP laptop at least

[WMGroomAK]

6 minutes ago, TheGlenlivet said:

How does 8 and 10 compute units compare to Intel HD 630?  

 

5 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

well they are up agains the MX150 rather really, which beats the HP laptop at least

If I remember correctly from the initial reviews of the R5 Envy x360, the Graphics performance was less than the MX150 but still substantially higher than the Intel HD graphics...  Still rather impressive considering this is Vega as integrated graphics.

[Nup]

That’s an interesting 750€ machine. 

[NumLock21]

16 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

those look like they should be great for the money but we still need more benchmarks for ryzen mobile. 

Only Ryzen mobile benchmark is from the HP Envy X360

 

10 minutes ago, WMGroomAK said:

They're really interesting, I just wish that they were offering more than 8 GB of RAM in them...  Also want to see how the R5 compares to the R7 on the graphics benchmarks and battery life tests.

Maybe it will let you customized up to 16GB just like the HP one? Acer don't sell it directly like HP, so let's hope they don't super glue their rams.

9 minutes ago, TheGlenlivet said:

How does 8 and 10 compute units compare to Intel HD 630?  

So far VEGA 8 is faster than Intel UHD630, but way slower than MX150. The MX150 is a discrete gpu with 2 to 4GB of GDDR5.

[Matu20]

16GB option is a must for 2018 machines.

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, NumLock21 said:

So far VEGA 8 is faster than Intel UHD630, but way slower than MX150. The MX150 is a discrete gpu with 2 to 4GB of GDDR5.

Very likely VEGA 10 mobile is also going to be slower, not sure how much slower though due to lack of reviews of even the R5 2500U so maybe still like 10%-30% slower?

[NumLock21]

8 minutes ago, Matu20 said:

16GB option is a must for 2018 machines.

Can do a diy upgrade to 16GB?

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Very likely VEGA 10 mobile is also going to be slower, not sure how much slower though due to lack of reviews of even the R5 2500U so maybe still like 10%-30% slower?

Lack of reviews because it's not a gaming laptop, where the majority of enthusiast sites have any interest in reviewing.

[Matu20]

34 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Can do a diy upgrade to 16GB?

In that case, sure, but I saw some machines with max RAM as 8GB.

[NumLock21]

Just now, Matu20 said:

In that case, sure, but I saw some machines with max RAM as 8GB.

Which one? The only Ryzen mobile so far is the HP Envy X360 and it can go beyond 8GB, up to 16GB. Now if your talking about other laptops, then yes some do max out at 8GB, not because it can't support more than 8GB. It's because those rams are soldered.

[WMGroomAK]

8 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Now if your talking about other laptops, then yes some do max out at 8GB, not because it can't support more than 8GB. It's because those rams are soldered.

I think that is going to be a big question for people on this laptop is whether it will be offered with more than 8 GB, is it soldered or does it have SO-DIMM slots...  Not really sure I would be interested in these Ryzen mobile processors if I'm locked down to only 8GB of RAM.  That is part of the reason that the HP model looks appealing is the expandability of the RAM and onboard storage.

[NumLock21]

4 minutes ago, WMGroomAK said:

I think that is going to be a big question for people on this laptop is whether it will be offered with more than 8 GB, is it soldered or does it have SO-DIMM slots...  Not really sure I would be interested in these Ryzen mobile processors if I'm locked down to only 8GB of RAM.  That is part of the reason that the HP model looks appealing is the expandability of the RAM and onboard storage.

Yeah, not one wants to laptop with soldered ram, it's stupid. I've just check their other Swift 3 models and they do have ram in other configurations, like 4GB instead of 8GB. Reviews so far for the Intel model shows, ram is soldered.

[Shadestones]

1 hour ago, Matu20 said:

16GB option is a must for 2018 machines.

I thought I could get by with just 8 GB on my desktop, but now that I've grown accustomed to multi-tasking, I'm using closer to 6 without even trying. 8 GB is the new 4 GB in my opinion.

[Matu20]

1 hour ago, NumLock21 said:

Which one? The only Ryzen mobile so far is the HP Envy X360 and it can go beyond 8GB, up to 16GB. Now if your talking about other laptops, then yes some do max out at 8GB, not because it can't support more than 8GB. It's because those rams are soldered.

I think it was Lenovo and Acer on their Raven Ridge ads, only HP advertised 16GB.

[NumLock21]

8 minutes ago, Matu20 said:

I think it was Lenovo and Acer on their Raven Ridge ads, only HP advertised 16GB.

They all had ads advertising with just 8gb of ram. HP's ram upgrade wasn't known to be upgradable until they were selling it on their site and some brave people actually bought the laptop to just to check it out first hand. 

 

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11964/ryzen-mobile-is-launched-amd-apus-for-laptops-with-vega-and-updated-zen

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, NumLock21 said:

They all had ads advertising with just 8gb of ram. HP's ram upgrade wasn't known to be upgradable until they were selling it on their site and some brave people actually bought the laptop to just to check it out first hand. 

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11964/ryzen-mobile-is-launched-amd-apus-for-laptops-with-vega-and-updated-zen

Hope that Lenovo supports upgrading the ram to dual channel, single channel is going to suck for an APU. Also the ram speed is rather low, I'd take out the ram and put my own in assuming it supports faster speed ram.

[Prysin]

Lol people. this is ACER.... they skimp so hard on cooling that anything under 1500USD will NEVER EVER hit max frequency without throttling. These laptops are great on paper and terrible in practice. Just wait and see

[kiska3]

50 minutes ago, Prysin said:

Lol people. this is ACER.... they skimp so hard on cooling that anything under 1500USD will NEVER EVER hit max frequency without throttling. These laptops are great on paper and terrible in practice. Just wait and see

I don't think they skimp that hard.

I have had my Acer F3-573 at full load with both the dGPU and iGPU + CPU all running at 100% without throttling, granted temperatures weren't great....But yeah I don't think Acer skimps that hard

I think Lenovo skimp harder, I can't keep my Yoga 720 cool with that i5 7500U and what is worse is that the Yoga doesn't have a dedicated GPU unlike the F5 from Acer

[Nicnac]

15 hours ago, WMGroomAK said:

They're really interesting, I just wish that they were offering more than 8 GB of RAM in them...  Also want to see how the R5 compares to the R7 on the graphics benchmarks and battery life tests.

Also, I still don't get why they run the 8gigs in single channel only

[Stefan1024]

10 minutes ago, Nicnac said:

Also, I still don't get why they run the 8gigs in single channel only

True, as dual channel is vital for a decent performance of the iGPU.

[Prysin]

1 hour ago, kiska3 said:

I don't think they skimp that hard.

I have had my Acer F3-573 at full load with both the dGPU and iGPU + CPU all running at 100% without throttling, granted temperatures weren't great....But yeah I don't think Acer skimps that hard

I think Lenovo skimp harder, I can't keep my Yoga 720 cool with that i5 7500U and what is worse is that the Yoga doesn't have a dedicated GPU unlike the F5 from Acer

your anecdotal evidence means shit when we have review upon review upon review upon review of acer devices running dangerously close to TJ-max out of the box.... and what happens 6 months later? dust + wear and tear means it always throttles.

 

Acer has been bad with thermal design on their sub 1500 USD devices. This is just how it is. Maybe they will pick up the slack sooner or later, but for now, they suck. Deal with it and move on.