Acer Ferrari 5000 dual-core AMD laptop

Acer's Ferrari-branded notebooks have always favoured AMD-made engines, and the very latest model, the 5000, features the latest Turion 64 X2 twin-core processor. This fifth-generation Ferrari laptop brings yet more features, as well as higher performance, but like the titular sportscars, you'll need quite deep pockets to be …

[Anonymous Coward]

webcam and pictures

well it's unfortunate the webcam didn't work at the time of the review. i think this is one of the important features aside from the dual-core that sets it apart from the 4000 series.

review seemed like it was too short and the lack of pictures didn't help either. it would've been nice if there was a comparison between the 4000 and 5000 series in terms of performance.

[Greg Glawitsch]

2.0 GHz Turion TL-60 disappoints

Just today, there was a test of four "Yonah"-based notebooks at www.mobilityguru.com, more precisely at: http://www.mobilityguru.com/2006/08/02/four_notebooks_ready_for_business/

The performance charts can be found here:

http://www.mobilityguru.com/picturegalleries/gallery-200607315.html

The Lenovo Thinkpad T60 notebook eqipped with a 2.0 Core Duo "Yonah" processor scored a Mobilemark 2005 score of 227 and a PCmark05 CPU score of 4604, compared to 199 and 4073, respectively, for the Acer Ferrari 5000 featuring a Turion X2 TL-60 at 2.0 GHz.

In other words, "Yonah" 2.0 GHz is about 15% faster than Turion X2 2.0 GHz.

Adding insult to injury, "Yonah" is the "old" processor, to be replaced this very August by its successor "Merom" (Core 2 Duo).

Now, Merom is rumored to be another 10% to 15% faster than Yonah at the same clock frequency.

Conclusion: AMD has never achieved better performance than Intel in the notebook sector, not with the Turion and also not with the brand new Turion X2.

If you're in the market for a fast notebook computer, wait four weeks and get yourself a "Merom"-based one.

[John Kirkham]

Noting like the nostalgia of a 3000LMi.

I'm posting this using a Ferrari 3000LMi, the first one ever bought out by Acer. It has a crap screen, had the slowest HDD(until I updated to a 7200rpm model) and it creaks when you touch type on it, but, it's sexy as all hell being splattered in 'Ferrari red' unlike the overpriced new stuff which is non descript carbon fibre - people whom sometimes think the CF looks unfinished in appearance.

There's also something about the HDD's that Acer insist on using, if you change the drive over to a more up to date model the laptop runs cooler with the venting fan coming on less than original/stock setups.

What can I say about the new Acer Ferrari... next laptop I get will be a whitebox jobby, no more marketing/label/branding billboard for me. Oh how I've evolved.

[Lars Nilsson]

Reply

Thanks for your comments.

It's not easy getting hold of old kit to compare against new, so doing a comparison against the old version wasn't possible. And yes, Core or Core 2 Duo is a lot faster than AMD's mobile processors, there's no doubt about that. We've got a Core 2 Duo notebook on its way, so expect a review up as soon as we're allowed to publish the results.

The quality from the web camera was ok during the 3 seconds it did work before the software locked up...