E5-551G-T629 Dual graphics, misleading marketing

Narish

Hi!

 

I really feel like you are misleading people with the A10-7300 APU and R7 M265 GPU.

 

- Your BIOS is restricted and doesn't let you change any hardware options at all.

 

- Dual graphics doesn't work with any of Acer's drivers, or any of AMD's drivers. None. Not even modded ones (should this really be necessary?)

 

- All media players are forced to run in power-saving mode; your APU. Thus, all HD media in any media player (VLC, MPC-HC etc) will have terrible stuttering. There is no way around this.

 

- All browsers are forced to run in power-saving mode, see above. YouTube is very very slow (also any Flash video).

 

- In some games you can use the R7 m265 as a dedicated GPU, so theres that at least. :^)

 

When you buy a laptop with these specs you do not expect issues like this. Though what bothers me the most is the restricted BIOS which makes me unable to fix any of this myself, why are there no advanced options? Do I have to start cracking my own BIOS?

 

The hardware is not being used to it's said potential and I feel like a fool for purchasing this product.

 

Have a good day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

benton582

-I was quite unhappy when I saw the BIOS lock as well.

-Dual graphics? Acer's graphics drivers are a joke, heck, they still haven't given vendor approved driver software for months now, and here I am, stuck out of Acer support, and still not able to see my graphics fixed. Though, if they advertised it, it should work, ask Support.

-This should be easily fixed by going into your power options by right clicking the battery icon, then press Power Options, then set to High Performance. It has a huge effect, about 20 FPS worth.

-R7 M265 should be a dedicated card. And most probably, they look pretty similar to each other, dual graphics should work.

When you buy a computer like this, people need to spend time getting it to work, not expect it to be automatic. Not everything is "magical" or "perfect". And you know what you can do right now? Go on chat and talk to a customer service person. You don't have to wait that long.

MattmanCDN

I thought when dual graphics was advertised it was a mix of intel HD and either Nvidia or AMD, im going to check into this , I also thought that all the apu based laptops did not have discreet graphics they are part of the apu . If you are skilled in flashing a bios and understand all the risk involved there may be a modded bios available for your unit , but under warranty I would not pursue that coarse myself . Feel free to message me for that site if you want to go to the forums there.

 

Matt

MattmanCDN

a previous thread for this is here

 

http://community.acer.com/t5/Legacy-Laptops-and-Netbooks/Switchable-Graphics-problem-Aspire-E15-E5-551G-T629/td-p/352123

Narish

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benton582 wrote:

-This should be easily fixed by going into your power options by right clicking the battery icon, then press Power Options, then set to High Performance. It has a huge effect, about 20 FPS worth.

-R7 M265 should be a dedicated card. And most probably, they look pretty similar to each other, dual graphics should work.

When you buy a computer like this, people need to spend time getting it to work, not expect it to be automatic. Not everything is "magical" or "perfect". And you know what you can do right now? Go on chat and talk to a customer service person. You don't have to wait that long.

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-My laptop is not in power-saving mode, it's set to high performance. The switchable graphics option for the said applications are locked to power-saving in the AMD driver.

 

-It should, it does not.

 

-I do not expect anything to be magical or perfect, which is why I have spent hours on unofficial workarounds and the like, and also why I am asking why I can't fix stuff myself in BIOS.

 

-Customer service provide generic bot-like answers

 

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MattmanCDN wrote:

I thought when dual graphics was advertised it was a mix of intel HD and either Nvidia or AMD, im going to check into this , I also thought that all the apu based laptops did not have discreet graphics they are part of the apu

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http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/dual-graphics

 

I suggest you look up the specs on this laptop again. It has a R7 M265 with 2gb dedicated VRAM aswell as the APU.

 

MattmanCDN

I was going to do just that, Interesting laptop you have there I hope this can be solved !

benton582

That's strange, it doesn't seem to provide a bot answer from chat or anything. But I guess that's up to you. However, this laptop doesn't show up ANYWHERE, even on the offical Acer website, which is pretty weird as well. I don't see a advert for it as well. Can you send me the link about it?