-"Acer Aspire E15 15.6 Gaming Laptop" -
This is a great budget gaming laptop by Acer. Featuring a mobile
i5 processor and GTX 940MX GPU this laptop may not be powerful, but it will run some current games at lower settings in low resolutions (720p). Read on for a more in-depth look at the E15.
I. SPECS
- 6th Generation Intel Core i5-6200U Processor (Up to 2.8GHz)
- 15.6-inch 1080p Full HD Display
- NVIDIA GeForce 940MX with 2GB DDR5 VRAM
- 8GB DDR4 Memory
- 256GB Solid State Drive
- Windows 10 Home; Backlit Keyboard
- Up to 12-hours Battery Life; 6-cell Li-Ion (2800 mAh) Battery
- 802.11 a/c wireless
- 3 USB Ports ('2' USB 3.0, '1' USB 2.0)
The most important component to any build is of course the GPU, but that doesn't mean that the other components are worthless. They all play their roles to keep the GPU fed with data.
1.) Intel Core i5 6200U Dual-Core SOC CPU
-This mobile Intel processor is based on the company's "Skylake" architecture featuring 2 cores (with hyperthreading) with 3 MB of L3 cache. While its base clock-speed is 2.3 GHZ, it can turbo up to 2.8 GHZ when playing games or doing other intensive task. For a budget laptop, you really cannot do any better than this CPU. Its one of the best in its price-range.
2.) Nvidia Geforce 940MX Mobile GPU
-This laptop features a mid-range Nvidia mobile GPU, the GTX 940mx. This GPU is based on Nvidia's "Maxwell" architecture and features 384 cuda cores. It also features memory bandwidth speeds of 16 GB/s, comes with 2GB of DDR5 memory on a 64-bit bus, and is clocked at 1072 Mhz. While that may not sound like a powerhouse, this cards performance in games is passable given it's a budget orientated GPU, as long as the in-game settings are moderately low. What is really enticing about this laptop, is that other similarly priced laptops tend to come without mobile GPUs at all.
3.) 8GB DDR3 Memory
-This should be the basic amount of system memory you should accept when choosing a laptop to game with. Most newer titles have 8GB as the recommended required amount, so if you want to game without causing a lot of stuttering during gameplay and long pauses during load times, make sure the system you select comes with atleast this amount. As you can see, the Acer E-15 has got you covered in this aspect.
4.) 256GB Solid State Drive
-This laptop also comes with a 256GB SSD. While that might not be a large amount of storage space, it is enough to get you started. Also, you could simply add another larger SSD to the system in the future whenever you start to feel constrained by the space. And lets not forget that this is an SSD, which is much faster than a normal Hardrive in both reading and writing data speeds.
5.) Windows 10 64-bit
-With this gaming laptop, your getting a copy of Windows 10 with the system. Without a Windows operating system, you could not play 75-80% of the games that are available, not to mention being locked out from using the plethora of apps that is available for the platform. Its pretty much a must have if you plan to game on your laptop.
6.) Other Components
- This laptop comes with a 1080p LCD monitor that features a wide angle display and an anti-glare screen. It also has a 802.11 a/c wireless adapter, 3 USB ports, weighs 5.3 pounds, and has an average battery life of 12 hours.
II. PERFORMANCE
-This will give you an idea about how much performance you can expect to get out of this system from 4 recently released games. These benchmarks will show you just how many frames this system can pump out and at what type of settings you could play on decently enough. Remember that 30 fps and up provides a smooth experience, with higher frames giving smoother gameplay. Every game differs in requirements with the most demanding games requiring more powerful hardware to run at full settings.
This laptop seems to be consistent at playing games on low at 720p, but medium setting in games will vary. You aren't going to get amazing performance out of the E15, but you will get playable performance in 720p on low settings playing current games. Bump the resolution down to 1024X768, and you'll get much higher frame-rates (in most cases).
III. CONCLUSION
Pros: If you need a laptop and want to game with it on a budget, then this would be a great system to own. It will give playable performance in games and make everyday tasks on the web faster and more responsive.
Cons: The performance of this system, being a budget laptop and all, is lacking the power to run current games fluently at medium settings, especially if you desire 60 fps in 720p or higher resolutions.
A good choice if you want a low cost reliable laptop that will give you playable performance in 720p at low settings.
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