Acer launches AMD Vision powered laptops

DO ANYTHING YOU CAN IMAGINE is just one modest claim made by Acer for its AMD Vision powered desktops, notebooks and netbooks, just don't think about the price.

The high definition video capable computers from the Taiwanese PC manufacturer will arrive from mid-June but there are no price announcements to accompany its launch of four desktops, six notebooks and two netbooks.

The products' launch has seen the heavy promotion of Acer's use of AMD's Vision brand. These desktops, notebooks, netbooks and others are further divided into the sub-brands, Vision basic, which is not an HD capable system, Premium Vision that is for basic HD movie and music functions, Ultimate Vision for audio, visual editing facilities and Black Vision for gamers.

However Acer's specifications do not always match those given by AMD for its Vision line. While AMD specifies the Phenom II X6 1090T microprocessor for its Vision Black, Acer's Aspire M5400, which its maker says is for "passionate gamers", has just the Phenom II X4. And while Acer's Aspire 1551 notebook boasts having the AMD ultrathin configuration, which has an ATI Mobility Radeon 5430, the notebook's actual GPU is just the ATI Radeon HD 4225.

But for AMD it gets worse, Acer's X5400 and X3400 "entertainment center" desktops have Nvidia GeForce 9200 cards and not the MSI ATI Radeon HD 5450 that is specified for the relevant AMD Vision Premium with discrete graphics.

For other Acer claims that do not quite match reality, the Aspire 7552G is said to "do anything you can imagine," and the company asserts that the AMD parts it is using will deliver, across all the products, a 27 per cent productivity increase, up to 279 per cent improvement for "mainstream videogames" and 35 per cent faster conversion of video downloaded, legally one assumes, from the web. One hopes that it is not 1080p HD because the notebooks' and netbooks' displays can handle only 720p, but can output 1080p via their HDMI ports if need be. Not very portable though, that wall-mounted flat screen telly.

Across the product range Acer has launched, common technical features include the use of the Phenom II X4, DDR3 memory, SATA hard drives, numerous UBS ports, multi-in-one card readers, HDMI ports, wifi, 16:9 aspect ratio displays and Direct X11. µ