Gaming with the Acer Aspire 5943G

It’s relatively harder to find a suitable gaming notebook than a desktop system intended for the same purpose. High price alone doesn’t necessarily represent good gaming performance. If you happen to be a gamer with a somewhat limited budget, wasting money on the wrong mobile device is surely the last thing you need. Based on that consideration, we decided to make a test which could serve as your source of reference when you are about to buy a portable gaming system. For this first attempt, we picked up the Acer Aspire 5943G and throw in some of the latest game titles to find out if the notebook has enough power to fulfill your needs on-the-go.

The Acer Aspire 5943G is powered by an Intel Core i7-740M processor (1.73 GHz), coupled with 4 GB of DDR3 memory. An ATI Mobility Radeon 5650 graphics card drives the large, 15,4 inch screen (1366×768). We used the Windows 7 (64-bit) OS along with the ATI Catalyst 8.713.3 graphics driver. Because of the continuous, high power consumption due to our gaming activity, we kept the adaptor plugged to a wall outlet for the entire duration of our test. These are the results!

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

This is perhaps one of the most anticipated game sequels of all time. As such, we were led to believe that a good gaming notebook should be able to run Star Craft II: Wings of Liberty without too much of a slowdown. First, we tried to run the game at its default 1280×720 resolution. The texture, graphics quality, and shader settings were all set to medium. The game ran smoothly, even when the screen is clogged with so many units at one time. The frame rate hovered between 30-80 FPS.
Then, we tried increasing the resolution and the graphics detail settings to 1360×768 and “high”, respectively. The Acer Aspire 5943G still managed to produce acceptable frame rates, at around 22 FPS. However, that changed dramatically as we mobilize our forces to confront the enemy. With more than 200 individual units across the screen, the frame rate plummeted to less than 10 FPS, which turns the game hardly playable. It appears that we have to stick with “medium” or “low” settings to ensure fluid action in large-scale battles.

Mafia II

Set amidst the organized crime schemes in the United States shortly after the Second World War, this open-world game requires a powerful processor. At first, we tried to run the game using its default graphics setting: 1280×720 with no anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering set to “1x”, “low” shadows, while the ambient occlusion, geometry detail, and APEX PhysX each turned off. Under these settings, the game ran just fine at 45 to 50 frames per second and the graphics still look good. Increasing the graphics detail settings to “medium” improved the visual quality, but also drops the frame rate to 30-40 FPS. Increasing the settings to “high” further reduced the frame rate to 28-35 FPS, still playable by most standards.