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Acer's Ion 2 532g benchmarked

Published on 22nd February 2010 by Gareth Halfacree

The Aspire One 532g promises increased graphics performance, but results of tests by Netbook News tell a different story.

Acer's Aspire One 532g netbook - the first on the market to feature Nvidia's Ion 2 graphics hardware - has been run through its paces, and initial indications are that its performance is sadly lacking.

As reported in a video over on Netbook News, the latest Aspire One netbook is designed to offer a combination of excellent battery life and solid 3D performance thanks to Nvidia's Optimus technology, which allows the device to switch between low-power Intel graphics and the meatier Nvidia G310M processor on demand. While sound in practice, the overall experience is apparently not that great.

Running 3D Mark 03 on the device, Netbook News was able to get a score of 3,049 3DMarks with the Nvidia chip enabled - a score that Netbook Choice highlights as being significantly lower than they were able to get from rival Samsung's N510 netbook, which scored a more impressive 3,593 3DMarks despite using the last-generation Ion LE graphics chipset.

While the initial performance might be somewhat underwhelming, the fact remains that the Ion 2 platform promises a significant performance boost - which begs the question of why that increase in performance wasn't being seen during the benchmark. Whether it's representative of an issue with the platform, or whether the unit was running pre-release drivers that valued stability over performance, is currently unknown.

Are the benchmark scores putting you off the idea of making your next netbook an Ion 2 unit, or are you going to want to see scores from an actual release unit before making your mind up? Share your thoughts over in the forums.

18 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

rickysio 22nd February 2010, 13:54

It's unlikely that I'd even bother getting an laptop, given how tight my funds with, so Ion 2 being a flop or not, doesn't really concern me. Of course, being a geek, I still do want to see the benchmarks on RFR (ready for release) hardware.

rollo 22nd February 2010, 13:56

id guess using a 6 year old benchmark wont do it much favours

Matticus 22nd February 2010, 14:07

What rollo said.
I never pay attention to benchmarking software, unless its for testing hard drives and ram. I usually wait for real world performance differences. I don't like scores I like fps.

Dave Lister 22nd February 2010, 14:08

I'm sure Nvidia said months ago that ion 2 would not be more powerfull than the first one. I think they made it because it uses less power.

SBS 22nd February 2010, 16:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Lister
I'm sure Nvidia said months ago that ion 2 would not be more powerfull than the first one. I think they made it because it uses less power.

This.

And it's compatible with CPUs other than the Atom, finally opening up the possibility of CULV + anything other than that godawful Intel stuff. Such things are far more important than any poorly conducted benchmark test tbh, seriously who games beyond AoE2 on an Atom anyway?

HourBeforeDawn 22nd February 2010, 16:24

why would you buy this for gaming? its more a long the lines of mobile media and net browsing... I dont know Bit-Tech tends to do this as well, they go and review media related hardware/setups and what do they do shove gaming benchmarks up the wazzu and hardly any media test. ~_~ I know this wasnt tested by Bit-Tech just saying in general.

xaser04 22nd February 2010, 16:55

IIRC from a performance point of view the gpu that forms the G310m is near enough idential to the ion 1 GPU (9400mGT). Both are 16 shader products albeit the former is more efficient.

CowBlazed 22nd February 2010, 18:58

This was supposed to have double the shaders as the first ION, if it indeed does have the same 16 again thats another epic fail on nvidias part. More CPU support is great though its still only for outdated core 2s, still doesn't warrant a "2".

Another case of nvidia renaming existing products I think.

SteveU 22nd February 2010, 19:17

I think the real test is going to be how it fares with HD content and more importantly, how long the battery lasts on a netbook while watching said HD content on a 10 hour journey!!

That's what this tech is all about, not FPS, 3DMarks, etc....

Saivert 22nd February 2010, 21:19

well... the point of having a Netbook was because it didn't use much power (long battery life). Putting in Ion chipset dramatically reduced battery life and killed the concept. If Ion 2 can keep pace with Intel chipset on battery life we might see a winner here.
If this means you have to run on the IGP instead of NVIDIA's GPU the concept is killed yet again. If you need heavy graphics you need to buy a proper laptop instead which has a bigger battery (more cells) to keep up.

Wonder if we will ever see a great combo of excellent battery life and excellent graphics.

Time will tell.

ZERO <ibis> 23rd February 2010, 04:20

I was keeping tabs on the ion2 until the M11x came out and then I no longer cared...

Xir 23rd February 2010, 06:50

really looking for a 12" with HDMI out and a matte screen..
Oh, and Gigabit Network to fill it with (remember, no drive).
HD content isn't that important (screens too small anyway), but the ability to displaying a streamed DVD would be nice

Now that coupled with a netbook price....beeing about or below 300 euros.

Can't seem to find it.

BLC 23rd February 2010, 08:10

This kind of falls into the "Huh; that's a bit pointless" category for me. As others have pointed out, gaming is not important. HD Video might be important, but not at the expense of battery life. I would rather hold off full judgement until we see a complete set of benchmarks on a production/retail unit. The complete set of benchmarks has to include a comparison of battery life while doing different tasks....

I really don't think netbooks/mini-laptops are suited for HD video and gaming - that's not really the niche I see them filling. There are plenty of full sized laptops out there with much chunkier batteries & hardware for that kind of thing. Netbooks should be: small, light, easily portable and have excellent battery life. There's always a trade-off between power consumption and performance.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xir
really looking for a 12" with HDMI out and a matte screen..
Oh, and Gigabit Network to fill it with (remember, no drive).
HD content isn't that important (screens too small anyway), but the ability to displaying a streamed DVD would be nice

Now that coupled with a netbook price....beeing about or below 300 euros.

Can't seem to find it.

Streamed DVDs over a network is easy - even last gen netbooks, such as my Mini 9, can easily handle that without gigabit ethernet.

kenco_uk 23rd February 2010, 09:57

I briefly had a laptop with a 310m gpu in it (a Samsung R580) and an i3-330 cpu. In 3dmark03, I remember it scored around 11-12k (about 2-5% faster than my Dell Vostro with an 8600M GT installed).

Is it a cut down 310m in Ion2? Or just the sheer lack of bandwidth over the bus? I thought 3dmark03 was fairly gpu limited (particularly at low res).

DarkBanana 23rd February 2010, 11:08

Benchmark scores are all well and good but wasn't the original Ion CPU limited anyway? Makes no sense to improve the graphics performance if that wasn't even an issue to start with.

And the CULVs already have non-Intel graphics. Maybe with ARM or something if Chrome OS makes it.

Xir 23rd February 2010, 11:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by BLC
Streamed DVDs over a network is easy - even last gen netbooks, such as my Mini 9, can easily handle that without gigabit ethernet.

Nono, copy them onto the netbook to watch elsewhere...and filling the harddrive with 50GB of DVD-rips for the holiday takes ages over 100mbit network, hence the gigabit connection.

BLC 23rd February 2010, 11:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xir
Nono, copy them onto the netbook to watch elsewhere...and filling the harddrive with 50GB of DVD-rips for the holiday takes ages over 100mbit network, hence the gigabit connection.

Well then my Mini 9 definitely can't do that - it only has an 8gb SSD! :)

aoakley 23rd February 2010, 13:54

I was actually considering an ION platform as a tertiary desktop PC in the garage. But ION seemed to underperform in tests, and with ION2 tests showing similar poor performance, I'm fairly sure I'll be sticking with a Micro ATX build using reliable but low-end components; Celeron E3300, ATI Radeon 5350 and suchlike.

Given the almost complete inability to upgrade these ION machines, I'll just get the smallest Micro ATX case I can work with and shove it under a desk. At least by sticking to mATX architecture, I can upgrade.