In my last blog, I took the Acer 7551G-5821 through some of my everyday usage and found that it was definitely capable of handling and gave a very responsive experience. So what happens when I take this system using VISION Ultimate technology from AMD and put it to the test with some more difficult tasks?

Video Editing

In total, the Acer 7551G has 404 compute cores.  Ok, four processor cores and 400 stream processor units.  Why should you care?  One reason is video editing.  Video editing loves cores.  Video editing is one of the highest threaded applications and therefore can take advantage of many cores more than any other app I have used.  Many current video editing applications will use the GPU compute power to render effects that can be calculated more efficiently on the GPU than the CPU. Also, part of video editing actually entails some video playback and as I wrote earlier, the ATI Mobility Radeon^TM HD 5650 graphics does playback great.

Outside of productivity apps, I spend most of my home computer time on video editing.  As I described in previous blogs, I typically use my Kodak Zi6 HD palmcorder or smartphone to take 720p home videos.  I will then stitch them together, split videos, add a title, transitions, then save them in a few different formats.

This is very basic video editing, I know, but it’s what works for me and my family.  I prefer now to use Microsoft Windows Movie Maker 2011 because it’s simple, fast, and takes advantage of the system’s horsepower.  As Movie Maker 2011 imports a video, it converts it to an easy to use format.  This maxes out all four processor cores.  Saving the final edited file took almost all four processor cores, too.

So how does four cores compare to two?  I did a comparison between the Acer 7551G and the MSI U250… I took 44 short 720p MP4 video clips off of an iPhone 4, imported them into Movie Maker 2011, added some basic transitions and saved into 720p WMV file.  The total process on the quad core, discrete graphics Acer 7551 took 17 minutes.  One the dual core, integrated graphics MSI U250, the process took 52 minutes.  That’s 66% LESS time!  Sure, the 300MHz helped, but not as much as the extra two cores.

Video Transcoding

Video transcoding is the simple task of reformatting a video file into another format so that it can be properly played back.  For instance, Apple products like an iPhone or iPad unfortunately won’t playback files that are in Microsoft formats like WMV or even files off of a Kodak Zi6 palmcorder.  Also, some products may playback a certain file format, but just can’t handle the bitrate (mbps) or the resolutions (horizontal x vertical pixel count). Typically I need to recode files to go from my Kodak Zi6 to my AppleTV or iPad.

I use two products for this, Cyberlink MediaEspresso and Arcsoft MediaConverter.  The Acer 7511G did video transcoding really well, with all four cores chewing through the task.

Photo Face Tagging

I have over 50,000 digital pictures in my family library.  At first glance, that may seem like a lot, but when you spread it out over the 12 years that my wife and I have been taking them, it’s only about 80 per week.  Last year, I got into photo face tagging.  Basically, face tagging is where after some training, the computer knows whose faces are in each picture.  That helps to find people much more easily and create “face shows.”  Picasa 3.8 and Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 support this feature.  This takes a good deal of processing power over an extended time period. It took almost a full day with all cores humming when I imported photos into the Acer 7551G to even do the facial recognition.  That doesn’t even mention the time needed to pattern match.  Yes, for some tasks, processing power matters.

Home Server

OK, so you don’t typically hear of this as a stand-out usage model outside geeks, but with the second generation Apple TV and Google TV getting a lot of attention, this will start to become very important with mainstream consumers.  Technically, anyone using iTunes Home Sharing off of a PC is already using home server functionality, but no one wants to call it that because “home server” has negative connotations in the industry and scares mainstream consumers away.  BUT, with iTunes Home Sharing, gen 2 AppleTV, GoogleTV and other OTT (over the top) devices actually being sold, the usage model must be addressed.

While I personally prefer a desktop as a home server, some would prefer their notebook.  So I setup the Acer 7551G as a home server with a sophisticated home server usage model.  It’s one thing when all the connected devices support the same files, but what if they don’t?  As I illustrated above, the iPad and iPhone only support a narrow set of video types, so what if you want to playback that 1080p WMV file in real-time?  You transcode it, that’s how it’s done.

For transcoding to the iPad and iPhone, I prefer ZumoCast.  I also recommend looking at Orb as well.  With ZumoCast loaded on the Acer 7511G and the clients loaded on the iPad and iPhone, I can watch virtually ANY video file format, density or resolution in real time. Those four cores and discrete graphics came in handy as well, even allowing another person to be using the computer as I was streaming.  I couldn’t do that on the Toshiba or the MSI notebooks I used given their more modest processing power.

Next Generation Asks

I really like the Acer 7551G and here is what I would like to see in the next generation:

• AMD Radeon^TM HD 6000 Series graphics with next generation Unified Video Decoder (UVD3) for better video playback, faster video editing, video transcoding, home serving, and of course gaming.
• WiFi Direct to more easily communicate with other WiFi devices without a router.
• Blu-ray drive versus a DVD so I can literally play anything.
• 6 Gbps SATA and a large SSD to help with video editing and provide optimal system responsiveness.
• USB 3.0 to increase external storage, speed up synching, and increase webcam throughput. USB 3.0 is up to 10x faster than today’s USB 2.0.
• Rear audio port so I can connect a decent speaker system without cables crawling to the side of the notebook. Rear USB ports would be nice for the very same reason.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed the Acer 7551G and could recommend it to anyone looking for a mainstream desktop replacement notebook.  With four processor cores and DirectX 11 capable discrete graphics, it has room to grow for a mainstream user.  Let me know what you think below.

Pat Moorhead is Corporate Vice President and Corporate Marketing Fellow and a Member of the Office of Strategy at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

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