Solved! AoO522C50 fusion. poor performance?

[welshmousepk]

Hey guys, hoping for a little help or a fresh perspective.

so I recently bought an acer AO 522, with the C50 fusion APU. figured it would make a nice little HTPC/light gaming rig etc. reviews said it can handle old games very well, and playback full 1080p content.

Now ive replaced W7 starter with home pro 64-bit, upgraded the ram to 4gb, and put a hybrid HDD into it. Somehow though, the performance is terrible, and I can't for the life of me figure out why.

First thing I'm trying to do is play games. Now according to reviews, this game can handle crysis and other modern games at low settings. However I'm trying to play old games like Deus Ex, Morrowind and GTA SA, and they are all bordering on unplayable.
Also, it seems to be completely incapable of playing back video. Trying to play low quality compressed videos (.rmvbs were the last ones i tried), skip and stutter and are unwatchable. (this thing should play 1080p .mkvs without a hitch)

Now for those of you who don't already know me, I do know my stuff, and I have made sure i have installed on the necessary windows drivers, video drivers etc. But for some reason its performance is terrible. so far this netbook is proving to be a waste of cash.

Does anyone know what i'm missing?

 

[WR2]

Hello welshmousepk;

The reviews I've seen on the Acer Aspire One 522 'Netbook and its C-50 Fusion dual core APU bear our your assessment that it should be performing better.
Acer Aspire One 522 Netbook review @ NotebookCheck
Acer Aspire One 522 netbook review @ lilputing

The only thing I can think of trying to use use some of the exact same benchmarks used in the reviews and compare what you get.
For example, Street Fighter IV tested by lilputing.

Also check the Windows 7 Experience Index rating against what Notebookcheck got.
This might be one time where WEI gives an idea where that One 522 is falling down on the job.

 

[Branden]

welshmousepk,
i bought the aspire one 522 when it first came out, and like you, first thing i did was upgrade to 4GB Ram and put in a better HDD (SSD in my case).

i can't help you out with the gaming, i haven't tried any games on mine, i didn't get it for that and knew not to expect it to handle games satisfactorily.
but it can handle video just fine. you need to let GPU take care of the video. what software are you using for playback? i use MPC-HC which supports DXVA, and with that 1080p plays flawlessly.

 

[WR2]

Good point.
You might try testing one of the other video players, VLC for example.
Or a demo of one of the premium video packages. Just in case it's a codec issue or some sort.

 

[welshmousepk]

I was already using VLC, I don't think its a codec issue since the general performance is well below what i would expect.
will try a few benchmarks and see what happens.

 

[welshmousepk]

Ok, turns out it was the driver causing the issues. Rolled back to 11.4 from 11.7 and performance is right in line with what i was expecting. should have thought of that earlier really, but hopefully anyone else with this issue will be able to fix it now.