Acer Refreshes Predator Gaming Lineup With Skylake And Windows 10 At IFA
by Brett Howse on September 3, 2015 10:10 PM EST
Acer is also taking the opportunity of the timing of the IFA trade show in Berlin to announce updates to many of their notebook computers. As is the theme this year at IFA, Skylake and Windows 10 are the major changes, along with the new technology they bring to the table. The majority of the refreshed and relaunched devices fall into the Predator gaming lineup.
Predator 15
The Predator 15 and 17 notebooks feature the Core i7-6700HQ processor which is one of the new quad-core 45 watt parts from Intel. They will be offered with up to 64 GB of DDR4 memory, and offer the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M graphics card. Storage should be a strong point with Acer offering up to 512 GB of NVMe PCIe based solid state drives. Acer has turned to the Killer solution for networking, and it offers both 802.11ac and Gigabit which can be teamed using the Killer software. Keeping everything cool is Acer’s FrostCore triple fan design.
Acer has outfitted the devices with USB Type-C ports for expansion and while it does not specify if this is Gen-2 or not, it does hint at it being faster than USB 3.0, so it ls likely that it is.
Predator 17
The display on the 15-inch model is a 1920x1080 panel as the base option, and you can also get a 3840x2160 UHD panel, but the 17.3-inch model will only have the 1920x1080 version. To satisfy audio, Acer has four speakers and two subwoofers on the 17.3-inch model which delivers 12 watts of power. The 15.6-inch version has two speakers and a subwoofer with 6 watts output, and both notebooks support studio quality headphones up to 600 Ohm impedance.
These models will begin shipping in November with starting prices of $1500 for the 15 and $1600 for the 17. Exact specifications and prices vary by region, so check with your local Acer site to find out more.
Predator G3
Predator G6
Acer is also offering the Predator G6 and G3 desktops which are in an “armor-covered design” case which are certainly striking, although they will certainly not be something that everyone will be endeared to. They will of course feature Intel Skylake processors and up to 64 GB DDR4 memory. Graphics are NVIDIA GTX models. The G6 model will feature One-Punch Overclocking which allows the user to boost performance of the Core i7-6700K with the press of a button. Once again, exact pricing and specifications will vary by region and will release in mid-September in Europe and North America in October.
Source: Acer
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asmian - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
If you wanted to test an audio setup, then highly discerning hearing from many many years of classical musical training would be a bonus, I would think. My point is that they cannot be, by any normal non-marketing usage or definition of the word, a SUBwoofer at that size. Shill for them all you like, though.BMNify - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
I am happy to see that Laptop manufacturers continue to make laptops without listening to broke musicians, everyone knows we are not aiming for studio quality audio here, what I and everyone else wants is a reasonably loud speaker which can fill a room with enough sound and bass, these tiny subwoofer do provide that, there is a lot of difference between the laptops with subwoofer and without subwoofer.Almost all reviewers acknowledge these subwoofers, your snobby music training is useless here and almost everybody will mock you on this, most of the audiophiles are good people, only some tarnish the whole group by making such snobbery filled comments without actually using the product and comparing with the other products in the same range.
asmian - Saturday, September 5, 2015 - link
The snobbery and prejudice is in your curious assertion that musicians are generally "broke". But if you had a reasoned argument you wouldn't have had to resort to an unnecessary personal attack. How sad that these comment boards bring out the worst in people...BMNify - Saturday, September 5, 2015 - link
Well looks like i touched a raw musician nerve here :) He called me a "Shill" , I called him a broke musician, fair play most would day.Don't expect to get showered with roses when you post rubbish without having experience of a category of products (subwoofer-laptops in this case) and that too with a superiority complex and snobbery shining through the comment, then proceed to call the person who has a different opinion based on his interest and experience of such products a shill !! You would be treated much more harshly on any other comment board for such comments, be glad, this is Anandtech where people are still very moderate in responding to such comments and personal attacks.
kondor999 - Sunday, September 13, 2015 - link
Yeah, I agree. This is a gaming laptop, not an "audiophile system".This asmian fellow seems to believe that Acer is being intentionally misleading, but having used a laptop with a "subwoofer", it really does make quite a large difference when you play games, and that is the only point Acer seems to be making. Where in their product literature is any mention of "audiophile" aspirations for this thing?
And the reason audiophiles have a bad rep online has mainly to do with their pseudoscientific endorsement of things like $5000 speaker cables and such. Google "danceable cables" for a laugh on that subject.
we - Tuesday, September 8, 2015 - link
How do you define "bass"? This is a tech site, so although subjective perceptions are important to any end user, a definition in Hz is appropriate, which I believe would have to include frequencies below 100Hz. But you won't find a laptop with much output below 100Hz at ear distance, probably at least -10dB at 50Hz. In my book, a subwoofer which does not produce much useful output below 100Hz is not a subwoofer. It's a misleading use of th term. A marketing gag, which suggests to users, that they are actually getting true low frequency bass, which in reality they are not.SilthDraeth - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link
This laptop appears to share the same cooling design as the Asus G series gaming laptops. Is Asus perhaps the ODM, or OEM for Acer on this series?rm19 - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link
This is what I've been waiting for but I have to resist. I want to wait to see what Razer, Alienware, and all the others come up with. I know they'll all have Skylake, but if one came out with GTX 990M, I'd kick myself for jumping in too soon. I want this as a desktop replacement for less clutter.BrokenCrayons - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
The laptops are a bit loud looking, but not terrible. Their desktop on the other hand...it's eye-popping and not in a good way. It looks like someone found a mutated turtle outside of a nuclear power plant, stuck it onto the front of a desktop case, and then hosed it down with black spray paint. What were they thinking?toyotabedzrock - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
So the new fad is to make PC parts look like they came from a horror film.