I'm interested in getting a refurbished laptop for light gaming and simple engineering programs. It's an Acer Aspire V5 with an A10-5757M, 8GB DDR3, and a 8750M, where I can get it for 325 CAD. My concern is the dGPU and APU interaction. I read some reviews stating that, sometimes, the APU ran faster than the dGPU alone or in crossfire. I'm wondering why this is the case and if the issue was hardware or software related? Is there also a fix?
All I'd be gaming on it would be CS:GO and Dota 2. Engineering programs would be variations of different CAD software, Office applications, and programming. Nothing seriously demanding outside of the 2 games.
In the past I grabbed a Lenovo Y40 that had a severe BIOS issue with the GPU switching and Lenovo's temperature caps they put on the CPU and GPU. Although the GPU was crippled, it was suppose to perform much better (and consistent) than it did. The headaches of setting up custom programs was a chore. Even so, when I got the GPU to run as it was suppose to, the throttling issues, with the low GPU+CPU temp caps, had severe throttling issues for no reason at all. The CPU would throttle at 65C. It was a joke. I ended up sending it back and getting it refunded and wondering if I would run into similar issues with this ACER.
All I'd be gaming on it would be CS:GO and Dota 2. Engineering programs would be variations of different CAD software, Office applications, and programming. Nothing seriously demanding outside of the 2 games.
In the past I grabbed a Lenovo Y40 that had a severe BIOS issue with the GPU switching and Lenovo's temperature caps they put on the CPU and GPU. Although the GPU was crippled, it was suppose to perform much better (and consistent) than it did. The headaches of setting up custom programs was a chore. Even so, when I got the GPU to run as it was suppose to, the throttling issues, with the low GPU+CPU temp caps, had severe throttling issues for no reason at all. The CPU would throttle at 65C. It was a joke. I ended up sending it back and getting it refunded and wondering if I would run into similar issues with this ACER.
