First benchmarks of the Acer Nitro 5 (2018): AMD Ryzen 7 2700U takes the Intel Core i7-7700HQ head on
AMD has been putting up an impressive show ever since it launched its Ryzen 7 Mobile APUs last year. We've already had a look at some performance metrics of the AMD Ryzen 5 2500U and came out impressed with its performance. We're now live at CES 2018 and Acer has just announced its new all-AMD Nitro 5 laptop featuring the AMD Ryzen 7 2700U CPU and the Radeon RX 560 GPU. We took this opportunity to run a few benchmarks on the new Nitro 5 to see how it fares in comparison with last year's model and more importantly, to understand how the Ryzen 7 2700U compares with respect to the hugely popular Intel Core i7-7700HQ CPU.
The Acer Nitro 5 on display was a pre-production model. While we could run CPU benchmarks such as Cinebench R15 and wPrime 2.0x, GPU benchmarks such as 3DMark kept crashing consistently. The CPU scores are exciting nonetheless and we have some good news for prospective buyers so let's dive straight into the scores.
CPU Benchmark: Cinebench R15
Traditionally, Ryzen Mobile has always been compared to the new Intel 8th generation 'Kaby Lake-R' U-series chips, given similar TDP values and they've proven themselves to be worthy competitors to Intel's latest offerings, especially in multi-core performance. The HQ-series CPUs from Intel generally have an advantage considering their clock speeds and higher TDPs. While the Core i7-7700HQ does have about a 10% lead in single-core and 5% lead in multi-core scores, it is good to see that the 15W Ryzen 7 2700U is performing very closely to the 45W Intel offering. Also, the Ryzen 7 trails slightly longer in the single-core test when compared to the 8th generation Intel Core i7-8550U, which has similar TDP but has a comfortable 26% lead in the multi-core score. For those who require capable multimedia performance without spending too much or requiring larger cooling mechanisms, the Ryzen 7 2700U is a godsend.
Note: The higher multi-core score for the Acer Nitro 5 with Core i7-7700HQ is with cooler booster on and the lower score is without the cooler booster. Single-core scores were not affected with or without cooler booster.
| Cinebench R15 | |
| CPU Single 64Bit | |
| Acer Swift 3 SF314-52G-89SL | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN515-51-788E | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN515-51-788E (CoolBoost on) | |
| Acer Nitro 5 (AMD Ryzen & Polaris) | |
| CPU Multi 64Bit | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN515-51-788E (CoolBoost on) | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN515-51-788E | |
| Acer Nitro 5 (AMD Ryzen & Polaris) | |
| Acer Swift 3 SF314-52G-89SL | |
CPU Benchmark: wPrime 2.0x
wPrime 2.0x is a CPU-heavy benchmark that puts multi-core performance to the test. Multi-core and floating point performance have always been AMD's forte and the Ryzen 7 2700U continues that legacy. The wPrime results for both 32 million and 1024 million operations give a clear 20% lead to the Ryzen 7 when compared to the 7700HQ and almost double the advantage over the 8550U, especially in the 1024m test. The scores indicate that programs designed to scale across multiple cores will immensely benefit from AMD even when compared to the higher watt Intel.
* ... smaller is better
The 2018 Acer Nitro 5 presents a very good value for money proposition considering the amount of CPU performance it packs. The discrete Radeon RX 560, while still a Polaris GPU, can perform on par with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 at the very least. We wish we could have got some GPU scores as well for a more holistic idea of what to expect from a Ryzen + Radeon combo. Nevertheless, we will continue to see Ryzen Mobile proliferate in the coming months. As of now, the only other competition it faces is from the new Intel-AMD 'Kaby Lake-G' chips. We will do a comprehensive comparison once we get our hands on them so watch this space.
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