WHAT IS THE ACER PREDATOR G3-710?
This striking machine is Acer’s latest attempt to gain a foothold in the lucrative gaming market. The Predator G3-710 is an mean-looking system that aims to blast through top titles at 1080p.
The Predator faces an uphill battle. Although its £700 price won’t break the bank, with machines such as the Overclockers Marvel 4K promising far better performance and versatility for similar cash, it faces serious competition.
ACER PREDATOR G3-710 – DESIGN, BUILD QUALITY AND CONNECTIVITY
The Predator certainly attracts attention. The plastic front is angled in the middle and decorated with layered sections resembling tank tracks. An illuminated Predator logo sits close to the top, above which you'll find a triangular button that glows with red lighting.
A handle can be found on the top of the chassis, and the upper portion of the façade has two spring-loaded sections that pop open – one holds the DVD drive and the other a spare 3.5-inch hard disk bay that eases out of the case with a tool-free handle. There’s even a spring-loaded holder for a set of headphones.
Build quality is reasonable. The metal used to construct the side panels isn’t too thick but it has undeniable strength, and the façade’s plastic is just as strong. The Predator isn't too big – just 410mm tall and 185mm wide.
So while the Predator’s chassis certainly looks the part, get beyond the striking design and this system begins to underwhelm.
The interior is made from bare, unpainted metal, and there’s no motherboard tray – so the multi-coloured cables are strewn through the interior, with little regard for cable-tidying. The processor is secured with a bog-standard cooler, the graphics card is tiny, and the motherboard is a dull shade of green lacking any ornamentation. By comparison, the Overclockers’ smart black Asus board featured yellow slots and heatsinks.
Upgrade potential is minimal too. There’s a single hard disk bay on the inside, a couple of PCI Express x1 sockets, one empty SATA connector and two free memory sockets. This isn't great, and it gets worse: the front-facing 3.5in bay is the only part that can be replaced, since removing the Predator’s side panel and switching out the components voids this machine’s warranty.
Little impresses about the G3’s connectivity. Its front-panel loadout of two USB 3 and audio jacks is standard, and the rear panel offers four more USB 3 connectors, two USB 2 ports and three audio connectors – and that's your lot.
It’s a far cry from the Overclockers Marvel 4K. That system might cost £100 more than the Acer Predator G3, but the attention to detail is far superior. The cables are routed sensibly to maintain a tidy interior, and they’re all black – as is the metal used inside the case. There are a greater number of storage bays free, and the Marvel 4K's warranty also won't be voided as a result of any tinkering.
ACER PREDATOR G3-710 – SPECIFICATIONS
This machine is designed for 1080p gaming, so it’s no surprise that Acer has opted for AMD’s Radeon R7 360.
The R7 360 has a new name but, like many modest AMD and Nvidia cards, it’s based on older hardware. The Tobago core inside the R7 360 is a refresh of last year’s Bonaire Pro – itself a version of a GPU that first emerged as the Radeon HD 7790 back in early 2013.
The updated version of this old core has 768 stream processors and a 1,050MHz core, although there’s no Turbo to boost the GPU’s speed. It also has 2GB of dedicated memory.
The Core i5-6400 is another slab of mid-range silicon. It’s a modest chip featuring Intel’s Skylake architecture, a core clock of 2.7GHz and a Turbo peak of 3.3GHz. It has four cores but no Hyper-Threading, and since it isn't an unlocked part, it can’t be overclocked.
The 8GB of 2,133MHz memory is the bare minimum for this level of the machine, and the storage is similarly serviceable – the 1TB hard disk offers enough space for a decent games collection, but it won’t be able to match the speed from even a modest SSD.
The Overclockers machine uses its extra £100 on a specification that concentrates on graphics grunt. That machine has an AMD Radeon R9 390X that will easily outpace the R7 360: the Marvel’s card.
The Marvel 4K shares the G3’s 1TB hard disk and 8GB of memory, but it relies on a Core i5-4460 processor. That’s one area where the G3 could pull ahead, since the i5-4460 uses the older Haswell architecture – although its 3.2GHz stock speed is higher than the i5-6400 inside the Acer.
ACER PREDATOR G3-710 – PERFORMANCE
This machine is designed for 1080p playback, and there's no denying its single-screen gaming abilities.
In BioShock Infinite it handled 1080p gaming at Ultra quality at 38fps, and it was one frame faster when running Grand Theft Auto V at its Very High settings. Both of those games were bolstered by strong minimum frame rates.
The Acer also handled more demanding titles. In Metro: Last Light – at Ultra quality settings – the G3 returned an average of 31fps, and it was one frame quicker inMiddle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Those scores are playable, but they also highlight the G3’s limits. Gaming at 2,560 x 1,440 won’t be possible unless older titles are loaded or quality settings are dropped.
It’s a clean bill of health for 1080p gaming, but the G3 can’t match the Overclockers Marvel 4K in synthetic tests. The Acer’s 3D Mark: Fire Strike score of 3,129 is what I expect from a modest, current-generation GPU, but the Marvel’s overclocked high-end card scored 9,955 in that test. In Unigine Heaven’s basic 1080p test the Acer’s 33.8fps score is trounced by the Marvel’s 122.5fps score.
That’s all well and good, but it’s worth reviewing the facts before comparing the graphical abilities of these machines. The Acer is a cheaper and more balanced 1080p system, while the Overclockers system holds back in some areas in order to run with a pricier GPU that’s able to cope with the demands of 4K.
The Acer system's more even spec becomes obvious in the application benchmarks. The Acer’s PC Mark 7 score of 4,344 is about 100 points beyond the Marvel’s result, and it also beat its rival in the Cinebench test. The Acer’s Core i5 won’t set the world alight, but it’s enough to handle games and applications without balking – only more intensive software that requires Hyper-Threading and extra speed will struggle.
It’s a fine mid-range start, but the G3 proves underwhelming in other departments. Its hard disk figures slump to sequential read and write scores of 126MB/sec and 124MB/sec. Both are below those of the Overclockers system, and neither drive can compete with even a modest SSD.
However, on the positive side, there are no concerns with heat and noise. The Acer's processor and graphics card peaked at 71 and 80 degrees – on balance, I prefer those figures to the 61 and 92 degree peaks I recorded from the Overclockers system. It’s far quieter, too, with barely a whisper produced even during games tests. The Marvel 4K became noticeably louder when I pushed its components.
OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER
The Overclockers Marvel 4K is £100 more expensive than the Acer G3 and far quicker in games, but there’s no denying that its specification is heavily geared towards its high-end graphics card. That’s great for gaming, but it doesn’t necessarily make for a balanced machine: the older processor will be unable to handle more demanding modern software; the rest of the specification is underwhelming; and the case is basic.
Thankfully, Overclockers has a few alternatives in it range. Its StreamR Pro is a machine for people who broadcast over the Twitch platform, but it’s kitted out with GTX 960 graphics, a Samsung SSD, a Core i5 processor and a more versatile case. The Titan Scythe is an AMD-based machine with a six-core processor, SSD, Radeon R9 380 graphics card and a more versatile motherboard and chassis.
It isn't only Overclockers that shows up the G3 with better hardware. Several other British-based builders offer compelling alternatives: Chillblast’s Fusion Centurion has GTX 750 Ti graphics, an overclocked Core i5-6600K processor, an SSD and a better motherboard; and Scan’s G36i gaming system has GTX 960 graphics and a 250GB SSD.
This, then, is the Acer G3’s biggest issue. There are a number of British firms out there selling systems for £700, and they’re better in many ways: faster graphics cards and processors are commonplace, and many machines at this price have SSDs alongside hard disks. Also note that most of the cases and motherboards are more versatile, and they all have longer and more comprehensive warranties.
SHOULD I BUY THE ACER PREDATOR G3-710?
This system is designed for high-street buyers who want a big-brand 1080p gaming machine. That’s fine, and there’s no denying that the Acer Predator G3-710 fits the bill: its graphics card can handle any game at 1,920 x 1,080.
Move beyond the Predator’s striking styling, however, and there’s less to like. The interior is messy and offers limited upgrade potential, and changing components voids the warranty. The memory, hard disk and processor are all underwhelming, and the peripherals are inconsistent.
There’s also the fact that any popular British PC builder will be able to put together a faster, neater, more versatile machine with a better warranty for similar money. The Acer Predator G3 might deliver on 1080p gaming, but looking beyond the high street will mean a far better PC for £700.
VERDICT
The Acer Predator G3 will do the job, but there are far better deals out there.
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