Acer Aspire Revo

The NVIDIA Ion platform has been tested in our lab for the first time, with the Acer Aspire Revo. A competitor to the Asus Eee Box, it has a built-in Intel Atom and takes up minimum space. Designed mainly for desktop use, it also opens the way for HD video and gaming, thanks to the NVIDIA 9300M chip.

Handling, design and build

In terms of aesthetics the comparison between the Eee Box and the Revo is firmly in favour of the Asus. The Acer looks plasticky and the base is nowhere near as pretty. In transparent plastic, it can’t live alongside the metal arched Eee Box. Best to keep it out of sight! Aesthetic considerations apart, lets have a look at the interfaces, how noisy it is and what it has inside.

Noise levels on this computer are low even during intense activity. You do notice the fan accelerating from time to time, but nothing too troublesome.

It has the following connectivity: 6 USBs, 1 e-SATA 2 mini Jacks, 1 HDMI, 1 VGA 1 RJ45 and 1 multiformat card reader. This is much more complete than the Eee Box or even many laptops.

Processing

The Intel Atom processor limits performance. Here we got results pretty much on a level with a netbook or the Eee Box. It is even a little slower in general terms. This is most certainly attributable to the use of Windows Vista, heavier than XP.

If you are on the cutting edge when it comes to technology, you will see the advantages of the NVIDIA chip and acceleration of graphics processes thanks to the graphics chip: with Photoshop CS4 for example. This is good but obviously only relatively so when it comes to Photoshop CS4 as you would probably want to install it on a much more muscley machine anyway. The graphics chip can also be used to accelerate processing time on apps such as Badaboom. More for the general consumer than the Adobe software, it can be used to convert video files to adapt them for various types of player.

Refer to the inset for info on reading video files.

The base from above	2 USBs
VGA, HDMI, RJ45, 4 USBs	SD reader, 2 mini-jacks, e-SATA

Gaming

We tested our games on a 24 inch screen with a resolution of 1920x1200 pixels. Of course we didn’t expect to be able to play at this resolution and we reduced it until we found a playable level for each game. With Crysis, we tested the game at low display quality. The first thing to note is that loading up levels is slow. Next, even if you set the resolution at 1024x768 pixels, the game is not totally fluid. There are delays here and there. Race Driver Grid is fluid below 1680x1050 pixels and ultra low quality. There is a disagreeable crackling in the audio however when you’re surrounded by cars (pretty much all the time then!). World in conflict was our last test game and here things went better. We managed to get it to work with a few delays at 1920x1200 pixels, at very low quality.

To conclude, it’s better than a netbook but a long way off any computer with a real graphics card. You’ll get something out of it however if you concentrate in the oldest games that don’t demand too much in 3D performance.

Audio

For Home Cinema use and when transitting sound via the HDMI, no complaints at all. Digital audio functions without any intervention from the computer. On analysis of jacks, the headphones out is fine. We would have liked to see a jack at the back (perhaps an optical one), for plugging in a speaker kit.