Acer Triton 500 review

Acer Triton 500 -

Acer Triton 500 review

The Acer Triton 500 is a powerful gaming laptop in a thinner body, but just how well does the highest specced config actually perform in games? I’ve tested out 20 different games at all setting levels and also compared it against other laptops to help you decide if it’s worth it.

 

The configuration I’ve got has an Intel i7-9750H CPU, 90 watt Nvidia RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics, 32gb of memory in dual channel, and a 15.6” 1080p 144Hz screen with G-Sync, you can find updated prices linked in the description. At CES 2020, Acer announced the Triton 500 would also have an optional 300Hz screen, so we’ll see if any games will actually be able to utilize this.

 

The Acer Predator Sense software lets us disable Optimus, which is required to use G-Sync, and doing this will give us a performance boost in games so I’ve done all testing like this. I’ve also tested with turbo mode enabled, which basically overclocks the graphics by this much and sets the fans to maximum speed. The Triton 500 also comes undervolted on the CPU by default, so that should further help boost performance. I’ve reviewed the Triton 500 in the past, but that was with RTX 2060 and I figured it would be interesting to see how the highest specced version performs. We’ll start out by going through all games at all setting levels, then afterwards we’ll see how the Triton 500 compares with some other gaming laptops.

 

Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested using the game’s built in benchmark tool. High settings was still giving good results, however ultra wasn’t able to hit 60 FPS in this test even with these higher tier specs for a gaming laptop. Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode, and I’ve got RTX on shown by the green bars, and RTX off shown by the purple bars. With RTX on, it was still playable with high and ultra settings, however at these setting levels the frame rates were more than twice as good with RTX off.

Acer Triton 500

Control was tested with RTX on or off, and was performing well enough with the high setting preset with RTX off. I tested RTX with high settings, and it wasn’t too bad as the game still seems to run fine even below 60 FPS, but personally I preferred it with RTX off for the higher frame rates.

 

Apex Legends was tested with either all settings at maximum, or all settings on the lowest possible values, as it doesn’t have predefined setting presets. The 144 FPS frame cap was being hit at minimum settings, and we’re close to this maxed out too, the bigger difference was to the 1% low.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare was tested in campaign mode, and I’ve also tested it with the settings either maxed out or at minimum. It was still playing well with everything maxed out with above 100 FPS, however the 1% low saw a bigger drop off compared to average frame rate.

Borderlands 3 was tested using the game’s built in benchmark, and even with max settings it was still possible to hit above 60 FPS averages, with around double this possible at lower setting levels. Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark, and the results were very impressive when compared to other laptops, even with the same specs, we’ll check how this game and others compare against other laptops soon.

 Acer Triton 500

Ghost Recon Breakpoint was also tested with the benchmark tool, and even the highest setting preset was able to average above 60 FPS, with even very high settings scoring 100 FPS. Fortnite was tested with the replay feature, and as a less demanding game epic settings was able to get frame rates not too far behind the refresh rate of the screen. High settings would be a great match up for 144Hz, where even the 1% low was near the refresh rate. Overwatch is another less demanding game and was tested in the practice range. The 300 FPS frame cap was being hit at low and medium settings, so if you got the Triton 500 with the new 300Hz display then you could utilize it here.

CS:GO was tested using the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and the results are much better here when compared to most other laptops with similar specs due to the option of disabling Optimus. Again this is another esports title that hits high frame rates, and would be a good game to pair with the optional 300Hz display.

 

Dota 2 was tested playing in the middle lane, and as more of a CPU heavy test the frame  rates are pretty similar to most other i7 based laptops, however interestingly at ultra settings the performance was down a little more than I expected, but that said it still played very well without issues.

Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark, and even with the ultra setting preset the average frame rate is higher than the 144Hz display I’ve got, while low settings is just able to average 300 FPS, so could be a game to play with the 300Hz panel option. Metro Exodus was tested using the built in benchmark, most parts of the game perform a fair bit better than this, so don’t take these results as a good indication of what to expect throughout the entire game, it’s more of a worst case.

 Acer Triton 500

The Division 2 was also tested with the built in benchmark, and although it was possible to average above 60 FPS at ultra settings, the 1% low performance at ultra to medium was down significantly, though this is something I’ve seen from other laptops too so likely some issue with the game. PUBG was tested using the replay feature. The game was getting great frame rates regardless of the setting level in use, even with ultra settings these are great results for a laptop, and up to 180 FPS at very low settings is well above most other machines I’ve tested. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark, and as a resource

 

heavy game the frame rates aren’t all that much better compared to many other laptops despite having much better hardware and being tuned well out of the box. That said, it was still possible to hit 60 FPS averages at max settings, which I think is great for this game. Far Cry New Dawn was also tested with the games benchmark, and the results are pretty similar compared to most other i7 based laptops that I’ve tested on the channel, just a little higher at the higher setting levels due to the 2080 max-q, but realistically not that big of a difference.

 

The Witcher 3 was playing great with ultra settings, however simply dropping down to high settings would push the average frame rate closer to the refresh rate of the display. F1 2019 was tested using the game’s benchmark tool, and although max settings had decent average FPS, the 1% low performance was down substantially, however stepping down just one level to high increased performance significantly where even 1% low performance was now ahead of the average FPS of max settings. Let’s also take a look at how this config of the Acer Triton 500 compares with other laptops, use these results as a rough guide only as they were tested at different times with different drivers. In Battlefield 5 I’ve got this Triton 500 highlighted in red near similarly specced machines, I’ve also got the Triton 500 with RTX 2060 too, but we’re not concentrating on that here. These results are seriously impressive, they’re a fair bit higher than any of the other RTX 2080 Max-Q laptops that I’ve tested. To be fair though, this game has seen a number of updates over time, so it would be interesting to do updated testing on those other machines. Nevertheless, excellent results from the Triton 500.

 

These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark. Again the results were ahead of the other machines with similar specs. It is worth noting that the Triton 500 I’m testing here has the 9th gen i7-9750H CPU while the other 2080 Max-Q laptops I have data for have the older 8750H, and although this is a CPU heavy test, the 9th gen chip is only 100Mhz faster in multicore workloads. Honestly I think the default undervolt is giving it more of a boost than that difference. These are the results from Shadow of the Tomb raider with the built in benchmark at highest settings. Again the results were well above the competition, only being beat by more expensive and thicker machines with Max-P 2080 graphics, very impressive results from the Triton 500 here.

 Acer Triton 500

So why are the results a fair amount better than most other laptops with similar specs? In short, the Triton 500 is tuned well out of the box. By default, it’s got a -0.1v undervolt on the CPU, and turbo mode overclocks the GPU core and memory speeds. With the 2080 Max-Q version I’m testing here, we’re also given the option of disabling Optimus, which is a requirement to use G-Sync, and this further helps improve performance. This last component unfortunately doesn’t translate to the lower specced 2070 or 2060 Triton 500, as these aren’t available with G-Sync. They’ll still be undervolted and overclocked, just no option of disabling Optimus like was possible with this 2080 Max-Q version we’re looking at here.

 

Due to these tweaks, we’re seeing excellent performance from Acer’s Triton 500. Although the laptop was updated with an optional 300Hz refresh rate screen at CES 2020, even with all this power it’s worth noting we’re only seeing high enough frame rates to take advantage of this in esports titles, as expected, however even with these esports titles like CS:GO, Fortnite, Overwatch and Rainbow Six Siege, low settings are still needed at 1080p. Let me know what you thought of the gaming performance from the Acer Triton 500 gaming.