Acer Predator G6-710 review – „the beast” of Acer’s Predator series

Predator_G6_710Although Acer is associated mostly with mid-range or budget devices the Taiwanese manufacturer has a hgih-end gaming series, called Predator. All of the devices from the lineup boast a beastly appearance and incredibly powerful specs. Due to this, the Predator-branded PCs are a great choice as pre-configured computers.

Keeping this in mind, we hope that their new series, Predator G, will meet our expectations and will manage to take on any challenge. Currently, there are a couple of models available and in this article, we’re going to look at the most powerful offering – G6-710. Not only is the PC extremely fast, but its aggressive and interesting design is an eye-catcher.

The configuration we’re testing boasts a 6th generation Intel CPU – Core i7-6700K and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 GPU. Also, we’re looking at 64GB of DDR4 RAM, which is the maximum capacity of the motherboard and since the unit is an engineering sample, it had 4TB of storage available.

If you’re interested in the price and availability of Acer Predator G6-710 check out the following link: http://amzn.to/1RcQ7cp

Contents

Video introduction

What’s in the box

As we already mentioned, the machine we’re testing is an engineering sample so the only thing we found in the box, aside from the computer, was the AC cable. In the original package, however, you’ll also find a couple of user manuals and a DVD containing the drivers.

Design and construction

The first thing we noticed when we took the machine out of the box was that it was kind of heavy. However, we immediately fell in love with its design and we doubt that there’s a single person who wouldn’t enjoy the aggressive design language. The box appears to be wearing what seems to be an armor with overlapping plastic ribs. Anyway, the machine features a couple of red-colored elements, which really pop out on the black-colored construction. One of the aforementioned elements is the Turbo button, which boosts the overall performance of the system by overclocking the CPU and GPU.


turbo

2

The interesting design of the box continues to the front side. Starting from the top and going down the bottom, the first button we encounter is the one that turns the machine on. It is relatively large and flashes in a bright red light so there’s no way you’ll miss it. Right below it, we see the Predator placed on the optical drive’s casing. In order for you to access it, you’ll have to press the “arrow” in the lower right part of the “rib”.

Next up, we have another useful feature called Easy-Swap Drive. It allows you to access one of the HDDs of the PC by pulling out one of the “ribs” (the rest can be accessed by taking off the side plate). Replacing it is a relatively easy – you’ll have to gently press on the “^” symbol, which is located at the top right. The HDD is protected by a metal plate and you’ll have to be careful when pulling it out.

Anyway, at the front side of the PC, there’s one memory card reader, two USB 3.0 slots, and two audio jacks – for headphones and a microphone. Below them, you’ll find another pleasant addition – the so-called Headset Cradle. You can open it by pressing on the headphones sign and it is used to hold the headset.





The sides of the machine serve a couple of purposes. They aren’t completely sealed and here’s where the so-called IceTunnel Thermal system comes into play. It’s basically the gaps on the covers allowing the Predator G6-710 to cool off more efficiently. This way the fans operate at lower rpm when cooling off the hardware.

So the power supply is placed at the top, back end of the chassis along with one HDMI, DP and RD-45 port and 5.1 channel sound. The GPU is Zotac GeForce GTX 970 and it offers on Display Port, one HDMI port, and two DL-DVI outlets.

The dimensions of Predator G6-710 are pretty standard (210 x 462 x 553.3 mm). The PC also supports Wi-Fi 802.11 a/c, meaning you can browse the Web without necessarily having a LAN cable plugged in it.










Dissasebly and upgrade options

The CPU, GPU and the rest of the hardware is accessed by removing the side plate, which isn’t hard, but there’s a small catch. First, you will have to dismout the back plate of the casing, which is held by two plugs camouflaged with the same color as the casing. They are located at the bottom and release the rear part when pressed. Then, slide the upper part and you should be able to remove the smaller shell of the box. The rear cover holds by two screws that are removed with a crosshead screwdriver. The internals are revealed after you gently push the back. We also noticed that the rear cover is quite big and isn’t at all light.

Just like any other PC, all of the internals are replaceable. Our unit featured a high-end cooling system, which managed to successfully deal with the incredibly powerful Intel Core i7-6700K CPU, even when overclocked, and the Zotac GeForce GTX 970 GPU. Oh, and don’t forget removing the cooling systeb before doing so with the GPU.

We should also note, that the cable “management” sort of surprised us since it was basically a big mess, but we hope that the reason is that we used an engineering sample for our review.






Specs sheet


CPUIntel Core i7-6700K (4-core, 4.00 – 4.40 GHz, 8MB cache)
MotherboardAcer
RAM64GB (4x 16GB) – DDR4, 2133MHz
GPUNVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 (4GB GDDR5)
HDD/SSD4TB HDD (7200 rpm)
ConnectivityLAN 10/100/1000 Mbps, Wi-Fi 802.11ac/a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0
Features
  • 4x USB 3.0 (rear panel)
  • 2x USB 3.0 (front panel)
  • 2x USB 2.0
  • 5x audio jack
  • 1x HDMI
  • HD audio with 5.1 channel sound
  • RJ-45
  • memory card reader
  • 1x DVI


Software

Acer Predator G6-710 came with a pre-installed version of Windows 10. However, if you want to perform a clean installation, we suggest you download all the needed drivers from Acer’s official Web page: http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers

Furthermore, there are two unique software packages available on the computer.

Acer Predator Sense

As we already mentioned, Predator G6 sports a “Turbo” button, which automatically overclocks the machine but you can also do that by accessing the option from the provided software. We’re talking about the Predator Sense app, which allows you to browse between three modes – Normal, Faster and Turbo.

Furthermore, the software provides you with information about the fans’ rpm as well as the temperature and clock speed of the CPU. If you’ve activated the Faster or Turbo mode, the lights on the machine will turn on and you can manually control them in the Predator Sense app. You can also lower the rpm of the fans if you feel that the machine’s too noisy.

Acer Predator Sound Blaster X-Fi MB5

The second feature we’re going to talk about is Acer Predator Sound Blaster X-Fi MB5. We recommend you download it ASAP if it isn’t already installed on your G6-710 (the app is usually pre-installed on the machine). Anyway, the app improves the gaming experience by allowing you to manually adjust the audio options of any type of game (FPS, RPG, AA, Racing, etc.) to your liking.

Acer Predator Sound Blaster X-Fi MB5 provides you with a couple of pre-set profiles and tons of manual settings. You can set the sound to 2.1, 5.1 or 7.1 channels, depending on your audio system and control the volume, bass and audio quality.

CPU

Intel Core i7-6700K was announced in Q3 of 2015 and it’s part of the 6th generation (Skylake) generation with four cores operating at a base frequency of 4.0 GHz. Thanks to the Turbo Boost feature, the chip can run at 4.2 GHz. The CPU also supports Hyper-Threading (adds one virtual core for every physical one) and the new LGA 1151 socket.

Intel Core i7-6700K has an unlocked multiplier or in other words, it’s unlocked for overclocking as long as the cooling system can handle it. Since Predator G6-710 has an implemented Turbo Boost button we didn’t have to manually mess around with the BIOS in order to overclock it.

The CPU has been manufactured using a 14nm process and supports up to 64GB of RAM. The types of RAM you can use are DDR4 clocked at 1866/2133 MHz and DDR3 clocked at 1333/1600 MHz with 1.35V voltage. The chip has 8MB of level three cache and the maximum power consumption – 91W.

The processor integrated the Intel HD Graphics 530 controller. It operates at a base frequency of 350Mhz while Turbo Boost can increase that to 1150MHz.

We ran all our test in the three available modes – Normal, Faster, and Turbo. This way we can see how overclocking the machine affects it in terms of performance.

Table 1
Benchmark test:Cinebench 11Cinebench R15NovabenchFritz
Normal 9.62 861 970 15766
Faster 10.56 952 1032 17402
Turbo 10.86 993 1064 18180

Judging by the results, we can say that the Turbo Boost button is doing its job just fine and there’s a noticeable difference in performance. You can, of course, overclock the CPU even higher, but you’ll need to set up the BIOS for that.

GPU

The GPU we found in our configuration of Predator G6-710 is GeForce GTX 970. Announced at the end of 2014, the GPU is part of NVIDIA’s latest (9th) series and has 28nm manufacturing process. The high-end graphics card has 1097MHz of base clock and boost up to 1176MHz. GTX 970 features 1664 CUDA cores, 104 texture cores and 56 ROPs. It has 2GB of dedicated VRAM (GDDR5 in this case). The bandwidth of the memory is 224GB/s and the bus is 256-bit wide. The maximum operating temperature is 98 degrees Cecius while the maximum energy consumption – 145W. The GeForce GTX 970 requires 2x 6 pin connectors for the power supply.

The GPU supports 4K resolution (4096 x 2160), with the maximum supported resolution being 5120 x 3200 pixels. If you connect a VGA port to the GPU, the resolution is limited to 2048 x 1536. GeForce GTX 970 features one Dual Link DVI-I, one HDMI 2.0 and three DisplayPort 1.2 ports.

The tests were performed in all of the available modes.

Gaming tests

We ran all tests using NVIDIA’s latest drivers for the time of the review – 359.06 WHQL.

tomb-raider-2013-wallpaper1

ModeTomb Raider (1080p, Low)Tomb Raider (1080p, Medium)Tomb Raider (1080p, Max)
Normal348 fps174 fps82 fps
Faster356 fps178 fps84 fps
Turbo363 fps180 fps88 fps

f1-2015-game

ModeF1 2015 (1080p, Low)F1 2015 (1080p, Medium)F1 2015 (1080p, Max)
Normal145 fps110 fps78 fps
Faster147 fps110 fps80 fps
Turbo148 fps112 fps81 fps

thief_4_wallpaper_by_christian2506-d5x4ppb1

ModeThief (1080p, Low)Thief (1080p, Medium)Thief (1080p, Max)
Normal93 fps89 fps76 fps
Faster98 fps94 fps78 fps
Turbo101 fps96 fps80 fps

gta-5-cover

ModeGTA 5 (1080p, Low)GTA 5 (1080p, Medium)GTA 5 (1080p, Max)
Normal177 fps80 fps33 fps
Faster183 fps81 fps33 fps
Turbo185 fps81 fps33 fps

Shadow_of_Mordor_Wikia_-_Welcome_Video (1)

ModeMiddle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (1080p, Low)Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (1080p, Medium)Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (1080p, Max)
Normal164 fps95 fps77 fps
Faster165 fps97 fps77 fps
Turbo165 fps98 fps78 fps

Conclusion

Predator G6-710 is without a doubt the king of beasts from Acer’s Predator series. The PC is a great choice for users looking for a machine with interesting and aggressive design language combined with extremely powerful hardware capable of running all of the latest games (depending on the resolution of course). The machine performed more than okay at FHD (1920 x 1080) resolution, but we’re expecting even higher results from the final product. Anyway, we really liked the Turbo button, which proved to be very useful.

The front side of the box not only looks stunning but also provides us with a couple of features. Thanks to the integrated Wi-Fi module, we were able to fully enjoy our experience on the G6-710, without being “chained” by a LAN cable.

Perhaps, the only thing that we didn’t like about the machine was its weight. The side covers were unnecessarily reinforced and the whole construction isn’t easy to move. However, we can get past this since this is a PC – not a notebook – no one expects it to be light and mobile.

If you’re interested in the price and availability of Acer Predator G6-710 check out the following link: http://amzn.to/1RcQ7cp

Pros

  • Unique and agressive design
  • Powerful hardware
  • Support for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity
  • Easy-Swap Drive
  • Turbo mode which overclocks the whole system


Cons

  • Relatively high weight

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