Acer G7700 Predator review

There's no mistaking that Acer's G7700 Predator is a PC aimed at hardcore gamers.

Gaming PCs tend to have heavily stylised cases and the most powerful components for playing the latest, most demanding games, and they also tend to be expensive. The Predator is no exception in any respect, but even if gaming is only one of the tasks you're buying a PC for, it's an exciting option.

Acer is best known as a leading laptop maker, so this is something of a departure. The Predator's eye-catching design, with its metallic orange paint job, looks like a cross between Iron Man and a Transformer. The front panel flips up on two pairs of insect-like hinges to reveal a black ribbed façade, with the two optical drives protected by jaw-like mandibles. Its appearance may be outlandish, but it's hard to dislike, and undeniably a good deal more interesting than the average PC.

Twins

Gamers will be pleased with the Predator's 3D graphics performance. This model came with two GeForce 9800 GTX graphics cards in SLI mode. It stormed through our Call of Duty 2 test at 100 frames per second - far beyond what's required for smooth gameplay. It was even quicker in Prey, at 138fps. The more demanding Call of Duty 4 maintained a solid 78fps, so the Predator should have no trouble handling even the most advanced games for some time to come. If you want even more performance, you could add a third 9800 GTX card in the remaining PCI Express x16 slot.

Everyday Windows performance hasn't been neglected. The Core 2 Quad Q9450 processor and 4GB of RAM made mincemeat of our 2D (general) benchmarks, especially the video encoding test. Short of rendering the next Pixar movie, the Predator will handle even the most punishing of tasks. 64-bit Windows is pre-installed, so all 4GB of the installed RAM can be used, with the usual caveat that some older software and hardware may not be compatible with 64-bit systems.

No monitor is included with the Predator, but there are no less than four DVI ports to add as many screens as you want. You do get a responsive Logitech laser gaming mouse and matching keyboard, which has plenty of programmable buttons. The Blu-ray drive will play the latest high definition movie discs, though it can't write to Blu-ray media, which would have been nice. It can burn all the usual CD and DVD formats.

The integrated sound chip supports a 7.1 surround sound speaker set or a surround sound amplifier. This is pretty standard, but we would have preferred a dedicated sound card with support for EAX processing, which can make audio in games sound more realistic. It isn't a critical omission, but would have been appreciated.

Total recall

Internal upgrade options are rather limited. There are no empty PCI slots for a sound card or other basic peripherals, though there is a PCI Express x1 slot that you could use for a TV tuner. Nor are there bays for more optical drives, but there are two easily accessible hard disk bays if the existing 640GB capacity isn't enough.

The flip-up cover only reveals the front panel, and actually hampers access to the works, since it first has to be unscrewed from its struts. Upgrades aside, one reason to do so is to marvel at the surprisingly compact water cooling system. This takes the place of a processor fan, and helps keep the Predator remarkably quiet, although, oddly, the northbridge chip (which handles communication between the processor and memory) has its own whiny fan, which is a missed opportunity.