Acer’s New Swift 3X Notebook, with Intel Iris Xᵉ MAX Discrete Graphics, from $900
by Dr. Ian Cutress on October 21, 2020 9:45 AM ESTAt Acer’s global press conference today, one of the hot ticket items was the announcement of an upcoming laptop featuring an Intel’s discrete graphics option. The new Intel Xe graphics architecture, which debuted in Intel 11th Gen Tiger Lake notebook processors, is now set to see the launch of an additional higher power discrete graphics option and coming to notebooks first. One of those devices will be the Acer Swift 3X, with both Tiger Lake and discrete Xe MAX inside.
The Swift 3X (SF314-510G) is a notebook with a 14-inch 1080p IPS display, peaking at 300 nits brightness, and will be offered with up to 16 GB of LPDDR4X memory as well as 512 GB of Optane+QLC or up to 1 TB of NVMe storage. The unit will have Wi-Fi 6 support, and is rated for up to 17.5 hours battery life. Weight tips the scales at 3 lbs.
This device seems like a typical Swift 3-esque notebook, with a backlit chicklet keypad, a good sized trackpad, a fingerprint scanner, good bezels, and a webcam up top. The hinge mechanism lifts the laptop up slightly to create some additional airflow. There is a HDMI output, two full sized USB Type-A, and a Type-C that could be Thunderbolt but it is unclear.
Processor options are the top line Intel Core i7-1165G7 or Core i5-1135G7 – there’s no direct indication about what power level these are set to (a drawback of Intel’s non-fixed TDP marketing messaging), so these could very well be 12 W models with 1.2 GHz base frequency.
All that information aside, what you’re really after is the Intel Iris Xe MAX discrete graphics information – core counts, frequencies, power consumption, that sort of thing. Unfortunately Acer hasn’t released any additional information here – the chassis looks sturdy enough that it can handle some extra wattage above the 12 W suggested for Tiger Lake at least.
What you might be shocked to find out is that this model is due for release in China by the end of the month. This might be because entry level discrete graphics options are more favored in the APAC market. We’ve asked Acer if they can expand on reasoning here – it may very well be supply chain oriented due to the pandemic.
Acer plans to launch the unit in China first in October, Europe in November, and North America in December. Prices will start at $900 / €850 / 4999 RMB.
Related Reading
- Intel’s Tiger Lake 11th Gen Core i7-1185G7 Review and Deep Dive: Baskin’ for the Exotic
- Intel Launches 11th Gen Core Tiger Lake: Up to 4.8 GHz at 50 W, 2x GPU with Xe
- Seeing Is Believing: Intel Teases DG1 Discrete Xe GPU With Laptop
- What Products Use Intel 10nm? SuperFin and 10++ Demystified
- The Acer Nitro 5 Review: Renoir And Turing On A Budget
- The Acer Swift 3 SF314 Notebook Review: Swift Gets Swifter With Ryzen 4000
- Acer Launches Cheap USB-C Monitor for Laptops: The 15.6-Inch Acer PM1
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Teckk - Wednesday, October 21, 2020 - link
Also, does it use the Intel 1W display? 17.5 hours of battery life sounds very good.AshlayW - Wednesday, October 21, 2020 - link
GTX 1050 Ti topsUNCjigga - Wednesday, October 21, 2020 - link
I think I read somewhere that GTX 1650/1660 is the performance target for DG1--which would still blow MX 250/350 out of the water. But the mobile Xe MAX may be memory bandwidth starved as it uses LPDDR4X vs. GDDR6. We'll see soon enough.IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, October 21, 2020 - link
The DG1 you are thinking of uses GDDR6 memory, so it has much higher bandwidth.This Iris Xe Max uses LPDDR4X. It doesn't have to share with the CPU, but as AshlayW says the peak performance can't be better than the 1050 Ti mobile.
Unless it can work with the iGPU.
UNCjigga - Wednesday, October 21, 2020 - link
Verge says the Type-C connector is in fact Thunderbolt 4. I'm still unclear as to whether Thunderbolt 4 is forwards/backwards compatible with USB 4--or if that requires a software/firmware update--or if USB 4 is entirely different (is it supported in the chipset?)DigitalFreak - Wednesday, October 21, 2020 - link
Thunderbolt 4 is a superset of USB 4. It includes everything in USB 4 and adds to it. It's built into the Tiger Lake CPUs.twotwotwo - Wednesday, October 21, 2020 - link
Swift 3 is apparently the new sleeper laptop: a model with the 4800U and another with Intel's shiny new graphics, both under $1k.yankeeDDL - Wednesday, October 21, 2020 - link
I am a die-hard AMD fan, but this looks interesting. That battery life, a decent GPU, and with 512GB of SSD finally (Optane, on top of everything). $900 does not sound bad at all. Qhen are we going to see a review?Spunjji - Thursday, October 22, 2020 - link
Part-Optane - I'm guessing it's the H10. Still not a bad proposition, if the GPU can deliver - big IF there, though.Mil0 - Thursday, October 22, 2020 - link
AMD will prob announce either Van Gogh, Cezanne or both around CES - esp van Gogh has a good chance of making the Xe Max and the MX 350 obsolete.