The Predator is back – Acer’s gaming PC gets updated with Intel Haswell & Nvidia graphics

By Meghan McDonough Published June 3, 2013

Acer-Predator-G3_straight-kb-mouse_dt — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Gamers are a finicky bunch when it comes to looks. While some love the flare of rainbow-lit keyboards and tower lighting schemes, others eschew fancy lights for pure power and greater affordability. For gamers who prefer an understated look with a lot of power, Acer might have just the tower for you. The company just announced the newest update in its Predator desktop gaming PC at Computex. The redesigned Predator tower has a new, stealth look in sleek black with red-orange detail on the front of the tower and an embossed “Predator” logo along the side. Looks are nice, but it’s what’s inside that really counts, right? Right?

Acer packs the Predator AG3-605-UR20 with a new 3.4GHz Intel Core i7-4770 processor capable of clocking up to 3.9GHz. That’s coupled with an Nvidia GeForce GTX660 graphics card with 1.5GB of video memory. As we noted in our review of the previous Predator model, the included Radeon graphics card wasn’t quite fast enough for our gaming preferences. Hopefully, the switch to this new Nvidia card will make a significant difference, though with 500MB less of allocated video memory, we have to wonder how great the impact of the different video card will be.

Acer-Predator-G3_right_dt — Image used with permission by copyright holder

One spec we’re happy to see hasn’t changed with this model’s configuration is the very generous 32GB of RAM that’s included. Acer’s upped the hard drive on the new Predator, upping the storage to 3TB – a 1TB increase from the previous generation.

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The switch to Intel’s Haswell processor line and the Nvidia graphics card has bumped the price up slightly to $1,499, but that’s still a decent price for a gaming rig, especially considering the ginormous 3TB hard drive and 32GB of RAM.

Meghan McDonough

Contributor

Meghan J. McDonough is a Chicago-based purveyor of consumer technology and music. She previously wrote for LAPTOP Magazine…

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