Acer Predator G6-710 Review
Category : PCs
Published by Marc Büchel on 09.12.15
With their Predator G6-710, Acer has an eye-catching system in its protfolio, which features fast hardware. There is for example an Intel Core i7-6700K, which can be overclocked to 4.6GHz by the touch of a button as well as an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 graphics card. Apart from that Acer also equips this rig with a rather big 512GB SSD. At this point we're now curious to find out how this system does in our full review.
We’re pretty confident everybody here knows Acer. The company with its headquarters in Taiwan has been building PCs for decades and they’ve a vast product portfolio offering anything from PCs, to displays to tablets and much more. Today we’re going to have a look at their new Acer Predator G6-710 high-end system. This rig is mainly targeted towards gamers but it thanks to the specs/performance it could also be used as a workstation. Already at this point we want to underline that Acer bundles the Predator G6 with a SteelSeries Apex Raw gaming keyboard and a SteelSeries Sensei laser gaming mouse. Both, the keyboard as well as the mouse are great gaming devices and really nice addition to any gaming PC.
Preview
Specifications / Chassis
| CPU | Intel i7-6700K Overclocked 4.60GHz (Turbo Button) | Intel i7-6700K Overclocked 4.60GHz (Turbo Button) |
| Cooler | Acer IceTunnel | Acer IceTunnel |
| Motherboard | Acer Custom mATX, Z170 Express | Acer Custom mATX, Z170 Express |
| Memory | 32GB DDR4-2133 SK-Hynix | 8GB DDR4-2133 SK-Hynix |
| Graphics card | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Reference | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Reference |
| Hard drive | 1 x 1TB 3.5'' 7200rpm SATA-III | 1 x 1TB 3.5'' 7200rpm SATA-III |
| SSD | 1 x Lite-On 512GB (Model: CV1-8B512) | 1 x Lite-On 128GB (Model: CV1-8B128) |
| ODD | 12x Blu-ray Combo Drive | 16x Multi Drive (DVD) |
| Power supply | FSP 80Plus Gold 750Watt | FSP 80Plus Gold 750Watt |
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| Case | Acer Predator | Acer Predator |
| Keyboard | SteelSeries Apex Raw Gaming Keyboard | - |
| Mouse | SteelSeries Sensei Laser Gaming Mouse | - |
| Drivers | NVIDIA ForceWare 359.06 | NVIDIA ForceWare 359.06 |
| OS | Windows 10 x64 | Windows 10 x64 |
| MSRP | CHF 2'799.- | CHF 1'799.- |
In the case of the Predator G6-710 we’re having here for review one should keep in mind that this is a system from one of this worlds largest system builders and this is no custom build from a large or medium system integrator, who specialized on building custom systems. Therefore we will not be comparing the Predator G6-710 to any custom system since this would be like comparing apples and pears or in other words pointless.
Acer shipped the Predator G6-710 nicely and well packed. The system arrived in perfect condition via post. Opening up the cardboard box reveals large styrofoam protection, which has been put over the system in order to provide best possible protection. Also at this point we see the warranty terms as well as a quick setup manual in the shape of a banner. After having the styrofoam removed we find the system packed in protective plastic bag. On one side of the PC there is a SteelSeries Apex Raw gaming keyboard and on the other there is a SteelSeries Sensei laser gaming mouse. We have to mention we were very positively surprised to find high-end gaming hardware in this box. If we’d wanted to complain on a very high level we could ask why Acer didn’t include a mechanical gaming keyboard in the delivery, which would have been even better. The reason for that might quite obviously the final price of the system since those two peripherals already cost approximately 130 Euro if you were to buy them separately.
Taking this rig out of the box and removing the protective plastic bag we seen the enclosure with it’s caterpillar like plastic outer hull. Apparently design is always subjective and while reviewing the Predator G6-710 we found you either love or hate its looks and there isn’t much in between. Focusing on build and material quality we notice that while lifting the case out of the box there is absolutely no squeaking noise at all. This is a solid hint that high-quality materials have been used and the build fits tightly and firmly everywhere. Apart from that there are rather thick, double-walled side panels, which feature integrated lighting. To a certain extent these panels also offer noise isolation. Talking about the lighting: Acer equipped this system with a Turbo button, once pressed the automatic overclocking kicks in and the silhouette of the starts to glow red.
A quick look at the front reveals there are two USB3.0 connectors as well as two 3.5mm audio jacks and a card reader. Nicely hidden behind a cover we find the Blu-ray drive and furthermore there is a lash to hold your headset. In this case I would make quite a lot of sense if you put this system on a desk to benefit from the front I/O connectors as well as the support bar for your headset.
Meanwhile it’s about time to have a close look at the components Acer is using for their Predator. In the case of the processor there is an Intel Core i7-6700K Skylake CPU. Although the maximum standard clock speed of this CPU is 4.2 GHz the vendor decided to lock it down to 4.0 GHz. Fortunately there is the Turbo button which sets the multiplier to 46 and therefore overclocked the CPU to up to 4.6 GHz. Apart from that the CPU automatically changes the voltages so the system remains stable. During our load tests we noticed that the aircooled CPU is capable of maintaining 4.6 GHz when there are four or less threads under full load. Using the Turbo mode while gaming will not make the CPU throttle, since today’s games, don’t generate that much load on CPUs. Instead they really demand a lot from graphics cards. Talking about pixel accelerators, Acer equipped this system with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 reference card, which is a solid choice for any high-end gaming machine. The card packs plenty of punch to run games a high resolution and max details. A quick look in the memory department shows a whopping 32 Gigabyte of RAM. This is more than enough and one could argue that this is either too much or it makes this setup future proof. In the case of the system drive Acer decided to put a 512 Gigabyte M.2 SSD from Lite-On into this system. We like the size of the drive, since it allows you to have all games you actually play on the system drive. Nevertheless we would have loved to see a Samsung SM951 M.2 SSD, since this particular drive is almost four times faster at basically the same price. If you want to store some movies as well as music on your gaming rig, then there is a 1 Terabyte HDD, which runs at 7200rpm. Last but not least we had a look at the power supply unit and we find an 80Plus Gold certified unit from FSP. Opening it up we see it’s based on a highly cost optimized platform and we really would like to see Acer not saving money on the PSU.
Test Setup
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3DMark
| Score | Graphic Score | |
| Acer Predator G6-710 Performance | 14'964 | 16'561 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 14'938 | 16'534 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 Extreme | 7'478 | 7'637 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 7'483 | 7'648 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 Ultra | 3'843 | 3'670 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 3'851 | 3'677 |
Fire Strike Physix
| Points | |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 17'426 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 17'280 |
UCBench
| Points | |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 1'661.1 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 1'518.7 |
XTU (Intel Extreme Tuning Utility)
| Points | |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 1'719 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 1'543 |
Cinebench R15
| Points | |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 1'281 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 1'172 |
HWBot Prime
| Points | |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 7'175.04 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 6'458.09 |
Blackhole Benchmark Multithreaded
Single Thread
| Points | |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 3'440 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 3'148 |
4 Threads
| Points | |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 4'432 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 4'056 |
Multithreaded
| Points | |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 12'984 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 11'738 |
Overall
| Points | |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 20'856 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 18'942 |
WinRAR
| WinRAR | Points |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 16'813 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 15'402 |
Frybench
| Points | |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 2'709 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 2'462 |
Games
| Battlefield 4 | Average FPS |
| Acer Predator G6-710 1080p | 102.31 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 100.44 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 1440p | 70.69 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 61.36 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 2160p | 37.83 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 36.06 |
| GRID Autosport |
Average FPS |
| Acer Predator G6-710 1080p | 108.06 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 105.53 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 1440p | 84.18 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 85.42 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 2160p | 56.67 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 58.61 |
| Metro Last Light |
Average FPS |
| Acer Predator G6-710 1080p | 70.00 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 69.70 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 1440p | 43.33 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 43.71 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 2160p | 21.00 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 20.60 |
| Thief |
Average FPS |
| Acer Predator G6-710 1080p | 84.05 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 84.90 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 1440p | 63.46 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 62.80 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 2160p | 34.23 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 34.10 |
| Tomb Raider |
Average FPS |
| Acer Predator G6-710 1080p | 64.54 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 66.80 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 1440p | 40.08 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 41.10 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 2160p | 18.75 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 18.50 |
| Watch Dogs |
Average FPS |
| Acer Predator G6-710 1080p | 68.76 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 68.45 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 1440p | 45.81 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 44.94 |
| Acer Predator G6-710 2160p | 23.18 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 23.12 |
SSD
Crystal Disk Mark
| Read MB/s | Write MB/s | |
| Sequential QD32 - Predator G6-710 | 560.8 | 455.7 |
| Sequential QD32 - ocaholic Reference Samsung 850 Pro 256GB | 553.7 | 521.2 |
| Random 4K QD32 T1 - Predator G6-710 | 310.2 | 312.0 |
| Random 4K QD32 T1 - ocaholic Reference Samsung 850 Pro 256GB | 399.4 | 363.3 |
| Random 4K QD1 - Predator G6-710 | 34.64 | 120.4 |
| Random 4K QD1 - ocaholic Reference Samsung 850 Pro 256GB | 42.46 | 163.4 |
Acer equipped its Predator G6-710 with a quick M.2 SSD, which they buy from Lite-On and offers 512 Gigabyte capacity. Next to the SSD there is also a 1 Terabyte hard drive offering additional storage space. The SSD with Marvell controller is capable of sequentially writing 455.7 MB/s and sequential reads top out at 560.8 MB/s. Therefore the CV1-8B512 from Lite-On is about as quick as a recent SATA-III SSD.
Power Consumption
| Power Consumption Load (Idle)* | Watts |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 48 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 68 |
| *Entire system | Less is better |
| Power Consumption Load (FurMark)* | Watts |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 365 |
| Ocaholic Reference i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980 | 295 |
| *Entire system | Less is better |
Noise Level
Acer equipped its Predator G6-710 with a total of three fans. One fan is located on the CPU heatsink, another one has been screwed to the back of the case and the third one is in the power supply unit. When the system is running in idle the noise level can be described as subjectively speaking audible but not disturbing. Once we’ve put the system under full load the fans occasionally start to spin up causing the noise level to go all the way up to 47.0 dBA, which is subjectively speaking loud.
Messwerte
| Temperature | Idle | Full |
| Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.0 GHz | 32 / 30 / 29 / 30 | 81 / 81 / 79 / 80 |
| Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.6 GHz | 32 / 30 / 29 / 30 | 90 / 89 / 88 / 89 |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Reference | 40 | 82 |
| Noise Level | Idle | Load |
| Acer Predator G6-710 | 37.3 dBA | 47.0 dBA |
| Less is better | ||
With ambient temperatures at 23°C, we measured reasonable temperatures regarding processor and graphics card, using Prime95 64bit and FurMark for stress testing purposes.
Conclusion
Should you be looking for a well performing high-end PC, which is capable of running recent games at 1440p and even at UHD (low detail level), then the Acer Predator G6-710 is a solid machine. In our tests it performed accordingly.
We like the fact that there is a Turbo button, which automatically overclocks the CPU to 4.6 GHz. Like this you gain some extra performance, which is always nice to have. If you don’t hit the Turbo button Acer locked the max CPU frequency down to 4.0 GHz, although the i7-6700K used in this system would do 4.2 GHz. When using the Turbo we also noticed that there is thermal throttling when we put load on all cores. Luckily there wasn’t any throttling while playing games.
Acer equipped this system with a quick M.2 SSD and in combination with Windows 10 64 Bit we see quick boot-up times. Apart from the rather big 512GB SSD there is a 1 Terabyte HDD offering additional storage space.
We were actually a bit surprised about the noise level of this system. As long as the Predator G6-710 runs in idle the noise level is overall ok, but when you’re using the Turbo mode and put load on the CPU, then the rig can become subjectively loud, since the fans start to spin very high in regular intervals. When you’re playing games with a headset on this is not really a big deal, but should you be rendering something you might want your PC to be more silent.
Last but not least let’s have a look at the price. The Acer Predator G6-710 comes with an MSRP of CHF 2’799. For this kind of money you get a well performing gaming system and included in the delivery there is a very good gaming keyboard as well as a very good gaming mouse from SteelSeries. We really like this addition and it shows that Acer is serious about targeting gamers with this rig.
The Acer Predator G6-710 receives good 4 out of 5 stars.
Buy Acer Predator G6-710 at:
- Brack Electronics - Acer Predator G6-710 i7-6700K, 64GB RAM, 512GB SSD, GTX 980 - CHF 3'199.-
- Fust - Acer Predator G6-710 i7-6700K, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD, GTX 980 - CHF 2'699.-
- Digitec - Acer Predator G6-710 i7-6700K, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD, GTX 980 - CHF 2'599.-
- Interdiscout - Acer Predator G6-710 i7-6700K, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD, GTX 980 - CHF 2'799.-
- Steg Electronics - Acer Predator G6-710 i7-6700K, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, GTX 980 - CHF 2'469.-
