Displaying items by tag: Asus

Asus has introduced an interesting external sound card named Xonar U7, which is connected to the computer via USB interface. The card is not in the Asus ROG product line, so the company has not targeted this product solely at the gamers but also at the fans of music and movies.

Asus likes to boast with speed records they achieve with their own computer components. The latest of them relates to the company's version of the monstrous GeForce GTX Titan, the most powerful graphics card with one GPU that money can currently buy.

The third generation of Intel ultrabooks, based on the Haswell processors, will be available to customers in three price categories. Ultrabooks based on Intel's concept so far mainly belonged to the upper market segment, while the division into categories could make choice easier on customer, and help manufacturers to increase sales.

Today Anandtech had an announcement from Intel about a reduction to their desktop motherboard business with a ramp down planned over the next three years. This means that Intel will begin to bow out of this market slowly with an expected exit sometime around 2016. Intel will continue to work with third party manufacturers in the design and build of their boards including the development of reference boards for new form factors (like the one used for the Next Unit of Computing).  The question is; what will this mean to both Intel and the rest of the desktop market? In truth it means very little to the majority of the market, but it is significant in many ways.

Manufacturers of hardware components are not expecting a significant recovery of the PC market over the next year. Asus and Gigabyte, both leading manufacturer of motherboards, have said that in 2013 they expect an equal or slightly lower number of deliveries of motherboards than was the case this year.

According to some rumors, Google wants to offer a tablet for those with shallower pockets, priced at around $99. The tablet would be similar to the current Nexus 7, produced by Asus, but it would have weaker hardware. How did we reach the hardware characteristics? On the web appeared a GLBenchmark for a certain tablet under the name "Asus ME172V", which some consider to be a future entry-level Nexus 7 (or one that has been assigned the name) from Asus’ workshops.

Google’s tiny 7-inch tablet with Android has launched a new trend in this market. Although not completely a new idea, having Google’s official stamp on the 7-inch device and Apple’s inadvertent support of the form factor with the iPad mini have given the smaller tablets a boost. With a starting price of $199 it was a very interesting trade for customers, but so far no official sale numbers have been released. Now Asustek’s CFO has finally given a hint about the figures and they are pretty good for the Nexus 7. With decent competition coming from the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD ($199) and Apple's 7.9-inch iPad mini ($329); Google will not have an easy time in the market, but at least customers will have decent choices.

With all of the news around Windows 8 and Microsoft’s Surface tablet many might have missed out on a small report that went around. In this report it was revealed that manufacturers like Qualcomm Texas Instrument, Samsung and more were having issues getting drivers working for Windows RT. We covered it and found that in more than a few cases the information was pretty spot on. We know that Acer decided to focus on x86 based products instead of opting for ARM due to technical difficulties. The issue which has slowed some OEM’s Windows RT progress was also used in the many reports that Microsoft was showing OEMs how it’s done.

Since the first day AMD presented the AMD Radeon 7850 2GB graphic card, code name “Pitcairn”, they surprised the industry with its performance, abilities, technology and efficiency that put them in front of the rivals. The 7850 series has around 40% better performance when compared to its predecessor (the 6850) when running at higher resolutions. The HD 7850 is based on 28nm GCN Pitcairn GPU with 1024 stream processord and 256bit memory interface.

In the enthusiast world you can never seem to have enough power or enough headroom for your system. Although you might hear rumors of the “post PC” era or that the desktop is dead nothing could be further from the truth with regards to Asus and their Republic of Gamers line up of boards. We have covered a number of these going all the way back to before the ROG line was even established and can tell you that when it comes to this line Asus spares no expense in components or research and development. Today we have the ROG Rampage IV Formula in the lab and will be covering the design, features and component choices that Asus has made with this this board and across the entire ROG line.