Asus Announces the Release of F1A75 series Motherboards with Dip2, DIGI+ VRM and UEFI Bios Techniques

ASUS has just announced the release of their new AMD A75 chipset-based F1A75 Series motherboards. Designed specially to optimize performance for the AMD Llano APUs, the F1A75 Series motherboards have exceptional overclocking capability for the versatile APU with a variety of integrated graphics built directly on the same die. This new series is also equipped with the latest ASUS-exclusive technologies and features, including the Dual Intelligent Processors 2 (DIP2) with DIGI+ VRM* for precise power control, a graphical and mouse-controlled UEFI BIOS and the easy-to-use auto tuning for better performance.

Asus G74 Gaming laptop is ready for Preorder

If you've been Waiting for Asus' G74 gaming laptops, there is good news. Your patience for these long-awaited notebooks can now be rewarded, as there's at least one U.S.-based e-tailer accepting preorders for two G74 notebooks SKUs, the G74SX-A1 and G74SX-3DE.

Dozen X79 Motherboards!!

Of the Twelve models on display, ASUS alone have six – the C1X79, C1X79 LE, C1X79 EVO, C1X79 PRO, C1X79 Deluxe and the C1X79 Plus, which covers most of their standard P67 launch model names. We have one from Sapphire (PB-C17X79N), one from ECS (X79R-A), one from ASRock (X79 Extreme4), and three from MSI (GD65, GD70 and GD80) also.

Up Close with ASUS UX Series with SanDisk's U100 SSD

I met with SanDisk earlier today and to my surprise they had an ASUS UX Ultrabook in their meeting room. It turns out that at least one model in the UX Series will use SanDisk's brand new U100 SSD.
 The U100 is SanDisk's first 6Gbps drive based on SanDisk's own controller. SanDisk's architecture is a little different than what we're used to. They claim to be doing some SandForce-like data reduction but they wouldn't give me any details on what they're actually doing. The controller doesn't have any DRAM to augment it, which lends credibility to some SF-like technology at work here. SanDisk wrote us to clarify that its U100 drive doesn't require any DRAM, which is the only similarity to SandForce that exists. There is no real-time compression or data deduplication enabled on the drive.

 SanDisk also uses a hybrid SLC/MLC setup where a small percentage of each MLC NAND die is actually configured as SLC NAND to act as a read/write cache in front of the rest of the die. This results in better random write performance and reliability.
 The U100 in ASUS' UX Series notebook is a mSATA drive in a MacBook Air-like thin gumstick form factor. SanDisk is promising idle power usage of only 10mW, although peak load is 4W.
 Maximum sequential read speed is listed at 450MB/s, with 340MB/s writes. Random performance isn't that good, SanDisk quotes a burst speed of only 2300 IOPS. That's still a lot better than a hard drive but definitely not as good as what we're used to from high end SSDs. Keep in mind that the UX Series is more like a MacBook Air than a traditional notebook, and these are much better performance specs than what Apple currently ships in the MBA.

ASUS ET2700 All-In-One: Taking A Crack At the 27" iMac

Rounding out Asus’s Computex 2011 day one announcements is the ET2700, the company’s first 27 inch all-in-one PC.

The prototype had previously been on display at CeBIT, but it’s getting its final announcement at Computex. The formal press release isn’t out yet so we don’t have the full specs, but Asus has published their photos of the PC. We do know it’s advertised to have a 178 degree viewing angle, so expect an IPS panel similar to the 27” iMac.

However its defining feature will be the fact that the monitor is in fact a capacitive touchscreen, meaning the ET2700 is fully capable of utilizing Windows 7’s touch capabilities. Going with a touchscreen is a logical progression from what Apple has done with the iMac, but it’s also a bit risky since it evokes the well-known “gorilla arm” problem. So we’ll have to see what Asus has in mind to combat this.

The ASUS Padfone: A Smartphone That Docks into a Tablet

Given that the two platforms generally share the same hardware, it seems to make sense. ASUS has heard your calls and today announced its Padfone, and no, I'm not joking about the name.

Building off of the expertise with the Eee Pad Transformer, the Padfone is a smartphone that's dockable into a tablet. The intelligence is entirely inside the ph...er fone part, the pad is strictly a display and extended capacity battery.

ASUS didn't announce anything on availability, internal specs or even what OS it would run. In one shot ASUS had a Windows interface and in another shot it had a Honeycomb interface. Clearly this is a work in progress but it's an interesting concept. Update: ASUS tells us that the Padfone will run Android and that the Windows interface was simply a mistake in the demo video.