ASUS @ Computex 2011 - ROG Launch & Booth Highlights

While yesterday's press-con was all about ASUS' consumer electronics division, it's the ROG brand that gets the star treatment at this morning's launch event. We got to see new, high-end ROG motherboards, graphics cards, notebooks and even a gaming headset. We also checked out the rest of ASUS' products at its Computex booth.

By Vincent Chang - 31 May 2011

More High Performance Gear from ASUS' ROG

Who says ASUS' CE arm gets all the fun? The Padfone may have grabbed all the headlines yesterday with its unique take on the hot tablet and smartphone segments, but ASUS' ROG team too had prepared a product launch featuring the brand's latest motherboards, graphics cards, gaming notebooks and peripherals. All these new, high performance products were unleashed to the media earlier today.

As a brand, ROG has a relatively short history of five years, but all signs are there that ROG is rapidly expanding from its original motherboard products. Graphics cards and notebooks have followed and the latest member of the ROG family is the Vulcan, a gaming headset with active noise-cancelling technology.

Gamers will fully appreciate the pair of gaming headphones here, with the active noise cancelling technology suitable for a noisy LAN environment.

The Vulcan is clad in the now-familiar red and black colors of the ROG brand. We tried the active noise cancelling at ASUS' booth and it worked decently to block out the hubbub at Nangang.

While the media politely applauded the new Vulcan gaming headphones, the stars of ROG are undoubtedly the motherboards. There was near pandemonium among the media when ASUS revealed its mystery product, a conceptual motherboard codenamed Danshui Bay. An audacious idea, Danshui Bay puts two generations of CPU and memory architectures on the same board, with Intel's Socket LGA1366, X58 chipset sharing PCB with its upcoming Socket LGA 2011, X79 chipset. We really can't imagine how ASUS will pull this off.

Tech journalists do good impersonations of the paparazzi when required, like when they try to scope out ASUS' conceptual motherboard, Danshui Bay.

In case you're still wondering, there's no guarantee that ASUS will actually build such a motherboard. It's just a concept at the moment, but we'll certainly give ASUS top marks for its engineering prowess should it succeed in merging two chipsets with two distinct sockets and memory architectures on a single platform.

Of course, there were plenty of ROG motherboards that are actually shipping, with ASUS updating the ROG series with some of the latest chipsets, with two ROG boards based on the new Intel Z68 Express chipset and one based on AMD's 990FX.

The ROG Crosshair V Formula is the latest version of ASUS' top AMD motherboard. Now with AMD's 990FX chipset onboard, this new board supports both 3-way NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFireX. It also comes with the ROG ThunderBolt audio and LAN combo expansion card, which integrates a Xonar audio solution with a headphone amplifier for better gaming audio performance and a Bigfoot Networks' Killer NIC for lower CPU utilization during network gaming. Which just means more CPU for your games.

With two dual-slot graphics cards installed, one can barely see the latest ROG motherboard, the Maximus IV Extreme-Z. Notice the 'Z' suffix to represent its Z68 chipset. If Intel keeps releasing new chipsets every six months, ASUS will run out of names for its Intel based ROG boards.

Here's the Maximus IV Extreme-Z without the installed components. It supports both NVIDIA SLI and CrossFireX of course, along with Lucid Virtu for switchable graphics and Quick Sync support.

From the number of blue USB ports, there seem to be many USB 3.0 ports on the Extreme-Z.

The other ROG Maximus IV board is the Gene-Z, which like the Extreme-Z, is based on the Z68 chipset. It's a mATX board that continues the ROG Gene tradition, which should delight those who like their systems small and powerful. As you can see, huge graphics cards aren't an issue for this board.

Surprisingly, this ASUS Z68 motherboard was on display besides the other ROG boards. At least it's a pretty high-end model.

Then there's the ROG graphics cards, with the dual GTX 580 monster, Mars II, given an airing too. This card comes with three 8-pin power connectors and take up three slots. With the presence of two, true GTX 580 cores, the Mars II technically has a higher overclocking headroom than NVIDIA's own dual GPU card, the GTX 590.

A real heavyweight of a graphics card, the dual GPU, Mars II.

The ROG Matrix GTX 580 graphics card here boasts of greater overclocking headroom, with ASUS offering a number of proprietary utilities to assist in this process. ASUS' DirectCU II cooler is used, which is supposed to lead to 20% cooler operation than the reference card.

The Safe Mode button here on the Matrix GTX 580 is a fail-safe for those who like to tweak their clocks and voltages.

The new GPU Tweak tool allows users to adjust the clock, fan and voltages in real-time, making it extremely easy to overclock.

The ROG Systems

ASUS' ROG gaming notebooks have gotten more polished with each iteration and the latest versions unveiled by ASUS come with cutting edge features, from quad-core processors to 3D displays. NVIDIA's GTX 560M graphics are found on the two different models we saw today, the ROG G74Sx 3D and the G53Sx. While the G74Sx 3D uses the familiar NVIDIA 3D Vision that requires active 3D glasses, the 3D technology on the G53Sx does not.

The 15-inch ASUS G53Sx was showing off a 3D version of this Tomb Raider game. The best thing is that no 3D glasses are required. As for the specs of this laptop, it uses an Intel 2nd-gen Core processor, with options for Blu-ray drive and up to 16GB of memory.

One of the common issues with glassless 3D is the limited viewing angle. While the 3D technology on the G53Sx only works for one user, the technology makes use of the camera on the notebook to track faces and hence shift the 3D effect as you move your head. It just means that no matter where you sit, you'll always get the 3D effect.

The larger G74Sx 3D comes with a thermal design where the rear exhaust vent out the warm air behind the display. This ensures that users won't feel the heat coming back to their hands on the backlit keyboard and also reduces the noise level slightly. ASUS will reveal more details later this month.

ASUS also affirmed its confidence and commitment to the desktop PC with a new ROG gaming desktop system. The pre-made ROG CG8565 may have a name that's hard to remember but its angular, matte black exterior, which reminded us of stealth ships and aircraft, will stick in the minds of gamers. Powered by an Intel Sandy Bridge Core i7 processor with a Z68 motherboard, this system comes with ASUS' auto-overclocking utility where one can get up to 4.2GHz just by pressing a button. It also comes with ASUS Xonar sound card. Perhaps the P8Z68 Deluxe motherboard that we saw earlier is found inside this desktop PC.

The ROG CG8565 gaming desktop looks impressive and follows the same angular, stealth theme present on the ROG notebooks.

USB 3.0 ports appear to be available on the front panel. You can press a button on the front chassis to reveal the 3.5-inch drive bays.

Like many modern chassis, the power supply unit is located at the bottom, which not only anchors the chassis with its weight, but it helps with thermal isolation and airflow.

ASUS' ROG has come a long way since its inception and the company is committed to expanding the brand even further, as evident from these new products.

ASUS Booth Highlights - Part 1

All the new products we saw at ASUS' two events can be found at its Computex booth at Taipei's Nangang exhibition hall. We went down to find out what ASUS had to show visitors and here are the highlights.

The ASUS Padfone was again the center of attention at the booth, with a huge display helping its cause.

For those who missed it, the Padfone aims to merge the smartphone and tablet form factors, with a tablet dock that holds the smartphone within. Seamless and dynamic data and app transfers are the goal, with the tablet providing extra battery life for the smartphone when connected.

The tablet that you can actually buy and touch and try for yourself is the Eee Pad Transformer and there were plenty of units available for visitors to experience at ASUS' booth.

The US$399 ASUS Eee Pad Transformer got a Best Choice award at this year's Computex.

ASUS' UX series of ultraportables garnered much attention but the rest of ASUS' U series are worthy of consideration too. They are all under 1-inch thick and boast up to 10 hours of battery life.

The 13.3-inch ASUS U36 comes with a standard voltage, second-gen Intel Core processor and an NVIDIA GT520M graphics processor with 1GB of memory. It weighs just 1.44kg thanks to its aluminum magnesium alloy lid and ASUS claims the battery can last up to 10 hours.

This 23.6-inch ASUS ET2410INTS AIO has a full HD display along with a Core i5-2400S processor and an NVIDIA GTX540M graphics chip. A Blu-ray drive is present and USB 3.0 ports are available.

ASUS appears to be refocusing on the LCD/LED monitor business in recent months and this professional grade 24-inch PA246Q is an example. It has a 24-inch 1920 x 1200 IPS panel with a wide color gamut that covers 98% of AdobeRGB. The screen can be tilted and pivoted and the height can be adjusted.

ASUS first showed off this O!Play 3D Blu-ray player at CeBIT and it's another example of the company expanding its CE portfolio.

The latest in ASUS' line of O!Play HD media player is the Gallery, which was announced in April. This full HD media player is touted to enable easy transfer of media content from the PC to the TV, supports SATA 6Gbps HDDs and USB 3.0.

ASUS Booth Highlights - Part 2

Motherboards featuring AMD's latest 9-series chipsets, along with Intel's Sandy Bridge compatible chipsets were also prominently displayed at ASUS' booth. We saw an early Intel X79 sample that does not appear to be the final cut. AMD's chipsets were well represented too, with motherboards for the higher end FX processors and mainstream ones for the A-Series APU (Llano).