NCIX Tech Fair Booth Review 4 - ASUS Nvidia Galaxy
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,061 words · ~10 min read
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welcome to the ASUS Booth so I know in my preview I said ASUS had a wide
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variety of products here but I only showed like one motherboard no no no no
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no they have more stuff than that ASUS is involved in everything from monitors
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to allinone PCS notebooks tablets motherboards video cards networking even
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cases I think although not really in North America so let's have a look at
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what they got here number one they have a g53s so this is part of their gaming
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series that is also uh populated by the
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g74 which is the 17 or rather yeah the
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17-in version this is the 15-in version these are I've actually done an unboxing
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of a g53 at one point so these are super beefy gaming machines with huge cooling
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vents at the back and basically the Republic of Gamers edition of what a
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notebook would be next we've got the ASUS Transformer Pad TF300 so this is
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kind of a lower cost version of the Transformer Prime it uses a plastic back
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instead of the metal back and personally I actually prefer this I've talked about
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the Galaxy Tab 10.1 how I like the plastic back because you don't worry
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about scratching it or like staining it with your
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fingerprints this makes sense to me uh right the mobile dock that goes
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with it so the mobile dock adds not only a keyboard and additional expansion
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including not that but ah USB as well as
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an SD slot but it also adds additional battery life so when you dock you can
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have up to to 15 hours of battery life between the battery that's in here and
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the battery that's in here together it also has a touchpad which you can use to
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navigate the Android OS that's on it finally the Zen book so the Zen book is
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one that I actually did a full NCI Tech tips episode on and at that time the
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Zenbook had a bit of a quirk where down
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here the touchpad was non-responsive you can see with the latest Zenbook the
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mouse cursor is moving can you see that the mouse cursor is moving even though
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I'm touching all of the touchpad it continues to move just fine so the Zen
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book the one problem that I might have had with it gone let's move around to
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the other side of the
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AC here we've got one of their all-in ones this is also something that I've
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done video coverage of in the past although I had Windows 8 preview running
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on it it looks like they've only got Windows 7 so my video is definitely
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cooler from last time than this one but it's a pretty neat little all-in-one
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machine it's on my CX Tech tips Chan
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we've also got a couple of their uh of their high-end networking products
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including a wireless router here as well as another other more different wireless
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router here so this is the RT n66u Dark Knight this is a phenomenally popular
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router at NC right now I actually don't know too much about it myself but I can
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tell you we're selling a lot of them and they aren't coming back so that's as
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strong an endorsement as there can be on the other side of the ASUS board our
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board Booth we have their motherboard so we have everything from their ramp our
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Republic of Gamers Maximus 5 Gene so this is basically all of the features
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that you would find in a full-size ATX gaming machine except in a mini or Micro
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ATX form factor so that is SLI and Crossfire compatible compatibility
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awesome cooling all the io that you could possibly need except for that
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additional three expansion slots we've also got the saber-tooth z77 which I
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think I've covered pretty early already it looks like some of the dust covers have walked off but uh yeah one of them
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still on here that's where one of the fans goes that's where the other fan goes so it's got their thermal armor
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which allows you to basically keep all the components cool and free of dust
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we've also got a susus VG series 27 in
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light boost compatible 3D display as you
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guys probably know if you watch my show I pretty much don't believe you should
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be buying a 3D display unless you get one with light boost it makes an
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enormous difference in terms of the Cross talk between the images as well as
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the um headache inducing this personally I get a headache from 3D Vision 1 no
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headache 3D Vision 2 last but not least we've got a gaming machine over here
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that uh apparently antech got their little pause on this one too because uh
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it's all Anta out as well as ASUS out so this is one of their direct CU cu2 cards
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ASUS is actually one of the few vendors that does triple slot graphics cards now
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while this may not be ideal for users who are running SLI especially you want
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like three-way SLI or three-way Crossfire cuz they won't all fit in a
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board it is ideal if you're running a single card because it means that you've
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got that much more metal strapped to your card keeping it cool so if you can
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see from the bottom you know what I can't see from the bottom this guy's
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actually got two cooling fans built in and the rest of the system is pretty neat too this is a really neat power
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supply there aren't many 80 plus Platinum power supplies and not many low
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wattage ones so what you'll discover is that most power supplies Peak at around
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50 to 60% uh load in terms of their
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efficiency that's where they're going to hit their maximum efficiency and with
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the highly efficient gaming parts that we have these days like GTX 680 radon
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hd7970 as well as the new IV Bri processors what we need in terms of
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high-end power supplies is low wattage extremely efficient power supplies in
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order to get the most out of them Kingston also got their grubby paws on
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this boots with some hyperx memory going on in here as well as a hyperx SSD
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welcome to the NVIDIA Booth NVIDIA I mean these guys are doing so much
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amazing stuff these days not just with GeForce on the desktop but also with
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Tegra on the mobile side so for their Booth they've actually got you can use
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these but personally I prefer the touchcreen interface they have an ASUS
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tablet powered by an NVIDIA Tegra chip that is outputting to here which looks
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really good and looks very impressive and all that stuff but what is even more
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impressive is the fact that that hold on
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how do I move there we go is the fact that they have this going on the
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full-sized 1080p TV right in front of me
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here so you can you can play with your tablet you can play with a remote
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controller whatever you want we are experiencing HD gaming at its finest in
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spite of the fact that this device is thinner than a phone which is pretty
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cool so let's keep moving right along in the Nidia boo here we've got a couple of
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other things including the ASUS Transformer Prime so I've covered this
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one in the past already this is running the Tegra 3 processor which is a five
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core processor it has four main cores and one auxiliary core for power saving
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and you can check out my unboxing on my Linus Tech tips Channel if you want any
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more details on it Tegra 3 basically turns
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Android into the experience that I thought it should have been Tegra 2 is
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fast especially for things like gaming but in terms of the overall snappiness
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and responsiveness of the platform Tegra 3 really kicks it up remember Tegra 3 is
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a quad core effective versus two cores effective for Tegra 2 we've also got a
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couple pretty neat gaming notebooks here 67 67 670s and 670s so these are from
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MSI and isus this MSI model is actually the one that I'm more familiar with this
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uses their custom steel series designed by Steel series backlit keyboard as well
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as their Dine Audio audio solution both of these are really a couple steps ahead
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of the competition in terms of what they're doing to make the tactile
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experience of your your notebook gaming notebook excellent as well as the audio
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experience now these are not for the faint have heart these are thick
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notebooks they're heavy however if you want the ultimate gaming experience on
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the go with a quad core processor a high-end NVIDIA graphics card then
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that's pretty much what you're going to want to go with new g75 and this is the
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new g75 so this is a brand new design
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the g74 saw several revisions of CPUs as
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well as gpus go into it before it looks like they have finally redesigned this
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notebook I actually haven't seen this one yet you can see remnants of the
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original g74 design like the way the hinges are positioned here however
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theyve looks like they've completely redone the interior design so they've
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got a great soft touch feel here this is
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actually a bit rougher than most soft touch which I think is a good thing
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because it'll keep it from wearing out as quickly as most soft touch finishes
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do in terms of I/O we've also got an upgrade here we've got Blu-ray s
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two USB 3 super speed ports and on the
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other side we have a wide variety of things
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actually we've got more Super Speed USB two more of those we've actually got
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HDMI gigabit Ethernet as well as what
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the heck is that one is that
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Thunderbolt looks like it's Thunderbolt correct me if I'm wrong here guys but I
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think that's Thunderbolt leave a comment under the video if I'm wrong and coupled
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together with the NVIDIA Booth one of their board part Partners decided to
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come to the tech Fair as well galaxy has got a beastly gaming machine going in
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here with one of their custom nonreference video cards that it looks
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like a GTX 670 GC with the dual fan
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cooling solution so they've got that running a 3D Vision demo over here on
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this table oh no they don't have 3D Vision
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sorry they have 3D Vision stuff here but they've got it running unen Heaven just
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so you can see how absolutely beastly it is also if you come check out the Galaxy
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Booth make sure you bug them for one of these I've got one these are um these
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are dead gpus from rmas over the years
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so these are older gpus and they put them in plastic and it makes for like a
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really cool little keychain finally they've got their lineup of graphics
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cards Unfortunately they don't have the GTX 670 or 680 here cuz they're rarer
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than hen teeth however as a show deal we
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do have the GTX 670 for $369.99 that's a Galaxy reference card which is pretty
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cool however remember the GTX 670 and 680 are great for surround gaming but so
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is the MDT series from Galaxy so they've got a 560 570 and 580 that are all
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capable of three monitor surround gaming we actually did an NCIX Tech tips on
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that not that long ago on the ncixcom channel so thank you for checking out
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our coverage of all of the booths at the
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NC Tech fair and don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech tips and NC Tech
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