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ASUS caters towards enthusiasts and gamers

ASUS has announced its new Republic of Gamers series of motherboards. The Republic of Gamers (ROG) series was displayed at Computex 2006 as the Pluto concept. It will be catered towards the gaming and enthusiast crowd much like DFI’s LANParty series. Most of the features found on the Pluto concept will make it onto production ROG series motherboards. These features include the LCD Poster which is a diagnostic readout placed on the rear I/O panel. Unlike traditional debugging readouts which require users to look up a debug code, the LCD Poster displays the boot-up process and errors in full text for easier diagnostics.

Gone from the ROG series of motherboards are traditional bulky capacitors that can leak. Instead Asus has installed 8-phase polymer aluminum electrolyte capacitors similar to the capacitors used in tightly packed server motherboards. The electroluminescent rear I/O panel will also see the light of day too. A high definition audio codec will be placed on a separate riser card to reduce electrical noise. The audio riser has been named SupremeFX and is capable of 24-bit/192 KHz audio on all eight channels. It will be bundled with a stereo array microphone which supports noise canceling technologies.

All ROG motherboards will come bundled with 3DMark06 Advanced Edition.  The first motherboard in this series, dubbed Crosshair, is expected to launch with Conroe this month.  ASUS has issued the following bullets for Crosshair:
  • AMD Socket AM2
  • NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP
  • Dual Channel DDR2 800/667/533
  • 2 x PCIe x16, support NVIDIA SLI at full x16, x16 speed
  • 8 x SATA 3.0 Gb/p including two external ports / 1 x Ultra DMA
  • Dual Gigabit LAN
  • SupremeFX sound card featuring ADI 1988b High-Definition Audio with 8-channel surround sound

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Nice board, lame marketing
By Operandi on 7/12/2006 3:41:11 PM , Rating: 2
Ok so the board looks great, but do we really need to attach retarded marketing titles to everything? I mean "Rebublic or Gamers"... give me a break...




RE: Nice board, lame marketing
By Aeros on 7/12/2006 4:21:38 PM , Rating: 2
Does look sweet... though I hope there are different sku's ones that dont include the tacky lights. Anyone know if the audio daughter card is removeable. I hate the idea of having a bulky ass daughter card permently sticking out of my mobo. Besides an x-fi blows this away and can be moved to the bottom pci and achieve the same effect.


RE: Nice board, lame marketing
By hwhacker on 7/12/2006 4:33:20 PM , Rating: 2
I'd bet it follows a similar design to DFI's karajan module. I've never found them to be bothersome, but I imagine that it does not need to be installed if you're using a seperate audio solution.


RE: Nice board, lame marketing
By Eric2203 on 7/12/2006 6:39:30 PM , Rating: 2
Well you're gonna have PCI(-E) boards sticking out anyway, so what's the problem ? Plus it's not very big:

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/tradeshows/200...


RE: Nice board, lame marketing
By Eric2203 on 7/12/2006 6:41:12 PM , Rating: 2
Sorry, link doesn't seem to work. Here it is (scroll to 3rd picture from the last):
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i...


RE: Nice board, lame marketing
By plimogs on 7/12/2006 5:16:30 PM , Rating: 2
Had the series been displayed as "plato concept" I would have said that "republic of gamers" was an adequate play on words. As it stands however, I too am left scratching my head.


RE: Nice board, lame marketing
By interl0per on 7/13/2006 8:28:00 AM , Rating: 2
your not kidding....

that marketing team should be flushed to Sony.



HS
By Trisped on 7/12/2006 2:49:18 PM , Rating: 2
The Heat Sink is WAY to big. You are just cooling the bridges and the power, not a CPU!




RE: HS
By desiplaya4life on 7/12/2006 3:32:30 PM , Rating: 2
why do they still have ps/2 ports?? i mean comeonnnn which gamer still put those to use? heck i even dont. put some usb 2.0 or exteral sata or something. as far as asus quality i had one of their boards and nothing went wrong. can someone add their input which mb manufacture has best rma and service? abit? ecs? dfi? asus???


RE: HS
By ziggo on 7/12/2006 4:24:39 PM , Rating: 2
I play alot of video games on my rig and still use the PS/2 ports. I dont know if USB has caught up, but I know PS/2 was better a couple of years back and lets my run my mouse at very high sampling rates that wernt available with usb. The higher sampling smoothed out the mouse response nicley.


RE: HS
By S3m4ph0r3 on 7/12/2006 8:49:59 PM , Rating: 2
Dude

You realy should look into upgrading your peripherals.


By granulated on 7/13/2006 4:57:32 AM , Rating: 2
Has a post been removed or is everyone insane ?




By kattanna on 7/13/2006 1:44:26 PM , Rating: 2
drop the rating display to the lowest and you will see it


By granulated on 7/29/2006 9:36:17 PM , Rating: 2
thanks


What the hell?
By Howard on 7/12/2006 1:40:05 PM , Rating: 3
8-phase caps? That makes no sense to me.




RE: What the hell?
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/12/06, Rating: 0
Good Hardware
By Xponential on 7/12/2006 1:14:20 PM , Rating: 2
Asus makes good hardware, most of their stuff receives average to great reviews. I personally have used several of their mobos, including the one I'm on right now, the P4C800-E Deluxe. I love it, never had any problems.




Uber bright LEDs
By Mikey on 7/12/2006 3:33:49 PM , Rating: 2
Anyone here know if the LED's are optional? They seem a bit overdone and bright to me.




Quality
By mendocinosummit on 7/12/06, Rating: -1
RE: Quality
By Tsuwamono on 7/12/2006 12:45:33 PM , Rating: 1
really? i was under the impression that Asus was a top mobo company and was renouned for their quality.. I guess I'll be looking at DFI for my AM2 mobo


RE: Quality
By bob661 on 7/12/2006 11:52:07 PM , Rating: 2
I'm running an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe board on bios 1002 (original shipping bios) and my board is stable as a rock. I would even say it is the most stable motherboard I've ever used. I also have two Asus A8N-VM CSM boards that reside in two servers, one is a license manager/application server and the other is a application/image deployment server. Both of these are critical systems and any hint of instability would relegate the hardware to the garbage bin. Asus = greatness.


RE: Quality
By bldckstark on 7/12/2006 12:50:43 PM , Rating: 2
Just like I say at work about the parts we make - ALL parts are good, but some are better than others. I've had trouble with just about every company I've ever purchased from. That means I don't need to be concerned with quality, only customer service. Find a company with good CS, and forget it.

P.S. I have found ASUS to have average quality and decent customer service, so I use them often. Creative, on the other hand, and Sony....... Heck, just look at the right hand frame on this page and take a look at Toshiba! They are known for making a good convertible tablet notebook, but you better hope it doesn't break.


RE: Quality
By dice1111 on 7/12/2006 1:01:02 PM , Rating: 2
I seriously doubt your claim. Every review I've read of the new ASUS AM2 mobo says it rocks. The alternates are good as well, but usually don't pack the features an ASUS mobo does. Call me a fanboy (I’ve never actually owned an ASUS board, but will soon), but I believe ASUS builds top quality boards.

I could post lots of links from reviews of other ASUS boards, but since AM2 is hot right now, here's reviews of the ASUS M2N32-SLI from some credible sources;

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2787'

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTA...

http://www.virtual-hideout.net/reviews/ASUS_M2N32-...

http://www.techspot.com/review/2-asus_m2n32-sli_de...

That being said, where's proof of your claim?


RE: Quality
By Wolfpup on 7/12/2006 1:15:26 PM , Rating: 2
Personally I've had terrible luck with two Asus boards, which is why I've always stuck with Intel (tons of boards, and not once a problem-and I don't care about overclocking or stuff like that).

First Asus board was back when the first 1GHz Thunderbird launched. To be fair, I think the problem with that was the hideous VIA chipset. VIA dosen't understand that microchips aren't supposed to be made out of peanut butter-luckily that gave Nvidia the chance to eat their lunch :D

Second board was a socket 754 Nforce 3. The AGP slot was DOA, and I've heard a lot of people complain about their Athlon 64 boards since then.

Sooooo yeah, I'm just sticking to Intel, even if it isn't "cool". My two main systems are two and four years old, and they've never crashed once or done anything weird, which I value :)


RE: Quality
By Wolfpup on 7/12/2006 1:17:08 PM , Rating: 2
I realize two boards isn't really a valid sample, but still! You buy tons of Intel boards, no problem. You buy two Asus boards, and they're both junk...well, dosen't make it likely I'm going to look at Asus again.

Forgot to mention though that I've still got a Geforce 4 from Asus I use daily. It's never had a problem and runs great.


RE: Quality
By Samus on 7/12/2006 6:19:56 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Personally I've had terrible luck with two Asus boards, which is why I've always stuck with Intel (tons of boards, and not once a problem-and I don't care about overclocking or stuff like that).



Ditto. The reviews always say 'they rock' but the real world users like us usually find complete shit in the box.

I will never buy another Asus product. I gave them a 2nd chance twice, only to have 3 unbelievably crappy products in a row.

CUSL2, A7N8X, A8N-SLI


RE: Quality
By mendocinosummit on 7/12/2006 2:06:08 PM , Rating: 2
Ya they receive great reviews, because they are great boards. For an example go to Newegg (link below), and look at the reviews. In the past year I have sent back three boards. Two for the same one model. I am saying that there quality is slacking. Two years ago they use to have all five stars and now I just feel reluctant.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?DEPA...


RE: Quality
By bob661 on 7/12/2006 11:54:05 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
That being said, where's proof of your claim?
I would like to add that Asus is a Tier 1 manufacturer and you don't get there by building shit.


RE: Quality
By kattanna on 7/13/2006 1:45:36 PM , Rating: 2
i have used ASUS for YEARS..and love them all.



How appropriate...
By cornfedone on 7/12/06, Rating: -1
RE: How appropriate...
By Shoal07 on 7/12/2006 1:12:08 PM , Rating: 2
And since when is computer geek > video nerd?


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