bseixas
Power Member
The C90 will be a whitebook machine, meaning customers and resellers will be able to buy the barebone C90 notebook and drop in the components that they want. The basic specs on the machine are as follows:
Supports Intel Conroe desktop processor platform, 1.86GHz - 2.66 GHz (E6700)
15.4" screen
2.0 Megapixel camera built-in
HDMI
Bluetooth
TV-Tuner integrated
E-SATA
8-in-1 media card reader
802.11n
Graphics: NVidia (???? -- we can't tell)
Finger Print reader
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray drive capable
3 USB ports
Piano gloss finish with inlaid pattern
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Asus said using a desktop processor makes it far cheaper to build a fast notebook as it will have both a front-side bus advantage and a clock speed advantage. Intel’s fastest publicly announced mobile Core 2 processor tops out at 2.33GHz on an 800MHz front-side bus. When you factor in price, Asus C90S gets really sexy. A 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo E6600 costs just $316 but can hit overclocked speeds of 2.93GHz. A 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo T7600 mobile part will set you back $637.
Portable gaming away from the AC umbilical cord is horribly short though as Asus said the overclocked Core 2 and a high-end GPU will drain the battery in 14 minutes.
On the graphics front, Asus thinks it has solved the upgradeable graphics question by using an updated Nvidia MXM Type II modules. Asus officials told us the main modification to the existing MXM Type II spec is to include a heat-spreader in the design. Although MXM laid out physical and electrical specs for graphics modules, module makers were free to move the RAM around. That made it difficult for notebook manufacturers to standardize their heatpipes. Now, Asus officials say, Nvidia has agreed to manufacture MXM modules with a heat spreader that clamps on the GPU and RAM modules. Now all the notebook makers have to do is attach their heat pipe to the heat spreader on the module.
Asus officials tell us this small change will make it possible to buy a C90S with a current graphics part and upgrade to a DirectX part when they’re introduced. It’s likely, the company says, that users will be able to upgrade graphics for sometime. The only thing that would break this model is thermals. Current MXM Type II’s top out at 25 watts. If a future GPU produces more than this, a notebook designed to only wick away 25-watts would not work. The company also said it was committed to supporting the notebook and was working on a way to make graphics modules available to end users.
Asus said that it’s not leaving ATI out of the game. The company said it has commitments from AMD to get its upcoming graphics parts in MXM Type II format as well so a user could easily switch from Nvidia to AMD.
We got to take apart a pre-production C90S and it is as easy as Asus claims it is. Remove four screws, slide off the bottom and you have easy access to the GPU, CPU, hard drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi card and digital TV tuner. You can literally remove and replace the CPU and GPU in less than five minutes if you’re in a hurry.
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Parece-me no geral muito interessante, gostei do look, só não gostei da autonomia, embora num portátil destes com CPU eventualmente OC e gráfica como deve de ser já se sabe...
Mas parece-me que vale apena seguir o "bicho"... parece que estamos mais perto do laptop "upgradeable"