Planning For Steamroller, Short PCBs, And HTPCs
Q. It's extremely difficult to find blower-style GPU coolers in countries like Australia. Have you considered making reference Nvidia and blower style AMD cards?
A. Our focus is currently on non-reference design and providing superior cooling and acoustics. We want to ensure cool and quiet operation. A blower design generally cannot offer the efficiency need to offer both of these, it has to work much hardware and can be much louder as such we do not use them.
Q. What happened to HomeTheaterGate, will it return?
A. We are always looking at different options but as many users are now using their own media portals we no longer focus on development of HomeTheaterGate. There are number of other options like JRiverMediaCenter, Windows Media Center and XMBC and more than users enjoy with their media centric or HTPC systems. With that noted, we of course continue to evaluate how we can improve the total HTPC/Media Center experience on both hardware and software levels.
Q. Is there an Asus Rampage V Extreme and will it still be LGA 2011? What is the outlook on LGA vs BGA? Will you be forced to abandon the LGA socket and will this be just with Intel or both Intel and AMD?
A. Sorry cannot comment on potential or upcoming product. You will have to keep a watch out for what may come out. Currently we are committed to our Rampage Series Gene, Formula and Extreme. We are continually fine tuning and tweaking and improving performance, compatibility and overall usability via updates of the UEFI and software updates. In regards to any socket questions all we can communicate is that looking at our track record Asus and its motherboard division we are committed to performance and innovation and the flexibility that is offered in the PC DIY space. We are working to maintain this as much as possible and will continue working on boards focused at allowing the flexibility and features that interest enthusiasts.
Q. I just got a 660 GTX DCU 2 OC earlier this year, is the 760 that huge of a jump that I should upgrade?
A. The 660GTX is a very solid card, especially with the latest drivers and when used with the GeForce Experience software. Depending on your gameplay needs and the resolution you are playing this should dictate your upgrade path. The 760 will provide an increase in performance but depending on what you are playing currently and what you plan is for the next year or two you may want to consider all aspects first.
Q. Have you considered SKUs with shorter PCBs for SFF gaming PCs?
A. Yes you can see we have done this with the release of our GTX 670 DC mini which is specifically design for ultra-small chassis. We hope to offer more of these types of solutions especially as we offer an extensive range of motherboards in mATX and mini ITX.
Q. If Steamroller is released for socket AM3+, will your 880G-series motherboards support it?
A. This isn't something that we directly control. AGESA is usually optimized for the latest platform. Any signal line impedance shifts to cater for new DDR3 modules can have an impact in how well a newer processor will interact with an older chipset/platform. Newer boards will have been designed with those specifications in mind. DDR3 voltage requirements have changed considerably over the past few years as has module density and this changes trace requirements. So I cannot give you a firm answer on that. Hope the answer does help, though.
