14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that the ROG logo has landed on quite a number of ASUS products today, with Computex 2011 being the place where the company unleashed a full line of gaming-oriented systems and hardware.
Since Computex 2011 is now underway, it would be odd if no sort of gaming hardware was released, emphasis on tablets or no.
In fact, since this is one of the biggest consumer hardware trade shows, it seems that all attendants have come out in force.
That said, ASUS turned out to be one of the more straightforward of companies, having presented a fairly big collection of ROG products.
For those that need a reminder, ROG stands for Republic of Gamers and is the logo that the company places on only the highest-end and aesthetically apt machines and motherboards it has.
A gaming notebook has already been detailed here, and it looks like the Maximus motherboard line also got a pair of additions.
The platforms are called ROG Maximus IV Extreme-Z and ROG Maximus IV GENE-Z and are intended for overclocking enthusiasts and speedsters that want smaller machines, respectively.
Among other things, they support multi-GPU setups (NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFireX) and the Lucid Virtu graphics virtualization engine, which automatically swaps between add-in-boards and the integrated solutions of the current-generation Intel chips (the Z68 chipset is used).
For those that did not guess yet, the Extreme-Z has an ATX form factor, while the GENE-Z is a micro-ATX mainboard.
“We’ve had great success in the gaming market and we appreciate that a vendor like ASUS is devoted to this field," said Zane Ball, General Manager for Desktops at Intel.
"Brands such as ROG demonstrate the best practice for gaming and overclocking PC hardware, and the two new motherboards [...] with Intel Z68-based chipsets announced today offer exciting new performance-turning opportunities." Unfortunately, no pricing or availability details have been provided, although online listings shouldn't take overly long to show.