14 DAY TRIAL // Asus already has quite an impressive lineup of AMD APU powered notebooks available, but in the first part of 2012 the Taiwanese hardware maker wants to expand this range with a new design built around the low-power E450 and dubbed the U32U.
The U32U is basically a slightly redesigned U36 that was now fitted with an AMD accelerated processing unit instead of the Intel Core-series CPUs found in the latter in order to reduce the overall price of the device.
This new AMD chip comes as the replacement for the E-350 introduced back in January of this year and raises the operating frequency of the two cores included from 1.6GHz to 1.65GHz, while also adding a series of new features.
The most important of these is the inclusion of the Turbo Core GPU technology, which can temporary boost the frequency of the graphics core in order to deliver improved performance when the need arises.
Together with the newly found support for DDR3 memory running at 1333MHz, this feature should bump the speed of the E-450 enough to make it able to run just about every mainstream app out there.
In the U32U notebook discovered by Blogeee.net, Asus has paired the AMD APU with 2GB of system memory that can be upgraded to 4GB, as well as with an 320GB SATA hard drive.
Users who require more storage space can also opt for a 500GB drive, but no matter the configuration chosen they get the same connectivity features.
These include three USB 2.0 ports, a pair of USB 3.0 ports, Bluetooth 3.0 and 802.11 b/g/n wireless, an HDMI output and an 8-cell battery pack.
According to Asus, the U32U can run up to 12 hours without requiring a recharge, while the 13.3-inch display has a native resolution of 1366x768 pixels.
Availability is expected in 2012 after the CES fair ends, and pricing will start at $449, which translates roughly into 332 EUR.
