The company's previous "seashell" design gets reused in the 1011CX

Mar 2, 2012 01:51 GMT  ·  By

Besides releasing a new series of Cedar Trail netbook utilizing the company’s new so-called “flare” design, Asus also updated some of its previous models to feature Intel’s 32nm Atom processors, including the company’s popular Eee PC 1011PX.

The new model is now called the 1011CX and the most important change brought by Asus to its new creation is the inclusion of a 1.6 GHz Atom N2600 Cedar Trail chip that replaces last year’s Atom N455/N570 CPUs.

As many of you surely know by now, Intel’s Cedar Tail platform comprises the Cedarview processors and the NM10 chipset, the latter also being used by the chip maker for the Pine Trail netbook and nettop platform.

However, unlike these processors, the CPUs used by Cedar Trail are built using the 32nm fabrication process and feature a unified architecture that packs the processing cores, memory controller and the GPU on the same die.

The latter is actually based on a PowerVR design and features hardware decoding capabilities for a wide number of HD formats including MPEG2, VC1, AVC, H.264 and Blu-ray 2.0 making it much better suited for playing back HD content.

The rest of the system's specs include 1GB of DDR3 memory (upgradeable to 2GB), a 320GB hard disk drive (a 500GB HDD is also available), as well as 802.11 b/g/n and 10/100Mbps Ethernet connectivity.

In addition, the netbook also packs a 0.3MP webcam, a 10.1-inch display which features 1024x600 (WSVGA) resolution, three USB 2.0 ports, a multi-format card reader, a VGA video output and an audio jack (headphone and mic-in).

The operating system of choice is Windows Starter 7, Asus also adding a series of proprietary utilities such as the Super Hybrid Engine and the Eee Docking tools.

As Liliputing reports, the netbook is available right now for pre-order from ExcaliberPC with prices starting at $259 for a 1011CX featuring 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive, but no operating system.

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Asus Eee PC 1011CX netbook with Intel Atom Cedar Trail CPU
Asus Eee PC 1011CX netbook with Intel Atom Cedar Trail CPUAsus Eee PC 1011CX netbook with Intel Atom Cedar Trail CPU
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