CeBIT 2011 - ASUS

The ASUS booth was just HUGE,. it literally took a big chunk of a CeBIT HALL, there where so many product on display that its hard to start even covering a few of them.

ASUS is working on WAVI Xtion technology, that hints quite a bit to Kinect alright. In a nutshell, the Xtion is a PrimeSense 3D depth camera built exclusively for PC, but with an important twist -- it connects to a pair of ASUS Wavi boxes, which wirelessly streams its data to your living room PC between your TV and a Windows PC over the 5GHz band. Oh, and should ASUS attract enough developers, it will even pull down applications from an Xtion online store.

Not just for gaming MIGHT it be interesting, but you can see yourself waving at the telly and by hand gestures pick out your favorite movie or music.

Another eye-catcher was something that you do not expect from ASS, BluRay player. These again will get a twist, they'll be HDMI 1.4a compatible thus allow 3D playback and will have it's full Dolbe / 7.1 channles audio .. but more interesting ASUS will be make the product a media-server as well, it will be able to stream your favorite movies from a source. The advanced models will go even further as they will get support for smartphone remote control - with compatibility for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry and Symbian.

"Support for a wide range of video, audio, image and subtitle formats ensures the BDS-700 offers the highest degree of media compatibility available, adds Asus.

"Content can play directly from external storage devices via the included USB port, while Ethernet comes standard. High speed 802.11n Wi-Fi with DLNA support enables easy and cable-free media streaming across a network and from cloud-based content providers such as Netflix, YouTube, Pandora, Flickr and Picasa. Internet radio streaming is also available."

On the component side of things we got some stuff to cover as well, next to soundcards and headphones we also spotted (and have a photo) of an external Xonar Essence soundcard called the Xonar Essence One. ASUS has been relentless with its R&D and soundcard releases, putting out one high end card after another. The Essence models are considered the current undisputed kings of the Xonar series of soundcards.

Also on display was the Rampage III Black edition, It has a X58 chipset and the main novelty is ThunderBolt, a new expansion card from ASUS that integrates Xonar sound as well as BigFoot's Killer NPU. Basically, this means that the board sports a quartet of PCIe x16 slots capable of supporting three-way SLI or four-way CrossFireX, support for 24GB DDR3 at speeds of up to 2,200MHz and all the other high-end features you'd expect on a ROG board. Have a peek peek the gallery as it is a feast for the eyes.

In the gallery a wide variety of ATX and small form factors motherboards as well, Zacate seems to be popular with the AMD E350 Fusion APUs.

Graphics cards wise you'll see the Latest DirectCU II models but most eye catching has to be the new MATROX GTX580 Platinum that was on display. This beast comes with new novelties. The card has 16 power phases, which confuses us a little TBH, but well. The card will support ASUS TweakIt and you can change the voltage for GPU, memory and PLL .There are no definitive numbers on clock at the moment.

Also some new gaming gigabit routers are on display, Dual-band 5GHZ and 2.4GHZ speeds up to 450Mbps concurrently.

Last but not least you'll spot some photo's of Slate's, PADs and TABs from ASUS with the EP121 being the most impressive pad as it comes with a detachable keyboard, and an incredible screen.

Check out the full photo gallery right here.