Asus P7P55D EVO and PRO motherboard now available in the Philippines

Done buying up all the parts necessary for your new PC running on Intel's P55 Express chipset? If not, and you're still in the process of picking out a motherboard to use your new Lynnfield processor on, then add these two newly available Asus mobos into your list of options. The Asus P7P55D PRO and Asus P7P55D EVO are the two most affordable P55 motherboards from Asus with 2 PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots that run in x8/x8 mode when used with 2 GPUs.

I used to recommend the cheaper vanilla P7P55D and even the P7P55D LE motherboards from the same company, until I found out that the second PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots on those ones only ran on x4 mode with a second GPU. For those that don't know, this is very bad news if you want to run your GPUs in Crossfire, and at least x8/x8 is necessary to be able to experience the benefits of such a dual-GPU configuration. And so, the Asus P7P55D PRO and EVO are yours for the picking. Happy New Year!

Sources: [P7P55D PRO, P7P55D EVO]

Apple's Core i7-equipped iMacs having serious quality and performance issues

A lot of people usually equate the word quality with Apple and its computers, so news of the new i7-powered iMacs having performance and quality issues is sort of a big thing. Well, to a lot of fanboys swimming in Steve Jobs's famed reality distortion field, maybe, but in reality, it's nothing new. More often than not, the first batch or shipments of any Apple product ever released has major flaws, the kind of thing that would drive anyone who paid upwards of $1000 USD expecting top-notch quality insane.

Lenovo ThinkPad W701 might carry Core i7 Extreme CPU

A new W series ThinkPad from Lenovo is on the horizon according to documents recently unearthed from the FCC's web site. It will reportedly have a Samsung-produced 17-inch 1920x1200 LCD screen, 320GB Fujitsu hard drive and a built-in Wacom Digitizer. What's interesting is that it is also listed as having a 2GHz Intel CPU, and Engadget infers that it may well be an Intel Core i7 Extreme CPU with 8MB of L3 cache, 3.2GHz single-core max speed and 55W TDP. This doesn't bode well unless you're willing to spend ridiculous amounts of cash to get the power of a desktop on your lap. And besides, this info hasn't been confirmed by Lenovo and can't be cross-checked anywhere else for now, so don't cross out the ThinkPad W701 from your Christmas wishlist just yet.

Sources: [FCC, Engadget]

17.3-inch Asus G72GX 3D notebook to launch in Q1 2010

Personally, I don't think it's such a good idea to have an Intel Core i7 CPU on a laptop, but if you have no qualms about that then you might be interested in an upcoming Asus notebook which features the said processor along with an Nvidia GeForce GTM 160M GPU, 4GB of memory, two 320GB hard drives and a 17.3-inch screen. This notebook is going to be called the Asus G72GX 3D notebook and it gets the '3D' in its name for bundled active shutter glasses which give it a 3D effect in use. A 15.6-inch version of this notebook is also expected to launch soon as the Asus G51J3D, featuring about the same specs, only with a smaller screen. Pricing info is currently unknown for both notebooks, though it may be revealed soon so expect an update to be posted.

Source: [DigiTimes]