is there any way I can upgrade the graphics in the asus and add a graphics card? I'm open to any and all suggestions. And also, i haven't seen a customizable R1F yet, maybe when it comes out from someone besides resellers it'll have that option?
Short answer but sorry no... the motherboard simply does not support such a hardware item, even via third-party.
i know this is getting a bit whiney, but can the motherboard be upgraded? I thought asus was known for the level of customization in their products
That's true, only for their "Barebone" line, those you can upgrade the CPU, memory, and (for some models) the graphics card. Since this is Asus' first tablet PC, I don't think they will allow an option to easily upgrade it by one's self, but perhaps in the future, Asus will allow customization as a built-to-order option.
I know I'd like to see it...I'm getting pretty sick of pricing different R1F's from the US, UK, and Australia to get the one that meets my needs.
The reason I'm so concerned is because I really like the R1F, the 13.3 screen is what I believe to be the perfect compromise point between portability and power, and I'm an electrical engineering student. We work with AutoCAD and photoshop alot and I just wanted to be safe about the integrated graphics handling the graphics. I won't be playing games, so can I run those programs maybe even simultaneously without lag? My ideal processor is 1.83/2.00(if necessary) ghz I'm also considering a tecra m7, but am wary about sacrificing some of the options available to the R1F
Well, I believe you can actually upgrade your CPU without any problem. I had P4 2.6 GHz-based desktop before I bought ASUS A6Ja laptop. This lappy has T2300 CPU which is actually Core Duo 1.67 GHz. What can I say, laptop is very fast, it is at least the same speed as my old desktop system... R1F tablet even with 1.66 GHz model (T5500, US version) is faster than mine T2300, so I don't think you should worry about that. As for CAD/CAM applications, I'm not pro in that, but from my experience they don't need too much power from your video-card. Obviously, it's better to have fast multiprocessor machine with lots of RAM than crappy CPU and X1600 installed Of course there are some nVidia Quadro things out there, but that's completely different story. So what you could actually do is max out the RAM to 2 GB, that will help a lot with both CAD/CAM and Photoshop. Faster CPU will help as well, but its pretty fast already in R1F. And there's upgrade option as well (though it will void your warranty if done by yourself). And don't worry about multi-tasking... Since the days of P4 Hyper-Threading that problem vanished from the horizon and with new Core Duo and Core 2 Duo there's even better performance.
yeah...if you're not planning on doing 3d I think you should be in good shape. I know the Tecra's nVidia Quadro card is billed more as a workstation card for doing the sort of things you'd be doing within CAD and the like...however I also believe the R1F will handle it unless you're doing some really insanely complicated CAD work. I've also heard that the R1F makes short work of photoshop as well, so I think you'll be ok... And it's like noskill said, if you get the R1F and find in a year or so it's no longer meeting your needs, upgrading is always an option... Also, does anyone know how I would go about getting a US R1F with 2 GB of RAM or is this something I'm going to have to myself?
It's really easy to do it by yourself and it will take no more than 5 minutes even if you never tried that before. Really simple
