Asus pushes performance on laptops

Asus has done its homework and found that performance is the most important feature for users. As a result, it has focused on this aspect in its new line of laptops. 

However, while the brand is now all about the performance of its laptops, it is eager to share a different kind of performance: how the business performed during the pandemic, and the improvement measures it has taken during this time.

“A major focus for us and by the ROG (Republic of Games) team is to develop more technology, to build high-performance components into really small chassis,” says Marce Besters, technical public relations manager at ASUS South Africa. “During the pandemic, we did see a lot of growth even though a lot of industries struggled. It was a weird time for the world, but people always need tech stuff, especially with working from home, and more mobility laptops are very important for how people live their lives. It was also very clear that people’s main things they look for when buying are performance and weight.”

Asus saw 20% growth in its notebooks segment years 2020 and 2021. Its OLED segment had a market share of 68% in 2021 globally.  Its market share in South Africa is a huge 94%  in 2022. Asus has also seen significant potential in the model that has been rebranded from gaming to a creator laptop.

Asus says its OLED panels helped it get through the chip shortage, as other vendors were struggling with standard panels.

The stats were shared at a Performance Day jointly hosted by Intel and Asus, revolving around the chipmaker’s collaboration with Asus and its rollout of the 12th Gen Intel Core chip. 

Nitesh Doolabh, Intel Africa consumer ecosystems manager, said: “We’ve launched a new hybrid architecture with our larger performance costs. The physically larger design speed and efficiency is optimised for single-threaded performance. 

“All of that is brought together by what we call Intel thread director. This is software that we’ve developed in-house. At Intel we work at that design level to bring in the software and, with the Intel-thread director, at the OS level, it intelligently assigns the work or the task to either the performance costs or to the efficient price at the right time. That gives users the best experience.” 

The 12th Gen CPUs integrate two types of cores into a single die, Performance-cores (P- Cores) and Efficient cores (E- Cores). P-Cores are physically larger and designed for speed and efficiency optimised single-threaded performance. The E-cores are physically smaller and optimised for multi-core performance-per-watt.

The Intel Thread Director helps the operating system to assign work intelligently between P-cores and E- Cores, which also means performance gains for gaming, streaming, content creation and productivity.

Asus says applications will always be more performance-demanding, and having a higher-end  CPU can assure smooth operation.  As a result, Asus has improved its cooling system, which provides higher fan efficiency, lower flow vortex noise and more flow path. The fan motor can be controlled with different modes: Whisper, Standard, and Performance modes.

Bester says Consumers desire high performance with low fan noise. However, better heat dissipation leads to louder fan noise. Users are able to customise their fan profile in “MyASUS” so that they can switch to performance mode or full-speed mode when full power is needed, and Whisper mode for distraction-free silence. 

Overall, Asus’ focus on performance appeals to a wide variety of end users and comes at an appealing price.