Xero, yes i too think that alienware apple and evga are direct competitors as well. From a particular partner, who i will not mention, has told me that our G series notebooks are the only real competitors in the $1000+ notebook market to go against apple OSX. Most of the mass selling notebooks are now under $1000.

I think alienware will have its fan boys but their reputation of low quality hardware is starting to catch up with them, to most of the enthusiasts, they already knew this back in the day. But they do have a big pot of gold to spend on marketing.

some neat stats on where ASUS lies in the market. using HWbot as a referance*
Currently ASUS has a 45% market share on hwbot.


EVGA has a 11% market share and have slowly been declining...


I Agree EVGA is pretty strong in the enthusiast community, lets just see how they play out with all the stuff that has been happening to them lately.

A brief history of where ROG came. To my knowledge, Republic of Gamers was for the motherboard division
and the ROG logo was considered the gaming series for the notebook division and VGA division

The two combined to form Republic of Gamers as you see it today. The original intent was focused towards gamers. We wanted to develop the absolute best performance in whatever we stuck the ROG badge on. that means it had to be the cream of the crop of ASUS products. To increase performance naturally you would need to overclock and most of the OG overclockers probably came from some sort of gaming background or wanted more performance to make "something" run quicker.

Naturally overclocking has become its own sport, but do note that the gaming audience is still wayyyy bigger than overclocking is. Which on my part has been lacking in the community and will hopefully make a big push in 2011 for gaming. along with case modding and folding. (should be interesting) so looking at our Gen 3 line of ROG products, we have the GENE for gamers and case modders or those that want ROG performance but still affordable, FORMULA for the gaming enthusiasts, everything you want from the extreme but nothing you don't need, and the EXTREME really targeted for the extreme enthusiasts and extreme overclockers.

The big question is why the hell do you want an ROG board and why are there 3 different levels? If i can make an analogy, i would compare it to a BMW. A normal 3 Series is like our premium ASUS motherboards. Still very good and can play all your games fine. ROG is like the M series. Its just that much better. Itll still drive like any other 3 series but its the best of the best.
then i would cater it towards the base package, sport package, and track package. 3 different levels for 3 different type of users.

Now just because you have a M3 doesn't mean you know how to drive it the way it was intended for. some may just fix it up for show, take it to a track, or just daily it. either way, we hope that anyone can jump into an ROG board and will be able to come to the ROG community for support on how to make their experience better.

you mean function over form?

agree most of the stuff out there these days are just a gimmick. you gotta give to apple for presenting its gimmick in a great way though. although some people still consider rog as a gimmick because they see a PC is a PC, we actually back up our statements and provide quality components in our products. its just not hyped up gimmick but the real stuff.

http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=0ODEkxv4cmlXkqmr

Just saw this.......all morning on the egg searching for an 1156 board. Im telling you that external Sound Card is a winner.....

I like the dark theme, fits with me just fine. Might be wise to invest in something light just for the sake of diversion.

However, I did not like the Asus G74SX much. Got used to it by now, but there is a room for improvement.

First of all it came with a whole load of programs pre-installed. That is fine, but if I wish for such garbage, I go buy an Acer or HP.
Secondly, no Windows DVD came with my computer. Obviously Asus consider it to be a "Good idea" to have 30++ gb of hard drive space taken up by "back up"....?
The third point is hardware, obviously there is a plenty of G74SX models, some come with intel and others with Azure wireless network adapter or so I am led to believe.
DETAILED HARDWARE DESCRIPTION IN MANUAL IS A MUST!

The first thing I did is wipe out hard drives, not having windows dvd forced me to result to piracy. Not cool.
Keyboard could use some improvement, especially after one person could have been using Logitech G15 for years, coming to G74SX feels weird.

Otherwise, a good idea is to include bios manual. One not might always know what "Intel BigB FSB" does if it is turned on or off. The same goes for drivers.