Hey, look who decided to join the Ultrabook party! Gigabyte this week announced the release of its U2442, an "extreme Ultrabook" for gamers with Nvidia GeForce GT 650M or 730M graphics. On paper, there's quite a bit of power packed into a machine that measures 339mm (W) by 233mm (D) by 18.5-21mm (H) and weighs 1.69kg (3.7 pounds) or less, depending on whether it's configured with a solid state drive (SSD) or mSATA SSD and hard disk drive (HDD) combo. It's a 14-inch laptop with a 1600x900 display resolution, 3rd Generation Intel Core i7 3517U (1.9GHz-3.0GHz) or 3537U (2.0GHz-3.1GHz) processor, 4GB or 8GB of DDR3 memory (supports up 16GB), two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, VGA and HDMI 1.4 output, GbE LAN port, SD card reader, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, 1.3MP webcam, automatic backlight sensing keyboard, 2W speaker, and Windows 7 or 8. There are a few different storage options to choose from, including: 128GB mSATA SSD 128GB mSATA SSD + 750GB HDD (5400 RPM) 128GB mSATA SSD + 1TB HDD (5400 RPM) 256GB SSD The real treat, of course, is the discrete graphics, and according to Gigabyte, the U2442 notched a score 9,587 in 3DMark Vantage during internal benchmarking. Street pricing for the U2442 is about $1,040 and up. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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