Ultrabooks might not be able to play the latest blockbuster titles at max settings like a full blown liquid-cooled gaming desktop, but there’s still a heck of a lot of great titles that they can play. I’ve been using the Asus UX31E (Core i5 Sandy Bridge with Integrated HD3000 graphics) to happily play Minecraft, Tribes Ascend, Half-Life 2, Day of Defeat Source, Bit Trip Runner, League of Legends, Team Fortress 2, and plenty more. Having my Ultrabook running at peak performance means I get a competitive advantage and the most enjoyment thanks to my games running smoothly and responsively.  This guide will tune up your Ultrabook to run at maximum performance and will benefit your graphical applications even if you aren’t a gamer!

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With the release on Intel’s latest generation of processors, codenamed Ivy Bridge, comes Quick Sync Video 2.0. This is an enhancement to Intel’s original Quick Sync Video technology which provides hardware encoding and decoding of video directly on the processor. All second-generation Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks feature Quick Sync 2.0 which is up to twice as fast as Quick Sync found in first-generation Sandy Bridge Ultrabooks. In order to take advantage of Quick Sync 2.0 you need to be using software that is designed to use it; a number of companies have announce support for the technology.

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John Taylor, Director of Global Product Marketing at AMD, just published an official post over at the AMD blog entitled: ‘Does an Ultrabook™ by any other name smell as sweet?’ In it, Taylor takes issue with Intel’s Ultrabook campaign and wishes that Intel would let OEMs alone to make their own decisions.

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Ultrabooks a sleek and slim by design. Unfortunately, thickness often has an inverse relationship with number of ports. For many, the Ultrabook is an attractive possibility, but not entirely practical without a decent set of ports. This is not the case for all Ultrabooks, however, and here are six solid suggestions if you need a good portfolio of ports on your Ultrabook.

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Intel’s Ultrabook campaign is quite rapidly transforming what consumers can expect from a PC laptop. They’ve driven prices and weight down, and performance and features up. I’d argue that PC laptops are looking the best that they have in recent memory thanks to Intel’s Ultrabook project. But that’s just the hardware. On the software side, we’re still dealing with Windows and the same frustrations it’s shown us for several years now. Can Microsoft up the ante with Windows 8 to bring software quality in line with Ultrabook hardware? Read the full story

Lately we’ve been getting asked, “should I buy an Ultrabook now or wait for Ivy Bridge?”. Here I’d like to give my recommendation to help out those who might be ready to pull the trigger on an Ultrabook purchase.

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Acer just ‘launched’ (how many launches does it take to get a device to market these days!) the Acer S5 Ultrabook in the UAE.  The 15mm thick Ultrabook with the cool Magic Flip motorized port panel is said to be the thinnest yet. The 1.3KG (under 3lb) Ultrabook will cost, at launch in Dubai, Dh4,999.  We assume that’s a zero sales-tax price which equates to $1361 at todays rates.

Acer S5 Product page.

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If you’ve got an Ultrabook, it likely has either integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics or discrete Nvidia GeForce graphics. Recently we gave you 6 excellent game suggestions for your Ultrabook. Now we’ve got a suggestion to make sure your Ultrabook is running those games as well as possible. One of the best ways to keep the graphical capabilities of your Ultrabook performing at maximum capacity is to ensure that you’re using the latest driver for your graphics card. Intel and Nvidia regularly update their GPU drivers to address bugs and other problems. Sometimes there are game-specific fixes, and other times there are general performance-enhancing changes. In this article I’ll show you how to quickly and easily update your Ultrabook’s GPU drivers in order to maintain maximum graphics performance.  Note that this guide will also apply to Intel HD4000 graphics when Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks are released later this year.

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