ASUS Rampage IV Extreme review -
Introduction
Motherboards taken to the extreme ...
If the Intel Sandy Bridge-E processor series is going to do anything, then it's igniting a series of hardware upgrades amongst the hardcore hardware aficionado's of you. That's right, the X79 chipset based motherboards have arrived and there's okay, good, better and best (it works vice versa for your wallet btw). As such it's now time to cover one of the most high-end enthusiast X79 motherboards we could lay our hands on, it's the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme.
The new Extreme is exactly that, EXTREME as it comes with one of the most advanced specs list that I have seen ever, and then some more.
The ROG team this time went wild, releasing a motherboard with all the features that last-gen motherboards should have had such as USB 3.0 connectivity, Bluetooth, eSATA connectors, SATA 6.0Gbps, and 7.1 channel audio, but the real x-factor of the Rampage IV Extreme can only be found when we look at its overclocking features.
The CPU and the memory are now powered by Asus' new Extreme Engine Digi+ II power design and allows you to install eight DIMMs in the respective eight memory slots, which can reach speeds to an excess of a whopping DDR3-2400, that's configured in quad-channel mode of course.
You'll spot the standards like the usual Power, Reset and Clear CMOS switches, but also with a series of voltage reading points. For the professional overclockers, there's a button for a special LN2 (liquid nitrogen cooled) slow boot mode, and also four DIP switches for enabling or disabling the PCIe slots (if a card dies during an LN2 session, simply switch the port off so you don't have to remove the card and LN2 pot to be able to continue).
The new R4E comes with five PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (physical) slots and it will even support 4-way CrossFireX and SLI setups (though the PCIE slots drop to x8 mode). An interesting feature that comes bundled together with the board is a so called ROG OC Key, which is responsible for an extra graphics overlay on your active (DVI) monitor. So you can monitor and adjust overclock settings in real-time without using additional software or hardware (it's a dongle that sits in-between the graphics card DVI port and your monitor).
Anyway there's more and thus lots to talk about, head on over to the next page where we'll discuss the X79 chipset, the respective ASUS model. Then will throw a decent photo-shoot and a benchmark suite at the products and get an indication what performance is like with the Intel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E) and X79 Platform.
Have a peek at the motherboard, which is just loaded with interesting options.
ASUS recently released an update to their Rampage IV series motherboards with a black edition. It's big, fast and black and has tweaking written all over it. The board is just gorgeous and totally ...
ASUS Rampage IV Extreme review
The ROG team this time went wild, releasing a motherboard with all the features that last-gen motherboards should have such as USB 3.0 connectivity, Bluetooth, eSATA connectors, SATA 6.0Gbps, and 7.1 channel audio, but the real x-factor of the Rampage IV Extreme can only be found when we look at its overclocking features. Head on over to the next page where we'll discuss the X79 chipset, the respective ASUS model. Then will throw a decent photo-shoot and a benchmark suite at the products and get an indication what performance is like with the Intel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E) and X79 Platform.
ASUS Rampage III Black Edition review
ASUS are launching the ASUS Rampage III Black Edition and it just has to be the most exclusive X58 motherboard we have ever had our hands on. Improved overclockability, black design (including a black colored BIOS). The spec-sheet might read pretty similar to last year's Rampage III Extreme, but there have been a few tweaks alright. The board now sports a quartet of PCIe x16 slots capable of supporting three-way SLI or four-way CrossFireX, support for 24GB DDR3 at speeds of up to 2,200MHz and then the fun begins, USB 3.0, SATA 6G, a ThunderBolt add-on card that integrates Xonar sound as well as BigFoot's Killer NPU.
ASUS Rampage III Gene review
Within that motto ASUS has it's own Gene series within the motherboard line up. Now if you put that on the X58 platform, it's called Rampage by ASUS. And then when this apocalyptic group of minions and demons called 'Republic of Gamers' aka ROG gets their hands on a product like this, you can expect improvements and extra overclock features.