Page 6 -- Software Kill Bits

Software

Just a quick page here about the pre-installed software.  The LANShark uses Vista x64 as its foundation, of course.  Besides being an enlightened choice, you can't use 6 Gigs of RAM without it.  We found the system was nearly perfectly installed, no hardware splatted in Device Manager.

Not sure why I bothered, but here's the Winders Experience Index for the LANShark:

The good news is that Windows 7 will up the WEI number to 7.9.  Yes, yes, I can hear the world rejoicing. 

There is one tweak that I had to do and that was to change the disk drives from running in IDE mode to AHCI mode.  Extremely minor, however, but AHCI mode enables some higher end SATA features, like NCQ, which will give you a small performance boost. 

Very nice wallpaper.  SmoothCreations also branded a custom user icon; very smooth indeed.  They also installed a copy of 3DMark 06 (it comes with the Rampage II Gene), as well as a copy of Far Cry 2, which we used for benchmarking.

The Rampage II Gene also comes with a few softwares and hardwares, namely the TweakIt utility.  We couldnt find the little LCD Poster anywhere on the LANShark case, but TweakIT thought it had one.

There are several more tweak utilites included with the Rampage II Gene, namely  the AiSuite, Fan Xpert, and CPU Level Up (which was installed on the Neptune, BTW), which allow you to change BIOS settings on-the-fly from within Windows.  Personally, I prefer using the BIOS for these settings, and suites like these usually end up being things that take up boot times and require constant updating.  SC includes all the software discs for the Gene, so you can install these utilities if you like.

Also installed is the Nero 7 Suite for burning purposes.  Choosing a version of Nero is often a subject of many a forum flame war (6d6 dmg), which makes Nero 7 an interesting choice.  Now, Im guessing it was just OEM software from the Lite-on DVD+/-RW drive, but if that isnt the case, then I say kudos to SC for it.  I personally am not a fan of any Nero version beyond 6 and was sad that I could not get my version to install on my home Vista64 machine.  So I upgraded and am forced to use version 8.  Ug.  Anyway, users should be cautious about the Lightscribe utility, which caused some instability and was uninstalled before benchmarking. 

That is pretty much it for the Windows setup.  It is very simple and very clean.