Asus Rampage Formula X48 Motherboard Review

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Memory Benchmarks

Memory Benchmarks

Everest Ultimate v4.50<p style="text-align: justify;"><i>Everest Ultimate is the most useful tool for any and all benchmarkers or overclockers. With the ability to pick up most voltage, temperature, and fan sensors on almost every motherboard available, Everest provides the ability to customize the outputs in a number of forms on your desktop. In addition to this, the memory benchmarking provides a useful tool of measuring the changes to your memory sub-system</i></p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/bench-1.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">Going from the stock clocks up to our overclocked settings is quite a significant improvement in all aspects of memory bandwidth. This is no surprise since we make a rather hefty jump from 3GHz for the CPU and DDR2-1066 up to DDR2-1216 and 4.1GHz for CPU frequency. These numbers could be inflated further had we gone with a lower tRD and with brief testing, the memory bandwidth continues to scale very well with tighter tRD values.</p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/bench-2.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">Like the bandwidth, the Everest latency results show a marked improvement going from stock to the overclock. A 50.5ns result in Everest for this setup is very respectable and again, a slightly tighter tRD would get us into the 40s.</p>
ScienceMark v2<p style="text-align: justify;"><i>ScienceMark is an almost ancient benchmark utility at this point in time and hasn't seen an update in a long time. It is, however, still a favorite for accurately calculating bandwidth on even the newest chipsets.</i></p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/bench-3.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">Again, we receive a substantial increase in bandwidth going from stock to our stable overclock settings. An overall total of a 25% increase in bandwidth lets us know that the memory sub system is really benefiting from the increase in frequencies. We will now see how this increase in bandwidth will equate into performance in a variety of programs.</p>

 

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System Benchmarks

System Benchmarks

SuperPi Mod v1.5<p style="text-align: justify;"><i>When running the 32M benchmark of SPi, we are calculating Pi to 32 million digits and timing the process. Obviously more CPU power helps in this intense calculation, but the memory sub-system also plays an important role, as does the operating system. SPi 32M has been a favorite amongst benchmarks for these very reasons and is admittedly the favorite benchmark of this reviewer.</i></p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/bench-4.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">In all honesty, running SPi in Vista is a bit of a challenge. In order to do so, we had to utilize the efforts of HyperPi which is simply a better interface for running SPi Mod v1.5. The results are less than spectacular because the operating system is not tweaked for SPi but the gap is definitely noticeable. On a properly tuned Windows XP system, these results would be much better.</p>
PCMark Vantage<p style="text-align: justify;"><i>The latest iteration of the popular system benchmark is PCMark Vantage from the Futuremark crew. The PCMark series has always been a great way to either test specific areas of a system or to get a general over view of how your system is performing. For our results, we simply run the basic benchmark suite which involves a wide range of tests on all of the sub-systems of the computer.</i></p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/bench-5.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">An increase of overall score of 14.1% indicates that not all aspects of the system have benefitted from the increase in memory, system, and processor frequencies. This is to be expected as hard drive performance shouldn't normally be improved with overclocking. Even still, this is a substantial increase in performance from stock clocks.</p>
Cinebench R10<p style="text-align: justify;"><i>Another benchmarking community favorite, Cinebench renders an intense 2D scene relying on all the processing power it can. Cinebench R10 is another 64-bit capable application and is likely the most efficient program tested today at utilizing all cores of a processor. We will be running both the single threaded and multi-threaded benches here today.</i></p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/bench-9.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">The overclocked settings continue to thrash the stock settings and in Cinebench, this is primarily going to be a result of the massive processing power increase going from 3.00GHz up to 4.1GHz.</p>
DivX Converter v6<p style="text-align: justify;"><i>Moving from some of the more 'synthetic' benchmarks, we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of an AVI to DivX encoding task. We will take an AVI rip of the movie Blade Runner, the 1982 cult classic, and convert it into DivX using the default multi-media setting of DivX converter v6. DivX fully utilizes both cores of the processor and will rely heavily on all aspects of the system for performance.</i></p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/bench-6.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">Over a 27% decrease in encoding time was recognized through this overclock. That equates to nearly five full minutes off of a twenty one minute task. Clearly the benefits of overclocking a system can be found in results like this. Sure some benchmarks are just a measurement of the performance differences that may or may not equate to 'real world' gains. These results on the other hand are as 'real world' as it gets.</p>
Lame Front End<p style="text-align: justify;"><i>Un-like the DivX conversion we just looked at, Lame Front End is not multi-threaded and only utilizes a single core of a processor. This will obviously limit performance but we should still recognize significant time savings going from the stock settings to the overclocked results. We will be encoding a WAV rip of the Blackalicious album, Blazing Arrow and converting it to MP3 using the VBR 0 quality preset.</i></p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/bench-7.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">A whopping fifty full seconds was knocked off the encoding time which is quite significant considering the total encoding time was just over three minutes for the stock clocks. Again, another real world test shows the true power and time savings of being able to overclock hardware.</p>
Photoshop CS3<p style="text-align: justify;"><i>Adobe Photoshop CS3 is full x64 compliant and ready and able to use every single CPU cycle our processor has available. Since digital photography is as popular as roller skates were in the 70's, we are going to be timing how long it takes to convert 100 RAW images from a Canon 20D into half size JPG files of maximum quality.</i></p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/bench-8.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">Unfortunately we only had a single hard drive setup for all of the benchmarks and it appears that the Photoshop RAW conversion test was the most affected by this. There is still a solid performance increase but it was less than 17% which is quite a bit less of a gain than we have seen on previous results. The last of the benchmark sections will focus on 3D applications and gaming, let's take a look at those now.</p>

 

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Gaming Benchmarks

Gaming Benchmarks

Futuremark 3DMark 06<p style="text-align: justify;"><i>We had to bypass 3DMark Vantage for this review because it didn't want to play nicely with the HD3870X2 we used for this review. Honestly, I am not a fan of Vantage at this point as it has just caused headaches for me up until now. Needless to say, 3DMark 06 is still a very viable tool for testing a systems performance.</i></p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/bench-10.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">The results really speak for themselves as the increase in score is very significant. This is a result of both the processor tests but also the increased system performance allowing the HD3870X2 to be fully utilized. This may indicate a bottleneck in the video system that will show again in the last to gaming benchmarks we are about to look at.</p>
Company of Heroes - In-Game benchmark<p style="text-align: justify;"><i>Having very little to do with the actual game play, the Company of Heroes in-game benchmark is a very consistent way to test 3D performance of a system. All detail levels are maxed out and the resolution was set to the very popular 1680x1050. These settings are quite common but a hefty video card will be needed in order to not be the bottleneck at these settings.</i></p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/bench-11.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">At this point it is painfully obvious that the limitation of these results were the HD3870X2 and not the system. There is absolutely no gains to be had going from stock to the overclocked settings with detail levels turned up as high as they were. Obviously lowering details would present a phantom performance increase in the system but these settings are more than playable and there is no need to adjust the settings just to show a difference in results between system clocks. Adding a second HD3870X2, which is completely possible with the Rampage Formula, would result in a much different set of results showing up between the two setups.</p>
Call of Duty 4<p style="text-align: justify;"><i>The detail levels are again set to the maximum allowed and resolution to 1680x1050. This game runs flawlessly at these settings and many hours were spent playing Call of Duty 4 in this setup. For the benchmark, we have recorded a ten minute free for all match on the Crash level with fifteen users. There is plenty of heavy gun fight and action involved and fairly accurately portrays what type of results we would see on a regular basis playing multi-player COD4. The demo is then played back and FRAPS is used to record the frame rates shown below.</i></p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/bench-12.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">Again, we find out that at these detail levels, the system has absolutely no bearing on the results of the time demo. Lowering detail levels again creates a gap between the two sets of results but is completely un-necessary as COD4 runs very well at maximum details in this setup.</p>

 

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Voltage Regulation

Voltage Regulation

<p style="text-align: justify;">Our voltage regulation testing is compromised of two factors being tested. Since this ASUS motherboard provides 'Loadline Calibration', we will be testing the vCORE fluctuation with and without this feature enabled in the BIOS on our stable overclock. Intel specification outlines a droop in voltage for Intel processors when switching from idle to load conditions. This droop is referred to as Vdroop in the overclocking community and generally regarded as a bad thing because it requires setting a higher vCORE to make up for the droop that occurs at load. Loadline Calibration in the ASUS BIOS is basically an option to eliminate the Vdroop from occurring. So our testing will not only be showing the difference between the two different states of Loadline Calibration, but it will also let us know how well Loadline Calibration does at eliminating Vdroop.

The second prong of our voltage testing will be a look at the various voltages and the differences encountered between what is selected in the BIOS, what the BIOS reports, what Windows reports, and what a calibrated digital multi-meter (DMM) find. We have only found three voltage read points on the motherboard so the vCORE, vDIMM, and vNB will be the only three recorded with the DMM. Both vCORE and vNB will be read from the underside of the motherboard at the output side of the corresponding inductor for each voltage supply. These read points have been the general consensus amongst enthusiasts as the universally correct read points on ASUS motherboards for a while now. vDIMM will be read directly from an open DIMM slot using the VDD pin closest to the key. The ground point used for all readings will be the ground pin on a fan header located at the bottom rear of the motherboard. Here are a trio of photos showing the various read points used.</p><center><a href="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/voltage-1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/small/voltage-1.jpg" alt=""border="0"></a> <a href="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/voltage-2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/small/voltage-2.jpg" alt=""border="0"></a>

<a href="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/voltage-3.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/small/voltage-3.jpg" alt=""border="0"></a></center><p style="text-align: justify;">Since we just looked at the read points, we'll start with a look at the voltages selected and reported. In the chart below, vCORE (LLC) is the vCORE with Loadline Calibration enabled and vCORE will be with Loadline Calibration disabled. Here is how things shake out:</p><center><table border="0" bgcolor="#666666" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="1" width="735px"><tr><td align="center" bgcolor="#cc9999" width="105px"> </td><td align="center" bgcolor="#cc9999" width="105px"><b>BIOS Set</b></td><td align="center" bgcolor="#cc9999" width="105px"><b>BIOS Report</b></td><td align="center" bgcolor="#cc9999" width="105px"><b>PC Probe<br />Idle</b></td><td align="center" bgcolor="#cc9999" width="105px"><b>PC Probe<br />Load</b></td><td align="center" bgcolor="#cc9999" width="105px"><b>DMM<br />Idle</b></td><td align="center" bgcolor="#cc9999" width="105px"><b>DMM<br />Load</b></td></tr><tr><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">vCORE</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.36875v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.320v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.33v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.30v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.335v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.306v</td></tr><tr><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">vCORE (LLC)</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.315v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.304v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.31v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.31v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.307v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.308v</td></tr><tr><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">PLL</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.50v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.568v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">x</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">x</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">x</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">x</td></tr><tr><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">vNB</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.45v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.456v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.47v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.47v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.456v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.455v</td></tr><tr><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">vDIMM</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">2.20v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">2.256v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">2.26v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">2.26v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">2.204v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">2.203v</td></tr><tr><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">vFSB</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.20v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.120v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.12v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.12v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">x</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">x</td></tr><tr><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">vSB</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.05v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.072v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.07v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.07v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">x</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">x</td></tr><tr><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">vSB II</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.50v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.536v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.54v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">1.54v</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">x</td><td align="center" bgcolor="#ececec" width="105px">x</td></tr></table></center><p style="text-align: justify;">As we can see, the BIOS selections are very close to what is presented in the BIOS as readings for pretty much all of the voltages. This is a welcome sight as it isn't always fun trying to remember what voltage offsets are all the time. The readings in Windows via PC Probe II carry over the accuracy which is fully expected as the voltages are likely polled from the same place as the BIOS does, the one exception being the vDIMM reading by PC Probe II. It appears to be the same reading as the BIOS, but our DMM found a slightly lower result with 0.05v less than the software readings. This equates to exactly what we set in the BIOS. The vCORE, and vNB DMM readings are almost bang on as well to the software which means these software readings should be trusted. It is hard to say whether this is the case across a number of the samples of this motherboard, but hopefully that is the case with others. Let's now have a look at a couple of OCCT vCORE charts over a two hour stress test.</p><b>vCORE w/Loadline Calibration Disabled</b>

<center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/voltage-4.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">Keep in mind that this result is with our highest stable overall overclock at 4.1GHz w/1.36875 set in the BIOS so as to stay above 1.30v under load. The Vdroop visible with the dual core E8400 is exactly what we should expect going from 1.33v down to 1.30v for a total droop of 0.03v. The two spikes we see in the voltage reading are a bit disconcerting and subsequent repeats of the test failed to show these spikes again. In all likely-hood, it was simply a miss-read from the software.</p><b>vCORE w/Loadline Calibration Enabled</b>

<center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/voltage-5.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">Once we enable Loadline Calibration, we can immediately drop the vCORE selected in the BIOS to 1.3125v for stability at this overclock. The vCORE right across is straight as an arrow showing absolutely zero ripple according to OCCT. As random checks with the DMM throughout the test, it was found to be within a hundredth of the same value every time. The voltage under load required to maintain stability isn't any less, or more, but the voltage then being fed to the CPU at idle is less than if we have Loadline Calibration disabled. This is what enthusiasts don't like about Vdroop, it requires a higher vCORE to be used when at idle than if there was no droop. Some boards are really bad with droop, the Rampage Formula isn't one of those, even with Loadline Calibration disabled. Keep in mind though, we have only looked at a dual core CPU, not a quad core which will likely increase the amount of droop slightly.</p>

 

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Heat & Acoustical Testing

Heat & Acoustical Testing

<p style="text-align: justify;">The name of this section is a bit misleading. The acoustical testing for this motherboard is...well, non-existent and this is because of a very simple reason: the chipset is silent. In the features section it was discussed at length that the Pin-Fin Thermal Module is a silent chipset cooling solution and we can confirm that with no fan running, the motherboard is completely silent. Now since the motherboard is silent, we expected some sort of disadvantage when it came to cooling the Intel X48 north bridge and ICH9R south bridge. We decided to do a quick comparison of the chipset temperatures with the 120mm fan hanging above the memory as seen in the setup photos, and without that fan there leaving the Pin-Fin Thermal Module responsible for all the cooling by itself. Again, we rely on the stable overclocked setup to provide the stress with 1.45v going to the northbridge, here is how the board performs:</p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/temp-1.png" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">To record the temperatures above, we simply recorded the PC Probe II reported temperatures at twenty minute intervals throughout the two hour test. It is obvious that the passive heatsink and heat pipe solution on the Rampage Formula benefits from some active cooling, but it is also evident that it doesn't suffer too much without any help at all in about 22C~23C ambients. The average delta between actively cooled and passive is about 13C~14C but the chipset never went over 50C at any point when passively cooled. Personally, a recommendation of making sure some sort of airflow finds its way to the large Pin-Fin Thermal Module isn't a bad idea if you mount this motherboard in a case. It won't take much and will be just fine without any airflow at all.</p>

 

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Long Term Impressions

Long Term Impressions

<p style="text-align: justify;">We are going to use this section as a precursor to the conclusion, touching on a few key points and sharing more experiences we had with the ASUS Rampage Formula. In addition, we will also cover a few topics yet to be discussed, like hardware installation and the External LCD Poster. Let's start off with a small but very substantial networking issue.</p>

Network Copying Issue

<p style="text-align: justify;">This issue popped up very early in the review once the overclocking started and screenshots were being collected. With the shipping BIOS (0219), we found that we were unable to transfer files from the Rampage Formula over either network connectors to other computers or NAS devices on the network. We could see the other computers and could pull files from any other device on the network, but were unable to send files. This was a characteristic of the ASUS Maximus Extreme but switching to the other ethernet connector would temporarily solve the issue but this wasn't the case with the Rampage Formula. When contacted, ASUS confirmed it was a known issue and was to be resolved in a future BIOS release.</p>

External LCD Poster

<p style="text-align: justify;">The reason our discussion of the LCD Poster is here is for one simple fact: it doesn't really belong anywhere else. Here is the LCD poster in the light, and in the dark lit up.</p><center><a href="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/lcd_poster-1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/small/lcd_poster-1.jpg" alt=""border="0"></a></center><p style="text-align: justify;">The ability to control whether the light stays on or off after getting into Windows is a priceless feature that could have been easily overlooked and if it had, the LCD would have been more annoying than useful. With that said, the LCD is not at all annoying and quite useful. It is no different than an onboard LCD POST code reader but instead of providing cryptic codes, it says exactly what is attempting to past POST. During POST it cycles through the various stages, <i>DET DRAM</i>, <i>CHECK CPU</i>, <i>VGA BIOS</i>, then goes to <i>Final USB</i>, <i>Count Mem</i>, and <i>Init ROM</i> before going onto load the OS. There may be a couple more in there but they go by too fast to see. Essentially, if any step fails, the LCD will stay stuck on the last item it was working on when it failed and we will know what the problem is.

For the most part, this tool is just going to be a toy piece of eye candy, but when trouble shooting a failed overclock or new system that won't POST, it might be invaluable saving headaches and hassles.</p>

Ease of Use

<p style="text-align: justify;">To say this motherboard is a willing participant in everything we did is an understatement. From overclocking, to hardware installation, to Windows & driver installation; everything went incredibly smoothly for us throughout the review period. As we mentioned in the overclocking section, the Rampage Formula is at home to being completely manipulated by an experienced user and pushed to the limits or guided by an amateur willing to reach lofty highs almost on its own. The one thing we would like to see changed is the recovery from a bad overclock that refused to POST. Having worked with the EVGA 790i a lot in the last few weeks as well, we were spoiled by the ability to simply hit reset and to get back in the BIOS.

With the Rampage Formula, we had to turn off the power supply for a split second in order to get safe defaults that would allow us back into the BIOS. In the features it lists C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall) as being able to do this with a simple 'reset' but it actually needs a hard power off. Again, this is getting pretty petty because we couldn't find much else to complain about...but it does say 'reset' in the features.</p><center><a href="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/thermalright-1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/small/thermalright-1.jpg" alt=""border="0"></a></center><p style="text-align: justify;">Speaking of hardware installation, we really didn't touch much on it as it was decided that this review was getting too large as it was, but here is the proof. The heatsink / heatpipe theme park on this board has no problem accepting the insanely popular Thermalright Ultra-120 and therefore the Ultra-120 Extreme as well. We have already been out in the forums informing potential customers of this ability as it is already a commonly asked question.</p>

Smooth Sailing Throughout

<p style="text-align: justify;">To put it mildly, this motherboard was beaten rather profusely. As seen by the FSB testing, we did everything we could to get the absolute best out of this board including voltages that may or may not have been authorized by ASUS. The stock cooling really held up well, and to top it off, the thermal paste was not even changed for any of the results seen in this review. Sure, there are going to be some boards that come from the factory with less than stellar heatsink contact but this sample seems to be faring quite well.</p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/asus/rampageformula/longterm-1.jpg" alt=""></center><p style="text-align: justify;">On top of all the testing, this setup has been running pretty much non-stop the last couple of weeks testing a couple kits of memory in a variety of programs and it has always been predictable. There haven't been any of those weird moments when you’re overclocking and you think the board should POST but it just doesn't only to work a few minutes later at the exact same settings. The motherboard really seemed steady on its feet through the entire testing period, and that is with the release BIOS which was a nice surprise.

We have worked with a number of ASUS motherboards as has been mentioned throughout this review and they always seem to be great to work with. The ASUS Rampage Formula is no exception to that loose rule. We wish there was more to complain about but there really isn't much anything else to say...aside from ASUS, please, please, please, make your web site as consistent as your high end motherboards. Pulling teeth is the term that comes to mind when contemplating going to the web site to look for new drivers, or a BIOS, or even to download the manual.</p>

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

<p style="text-align: justify;">It is hard to even start this conclusion because there are so many things to potentially talk about that impressed us with the ASUS Rampage Formula. The features list reads like an edition of the encyclopedia that doesn't seem to end and it was apparent again and again why ASUS has made this board part of their ROG series. It, quite simply put, is the best DDR2 motherboard that ASUS offers at this time. The BIOS is as rich as a long time gold stock owner and yet it is easy to navigate and acclimate to for the experienced Intel chipset user. The overclocking capabilities of this motherboard allow users to squeeze the most out of their hardware and make the benchmarkers drool at the possibilities available to them. However, with this complexity there are some draw backs.

Despite being very easy for enthusiasts to learn this BIOS, the beginner might be intimidated when they first get into it. ASUS has done a great job helping this first-time user out with a BIOS that seems to have all the right options set to AUTO until the user decides they are ready to tackle them manually, but only so much can be done to help when the BIOS is this intense. With that in mind, the cost of this motherboard might limit its primary user base to the more experienced user that is getting the Rampage Formula for a reason. Let's not forget, this is a $300+ CND motherboard and despite some DDR3 boards surpassing that by $100, it is definitely at the upper end of the DDR2 motherboard food chain.

What you get for the price can certainly be justified though because you are getting the best Intel chipset available at this time and a host of features that other manufacturers don't offer like the External LCD Poster. Sure it may seem gimmicky to some, but to the guy that is trouble shooting a no POST situation on a new build, it certainly isn't a joke. The Pin-Fin Thermal Module proved its worth as a passive and active cooler, so silent users can have all the power they need at their finger tips, without sacrificing noise. At the same time, power users know that a little bit of help really opens up possibilities to push this board further. All of this equates to a very refined DDR2 motherboard that is at the top of its game and fully capable of showcasing everything that the Intel X48 chipset has to offer.</p>
<b>Pros:</b>

• Powered by the top rank Intel chipset available and that it offers
• Loaded with features like a 1959 Cadillac Coupe deVille
• The ultimate enthusiasts BIOS
• Overclocking capabilities that far surpassed our expectations
• Passive cooling that actually works like a champ passively

<b>Cons:</b>

• The ultimate enthusiasts BIOS may be overwhelming for average users
• At the upper range of the DDR2 motherboard spectrum price wise
• Really should have temperature sensors included in the package

<p style="text-align: justify;">At this time, we proudly present ASUS with the Hardware Canucks Dam Good Award for releasing a motherboard that is ready to rock with the shipping BIOS and tough to find faults in. Congratulations, it is certainly well deserved!</p><center><img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/3oh6/dam_good-1.jpg" alt=""></center>

<center><b><i>Thank-you ASUS for making this review possible!</i></b>
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