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Asus Rampage II GENE Review
[Abstract]
Rise of the Micro X58sIt seems that being small is in vogue among motherboard vendors now. In this case, it means motherboards of the microATX form factor. While we can't pinpoint any seminal p...
[Content] PCDigitalMobileGame
Overclocking
The main selling point of the ROG series of motherboards is about overclocking and that's something the ASUS Rampage II Gene has in abundance. Almost all of these features are direct 'ports' from the ASUS Rampage II Extreme (and even older ROG boards) and they span the range from assisting the veteran overclocker to user friendly tools that guide the novice through the process or enable the overclocking automatically.
The BIOS appears slightly messy and chaotic to the novice and while nothing has changed significantly from the Rampage II Extreme, it could do with some housekeeping. We recommend that users update to the latest 0705 BIOS at least, since we found that the benchmark scores for older BIOS were significantly lower compared to the newer version.
The settings themselves are identical to that on the Extreme and we have listed some of the more important ones:-
- Base Frequency (aka FSB) Settings: 100 to 500MHz
- PCIe Frequency: 100 to 200MHz
- DRAM Frequency: Auto, 800, 1066, 1333, 1600, 1866, 2133MHz
- CPU Core Multiplier: 12 to 64
- UCLK Frequency: Auto, 2666 to 5600MHz (in 133MHz steps)
- QPI Frequency: Auto, 4800, 5866, 6400MT/s
- CPU Voltage Settings: 0.85 to 2.50V (in 0.00625V steps)
- Memory Voltage Settings: 1.51106 to 2.50481V (0.01325V steps)
- IOH Core Voltage Settings: 1.11341V to 2.19991V (in 0.01325V steps)
- ICH Voltage Settings: 1.11341V to 2.00116V (in 0.01325V steps)
The maximum overclock we got was 220MHz for the base clock, which is more than sufficient for any overclocking attempt. Click for larger image. |
The overclocking margin on the Gene was similar to what we saw on the normal sized Rampage II Extreme and other X58 boards that we have tested in the past months. Since overclocking the Core i7 usually involves adjusting a few other multipliers and clocks rather than focusing solely on the base clock, such a clock limit is more than adequate for users.
We also quickly tested the built-in automatic overclocking profiles, the CPU and Memory Level Up. Both features worked without any hassle, making them simple, one-click overclocking tools for the novice or even experienced users who may not have the time to tweak.
Test Setup
When testing the Core i7 or X58 motherboard, both Intel Turbo Boost and HyperThreading were enabled at all times. Recent motherboards that we tested were used to compare the Rampage II Gene's performance. The rest of our typical configuration:-
- Intel Core i7-965 XE (3.20GHz, Intel Turbo Boost, HyperThreading enabled)
- 3 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 @ 7-7-20 CAS 7.0 (7-7-22 for Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME)
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 200GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
- ASUS GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB - with ForceWare 178.24 drivers
- Intel INF 9.1.0.1007 and Intel Matrix Storage manager 8.6.0.1007 driver set
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 (and DirectX 9.0c)
The following benchmarks were used to assess the performance of the motherboards compared in the review:-
- BAPco SYSmark 2007 (with Patch 4)
- Futuremark PCMark05 (ver 120)
- SPECviewperf 9.0
- AquaMark3
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