Asus Crosshair IV Extreme
Testbed & BIOS
Published: 30th September 2010 | Source: Asus | Price: ~£250 |

Testbed
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T BE 3.20GHz Processor
Asus ROG Crosshair IV Extreme Motherboard
Corsair Dominator GT 4GB 2000mhz
ATi Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
nVidia GeForce GTX 480 Graphics Card (For LUCID)
Corsair AX1200w PSU
Windows 7 Home Premium x64
BIOS
Like the Crosshair IV Formula, you can immediately tell that this motherboard is centred around Overclocking. Really who cares about Date, Time or Current Boot devices? All that matters is that the overclock menu is in front of you from the word go!
As you would expect, a whole host of Voltage and Frequency parameters are available for you to access. The flexibility on offer suits the needs of everyone from novices to dry ice/LN2 lunatics.
As with most Asus boards these days, it is possible to save and load BIOS profiles in up to 8 banks. The Crosshair IV Extreme also includes a separate BIOS Profile named "Go Button", which links with a button on the motherboard. This is convenient for those times when a particular overclock fails and you simply need to call up some fail safe defaults with minimal hassle.
Finally, the BIOS menu provides you with access to the EZ Flash 2 tool. As mentioned before, you can even load BIOS ROMs from your Hard Disk Drive, as the tool is capable of navigating through most file systems.
Most Recent Comments
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At last, it's finally here. After four weeks of examining Asus' flagship AMD motherboard, what do we think of it? Continue Reading |
man i realy wished this performed better its a shame tho
I mean sure, if you are a gadget freak then it may appeal to you, but the bottom line on a board of this cost is function. Function should come over form as it does with the MSI.
Yet it wasn't even able to match the MSI's bottom line function.
So all of the stick on tat does very little if it is being compared to what I would call a budget board.
It was the same with my CHII ROG. Loads of stupid tat (The LED poster for one) that was fun for about five minutes and then got old fast. The only thing I really liked on that board that explained away the premium price was the cmos reset on the IO shield - that was bloody marvellous. But the rest? I ended up disconnecting the LED poster after about six boots never to use it again.
And then I got my M3A32 deluxe wifi which was also a very expensive board, yet doesn't have any silly bits on and has far more to offer in the way of function.
Again I suppose Asus are going to cater to many people with this board, but what with this, the Ares, the Mars II (if it ever comes along) and that add in board previewed today I just worry sometimes that they are being a bit over indulgent and started to fritter away their successes on stupid stuff.
It's all starting to seem a little... How do you say it?... EVGA.
Sorry if I sound harsh or pessimistic, I am only thinking aloud. But I think this time MSI have shown that stuff like this and EVGA boards are all rather pointless.
Thanks ever so much as ever for the reviews guys.
Great review, shame about the price. The formula looks like the best option for those needing multi GPU lanes or the MSI for rampant overclockers.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this board has taken a LONG time to come to market, and in the previews we've actually seen various heatsink designs fitted. Why oh why did they decide that this one was the best? Looking at how it's put together, I'm almost certain a better heatsink would deal with things much more effectively anyway. Perhaps they could have bundled an add-on fan for low airflow environments (read watercooling etc) that wasn't as small any whiny and above all, not necessary for most.
The performance also seems a bit of a let down for such an expensive piece of kit. You talk about it perhaps being good for extreme overclockers, but if you look at all the features on this board, perhaps it's not aimed at them, but more at the feature nuts who want to control their board with bluetooth and run mixed cards just because they can. Some of the sentiments in this thread seem to be that the RoG boards are almost gimmicky and don't have the performance to match, especially the AMD ones. There must be an element of truth in that.
Speaking of AMD, the only massive advantage this board has is SLI I would think. You could change to a hex core and run your 460 SLI etc if you wanted to. It does seem AMD have made some headway to Intel on the CPU front, but they're still not there yet. I think you may be right that they're not extracting everything from the multi-gpu setup, but the reason is unclear. Hopefully it is just drivers as you say. I guess we'll see as the Lucid chips mature. You can't ignore the major selling point for AMD kit though. You get most of the performance and all the high end features you want for a fraction of the price. It's nice to have a top end board to play with (I have the Crosshair III Forumula) rather than a run of the mill. Still, I understand that's not everybody's cup of tea, but it makes extreme overclocking with all the bells and whistles (and bluetooth overclocking!) a bit more accessible.
Disappointed that after a massive wait this board is a bit of a flop? Yes. Would I still like to play with it and clock the nuts off my AM3 chip with my phone? Almost certainly!
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Speaking of AMD, the only massive advantage this board has is SLI I would think. |
I've not tried it (obviously) but there are videos doing the rounds on Youtube ETC.
Just in the process of watching your video Tom..
I think the difference with the results over the P55 and the AMD set is the bios. Well, not strictly the bioses but the drivers communicating with the ports.
The P55 (IIRC) already allows SLI and Crossfire.. Let me check that... Yes it would seem it does. And maybe this has made it easier to integrate the Lucid chip into those boards?
Moving onto your MSI comment about how it was faster? Well, MSI have more experience with the Lucid IMO. Thus they know how to integrate it better and how to work their bios possibly? Where as Asus have never tried it before?
Things could well improve with bios updates....
I do really appreciate your honesty over it all. Most would get all excited and say how wonderful it was, but this is very misleading and can cause people to waste money. What I really respect from you guys is the fact that Asus are good to OC3D and supply us with some of the most droolworthy items, yet, there is no favoritism when reviewing their products.
I also really appreciate how you have demonstrated just how much bum that fan sucks. Most wouldn't give a crap about that noise, but times are a changing and that noise is just not acceptable any more. I know a good few people who bought the EVGA 790i board and that too had a woefully loud and obnoxious northbridge fan. The workaround was to cable tie a 92mm fan on to quieten it down, yet, not a single review mentioned this. It seems that some people think that just because a product is expensive and top of the range that it can be loud and no one should care. Olbocks !
*Hi Emma !*
Once again I appreciate your videos, your honesty and this site's integrity on being truthful and honest !
I mean, it is obviously down to the drivers, as it could be that the drivers need to be completely and utterly different to do what they do on an ATI/AMD set. Communciation between the lanes is handled by the bios at a low level IIRC via the northbridge so it may take Lucid/Hydra time to sort this out. Or, it could even be the actual bios itself?
But yes, those scores look utterly cack.
I don't see the difference in price between the formula and extreme though. With all the extras I could understand £50, but £100 is excessive really.
It greatly leaves me questioning the worthiness of even the Formula as it has overheating problems on the north bridge. With all the hype everything has now come to a grinding halt and fallen flat on it's face.
Why on earth did they not stick with some of the early passive heatsinKS which looked far better and were dead silent to boot.
Oh The decisions!
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I officially feel cheated and let down greatly by ASUS It greatly leaves me questioning the worthiness of even the Formula as it has overheating problems on the north bridge. With all the hype everything has now come to a grinding halt and fallen flat on it's face. Why on earth did they not stick with some of the early passive heatsinKS which looked far better and were dead silent to boot. Oh The decisions! |
And what the heck is the deal with lucid working better with intel, jesus...
Long story short, the fan is not a necessity. While previous ROG packages offered an optional bolt on fan, the Extreme has one prefitted on the grounds of space saving. The fan is orientated towards those who run their systems under conditions with minimal case airflow (i.e.- open test bench and/or watercooled). It is only fair that we mention the reasoning behind the fan implementation, but our personal opinions remain unchanged.






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