Asus mATX ROG Rampage II Gene X58 Motherboard
To ensure that all reviews on Overclock3D are fair, consistent and unbiased, a standard set of hardware and software is used whenever possible during the comparative testing of two or more products. The configuration used in this review can be seen below:Â
Motherboard: Asus mATX ROG Rampage II Gene X58
Memory: Corsair Dominator @ 8-8-8-24 1600MHz
Graphics Card: NVidia GTX280
Power Supply: Gigabyte Odin 1200W
CPU Cooling: Stock Intel Cooling
Hard Disk: Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 7200rpm 80GB
Graphics Drivers: Geforce 180.60 CUDA
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1
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During the testing of the setup above, special care was taken to ensure that the BIOS settings used matched whenever possible. A fresh install of Windows Vista was also used before the benchmarking began, with a full defrag of the hard drive once all the drivers and software were installed, preventing any possible performance issues due to leftover drivers from the previous motherboard installations. For the 3DMark and gaming tests a single card configuration was used.
To guarantee a broad range of results, the following benchmark utilities were used:
⢠Sisoft Sandra 2009
⢠PassMark CPU test
⢠SuperPI 1m, 8m, 32m
Memory Test
⢠Sisoft Sandra 2009
⢠Everest 4.60
File Compression & Encoding
⢠Sisoft Sandra 2009
⢠7-Zip File Compression
⢠River Past ViMark
Disk I/O Performance
⢠HDTach 3.0.4.0
⢠Sisoft Sandra 2009
3D / Rendering Benchmarks
⢠Cinebench 10
⢠3DMark 05
⢠3DMark 06
⢠3DMark Vantage
3D Games
⢠Crysis
⢠Far Cry 2
⢠Call of Duty 4
Overall System Performance
⢠PCMark Vantage
Power Consumption
Power consumption is an aspect often forgotten when it comes to enthusiast motherboards but in todays climate, with rising utility bills special consideration needs to be taken when choosing you components as over a period of time, one components can prove to be much more expensive than another over its lifetime.
Power consumption was measured at the socket using a plug-in mains power and energy monitor. Idle readings were taken after 5 minutes in Windows. Load readings were taken during a run of 3DMark Vantage.
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Using a respectable Vcore of 1.40v, loadline calibration and Turbo technology enabled, the remainder of BIOS voltage settings were left in their stock state to ensure equality throughout the testing.
The motherboard recovered from bad overclocks with ease and not once did IÂ have to reset the CMOS. I should also point out that Vdrop and droop was pretty much non existent thanks to Asus’s loadline calibration, making the voltages stable as a rock and thereby allowing a much more pleasant overclocking experience.Â