Despite its over-the-top price, the arrival of Intel’s Sandy Bridge E line up of processors has indeed kick started a fresh round of hardware up-gradation race amongst the tech savvy population from all across the globe. And quite understandably so-- after all the brave initial reviews that most of the products from the family line managed to bag, that indeed showcased Intel’s ability to cater to the constant demand from the market for more sophistication in its next generation product lines. Keeping in sync with this new offering from the Santa Clara based semiconductor giant, motherboard manufacturers from all across the world are also coming up with their new and state-of-the-art product lines to match the high end performance of the Sandy Bridge E processors.
Being a close strategic ally of Intel, ASUSTek- the tech heavyweight from Taiwan has emerged as one of the leading brands to come up with their own set of offerings with the launch of the new X79 family line of motherboards, aimed at complementing the mighty performance of the Sandy Bridge E. The X79
The ASUS Rampage IV Extreme is perhaps the most highly anticipated amongst all the X79 based products which has managed to stand up to the expectations of both fanboys as well as experts from round the globe. Well, at least that’s what we have been hearing from the market ever since the product was dished out. But then, being habitually inclined towards not blindly believing what others have to say about a particular product, we decided to give a closer look at the Rampage IV Extreme i7 Motherboard ourselves in order to find out whether or not it deserves all the positive reviews inked down by numerous experts from all around. Here’s what we found:
The ASUS RAMPAGE IV Extreme Motherboard with a bunch of new-generation and sophisticated specs, appeared to us in the first look as perhaps the most amazing motherboard we have come across off late. Indeed a deserving candidate for finding its place in the ROG (Republic of Gamers) family-- that was the first idea we had about the product when we went through all the specs mentioned by the manufacturer. Then we dug deeper- the product really features all those stuffs that we were expecting to see in the previous offerings from the ROG line up-- e.g. USB 3.0 connectivity, 7:1 channel audio, SATA 6.0 Gbps connections, eSATA connections just to name a few.
Speaking of the packaging, the Rampage IV Extreme bundle is pretty huge just like in the case of the previous RoG models. The board is accompanied by a user manual, 8 Serial ATA cables, a driver CD, I/O back plate as well as EZ Connectors. In addition, there is a pair of extra cables that help you monitor the voltage in a few specific key regions on the board. And then there is a 1366 back plate included too.
The memory and the CPU in the Rampage IV Extreme are driven by the company’s brand new Extreme Engine Digi+ II power design which enables you to include upto 8 DIMMs in the 8 memory slots featured by the board. This outstanding configuration eventually results in an amazing speed that even a whacking DDR3 2400 (quad channel mode) set up.
The product brings along with it a total of five PCI Express 3.0 x 16 slots (physical) which is capable of supporting up to 4-way SLI and CrossFireX setups. In addition, there is also an relatively new feature included by ASUS- the ROG OC Key which makes sure that you are facilitated an additional graphics overlay in the DVI active monitor.
Now about the BIOS-- the BIOS in the ASUS Rampage IV E is perhaps one of those never-seen-before aspects-- perhaps the most crucial one which makes the product a stand out amongst all its competitors floating around in the market. It’s incredibly easy to understand- so easy that every single option included in it shouts out loud what’s its functionalities are really about.
All the 5 PCI Express x 16 slots belong to the PCIe 3.0 category. However, tough luck that the Sandy Bridge E family is not equipped yet to support the PCIe 3.0. So, as of now we don’t have any other option than to wait for the arrival of an upgraded generation. While the single grey slot operates at x8, the remaining four can also give an impressive x16 or x8 performance. And then, if you are looking forward to install two cards, even then both will run at x16.
ASUS has also deployed a new and more advanced feature aimed at beefing up the performance level of USB devices. The end result, as we must acknowledge, is impressive enough-- especially with the Turbo on.
As far the components are concerned, the product can really boast off some really high-end stuffs including quality solid core chokes, solid capacitors etc. The total supported memory by the 8 DIMM slots can be as high as 64 GB. In addition, the board supports all of the commonly seen memory sizes- i.e. 1GB, 2GB, 4GB as well as 8GB DRAMas.
With so many features present in the Rampage IV Extreme i7 Motherboard, we must say that to ink down each and every positive as well as negative aspects (we honestly could not find too many from the latter) will be one monster of a task- in fact its as complicated as being sort of the next best thing to impossible for us mere mortals-- that’s all I am saying. Be it editing related works, or gaming, the product did remarkably well during the most part of our observation.
Overall, we were quite pleased with the way the new ASUS Rampage IV Extreme performed during our observation. The high-price could be worrying factor for many of us though. But then, if you are willing to spend some extra, we highly recommend you this monster of a motherboard.
All in all, from our experience, the ASUS Rampage 4 Extreme delivers exactly what it was meant to. Especially, if you are game freak, you would surely like to lay your hands on this yet another fine product from ASUS and for this visit Evetech.co.za which offers a massive range of customised PCs and hardware accessories tailored to satisfy your every gaming need. Just browse through the site you can get a host hardware products that stand out for their outstanding performance, attractive look, and a reasonable prices.
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