Gamers looking for the ultimate motherboard will have no doubt checked out all the high-end products on offer from companies such as ASUS, Abit, MSI, Gigabyte, Foxconn, and the list goes on. However there is one company that has dedicated an entire product line-up to developing the latest and greatest motherboards aimed at gamers. That company is of course ASUS, with their elite “Republic of Gamers” family which has been around for a few years now.
Each time we check out a new Republic of Gamers (ROG) product it seems that they are more advanced in just about every way possible, and today’s review item is certainly no exception. The ASUS Rampage Extreme is the latest and greatest member of the ROG family, and I am going to go out on a limb here and say that it is probably the best Intel motherboard money can buy! Featuring the latest and greatest Intel chipset, the Rampage Extreme is far more impressive than any X48 board that we have seen to date.
As it stands the X48 is going to remain the latest and greatest chipset from Intel until the Bloomfield variant of the Nehalem processors come in later this year, bringing the new X58 chipset (Codenamed ‘Tylersburg’) along with them. However this new platform will use the LGA1366 socket, so the X48 should remain the flagship part for the long lived LGA775 socket. So getting back to the here and now, those wanting the very best chipset to work with their new Core 2 processor have the X48.
Although ASUS may already have four Intel X48 motherboards on offer, not including the ASUS Rampage Extreme version, they have still managed to find several ways to make this version special. For example, the Rampage Extreme is the first motherboard we have reviewed to feature modular cooling. Right out of the box this board looks incredibly impressive, but there are a few other heatsinks included in the bundle that can be installed if the user wishes. These modular heatsinks are much taller and the water-cooling block on the north bridge can be removed and replaced with a large heatsink if the user is not interested in using this feature.
Like all previously tested ROG motherboards, the Rampage Extreme saves precious onboard real-estate by using a PCI Express sound card. However instead of using their typical Supreme FX II sound card, which uses an ADI codec, this motherboard features a new Creative X-Fi version.
The list of integrated peripherals that can be found lurking on the Rampage Extreme includes Firewire, dual Gigabit LAN, 8-Channel audio that supports EAX 4.0, eSATA, SATA RAID, EPU-6 Engine, CrossFireX support, and the list just goes on. The ASUS Rampage Extreme uses the X48 chipset, which has been paired with the tried and true ICH9R south bridge chip.
In order to support the latest DDR3 memory running at 1333MHz, the chipset’s Memory Controller Hub (MCH) features wider buses. The Rampage Extreme goes beyond official DDR3 frequencies by adding support for DDR3-2000 and DDR3-1800 via overclocking, while DDR3-1600 is officially supported. This is quite impressive, while the board can also accommodate for up to 8GB of DDR3 should you be brave enough to burn that much cash.
ASUS has abandoned the chipsets HD audio support and replaced it with a separate soundcard as part of the package. This has been the case with all of their new high-end ROG motherboards, and it is a great idea as it allows them to save valuable PCB real-estate by going with a soundcard-like approach. What they call the SupremeFX X-Fi is the latest in their SupremeFX range.
This small PCI Express x1 card features an Analog Device AD2000B HD Audio codec, supporting output for up to 8 channels, and Creative’s EAX 4.0HD API. According to the ADI website, the AD2000B chip features six ADCs with 96kHz at 95dB, simultaneous recording of three stereo channels, support for quad microphone arrays, independent sample rates from 8kHz to 96kHz, and 16, 20, and 24-bit PCM resolution.
Although Intel has done away with IDE support altogether with their chipsets, ASUS has revived this age old technology on the Rampage Extreme for some unknown reason. Nevertheless, at the same time they also added an additional 3 SATA ports, one of which is external. By including the new Silicon Image 5723 SATA controller users can now install two newly formatted drives and the controller will automatically configure the drives for RAID 0, without the need for additional drivers. Furthermore this controller can also be set to work as a RAID 1 setup if the user desires so.
The key advantage here, other than being quick and easy, is that the array calculations are made by the hardware, the operating system does not require a special driver. Additionally, the ICH9R south bridge offers six more Serial ATA ports, boasting data transfer rates up to 300MB/s. These six ports also support standard RAID 0 for performance and RAID 1 for protection, along with RAID 5 and RAID10. The advanced host controller interface (AHCI) further boosts performance with Native Command Queuing (NCQ), and provides native hot plug for drive swaps.
The Rampage Extreme supports IEEE1394a (FireWire 400), offering bandwidth up to 400 Mbps, making it suitable for bandwidth-intensive applications like digital video (DV), professional audio, and hard drives, which often consume hundreds or even thousands of megabytes of data per file. The board provides two 1394a ports due to the inclusion of the VIA VT6308P PCI IEEE-1394 FireWire controller. The more obvious USB 2.0 support comes from the X48 chipset, and therefore the Rampage Extreme does support a total of ten ports.
The dual Gigabit LAN design allows a PC to serve as a network gateway for managing traffic between two separate networks. This capability ensures rapid transfer of data from WAN to LAN without any added arbitration or latency. No more bottleneck to handle large amounts of data such as video, audio, and voice. The Rampage Extreme features dual Marvell 88E8056 Gigabit LAN controllers which use the PCI Express bus for maximum throughput.