ASUS Republic of Gamers and X79 ROG Review – Rampage IV Gene, Formula and Extreme
by Ian Cutress on August 3, 2012 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Asus
- X79
- ROG
Competitive Overclocking on the Extreme
Both the Gene and the Formula were both quite happy to reach 5.000 GHz with the minimal of effort. For the Extreme, I had something extra prepared. With thanks to ASUS for supplying us with several high-end graphic cards, I attempted to break some UK records for various benchmarks in the name of 'extreme overclocking'. These occurred over two planned events using slightly different setups each time:
Test Setup 1 (TS1):
Core i7-3930K
Rampage IV Extreme
GSkill DDR3-2400 9-11-11 4x4 GB Kit
OCZ ZX-Series 1250W Gold + Silverstone 1000W Silver
Corsair H100 + Delta-Fans
ASUS 7970s, 925 MHz Core/1375 MHz Memory stock
Test Setup 2 (TS2):
Core i7-3960X
Rampage IV Extreme
GSkill DDR3-2400 9-11-11 4x4 GB Kit
OCZ ZX-Series 1250W Gold + Silverstone 1000W Silver
Custom Made 6x120 Water Cooling (many thanks to the head of TeamGB)
Various GTX-580s, 772/1002 stock
Benchmarks:
3DMark Vantage - Performance
Unigine Heaven - Xtreme Preset (HWBot Version)
3DMark11 - Performance
3DMark11 - Entry
3DMark11 - Extreme
3DMark03
3DMark05
Each of these would be competing against equivalent setups using sub-zero temperatures, whilst the reliance on my end would be to understand the hardware, the benchmarks, and the legal tweaks as defined by the overclocking leagues.
For TS1, this event took place locally with the intention of exploiting the system as much as possible for highest scores. With the i7-3930K at 5 GHz (102 MHz with 49x multiplier) and the memory at 2450 MHz (9-11-11-31 2T timings), the following scores where achieved:
3DMark Vantage - Performance
68912 3DMarks (78908 GPU, 49936 CPU)
4x Radeon HD 7970 @ 1,200/1,850 MHz
UK Record
3DMark11 - Performance
P27010 3DMarks
4x Radeon HD 7970 @ 1,200/1,850 MHz
UK Record
3DMark11 - Entry
E27872 3DMarks
4x Radeon HD 7970 @ 1,200/1,850 MHz
UK Record, 6th World
3DMark11 - Extreme
X15113 3DMarks
4x Radeon HD 7970 @ 1,200/1,850 MHz
UK Record, 4th World
For TS2, this event was part of a Team Great Britain Overclockers event, in the colder northern reaches of England. Ambient temperatures were below 5ºC, which allowed for a better extreme overclock. The i7-3960X was at 5125 MHz (125 MHz with 41x multiplier), and the memory a little lower at 2333 MHz (9-11-11-31 2T timings). The following scores were achieved:
3DMark03
195513 3DMarks
4x GTX-580 @ 850/1077 MHz
2nd UK
3DMark05
45916 3DMarks
4x GTX-580 @ 850/1077 MHz
4th UK
While none of the above setups is suitable for 24/7, for extreme overclocking they are great. My main limiting factors in the setups were the GPU voltages on the AMD graphics cards (default BIOS limited to 1.2 volts, need an updated BIOS to expand this) and the CPU temperatures. The ASUS X79 motherboards performed really well in all conditions, and this is backed up by the number of extreme overclocking scores made on these products.
Disclaimer: Overclocking can break hardware, and should be performed initially with direction until experience is gained. This is especially true with sub-zero overclocking. Read guides, ask questions - especially on the ROG forum, where guides are written specifically for these use cases: Link.
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jontech - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
But sounds kind of cool,.Helps that Asus makes it :)
Paulman - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
Asus Republic of Gamers also holds Starcraft tournaments, as well! That's how I first heard of their brand. In fact, the ASUS ROG Starcraft II Summer 2012 tournament is on right now and I'm watching a game vs. EG.IdrA and EG.Puma (same team, but one American teammate versus a Korean teammate).For more info on this tourney, see: http://rog.asus.com/142982012/gaming/join-the-rog-...
primeval - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
A fun tournament thus far.For the branding portion of this article, I highly recommend checking out some of ASUS ROG's commercials. They have been playing throughout the aforementioned tournament and I have to say they are probably the best hardware commercials I have ever seen in terms of production quality. I think that if you see a few of those commercials, you may be able to further rationalize the branding award.
Meaker10 - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
1x/16x/8x/16x would kill any dual card setup in a micro atx case, kinda defeating the point....just4U - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
the 8x slot is rather pointless...danjw - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
I would rather see an article on the Ivybridge ROG motherboards then the Sandybridge-E ones. These are very niche boards, though I guess that is only slightly less true of the Ivybridge boards. For heavily threaded and memory intensive applications Sandybridge-E will win. But not really on much else, though they are chosen by some just because they are the most expensive.StevoLincolnite - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
Also, Sandy Bridge overclocks higher and throws out less heat, because of the silly design choice that Intel made in regards to the heat spreader compound.Not a problem for those who are up to the task of removing the IHS or lapping.
Sad part is that Ivy Bridge actually has nice thermals and power consumption at stock; which could have translated well for enthusiasts.
IvyBridge-E should be out within the next year, haswell will get released and the cycle shall continue.
Hopefully we get 8 core Ivybridge-E chips, which is severely lacking on the Socket 2011 platform with the 3930K's being die harvested 8 core chips, plus most socket 2011 motherboards will take an Ivybridge-e chip anyway, when they're released.
danjw - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
I was just looking at "leaked" slide that shows Ivy Bridge-E out in Q3 2013 and Haswell out in Q2 2013. I really don't see what the point is of an Ivy Bridge-E if Haswell beats it to the market. With Sandy Bridge-E they released it before the Ivy Bridge tock. I just don't see why that would make much sense.Assimilator87 - Saturday, August 4, 2012 - link
Haswell will probably be limited to four cores, whereas Ivy Bridge-E will scale up to ten cores.mapesdhs - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link
I was hunting for R4E refs and found this. It's strange reading what people expected was going to happen back when the R4E was new. IB-E with 10 cores eh? Oh well. Mind you, that did happen with IB-EP, and infact the XEON E5-2680 v2 is one of the best upgrades one can do for an X79 mbd, at least for threaded performance anyway. Hard to avoid wondering how things would have panned out if the 3930K had simply been a fully functional 8-core in the first place, instead of the crippled sampled chip consumers were offered. However, I obtained quite a few, and they still work pretty well, especially with so many PCIe lanes to play with, and it's cool being able to use a 950 Pro to boot from NVMe (comes with its own boot ROM), though the ROG forum does have a thread with custom BIOS profiles available to add native NVMe boot support to various ASUS mbds.