By: Poldopunk, Techisland Hardware Reviewer.
I. Introduction
The Asus Rampage II Gene that was used recently in the Asus Overclocking Show in SM City Cebu is a sight to behold. It is a performer, feature-packed, crossfire capable and a layout that is near flawless for a micro-ATX board. For the rest of us mortals who are unable to catch up with the Core i7 + x58 + DDR3 combo, we are left wondering if such a motherboard exists for Core 2 users. Asus answered those unheard prayers by giving us the Maximus II Gene motherboard. Yes, it is also mATX, uses Socket LGA775 partnered with Intel’s P45 chipset and looks exactly like the Rampage but does it have the equivalent performance? We’ll find out later. Side-by-side the difference is obvious, but even the layout and color scheme are the same.
Given that Intel is set to introduce another socket and chipset before the year ends, it seems that its only a matter of time before the front-side bus technology is fully abandoned and the P45 chipset will become the last mainstream solution that will come our way. Nevertheless, most consumers will have a hard time catching up will all these new technology and in my opinion, Socket LGA775 is going to live for another couple of years before it starts to die slowly. Before we continue with the rest of the review, we will take a short trip down the memory lane and checkout the P45 chipset to fully understand its advantage and improvements over its predecessor, the P35.
The P45 chipset is actually a die-shrink from the previous generation and because of that, it runs on lower voltages and runs much, much cooler. Besides the die-shrink, Intel added PCIE 2.0 support which promises more data bandwidth than PCIE 1.1, the ability of the PCIE 2.0 lanes to be split into two x8 lanes electronically is also included. The previous solution to crossfire on the P35 is a 16 lanes on the MCH (northbridge) and 4 lanes from the ICH (southbridge) which makes the second card slower because of added path that it has to travel not to mention the lanes it is restricted to. With PCIE 2.0 implementation, two 8 PCIE 2.0 lanes is equal to two 16 PCIE 1.1 lanes both lanes are directly connected to the MCH. In the following pages, we shall take a look as to how Asus implemented these technology to the Maximus II Gene motherboard but first up, let’s take a look at the accessories and bundled items with the board
II. Accessories and Bundled Software
The accessories are quite limited, just enough to get you started. There are no USB or eSATA brackets, instead, you get the following: 4 SATA connectors (one side is angled), Q-connectors, a rear I/O backplate, 1 ATA cable, Support DVD, a sticker badge that contains the ROG logo and the very cool LCD Poster that lights up blue when enabled from the BIOS. This after all, is a motherboard aimed towards gamers and enthusiasts so most of the accessories would be tucked away left untouched.
The Maximus II Gene ships with a support DVD which contains quite a handful of programs. Upon insertion, the software contained is presented clutter-free. You will find options to create driver disks for AHCI/RAID and bonus video clips of one of the greatest overclocker today and a promotional video for the Asus’ brand ‘Republic of Gamers’.
You’ll not only receive these standard Asus products, you’ll also get a free copy of 3Dmark06 and a one-year free subscription of Kaspersky Antivirus which is exactly what I use.
Another addition to the bundled software is the Asus EPU-6 engine which in my opinion, one the best utilities for power management. The interface is intuitive and it works seamlessly with EIST (Enhanced Intel Speedstep Technology). The EPU engine on the board itself makes low power states that are even more efficient than the integrated feature on the processor. It lowers down power consumption on almost all aspects of your computer (memory, hard drive, chipset, fans and even the graphics card). Since the graphics card I’m using isn’t made by Asus, low power states are not available but the rest of the system works flawlessly.
The chip and the program not only lowers down CPU Core Ratio, it also lowers down front-side bus and memory speeds. At this state, everything in your computer runs cooler and is very useful when doing less intensive tasks like surfing the internet and document processing. I tested it with a 64-bit Prime95 to see if the system is stable and after an hour, I must say I’m impressed – even the LCD Poster reports lower voltages on the components. The board also comes with an excellent audio solution through SupremeFX X-Fi, this time though, the sound chip is soldered directly into the motherboard instead of connecting it via PCIE or PCI because of the space limitation.
And lastly, for computer enthusiasts we have TurboV which gives you access to front-side bus and voltage settings even when you’re in Windows. The utility is very simple and yet, powerful to get the most out of your overclock. However, this utility cannot be used as a primary tool for overclocking because once you cross between fsb straps (example: from 200 to 266 FSB strap), the chipset requires a restart and if the overclock is unstable, the computer would freeze. This utility doesn’t work in conjunction with the EPU-6 engine. You would have to disable one or the other to get it working properly.
III Board Layout
The motheboard is packaged nicely, The packaging itself contains the features of the board written all over it. The red colored box gives emphasis that this is a Republic of Gamers motherboard aimed to enthusiasts and gamers like. It is placed in a cardboard box with a transparent cover that allows one to view the board itself without having to remove it from its packaging. There should have been a foam backing that will protect the soldered pins as the board tends to move about while inside this box.
To start with, the upper left hand side is where the 8-pin EPS +12-volt connector, LCD Poster and the voltiminder LED for the CPU Voltage/PLL are located, this is where the first minor issue is located at. While the EPS 12-volt connector is ideal for cable management, the LCD Poster makes mounting a little hard. To put it in a perspective, imagine where you already have the motheboard mounted in your chassis, that makes the connector an awful place to be at since the LCD poster connector is quite small. Once the LCD Poster is connected and your tower-based heatsink are mounted, there’s no way for your to disconnect the cable.
The voltiminder LED reminds you of the range of voltages you’re using on a specific component; you have green for normal, amber for high and red for extremely high which Asus calls it crazy because you have got to be crazy if you’re running those voltages. This feature isn’t limited to the CPU only, your memory, northbridge and southbridge chipsets has this, too.
The CPU socket is given an 8-phase power delivery which provides stable, clean and continous power to the processor which is ideal for quad-core processors overclocking. There is quite an ample amount of distance between CPU socket and the memory slots which allows one to mount 32mm-thick without any issue. Following the awkward location of the LCD Poster connector is the CPU socket itself. As you can see, it is mounted with very little clearance on the edge. For chassis’ with top-mounted PSUs and intake fans on the bottom, this might be a problem. On my Antec 300, there was only a few millimeters left for clearance to my Dark Knight HDT-S1283 and the 140mm top exhaust fan. Of course, adding the fan was more painful since there is no space for leverage. I had to place the rubber groumets on the heatsink and forcefully pulled its tips to hold the fan in place. Capacitors surrounding the area are low-rise where water-cooling blocks shouldn’t be an issue.
The small red button on the right is a feature called MemOK! Which supposedly is an automated way of addressing memory detection issues but I did not have the chance to test this since my memory were detected (SPD) properly without any hiccups.
Next we have the CMOS battery mounted vertically for spacing, the 24-pin ATX power connector, IDE controller, and the side-facing 6 SATA ports which are powered by Intel’s ICH10R chipset. The odd SATA port facing you is an addition to the Jmicron chipset used to provide parallel connections since the ICH10R ditches support for IDE. In my opinion, the IDE controller should have been mounted facing the side just like the SATA ports but you don’t always get what you want, right?
The middle part of the motherboard contains the heatsink of the P45 chipset with a heatpipe that connects to the mosfets. Quite notable is that the size of the heatsink which is smaller compared to the Rampage II Gene because the P45 chipset being a die-shrink of the previous P35 is a lot cooler. If you’re wondering what their differences are; the P45 has support for PCIE 2.0 and splits the lanes to two 8x in crossfire mode as opposed to the P35’s x16 and x4. One also needs to understand that having two x8 slots in PCIE 2.0 mode provides data bandwidth similar to two x16 in PCIE 1.1 and lastly, the P45 has support for ICH10R I/O chipset. Now, there are 2 physical PCIE x16 slots which are capable of x8 crossfire (electronically) provided by the P45, a lone x4 PCIE and the ancient PCI slots. You will lose the PCIE x4 and the PCI slot when you install 2 dual-slot graphics card for crossfire.
Lastly, we have the back panel I/O ports. Despite the size, you get 6 x USB port, 1 x PS2, 1 x eSATA, 1 x Firewire IEEE 1394, 1 x S/PDIF Out (Optical), 1 x RJ45 (LAN) and 1 clear CMOS button.
IV. BIOS OPTIONS
The Asus Maximus II comes with a modified version of AMI BIOS. Before that you actually get there, you’re presented with an animated splash screen during POST. I’ve always been a classic POST screen guy but this particular splash screen was so good that I left it enabled. Of course you can change it to any image that you want with Asus MyLogo utility from the support DVD but make sure you make one better than the default, it’s just that good. The image you see below doesn’t give the actual splash screen justice.
Here you will find the tabbed BIOS by AMI. First tab is the Extreme Tweaker page where most enthusiasts would be spending so much time. The slew of options available at your disposal is so overwhelming that inexperienced users would be left questioning if there is a BIOS dictionary that contains the interpretations of each particular setting. Yours truly stuck with the options I’m familiar with and left the others on Auto.
There are no incremental changes available for the voltages, instead you are given the power to type in your preferred voltage, while this is great for advanced overclockers, newbies would be intimidated by such approach. The right pane contains the Minimum, Maximum and the Standard voltage for each component though for easy reference. As for the FSB straps, the user may choose Auto which automatically gives you the available DRAM speed options making it easier first time overclockers to set the speed of their memory with respect to the front-side bus.
The second tab contains system and storage information for your date, time and hard drive settings.
Moving on you’ll find the Advanced tab which contains the settings for the half-part of your motherboard, the I/O hub or commonly known as the Southbridge chipset. This is also where you can enable/disable the standard CPU features as well as settings for the USB configuration and On-board devices such as the Jmicron chipset and the chipset for the firewire.
Besides the LCD poster, the BIOS has a page that shows you the current voltages you’re running at. It also shows you the temperature of your components and has the ability to shut the system down should the set threshold is reached. This protects your computer from burning up regardless of the voltage that you’re using. Since the board contains four 4-pin fan headers, a separate page is also available for you to manipulate fan speeds for noise freaks.
Lastly, this page contains the EZ Flash utility which allows you to flash the BIOS without the need for floppy disks. This is the utility in effect even with a corrupted a BIOS; you simply pop the support DVD in then restart the computer, the motherboard automatically seeks locations that contains a BIOS rom and flashes it accordingly. The profile page is where you save your settings even when the CMOS is cleared, these settings are still intact.
V. Overclocking, Performance and Conclusion
This is the best part of the review, overclocking and performance. Sadly, since my resources are limited, I have no data to compare the tests with. Instead of the fancy graphs that showcase how the motherboard stacks against the competition, instead I’ll post here my overclocking experience. My processor has been with 3 motherboards already, 2 of which are enthusiasts’ boards. This test should be enough how the motherboard fares with my configuration since it has been with me long enough that I know it very well.
First off, the board still has to turn on and off when switching FSB straps which is true for the P35 and P45 chipsets but it does it elegantly and turns right back on in a split second unlike the current motherboard I have which takes a minute or two before it starts posting. Vdrop is excellent -- .02 on idle and drops further to mere .03 on load. With load-line calibration, the Maximus II Gene takes a different approach, there’s no vdrop from BIOS to Windows and during load, it slightly overvolts further. Say, the voltage is 1.35 volts with load-line calibration enabled, the voltage stays the same when in Windows but when the processor is loaded, it increases the voltage further to 1.36 volts to compensate for the added load.
The P45 chipset really shows its advantage over the P35 with the temperature locked at 45~50c even with the small heat sink used while motherboard temperature is 36c courtesy of the LCD poster. Ambient temperature is somewhere around 30c if you’re wondering why it’s higher than usual. Even without the LCD poster, the motherboard through the Voltiminder LEDs shows you an approximation of your voltage through their respective light colors. As you can, only the memory is running a somewhat higher voltage. Another thing worth noting is that the memory rated to run at DDR2-800 CAS4 latency with 2.1~2.2 volts can actually at the rated speed with a meager 1.9 volts. The other 2 boards that I own simply wouldn’t post at a voltage lower than 2.0.
With load line calibration disabled, maximum stable overclock is 3.0 GHz at 1.41 volts on idle and 1.39 ~ 1.40 volts on load, the same overclock I can get with my 2 other motherboards. With LLC enable, I can get the system 1-hour Prime95 stable at 3.2GHz with 1.49 voltages on idle and 1.50 on load. While this may not be exceptional, you have to understand that the 2 boards that I own (DFI UT ICFX3200 T2R/G and Gigabyte EP45-UD3R) simply cannot boot at this speed even when the voltage is set 1.55 with LLC enabled. This is actually an unchartered territory for my processor and is the first time I’m seeing it running at 400 MHz FSB and the first time that memory is running at its rated speed (1:1 FSB-DRAM) ratio. Sure it’s not a world record or spectacular in anyway but the stubbornness of my E4500 is conquered by the Maximus II Gene – half the size of my 2 other motherboards. Who knows what I could’ve accomplish if given a decent-overclocking processor?
The table you see below is a short benchmark done with PCMark05. I did not use the 3Dmark06 utility since most of the tests are geared toward graphics. PCMark05 on the other hand, does synthetic benchmarks on the overall system.
Overclocking is all about improving memory bandwidth. The processor itself is connected to the memory via the front-side bus. Overclocking the front-side bus in other words, improves data bandwidth. Everest has a tool that shows the theoretical amount of data that can pass through between the processor and the memory as such it becomes a valuable tool in visualizing the performance improvement over stock settings.
From the 2 images, you can clearly see how the memory bandwidth is improved in overclocking. Essentially, the clockspeed of the processor is the speed of the L2 Cache, overclocking the front-side bus is basically overclocking the L2 Cache speed which also affects the memory. To put things in a clearer perspective, we’ll use a graph:
Here you will find a much clearer perspective in terms of improvement. L2 Cache Copy shows a 40% improvement, L2 Cache Write give 43% while L2 Cache Read yielded 43% as well. On the memory side, Read yields 31% improvement, Memory copy improvement is 80% while Memory write shows a whopping 92% over stock speed since the speed of the memory is now the same speed of the front-side bus putting them at 1:1 ratio. In other words, the memory is now fully synchronized to the processor hence the massive improvements. The delays (latency) has also been improved but this is more depended on the memory rather than the processor, at CAS5, the delay is 97.2 nano seconds while putting the memory at CAS4 shortens the delay to 76.6 nanoseconds. Again, I would like to emphasize that only the Maximus II Gene has managed to put my processor and memory synchronously. It showed finesse in overclocking my E4500 as such that my 2 previous motherboard cannot do.
To keep my conclusion short and simple, most people would say get an expensive processor and a cheapo motherboard to get the best performance. With my Maximus II Gene experience, my cheapo processor is running at high-end speeds at no cost. Of course when the need for speed comes up, I can simply upgrade to a much faster processor where I’m sure the motherboard can handle what I throw at it. With the Maximus II Gene, you simply can’t go wrong – enthusiasts, gamers or even the regular users will be awed by the performance and the feature it offers, despite the size. Asus has proven that size truly doesn’t matter.
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