Asus Rampage Extreme

Verdict: This motherboard practically rampages through our benchmarks when overclocked.

DFI has been making enthusiast-branded Lanparty models for several years, but Asus was the first company to mass-market high-end motherboards under the Republic of Gamers brand. The Rampage Extreme is the company's latest RoG board, but unlike the previous model, the eminently disappointing Maximus II Formula, it has been designed first and foremost with overclockers in mind.

The Rampage Extreme's overclocking credentials get off to a good start with the Intel X48 chipset and four DDR3 DIMM sockets. DDR3 is pointless for most people, but its high frequency is very useful for extreme overclocks that need plenty of memory bandwidth. The surface of the Rampage Extreme is dominated by a massive heatpipe cooling system that links the Northbridge, Southbridge and VRMs. As this surrounds the CPU socket on three sides, it can make fitting a CPU cooler tricky, although it's short enough to not get in the way of the CPU cooler itself.

The Northbridge cooler can act as a heatsink, or you can fit it with a small crossflow fan. Alternatively, you can upgrade it with a bundled waterblock, which is supplied with fittings for 3/8in ID, 1/2in ID and 10mm tubing. Asus has even gone so far as to fit the DIMM socket's power circuit with a small heatsink - the first time a motherboard has featured this.

Despite the wealth of cooling hardware, the Rampage Extreme has plenty of expansion card slots. There are two CrossFire-compatible 16x PCI-E 2.0 slots, two PCI slots, two 1x PCI-E slots and a black slot that looks like a 1x PCI-E slot, but is only compatible with the optional sound card. Unlike the sound cards bundled with most motherboards, the SupremeFX supplied with the Rampage Extreme is compatible with the X-Fi. This means that it supports CMSS3D and Crystalizer, which makes games and music sound livelier.

Other RoG features include reset and CMOS clear switches, a glowing power button and a new feature called TweakIt. In conjunction with the small external screen known as the LCD POSTER, and a small joystick and two buttons on the PCB, TweakIt allows you to adjust several voltage and frequency options on the fly, even while applications are running. It strikes us as more of a gimmick than a genuinely useful feature, but it's good to see Asus continuing to innovate in the RoG series. Asus also bundles a copy of 3DMark06 Advanced Edition in the box - which remains the benchmarkers' favourite, despite the release of 3DMark Vantage - and Kapersky Anti-Virus.

The BIOS is a joy to use. By default it even opens at the overclocking page rather than the more usual disk drive selection page. It provides more options than you can shake a stick at, including the ability to increase the vcore to a ludicrous 2.5V and the CPU PLL to 3V, neither of which we'd recommend without extreme cooling (LN2 or a cascade). The BIOS is a lot easier to use than that of the DFI, as it performs all the voltage calculations for you, rather than forcing you to work out how much the voltage will increase when you add a certain percentage.

Out of the box, the Rampage Extreme achieved a fast overall score of 957 in our Media Benchmarks, edging ahead of the DFI and Foxconn boards. While this is admirable, it was when overclocking that the Rampage Extreme lived up to its name. We overclocked the CPU to its air-cooled maximum of 3.66GHz with a 456MHz FSB; at these settings, the board rampaged all over the benchmarks, scoring an unparalleled 1,288.

With 1.74956V coursing through the CPU PLL, 1.76272V to the Northbridge, 1.5095V to the FSB and 1.57731V to the Southbridge, we could benchmark the Rampage Extreme at a 555MHz FSB, making it one of just four motherboards to reach such a high frequency. The VRMs proved to be more than up to this challenge, with no measurable vdroop after an hour of running Orthos.

The Rampage Extreme doesn't appear to suffer from any vdrop, either - in fact, it slightly overvolts the vcore and Northbridge. For example, when we set the vcore to 1.525V in the BIOS, the VRMs provided the CPU with 1.556V.

Conclusion

Of all the overclocking motherboards in this Labs test, the Rampage Extreme has the most user-friendly BIOS. It may not be as comprehensive as the DFI's BIOS when it comes to memory timings but, as the Rampage Extreme is much more overclockable than the DFI, this is something of a moot point.

The only major challenger to the Rampage Extreme is the Foxconn Blackops - and what a challenger it is. Both motherboards overclock identically and are supplied with numerous useful extras. In the end it's too close to call, especially as both motherboards are similarly priced. As such, both models are 'Crazy but Cool'.