Asus Rampage III Extreme Motherboard Review

Performance Analysis

At its BIOS default settings, the R3E proved fairly fast for a third-generation X58 motherboard, managing an overall score of 2,081 in our Media Benchmarks.

This is only a few points slower than the fastest two boards we’ve seen, the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R and Asus P6X58D Premium. The performance difference is so slight that you’d be hard-pushed to notice it during everyday use.

However, the R3E was quite sluggish in Crysis – both its minimum and average frame rates were 3-8fps slower than other X58 motherboards. This isn’t a great starting point for a motherboard that’s marketed at performance hounds.

The SATA ports are reasonably rapid too, although we’ve seen slightly quicker speeds beyond 250MB/sec. According to HDTach the Intel ICH10R Southbridge ports read at an average of 244MB/sec and the Marvell SATA 6Gbps ports read at an average of 237MB/sec.

Conclusion

The R3E is fast and a great overclocker that can easily keep up with the best X58 boards on the market. It’s also very easy to overclock thanks to its well-designed BIOS that combines both user friendliness and a ton of obscure options that an extreme overclocker may find useful. Several of the RoG features are handy too, such as the voltage monitoring points.

However, the bad news is that the R3E is, with air cooling at least, no more overclockable than the awesome Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R. Plus, the R3E is so weighed down with features that it’s more than double the price of this board, and yet for most overclockers and gamers, it’s no better.

Ultimately, for the vast, vast majority of users, the R3E fails to justify its extremely high price tag in the face of such stiff competition from Gigabyte and Asus’ own range of non-RoG motherboards.

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• 9/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• 9/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 3/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

Score Guide