Section IV Performance – Gaming
Gaming as a test of motherboard performance is sort of a joke these days. The big player in the gaming arena is the GPU. Everyone but a few hardcore PR teams know this. However, it is important to run at least a few (one from each current DX version) to see if there are any issues with the combination of components on a motherboard. These are items like Audio lag, memory lag and of course problems with the PCIe lanes and signal traces. If there are issues in design, drivers or BIOS then you can have odd gaming performance. So without much more preamble let’s dive into the three games we currently use; Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 for DX9 FarCry 2 for DX10 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 for DX11.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 DX9 -
As the third installment in the Modern Warfare franchise you are picking up some old roles while adding a couple of new ones as well. The game play is almost identical to what you are used to in Modern Warfare 2 as are the graphical settings. The AI is a little different thought it is still similar to the bar fight style AI we like in the Call of Duty series. For our testing we run the first mission (Black Tuesday) from start to finish.  Settings are shown below

In gaming things are close with regards to motherboards and how they operate. Looking at the numbers here you can call a “winner” but you could put these two systems side by side and you would not be able to tell them apart visually. Where you would see a difference is in things like level load times, audio quality and the general feel of the game. The Rampage IV Gene has that and it showed during our testing time with Modern Warfare 3.

FarCry2 DX10 -
Although not one of my favorite games this tedious game does have some good graphics. The large sandbox style of the game lends to mission based play. The only problem is that the AI is rather low grade. Still the more CPU power the more the bad guys try to do. Over all the game was a little bit of a disappointment to play, but still not a bad DX10 representation. Our testing run starts right after you get your first mission to clean out the safe-house and ends after the hostage rescue. Settings and performance numbers are shown below.

In Farcry2 the Rampage IV Gene was a little less than average at stock CPU speeds in terms of where it stands in the systems we have tested it against. Even taking the average frame rate into consideration it is not that good.  When the board was overclocked it picked up the slack and was able to really shine. Again, as with Modern Warfare 3 we saw very quick level load times and had good audio from the Supreme FX III sound that comes with the Gene.

Crysis 2 DX11 –
Another sequel Crysis 2 follows up on two other Crysis games (making the title a little misleading). You take the role of a Force Recon Marine who is given a battle suit by a character named Profit (you will remember him from the other two Crysis games). From there you run around an Infected and Invaded New York City trying to survive and, of course, save the planet. For our testing we ran through the first “mission”. Settings are shown below.

With Crysis 2 our test subjects are so close we are not even going to bother trying to call out frame rates. We will say this, the Asus Rampage IV Gene did have much better level load times and also featured a more immersive audio experience (especially with headphones) than the other boards we tested.

Gaming wrap-up -
As we have said above there is more to gaming than just frame rate (although that is a big part) there are items like audio quality, level load times, AI responsiveness, and more. On many motherboards these days these items are overlooked. Sometimes they are overlooked to save costs, but in some cases they are missed because manufacturers think that a part is “good enough” what we found with the ROG Rampage IV Gene is that good enough did not make the cut and the gaming performance shows this; not in terms of frame rate, but in the overall gaming experience.