With all of the news about the Z77 Express motherboards and Ivy Bridge we thought we would step back and take a look at our old friend the X79 and the Sandy Bridge-E CPU. This platform still represents the top end for Intel and although it does not have the same mainstream media acceleration that Ivy Bridge does it is still quite the platform. We are going to dive into the design and features of one of the more prominent enthusiast products for this chipset; Asus Republic of Gamers Rampage IV. We have the Rampage IV Gene and the Formula in the lab and will be running both of these through their paces in the coming days. Right now we are going to walk around the Rampage IV Gene which at $290 is a lot of money to shell out, but it also looks like a lot of motherboard in a small package. Let’s take a look shall we?
Features -
In the current market motherboard (and indeed almost all component) performance is very close. The days of a large performance advantage between boards using the same chipset are long gone. That is unless someone makes a HUGE mistake (like runs traces completely wrong). Now, the thing that differentiates different products is the features. These are things like power management, extra slots, better audio CODECs etc. It is these items that R&D teams work so hard to drop into what are really identical pieces of hardware at their most basic level.
With Asus (as we have told you many times) there is a push to put features that “make sense” into each board. We saw this during our recent coverage of their Z77 line up. They are working hard to differentiate between the different boards that have identical chipsets (Z77, X79 etc.) and will have similar performance windows by not only their selection of components, but also what you get when you buy each board. Looking at the Rampage IV Gene we can see this as well. The board is first and foremost an enthusiast product as you will see in the features listed below.
Excellent -
PCIe Gen 3.0 at full x16 for Crossfire and SLI
PCB Separation for Audio
Three-way SLI and Crossfire X
SupremeFX III Audio
Mem Tweakit
USB BIOS Flashback
This list is full of items that enthusiasts and even mainstream users have been waiting for. USB BIOS Flashback is something that honestly should not have taken this long to happen. Other items like x16/x16 SLI running at Gen 3 speeds are simply going to set this board apart from many of its competitors on that alone. Really you can easily see how well stacked the feature set is and this is just the gateway into the ROG line.
In the middle (sort of good) -
THX Audio
EAX 5.0
Game First
ROG Connect
Here we find features that are still solid, but are ones Asus has had out for a while you expect them when you pick up an Asus ROG motherboard. If they were not there then something would be wrong.
Floor Mats -
ASUS Q-Shield
ASUS O.C. Profile
ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3
ASUS EZ Flash 2
ASUS MyLogo 2 - ASUS Q-LED (CPU, DRAM, VGA, Boot Device LED)
ASUS Q-Slot
ASUS Q-DIMM
ASUS Q-Connector
These features are good, but again they are common on Asus motherboards and now on many other motherboards out on the market. Do not get me wrong, they do round out the package but, they are not going to be the reason you buy the Rampage IV Gene.
