Asus has a flare for design and for choosing the right parts to go on their products. Over the years of working with them I have often had them tell me “wait for our design” instead of tinkering with the reference parts. The benefit of this is that the consumer usually gets a much better product in the end and we see the upper potential of a GPU, CPU or Chipset. We have walked you through the layout and design of the Asus Crosshair IV, now we are going to show you how well it performs.
Section IV Performance – GamingGaming 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 2 DX9 -This is an excellent but short game that put you right into the action from the beginning and does not let up the pressure until the very end. The graphics are a little better; most notably the night and thermal imaging have been improved. The AI is still the typical COD “bar fight” style AI, with maybe a tad more finesse. All in all it is not a bad game to play and a decent one to use for testing. Our testing run starts at the bridge and ends after you clear the school in the first level of the game. Settings are shown below as are the performance numbers.
Although this is an older game (and the frame rates are sky high) we still like to see what is going on here as this is still a popular game. If you are a fan of Modern Warfare 2 and own an AMD CPU, this will gain you a small bump to your minimum frame rate. Of course we have to remind everyone that the numbers here are good across the board. We seriously doubt you would notice the difference between any of the boards in the group if you were looking at them side by side.
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.
For FarCry 2 the Crosshair IV Extreme appeared to have some issues. Although we are above our 32FPS mark with this board we were still surprised to see it below 40FPS minimum. Overclocking helped a little and brought us up to 42FPS. For this game it is important to remember that it was designed with the Intel Core CPUs in mind.
Battlefield Bad Company2 DX11 –I have liked many of the Battlefield games. They usually tend to be fast paced and fun. With Battlefield Bad Company 2 you do get some of that, but there is something about the graphics and the movement that just does not sit right. The AI is a less sophisticated form of the bar fight AI, but it gets the job done. Still, the game is good for testing as it can put a strain on the components of the board. Out testing run is the entire first level, from beginning to end. Settings are shown below along with the raw numbers.
Now, when we test with a game that is built for the AMD GPU and we run it on an AMD platform (remember the whole “Dragon” idea?) we see the Asus Crosshair IV take off. It is out in front for this game even over some of the higher end Intel boards.
Gaming wrap-up -The Asus Crosshair IV Extreme is a nice board for gaming. It offers quite a bit that you are not going to get on other platforms (at least not in the same way) You have multiple options for muli-GPU setups including mixing AMD and nVidia GPUs on the same board. You also have a great LAN controller for your online gaming and added to this is a solid audio CODEC to push out the sound from your games.
