The Test System and Comments -

Our test system is built on an open bench. This has two effects on testing. First it allows us to see everything and also to setup and disassemble the test rigs quickly. Second it means that we cannot gauge the potential air flow found in a normal case. The air is pretty stagnant; some may say this is a great neutral testing method and it can be. However, it does mean that the temperature reading taken off of the components are not accurate to what an average consumer would see. This means that your thermal performance will vary from what we see here.

The build out of the Asus Crosshair IV was pretty easy. I had a couple of minor issues at first but these ended up being with some of the hardware I was using and not the board. The Windows 7 install went without issue and driver installation was a snap.  Once we had the board updated with the latest patches and service packs we installed the utilities. The most interesting was the AI Suite II. We talked a little bit about this above in the overclocking section but there is more to it than that. Asus has pretty much set this up as the one stop tool of this board (and others). You can update your board drivers and  BIOS, change the Boot logo, get detailed information about your system and even change the information that the AI Suite II displays.

Performance testing overview -
Our testing is a little different than most. We combine both synthetic and real-world applications to simulate the types of performance common to the individual products. For motherboards this means that we run roughly six synthetic tests and two real-world. We will be expanding the real-world testing in the near future.  But there is more to performance than just the raw numbers. As there are multiple components and sub-components on a motherboard there each item can have a distinct impact on the way the product will perform once you get it in your system. It is important to note not only the actual results but what they mean to you as a potential consumer. We will try to give this information to you. But we do not just cover the performance aspects that are measurable. We also talk about the components that might not have a direct benchmark. These are items like Audio Quality, ease of use and installation.