Displaying items by tag: MicroATX

As we round out our coverage of the Asus Republic of Gamers Rampage IV Gene we are taking a look at both the synthetic and real-world performance of this board. As we have mentioned before the Gene is the gateway into the ROG Line and shows an excellent blending of performance, features and ease of use for those that are new to playing with higher end Motherboards. Of course the Gene also serves a purpose with the enthusiasts as well it offers a very competent motherboard in a small package for gaming, small and quiet systems and even for someone looking for a solid board to build a home server on. Since we have already shown you what the Rampage IV Gene looks like on paper, let’s take the tiem to show you how it looks in the real world.

As we showed you recently we do not just have a single Z77 board from Asus in the lab, but a pretty good range of them. We have a lineup that covers the entry level, the mainstream and even the ROG line (although not the upper end there yet). We have already shown you what you can expect from the Micro ATX Maximus V Gene in terms of features and design so now we want to continue that thread and take a look at another Micro ATX board at the other end of the food chain; the Asus P8Z77-M Pro. So let’s take a few minutes to check out what Asus has in store for you here.

AMD’s Llano is not a new product; it is one that has been out on the market for long enough that all of the major hype and press has already been written. We recently wrapped up our long term testing of an AMD A6-3650 combined with a Gigabyte A75 motherboard. We were rather impressed with the performance that we saw, even if the numbers did not match up to the overall feel. Now we are taking a look at the same CPU, but taking a step down the ladder to the A55 chipset. This time the victim is the A55M-DS2 motherboard.  You are losing a few items with this shift like USB 3.0, SATA 3.0  and a PCIe slot, but we wonder if that will really impact performance. So let’s take a look at the design and the features that you can expect to get when you pick up one of these.