ASUS Rampage IV Extreme Review

If the Intel Sandy Bridge-E processor series is going to do anything, then it's igniting a series of hardware upgrades amongst the hardcore hardware aficionado's of you. That's right, the X79 chipset based motherboards have arrived and there's okay, good, better and best (it works vice versa for your wallet btw). As such it's now time to cover one of the most high-end enthusiast X79 motherboards we could lay our hands on, it's the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme.

The new Extreme is exactly that, EXTREME as it comes with one of the most advanced specs list that I have seen ever, and then some more.

The ROG team this time went wild, releasing a motherboard with all the features that last-gen motherboards should have had such as USB 3.0 connectivity, Bluetooth, eSATA connectors, SATA 6.0Gbps, and 7.1 channel audio, but the real x-factor of the Rampage IV Extreme can only be found when we look at its overclocking features.

The CPU and the memory are now powered by Asus' new Extreme Engine Digi+ II power design and allows you to install eight DIMMs in the respective eight memory slots, which can reach speeds to an excess of a whopping DDR3-2400, that's configured in quad-channel mode of course.
You'll spot the standards like the usual Power, Reset and Clear CMOS switches, but also with a series of voltage reading points. For the professional overclockers, there's a button for a special LN2 (liquid nitrogen cooled) slow boot mode, and also four DIP switches for enabling or disabling the PCIe slots (if a card dies during an LN2 session, simply switch the port off so you don't have to remove the card and LN2 pot to be able to continue).
The new R4E comes with five PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (physical) slots and it will even support 4-way CrossFireX and SLI setups (though the PCIE slots drop to x8 mode). An interesting feature that comes bundled together with the board is a so called ROG OC Key, which is responsible for an extra graphics overlay on your active (DVI) monitor. So you can monitor and adjust overclock settings in real-time without using additional software or hardware (it's a dongle that sits in-between the graphics card DVI port and your monitor).
Anyway there's more and thus lots to talk about, head on over to the next page where we'll discuss the X79 chipset, the respective ASUS model. Then will throw a decent photo-shoot and a benchmark suite at the products and get an indication what performance is like with the Intel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E) and X79 Platform.
Have a peek at the motherboard, which is just loaded with interesting options.

 

The Intel X79 chipset and Sandy Bridge E processors

We'll first start off with a bit of an explanation about the new processors that ignited the X79 motherboard chipset. If you read the launch review then you know it's all about Sandy Bridge-E, the all new 'enhanced' slash 'enthusiast' version of what pretty much in a nutshell is the Sandy Bridge (Core i7 2600K) architecture, yet with some new features added and some others stripped away.
Simply put, you take all the good ingredients from Sandy Bridge, preferably add two cores, a slightly increased L3 cache and add a pinch of quad-channel memory. There is one exception to the rule, one Core i7 Sandy Bridge-E CPU that will remain a quad-core processor.
Intel has announced three Sandy Bridge-E class processors, namely the Core i7-3960X, the Core i7-3930K, and the Core i7-3820. Each will have different clock frequencies and a slightly changed L3 cache. The Core i7-3820 is a quad core processor, the other two are six-core processors.
Below, an overview of the main specs.

Processor	Base Clock	Max. Turbo Clock	Cores / Threads	L1 Cache	L2 Cache	L3 Cache	Memory	Interface	TDP
Core i7-3960X	3.3 GHz	3.9 GHz	6/12	64KB x6	256KB x6	15 MB	Quad-channel DDR3-1600	LGA 2011	130 W
Core i7-3930K	3.2 GHz	3.8 GHz	6/12	64KB x6	256KB x6	12 MB	Quad-channel DDR3-1600	LGA 2011	130 W
Core i7-3820	3.6 GHz	3.9 GHz	4/8	64KB x4	256KB x4	10 MB	Quad-channel DDR3-1600	LGA 2011	130 W
Core i7-2600K	3.4 GHz	3.8 GHz	4/8	64KB x4	256KB x4	8 MB	Dual-channel DDR3-1333	LGA 1155	95 W

What's interesting from a naming point of view is that Intel chooses three different suffixes for the processors, we have an X model, a K model and a 'normal' model. A little confusing, but it does make some sense:

• The “X” suffix is Intel’s Extreme Edition processors, this means the top-of-the-line unlocked processors.
• The “K” suffix denotes a slightly lower end processor yet with its multiplier unlocked.
• And the normal editions are pretty much mainstream without any enthusiast grade overclock options, meaning a locked multiplier.

Cache wise the L1 and L2 caches are 100% similar to Sandy Bridge:

• 32KB data and a 32KB instruction L1 cache per physical core.
• 256KB L2 cache per core.

The L3 cache differs though, Sandy Bridge has one 2 MB slice of L3 cache per core, that's 8 MB for say the 2600K processor. The Core i7-3960X tested in this article has 15MB of L3 cache, meaning 2.5 MB per core (it's a single block of cache as it's shared).

All three processors have a 130W TDP, quite similar to the original six-core Gulftown based Core i7 980X. We had hoped to see a lower TDP with the original Sandy Bridge processors being so energy efficient.

Quad-channel memory

One of the hip features of the X79 / SBE platform is quad-channel memory. Though nothing has been as rock solid as Intel's 64-bit memory controllers a lot certainly happened. Over the space of three years we went from dual-channel towards triple-channel on X58 (Gulftown), then back to dual-channel with the Sandy Bridge architecture and now with Sandy Bridge-E we see quad-channel memory support. Regardless of what you think about it, progress is obviously always good.

Admittedly, the Intel memory controller, whatever platform you choose, is grand. Sandy Bridge and its dual-channel controller still hauls ass even compared to quad-channel, make no mistake there. At launch quad-channel 1600 MHz low-voltage DDR3 is supported out of the box, and that means an increase from 25.6 GB/s to 51.2 GB/s of available memory bandwidth. That's fast enough to drive a mid-range graphics card ported through system memory fairly well, well if we exclude latency of course.

Quad-channel is going to be crazy stuff, crazy numbers is what you'll see. What the effect will be on real-world performance, well yes... that's trivial at best.

More PCIe lanes

The one thing that people grumble about the most with P67/Z68 is the relatively small number of available PCIe lanes (16) for graphics cards. If you are working a setup with two or more graphics cards (SLI/Crossfire), the PCIe bandwidth is limited at x8:x8.

Here again the performance difference is trivial as running today's fastest cards barely utilizes all that bandwidth, but two x16 and then room for another x8 obviously is much better.

Sandy Bridge-E has a nice 40 lanes available. You can split them up in a variety of combinations, two x16 links with one x8 link, one x16 link and three x8 links, or one x16 link, two x8 links, and two x4 links. So this will be one concern less, though I betcha some of you would like to see three x16 as an option.

PCIe gen 3.0

What should be a prominent feature of the X79 chipset update is the inclusion of PCI Express Gen 3. In a nutshell, PCI Express Gen 3 provides a 2X faster transfer rate than the previous generation, this delivers capabilities for next generation of extreme gaming solutions.

Right now we still dispute the fact that PCIe Gen 3 is working properly, we hear the same thing from several manufacturers. With no Gen 3 video cards at hand it is however impossible to test and check. If it doesn't work then it might get fixed/enabled with future BIOS updates or... Intel might have scrapped it from the feature list and is bringing it as a feature to Ivy Bridge. For now, however, this remains unconfirmed.

Regardless, we love to explain stuff; PCI Express Gen 3 has twice the available bandwidth, 32GB/s, improved efficiency and compatibility and as such it will offer better performance for current and next gen PCI Express cards. Going from PCIe Gen 2 to Gen 3 doubles the bandwidth available to the add-on cards installed, from 500MB/s per lane to 1GB/s per lane.

So a Gen 3 PCI Express x16 slot is capable of offering 16GB/s (or 128Gbit/s) of bandwidth in each direction. That results in 32GB/sec bi-directional bandwidth.

Again, the big problem is that to date there really is nothing here in the lab we can use to test these new slots. You need proper compatible hardware, like this platform, but also a graphics card or say PCIe SSD supporting the new standard.

LGA 2011

It is a little unfortunate that once again we see a new socket with this processor series. Over the last three years we left LGA 775 then started with LGA 1366, then moved to LGA 1156, with Sandy Bridge we moved to LGA 1155 and now we have to harbor the processor in socket LGA 2011.

We know, it's unfortunate, but with a changed architecture and features like the quad-channel memory controller, the lack of an embedded graphics unit and the massive update towards 40 PCIe lanes the entire dynamic changed. So ever since 2008 that's four different CPU sockets in the consumer market.

It's not a weird move to make, but for those on LGA 1155 hoping to upgrade to Sandy Bridge-E on the same motherboard, well it's not a possibility.

So yes, this means that for a Sandy Bridge-E processor you'll need to purchase an accompanying motherboard based on the X79 chipset. Not just that though, the cooler mounting is completely different as well, you'll need to seek a new mounting bracket for your cooler, or purchase an LGA 2011 compatible cooler.

The BIOS and Software Suite

The ASUS EFI BIOS is an Extensible Firmware Interface that complies with uEFI architecture, offering a user-friendly interface that goes beyond traditional keyboard-only BIOS controls to enable a way more flexible and convenient mouse input at BIOS level. uEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a specification detailing an interface that helps hand off control of the system for the pre-boot environment (i.e. after the system is powered on, but before the operating system starts) to an operating system, such as Windows. uEFI is an interface.

It can be implemented on top of a traditional BIOS (in which case it supplants the traditional "INT" entry points into BIOS) or on top of non-BIOS implementations. End-users can navigate the new EFI BIOS (basic input/output system) with the same smoothness as their operating system. It's simply a Windows OS feel. The EZ Mode displays frequently-accessed setup info, while the Advanced Mode is for experienced performance enthusiasts that demand far more intricate system settings.

  
  

Above screenshots (clock to enlarge) on the new uEFI BIOS feature, and yes it is as impressive as it looks. So yes, the uEFI BIOS is really handy to use and easy to navigate. Next to that it makes common functions really fail proof, features like flashing a BIOS is done in a jiffy and all variables can be managed and monitored really easy. A massive improvement over the classic BIOS alright. 

The ASUS Software Suite

Bundled with the Sabertooth is the extensive AI Suite II which if you haven't already seen has had a facelift and is included with the motherboard DIGI+ VRM, and monitoring software for voltages, sensors and frequencies (Sensor Recorder). DIGI+ VRM allows you to control the balance between efficiency and performance. Giving you the management over Phase Control above other elements.

There's just lots of software for you to check out.

The OC KEY

So here we have the ROG OC key. This device creates an overlay on the active DVI monitor to adjust overclock settings in real-time without using additional software or hardware (it connects to the graphics card DVI port).

The dongle, if we may call it that, is placed in-between the graphics card and the DVI connector of your monitor. You can already see the problem ...the thing is really long. Not very handy or sexy to be totally honest.

From the dongle you lead a cable towards the motherboard and connect it to a ROG connect header just behind the rear IO. Now you press the ROG Connect switch for three second and the overclock will activate like so:

Since it's an overlay we could not take a screenshot on the PC, this horrible photo will have to do I'm afraid. But here you can see the OC Key activated and outputting several variables. Tap the ROG connect button once more and it will take commands from your keyboard. Tap it three seconds again and it will shut down.

The OC Key as such allows for for simple on-screen and on-the-fly overclocking and monitoring. The ROG OC Key will also feature a dedicated USB port where its firmware can be easily updated with future tweaks and advancements.

CPU-Z Screenshots and System

And here we have CPU-Z screenshots of the processor in the motherboard we used today, let's have a look.

 

So, that's all looking alright. If interested, you can download CPU-Z here.

Reaching new heights - Overclocking

With so much ridiculous horsepower in the system, (engineering samples we must add) we could not resist trying out overclocking. We're keeping it simple, but anything over Gulftown on LCS (roughly 4.2 GHz) is a win in our book for this six-headed beast.

Pretty much we need to take a couple of steps if we want to overclock. Invest in good hardware by the way, the cheaper motherboards often are not well tuned for enthusiast overclocking.

Manual overclocking

The true guru3d audience overclocks from the BIOS and try to find the maximum stable limit. The generic overclock procedure for multiplier based overclocking is as follows (this can differ a little per motherboard but the idea is the same):

• Leave baseclock for what it is right now
• If optional in the BIOS, increase your TDP limits of the processor to 250 Watts (by that you are allowing a higher power draw)
• Leave your base multiplier at default e.g. 34
• Set the per core Turbo multiplier at a maximum of your liking, we applied an MP of 48 on all six cores
• Increase CPU voltage, though setting AUTO might work fine, we applied 1.55V on the processor cores
• Make sure your processor is properly cooled (we used the Corsair H100 LCS cooler at performance settings)
• Save and Exit BIOS / EFI

So these settings allow us to work at a baseline clock of roughly 3400 MHZ that can actually still throttle down to 1200MHz in idle, which helps us in power consumption. However, once the processor gets a kick in the proverbial nuts, it can turbo any or all cores towards that multiplier of 50 times that 100 MHz baseclock frequency, that's a 5000 MHz configuration.

A Prime95 stress test with all four cores active and stressed at 5000 MHz. As you can see, you'll need a rather good cooler as temperatures are on the borderline of acceptable.

Mind you that there are many ways to overclock, you could also disable the turbo and just go for the reference frequency. With a the help of a new buffer you can also overclock on the bus a little better in 33 MHz increments top say 133 and 166 MHz. The sky is the limit.

The Rampage IV Extreme also hold predefined overclock presets in the BIOS for you. Fool around we say .. the motherboard is 100% made for this.

For overclocking you need at the very least decent cooling. Some sort of LCS kit is recommended.