Tech Reaction

Introduction – Part 1 Recap:

On January 2nd, NDA was lifted for the new “Sandy Bridge” architecture from Intel.  TechREACTION was ready with a hands-on look at the new Republic of Gamers motherboard from Asus, the Maximus IV Extreme.  With minimal time for testing, we were only able to bring you a portion of the review in Part 1, but we promised a follow up article to answer the remaining questions about the Maximus IV Extreme, and real world use with Sandy Bridge.  Well, to quote the movie “The Cable Guy”…”The Future Is Now!” and today is that day!

Asus Maximus IV Extreme

In this review, we’ve dug much deeper into the Maximus IV Extreme and exploited its full potential with single, dual, and triple SLI configurations.  We’ve included a much more thorough testing regime to better gauge the real world performance potential in this platform, and drawn full conclusions to better help you with your buying decisions.  So is Sandy Bridge right for you?  Do you need a Maximus IV Extreme?  These are all good questions, read on for the answers.

Test Setup:

Testing this new platform without any comparisons would be a bit pointless.  When determining exactly how we should conduct the testing, we decided on two scenarios which will hopefully help me represent the largest number of you.  For each of these four scenarios, we tested with all three graphics card configurations; single, dual, and triple-SLI.

***Spoiler! — If you are on an older platform, you can skip to the end. Sandy Bridge is worth it for you!***

Average Enthusiast Overclock:

• Intel Xeon W3520 (identical to the i7 920) @ 4GHz with 3×2GB DDR3-1600 9-9-9-27 1T
• Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4.5GHz with 2×2GB DDR3-1675 8-8-8-24 1T

“Best Case Scenario” Overclock:

• Intel Xeon W3520 @ 4.5GHz with 3×2GB DDR3-1720 8-8-8-24 1T
• Intel Core i7 2600K @ 5GHz with DDR3-2133 8-8-8-24 1T

Since the two configurations meet in the middle for a clock-for-clock comparison at 4.5GHz, we thought it a good opportunity to bring in two other major contenders. The AMD Phenom II X6 1090T and the budget variety Sandy Bridge, the Core i7 2500K.

Clock-For-Clock at 4.5GHz:

• Intel Xeon W3520 @ 4.5GHz with 3×2GB DDR3-1720 8-8-8-24 1T
• Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4.5GHz with 2×2GB DDR3-1675 8-8-8-24 1T
• Intel Core i7 2500K @ 4.5GHz with 2×2GB DDR3-1638 8-8-8-24 1T
• AMD Phenom II X6 1090T @ 4.5GHz with 2×2GB DDR3-1666 8-8-8-24 1T

Common Configuration:

• LGA1366 – Gigabyte X58A-UD9
• LGA1155 – ASUS Maximus IV Extreme
• AM3+ – Gigabyte 890FX-UD5
• Memory – Corsair Dominator GTX2 DDR3-2250 8-8-8-24 1T
• Graphics – ASUS GeForce GTX 570 (x3)
• HDD – 74GB Western Digital Raptor
• PSU – Corsair AX1200 80+ Gold
• Windows 7 x64 Ultimate SP1 RC
• nVidia Forceware 266.35 beta

The Sandy Bridge CPUs were air cooled, the Bloomfield CPU was water cooled but probably could have managed on air cooling (this is a particularly good chip), and the AMD Phenom II X6 CPU needed cold water to complete testing at 4.5GHz.  Obviously, an AMD X6 running at 4.5GHz is highly unlikely, but we wanted to be able to show you its capabilities if it were possible.  When we asked for your opinions about what to test, “clock-for-clock” comparisons were in high demand.

Next: Test Systems Pictured

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