ASUS Maximus II GENE P45 mATX Motherboard Review

System Benchmarks

When running the SuperPI 32MB benchmark, we are calculating Pi to 32 million digits and timing the process. Obviously more CPU power helps in this intense calculation, but the memory sub-system also plays an important role, as does the operating system.


In SuperPI 32M, the results that we saw in the memory benchmarks section are turned around, with the EP45-DQ6 being the faster board at stock, and the MIIG taking the lead when overclocked. There is only a roughly 1% performance difference between both boards, but in this benchmark every millisecond is absolutely critical if you're competing at a high level.



The latest iteration of the popular system benchmark is PCMark Vantage from the Futuremark crew. The PCMark series has always been a great way to either test specific areas of a system or to get a general overview of how your system is performing. For our results, we simply run the basic benchmark suite which consists of a wide range of tests involving all the sub-systems of the computer.


Perhaps because it is a total system benchmark, the variance between PCMark Vantage scores tends to be rather large, dare I say borderline erratic. However, judging by these results, the MIIG once again appears to be faster at stock, while the EP45-DQ6 shines when overclocked.



Developed by MAXON, creators of Cinema 4D, Cinebench 10 is designed using the popular Cinema software and created to compare system performance in 3D Animation and Photo applications. There are two parts to the test; the first stresses only the primary CPU or Core, the second, makes use of up to 16 CPUs/Cores. Both are done rendering a realistic photo while utilizing various CPU-intensive features such as reflection, ambient occlusion, area lights and procedural shaders.


It's a statistical dead heat in Cinebench, with the new Maximus II GENE performing as well as the much more mature EP45-DQ6.



Tech Arp's recent development of the x264 HD Benchmark takes a 30 second HD video clip and encodes it into the x264 codec with the intention of little to no quality loss. The test is measured using the average frames per second achieved during encoding, which scales with processor speed and efficiency. The benchmark also allows the use of multi-core processors so it gives a very accurate depiction of what to expect when using encoding application on a typical full length video.


Once again, a sub-1% difference between these models...now you see why don't usually compare such similar products, there is simply not much to say!



Unlike the DivX conversion program we just looked at, Lame Front End is not multi-threaded and only utilizes a single processor core. This will obviously limit performance but we should still achieve significant time savings going from the stock to the overclocked settings. We will be encoding a WAV rip of Santana’s Supernatural album and converting it to MP3 using the VBR 0 quality preset.


In our experience, LFE produces some of the most consistent results of any application, and here again we see a statistical tie.



For the image editing portion of this review, we will use Photoshop CS3 in coordination with Driver Heaven’s Photoshop Benchmark V3, which is an excellent test of CPU power and memory bandwidth. This is a scripted benchmark that individually applies 15 different filters to a 109MB JPEG, and uses Photoshop’s built-in timing feature to provide a result at each test stage. Then it’s simply a matter of adding up the 15 results to reach the final figure.


The ASUS board proved to be fair bit faster than its rival at stock settings in Photoshop, but the Gigabyte made up the gap when overclocked.



The last of our real-life tests will be with the highly popular & multi-threaded WinRAR 3.8.0 tool, in which we take a 1GB batch of assorted files and archive them, timing the task until completion.


Finally, some semi-interesting results, in our WinRAR benchmark, the Maximus II GENE is a surprising 3% faster than the Gigabyte, but the tables are turned when we start overclocking, with the EP45-DQ6 besting the ASUS by approximately 2%.