ASUS Maximus III Formula LGA1156 Motherboard Review‏

Included Software

Now that we have the motherboard unpacked and installed, it is time to take a look at some of the software utilities that ASUS has included with the Maximus III Formula.


Here we have the familiar setup screens for the included software CD. It contains all the drivers or ASUS-specific utilities that you will need to get your system up & running. However, we obviously recommend that you visit the ASUS website to get the very latest software revisions.


PC Probe II


PC Probe II is a system monitoring utility that displays information regarding fan speeds, component temperatures and voltages, as well as alerting users once preset thresholds have been surpassed. Like on all RoG models, ASUS have really gone to town with the voltage and temperature readouts, definitely a pleasant sight. As always, we wouldn't mind seeing some integration with Vista's sidebar, just to help clean up the desktop area a bit.


AI Suite


The AI Suite provides basic system information, but its main function is to host shortcuts to five other ASUS utilities and features, namely the EPU-6 Engine, AI NAP, CPU Level Up, Fan Xpert, and TurboV. The AI NAP is an advanced sleep feature that allows users to put their computers to sleep without terminating any tasks. Fan Xpert allows users to select from 7 fan speed profiles that can be individually applied to any fan.


TurboV EVO


For their P55 lineup, ASUS have unveiled TurboV EVO, a new version of their popular overclocking utility. This application allows users to adjust all essential system parameters from within Windows, namely the base clock frequency, CPU voltage, VTT/IMC voltage, memory voltage, and even then CPU voltage and PCH voltage when you click on 'more settings'. All these settings can be tweaked without the need to reboot. This program also allows users to also save profiles and load them from within Windows. As usual, we had a good experience with the program, and we have come to rely on it to make quick on-the-fly adjustments in order to find stable overclock settings in various benchmarking applications.

TurboV EVO also contains the Auto Tuning feature, which will automatically overclock your system by going through five tweaking and stability testing phases. As you will see in our Auto Overclocking Results section, Auto Tuning proved to be quite competent, and since ASUS are continually improving this feature, it will get better and better at safely squeezing extra performance from the available components.

This utility allows you to program some functions for Turbo Key, which can turn the PC power button (or selected keyboard keys) into a physical overclocking button, very much like the Turbo buttons of 386/486-era. This provides novice users a one-touch solution to boost system performance whenever they need it.


EPU-6 Engine


First showcased on the P5Q series, the EPU-6 Engine has been one of ASUS's most highly touted features. This utility works in coordination with the EPU (Energy Processing Unit) controller in order to minimize your system's energy consumption. It does this by continuously monitoring and altering the speeds and voltages of the CPU, VGA card, hard drives and fans. There are four manually selectable modes and an automatic mode that varies settings according to system load. Regrettably, unlike Gigabyte's Dynamic Energy Saver (DES) technology, EPU-6 will not work when your system is overclocked, which obviously makes it a less attractive proposition from our power user point-of-view.


Speeding HDD


The Speeding HDD utility allows you to configure and monitor the RAID configuration that you setup on the two Speeding HDD red SATA ports.


ROG GameFirst


RoG GameFirst is a new traffic shapping utility. The idea is that upon completion of a "calibration and learning phase" that can last several days depending on your connection usage, the utility will be able to optimally manage the flow of traffic to ensure that you can multi-task on your internet connection without it hampering your ping while gaming.


RC TweakIt


The RC in RC TweakIt stands for ROG Connect. This is the utility that you must install on your netbook/notebook/other system in order to control the Maximus III Formula through the ROG Connect feature through a USB cable. It allows you see the POST code, hardware readouts, and even make on-the-fly frequency and voltage adjustments in real-time. This utility and the ROG Connect feature in general does work, and it works well. However, it begs the question of who will actually ever use this feature, other than once or twice out of novelty.