ASUS Maximus III Formula LGA1156 Motherboard Review‏

SLI Gaming Benchmarks

As most of you know, there was a huge amount of excitement surrounding X58 motherboards being the first Intel chipset-based motherboards to officially support NVIDIA's SLI multi-GPU technology. The SLI support is not native to the X58 chipset though, motherboard manufacturers have to pay NVIDIA to obtain a 'bios key' to unlock SLI on whichever motherboard they decide the implement the feature on. The situation is identical this time around on P55 motherboards, and we are glad to report that the Maximus III Formula does support SLI. With this in mind, we decided test out how well it scales from one to two graphics cards, and how it performs compared to the similarly SLI-enabled ASUS P7P55D Deluxe and MSI P55-GD80.

For this test, we are using two EVGA GeForce GTX 280 1GB (01G-P3-1280-AR) graphics cards, which are referenced clocked parts.

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage v1.0.1
Graphic Settings: Performance Preset
Resolution: 1280X1024

Test: Specific CPU Score and Full Run 3Dmarks
Comparison: Generated Score

3DMark Vantage is the follow-up to the highly successful 3DMark06. It uses DirectX 10 exclusively so if you are running Windows XP, you can forget about this benchmark. Along with being a very capable graphics card testing application, it also has very heavily multi-threaded CPU tests, such Physics Simulation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which makes it a good all-around gaming benchmark.


All three motherboards exhibited similar scaling from 1 to 2 cards, with a 61-64% performance increase from SLI. The MSI model had the best performance scaling though, with both ASUS models stuck in the 61% range.

Crysis

Crysis v1.21
Resolution: 1680x1050
Anti Aliasing: 0
Quality Settings: High
Global Settings: DX10 / 64-Bit

Test 1: Ice benchmark_CPU2 demo
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

Still one of the most hardware intensive game on the market today, Crysis has been chosen for its obvious ability to be able to showcase the differences between platforms and to showcase just how far one will need to go in the quest for maximum performance. The game also features the renowned CryEngine, the power behind the incredible graphics, which is expected to be foundation of future titles.


The Maximus III Formula displays slightly better SLI scaling in Crysis, with a 43% gain compared to 40% and 41% for the P7P55D and P55-GD80, respectively.

Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 1.02
Resolution: 1680x1050
Anti Aliasing: 0
Quality Settings: Ultra High
Global Settings: DX10 Enabled

Test 1: Ranch Long Demo
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

Far Cry 2 is the hot new new first-person shooter from Ubisoft's Montreal studio, and the first game to utilize the new visually stunning Dunia Engine, which will undoubtedly be used by numerous future games. Using the included Benchmarking Tool, we ran the Long Ranch demo in DX10 mode at 1680x1050 with all settings set to very high.


All three boards performed equally in FC2, achieving 50-51% performance scaling when going from one graphics card to two.

World in Conflict

World in Conflict v1.010
Resolution: 1680x1050
Anti-Aliasing: 4X
Anisotropic Filtering: 4X
Graphic Settings: Very High
Test 1: Built-in Benchmark
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

One of the most visually stunning real-time strategy games in recent history, World in Conflict can really push systems to the brink, which is what we attempt by running the game in DirectX 10 mode at 1680x1050 with all settings maxed out. For this test we used the in-game benchmarking tool.


All three motherboards performed about the same, with MIIIF (39%) placing between the MSI (38%) and the other ASUS (42%).