ASUS Rampage Extreme X48 Motherboard Review

Test Setup & Methodologies

• Motherboard: ASUS Rampage Extreme (obviously)
• Processor: Intel C2D E8600 ES
• Processor Cooling: Thermalright Ultra-120
• North Bridge Cooling: Fusion Waterblock / Thermochill PA 120.2 / DD5
• Memory: Crucial Ballistix 2x1GB PC3-16000
  Corsair Dominator 2x1GB PC3-14400
  G.Skill PI 2x2GB PC3-12800
• Power Supply: Silverstone ST56ZF
• Video Card: 2 x ATI HD4850 512MB DDR3
• Additional Fans: 120mm AD1212MS-A73GL 2050RPM/80.5CFM
• Hard Drives: Seagate 7200.9 80GB SATAII 8MB cache
• OS: Windows Vista SP1 (with all updates) for benchmarks / Windows XP Pro SP3 for overclocking

The memory line of our test setup is getting a little clogged but that is because of the multiple kits of memory that we tested on this motherboard. Our overclocking section has turned into somewhat of a stability testing of memory section and the list of memory above reflects that. The rest of the setup remained the same throughout testing except for the Extreme Overclocking section. That setup is just slightly different and will be outlined then. The listed setup above reflects the setup that was used for the Stability Overclocking and standard benchmarks that we are about to look at.

The other item to note is that in some of the screenshots and benchmarks, the heat pipe attachment for the north bridge was used in place of the Fusion water block. Initially we ran with the heat pipe setup but after doing the north bridge testing we stuck with the Fusion block as it worked rather well. Obviously the cooling changes don't affect performance so no problems there. In a slight deviation from our previous layouts, we will now take a look at the Stability Overclocking Methodology.

Stability Overclocking Methodology

Now that it is lumped in with some other information, we'll keep this short and simple. Our Stability Overclocking is not to show how high we can clock the motherboard for a CPU-Z screenshot, nor is it to show a single aspect of the overclocking of a motherboard. Our Stability Overclocking is to show what we could do with the motherboard in a 24/7 overclocking setting. The fun overclocking will come later on in this review.

To test for a high level of stability we use various programs each known for finding specific issues in an un-stable overclock. This should provide us with as close to a 24/7 overclock as you will find anywhere. The following is the run-down of the stability testing that we do for all of the overclocks listed in the Stability Overclocking section:

• Dual 32M runs of SuperPi Mod 1.5 (ran at the same time using Hyper Pi 0.99b)
• 2 hours of dual Prime95 using Prime95 v25.5 Stress Testing Blend
• 2 hours of OCCT Custom 2H Mix OCCT v2.0.0a - Except for Memory Overclocking
• 2 hours of dual HCI MemTest Pro in Windows using all available memory
• Multiple loops of 3DMark 01 / 06 or Vantage (30 minutes of looping the full tests each or 3 loops of Vantage)

Again, this recipe of stability testing is designed to find a solid 24/7 overclock so we get a good idea of what our sample is actually capable of for end users, not the street racing benchmarker...like myself. Next up is a quick look at our benchmark methodology that we will be using for the Memory, System, and 3D/Gaming benchmarks.

Benchmark Methodology

We again wanted to change things up a little bit for today's benchmarks. Instead of a complete stock setup where we simply plug the hardware in, clear the CMOS, and go with whatever the system puts up for settings; we manipulated the memory and system timings a slight bit. We figured that we would take the approach of how quick we could get the system without changing the FSB and thus maintaining a completely stock CPU frequency of 3.33GHz for the E8600. The memory timings however were optimized along with tRD (Performance Level) to provide the best performance we could from our 'stock' settings. This is the type of thing that any user could do themselves with a little bit of trial and error.

The results with from the blue bars in the graphs will depict the performance of the tightened up stock settings we used and outlined in the example graph above. The red bars in the graph will represent our Overall Overclock from the Stability Overclocking section. These results are pretty much the fastest we could get this set of components to run under normal 24/7 conditions through our full stability testing.

The following will outline the rest of the testing methodology regarding OS setup and program/driver installation:

1. Windows is installed using a full format.
2. Intel Chipset drivers and accessory hardware drivers (audio, network, GPU) are installed followed by a defragment and a reboot.
3. At time of benchmarks the latest drivers were downloaded from their official web sites as the latest drivers, most notable, Intel Chipset 9.0.0.1008 and ATI Catalyst 8.8.
4. Programs and games are then installed followed by another defragment.
5. Windows updates are then completed installing all available updates followed by a defragment.
6. Benchmarks are each ran three times after a clean reboot for every iteration of the benchmark unless otherwise stated, the results are then averaged.