ASUS Rampage III Formula Motherboard Review

👤by Sahil Mannick Comments 📅02-09-10
Conclusion

Generally it's easy to conclude an ASUS ROG motherboard. The name itself implies the cream of the crop and all previous boards tested have done their moniker justice. Testing the Rampage III Formula, my expectation were inherently very high; features that compared it to the almighty Rampage III Extreme, aesthetics to make any potential buyers drool with anticipation, and quality components to ensure a solid motherboard. To top it off, pricing would have made it even more attractive to people wishing to jump on the X58 bandwagon. It was hailed to be the perfect compromise between the flagship Extreme motherboard and the practical micro-ATX Rampage III GENE. What could possibly go wrong?

Last Monday, news reached my inbox that reviewing the Formula would be pointless and it turned out that the motherboard was not going to be available in Europe. The reason wasn't clear but since availability would still be present everywhere else worldwide, I continued on. At least those in the Americas and Asia could still enjoy this promising motherboard. Then the next issue hit me, gaming performance, more specifically using the maximum BCLK I could achieve stably. The 220MHz base clock caused a large drop in performance, especially in Far Cry 2 where it was around 25%. Other games replicated the problem and to make sure it wasn't isolated to the few games I tested, I fired up Battlefield Bad Company 2. At 1920 x 1200 and 4x anti-aliasing, there was a 7 FPS drop representing a 10% performance deficit. I tried a number of ways to solve the problem, from moving the graphics card to a different slot to providing additional power using the onboard EZ-Plus but nothing worked. The only way to achieve a high overclock without affecting GPU performance was by using a BCLK of less than 216MHz. Realistically, most users will end up using a BCLK of 200MHz so this issue will only affect a small percentage of people but for a motherboard marketed for its overclocking and gaming abilities, this was a disappointing observation.

*Update*
The overclocking page has been updated with further details of the problem. It appears that the Nvidia GTX460 doesn't suffer from the same issue as the ATI HD5870 at high BCLK.



Apart from that key negative point, the Rampage III Formula proved to be a very good motherboard. All the features we have grown accustomed to seeing are back; ROG connect brings remote overclocking and monitoring while the innovative Extreme Engine Digi+ VRM circuitry ensures stable operation. ASUS know how to cater for a range of users and for their primary gaming audience, they even included their SupremeFX X-Fi2 audio engine and ASUS GameFirst to avoid latency issues when gaming. All that translates to a board that performs exceptionally (under the right settings) and provides a much cheaper alternative to the Rampage III Extreme.

Does it deserve the Republic Of Gamers status? Feature wise, it's a definite yes but in terms of extreme performance for enthusiasts looking to break records, the answer is no.

Pros


+Loaded with features
+ROG functionality
+Excellent overclocker and stable
+Cool and efficient
+USB 3.0 and SATA III 6Gb/s
+Attractive finish
+Excellent packaging and bundle
+Excellent performance below 216MHz BCLK
+Memory support and performance
+Price

Cons


-No plans for European release
-Poor gaming performance over 216MHz BCLK (based on HD5870 tests)

The ASUS Rampage III Formula earns the Vortez Hardware Silver Award.



I would like to again thank ASUS for providing us with this sample. To discuss this article or product, please visit our forums.



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