Hardware Asus Maximus VIII Gene Review

Seems to be a good board but nothing too unexpected from the RoG range. What really scares me is that Intel and seemingly the motherboard manufacturers have realised that large numbers of processors and motherboards simply aren't going to fly off the shelves and they are making up the cash shortfall by bumping up the prices. I can honestly see the Impact VIII coming out at the convenient price of £199.99 and then travelling upwards of that as time goes on, much like the Impact VII has increased in price since launch.
With motherboards costing upwards of £150 and often closer to or exceeding the £200 mark, ASUS are certainly pricing themselves out of contention in my opinion. Especially as MSI has come on leaps and bounds in recent years, often matching ASUS for quality, performance and easily beating them on price. I find myself using ASUS as the benchmark of what to look at, but MSI will be the board I look to buy I think...

 

Personally, I'm going to wait until there is a greater range of Z170 motherboards available, because I'm unconvinced that paying the thick end of £200 for a motherboard offers an acceptable performance premium over a board that costs half of that. Obviously there are other differentiating factors, but the majority of Z97 boards (for example) had the same set of core features, so until we see what else is out there in terms of Z170 boards then I'll keep my powder dry.

On the subject of performance, I think it's become a little bit redundant for you to continue to measure motherboard performance in benchmarks and games, given that most motherboards seem to perform almost identically - to within the margin for error. I know that back in the day you may have seen significant differences between boards, but that was a long time ago (possibly even pre-C2D days?).

It doesn't help that a lot of tech sites love to employ hyperbole when comparing products - so a product that is 0.1% faster will be described as "blisteringly fast" whereas it's rival will be "pedestrian" or "sluggish". Bit aren't immune from this type of language, although I have noted a decrease in it's use recently, which is a good thing.

 

I still can’t find a single reason to upgrade from Ivybridge. The only thing I can really think of that I’d like is M.2 support, but I’m not dropping another £350 for new kit just for that.

 

Precisely this!

 

One of the reasons I still use my XFi Xtrememusic Card is that onboard sound generally costs FPS in games due to the cpu overhead - what's the new audio systems like in comparison??

 

It's been about 10 years since that was a thing. Amazing really how effective Creative's marketing was. OpenAL has overruled it since ~Win 7 killed XFi CPU offloading.

And if you want M.2 - buy a HHHL M.2 to PCIE adapter.

 

I seem to have missed something.

In the conclusion it says:

But in the specifications it says:

Huh?

 

And just like that.... he was back!

 

Nah you don't want M.2

​

You want NVMe

 

It's lucky then, that they use the SAME socket!
Unless of course, you're referring to the NEW M.2 SSDs that use a PCIe controller instead of the older SATA ones?

 

I'm referring to to the fact I use an Intel 750 Series NVMe PCIe SSD/Solid State Drive 400GB LINK which requires a NVMe supported BIOS and Gen 3 PCIe (X99, Z97 or Z170 chipsets).

Parge and Spreadie are bothing rocking Z77 boards I believe - Only the above listed chipsets have NVMe BIOS support.

Ps. What's SATA???