Hardware Asus Maximus Formula & Maximus Extreme

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/11/22/asus_maximus_formula_and_extreme/1

Asus' latest Republic of Gamers motherboards are feature packed to the point of exploding at the edges. Thankfully you shouldn't have to fight to the death in an ancient arena, to get a hold of one of them though.

 

Why buy a new enthusiast board with no support 1600 fsb when there are other ASUS and Gigabyte boards that do and are available?

 

Awesome review as always Bindi!

 

I wonder why they've included waterblocks on the nbr of these boards. Any serious gamer that is actually bothering with watercooling will want to use their own chipset block. It would have been more sensible, in my opinion, to include an easy to remove heatsink with a decent universal mounting system.

 

On the eSATA test, the Formula is listed in the graph...

 

Thanks for highlighting that, it should be fixed now - the IP35 Pro was supposed to be in the graph and not the Maximus Formula.

 

Well, I was planning on getting a Maximus Formula and now I'm not so sure. Most other reviews I have read have been positive, so the only thing I can think of is that you received a bad board. Especially since the EPU didn't work. If you do get a response from Asus about that, I'd certainly like to read it. Maybe the board just has a bad bios. Also, on the key on page 2, item #6 is incorrect.

 

Whats the point in a high end 'gaming' mobo with a northbridge block.. when it's 3/8" and not 1/2".. imo Asus should allow you to replace the barbs.

 

We echoed this sentiment in the meeting we recently had with the one of the RoG engineers and the RoG product manager - hopefully they'll listen!

 

could someone quickly explain the difference between the ram slots? i know one is white and one is blue, but the white ones seem to have different clips at the ends, is this for any reason or just the way it is?

 

9 Intel motherboard articles in a row since the last AMD motherboard news.

I know Intel is #1 right now, but there has been a few things to cover on the AMD front. I hope to see something soon on an AMD board soon since Phenom is out.

 

That's exactly what I was thinking too.

I truly hope they do listen, because that seems ridiculous to go through the trouble of sticking a block on it, yet not make it 'modular' enough to allow the user to put whatever kind of barbs he/she wants on it.

 

Any idea if they will be making an SLi version of it, instead of just Crossfire? Kinda sucks if you like the board, but bought into one multi-GPU system and not the other.

 

@sparrohawk
X38 doesnt offically support SLI, because its not a nvidia chipset, but normally there is "hacked" drivers to enable it.

Imo x38 has been a disappointment

 

the board Rich is looking at now is a 790FX board

 

People are still *only* just getting us AMD boards, and I've no Phenom to test with

 

Hm. I was thinking of buying the Formula. Now I'm not so sure...

 

I'm confident that many of the issues you guys faced (particularly stability-wise) with the Formula was courtesy of an outdated BIOS (v0505). I believe the latest version is 0901, which supposedly fixes quite a few things.

 

Welcome! I hear that comment loud and clear

Well to be honest - I was given the BIOS a little while ago and all our testing was done with that a few weeks back. I tried updating using the included BIOS update program for windows and even redownloaded it from the Asus website but neither seemed to work.

In addition, Asus website doesn't list any BIOS' for me for that particular board (I've just checked this minute) - we got sent this BIOS from Asus themselves, however it does list them for the non-SE version but there's no link between them. Any customer buying this board will not know that they are interchangeable. Customers just using the Asus Update will just be left with a non-working update utility too.

It's still a BIOS that Asus gave us and what people will have used - it's not even a release BIOS we expect problems with - does it really take NINE internal BIOS revisions?

I will update the Formula SE with the 0901 from the non-SE to see if it does fix the problems, but it still doesn't change the fact it's an expensive board with little performance advantage over one of half the cost. You have to make up your own mind if it's worth spending £30-60 more than other equivalent boards for the bling, basically.

I'm getting an X48 next week so we'll see how that works out

 

i don't see the point of reviewing a board when quite clearly it's before the bios has a chance to mature.

as lots of ppl have shown, the forumla is a nice fast stable board now and if you want proper 16x lanes with your crossfire setup it's hardly a purchase for 'bling'.

as far as updating the bios, experienced ppl who've been around the block still use dos and refuse to even try and flash within windows .....afudos works just fine you know.

yet you praise the extreme which costs £30 more let alone the price of DDR3 for little performance benefits.

very amateurish and a dissapointing review.