Hardware ASUS Z97 Motherboards Preview

"Escape Mode"? More like Porn Mode.

It's all on intel now; a better performance hike than the usual 10% or they are going to struggle to make people upgrade from their 2500k, 3570k, 4670k, 2600k, 3770k, 4770k's. Intel are their own competition. At least partners like asus, msi, gigabyte etc really have to up their game to offer more to the end consumer. The sata express stuff looks promising.

 

Looking good but as above going to have to be a large increase in performance before I get rid of my 2700k and my max formula boards

 

They look great and I look forward to the reviews but I wish they'd use different names. It might be just me but doesn't "The Ultimate Force" sound a bit WWF?

 

It's a horrific, terrible name, just as it was for that ill fated Kemp show

 

The full-on ROK (ROss Kemp) edition. For when the **** really goes down.

 

mSATA on the back of the board? interesting... Anyone using mSATA?

 

I'd use it if it was SATA 3, but the slots on most things up until very recently have all been SATA 2 which sort of renders a modern SSD pointless.

With SATA 3 I'd get a solid 1TB drive to permanently upgrade the storage on the rig, then the fastest 256GB drive possible as the C:\

 

Bring on X99 ROG boards!

 

Ahhh, new ROG boards

Saying that, I still haven't worked out whether Intel will be offering six-core CPUs on this socket? Or will I need to get the Haswell-E whenever that lands?

 

It's M.2, not mSATA. M.2 is technically a mobile connector allows for carrying one legacy SATA port as well as native 4x PCIe lanes (aka SATA Express) on the same connector. These PCIe SSDs may use either the AHCI protocol derived from SATA (backwards compatible with any OS that understands AHCI, but relatively inefficient for SSDs), or the brand new NVMe protocol that's optimised for SSDs (needs NVMe drivers in the OS).

That'll be Haswell-E and the associated X99 chipset. You'll have a choice of four, six or eight cores!

Btw, is it just me or is Asus offering too much choice? I count at least 6 Z97 boards, 2 TUF boards and 6 RoG boards for a total of 14. It's gonna be hard to shop for a board, and that's before you start comparing with Asrock, Gigabyte and MSI.

 

I decided a short while ago to ditch my DVI monitor and share my Thunderbolt Display between my Mac and PC. Then I discovered how hard it was to buy an Asus ThnuderboltEX 2/Dual card. I give them credit for getting the polish out and making everything shiny and new - but until I see actual reviews instead of marketing fluff, then I'm not convinced to upgrade.

 

I had exactly the same problem - I was looking to buy an iMac and share its display with my PC, but ASUS decided to not bother to actually make the ThunderboltEX card available at all.

 

I do feel as though Asus are conning the buyer by suggesting the additional card will enable Thunderbolt on PCs, and then failing to supply the bloody thing.

Cei, have you considered buying a base spec Mac Mini with a good processor, then upgrading the RAM and converting 1 HDD to 2x SSDs in raid, and adding a Thunderbolt display? I have just finished the same mission, and my little Mac Mini is now a Mac Daddy!

 

I can't wait to see what the new Maximus Formula board looks like

 

wonder if theyve fixed the issue controlling 3 pin fans that has plagued a LOT of BT members (see forum), i find it rather annoying that theyve been aware of this issue for som time now yet havent acted on it at all.

 

The entire point was screen sharing between my gaming rig and a Mac. I ended up keeping my 27" Apple display that runs on MiniDisplayPort, added an MDP KVM that works on video and USB, and bought a 15" rMBP. Arguably this way has worked out nicely, as I can change my PC GPU at whim (as long as it has DisplayPort), or even the whole rig, and maintain access to any Mac with MDP support. It's just frustrating that Asus couldn't be bothered to make a product available.

 

I agree with you. If you have overclocked the 2700K @ 4.8-5Ghz have no fear. Nothing going to beat that CPU where you will need an upgrade. I feel upset that I didn't got one back when they came out. I have replaced 2 AMD CPUs since then, until I got my 4820K last autumn.

However I set the 4820K to 5Ghz and doubt going to need another CPU for at least 5+ years.

Lets not forget Mantle & DX12 are lowering the CPU power needed for games. More likely we will going to replace 2-3 high end GPUs, before we replace out current i7s.

 

Oh right, I didn't realise you already had the Apple display. I bought my display for sharing with the Mac mini server box I built, and my MacBook Air, and I was hoping to find the elusive Thunderbolt PC Card to share with my gaming PC. To be fair though I have set it all up including Apple display and gaming monitor side by side, and it is no longer a must-do. I will probably keep it all as-is.

It niggles me a lot that Asus mention the TB_HEADER connector as something useful ... Maybe when the price comes down and the TB2 peripherals start arriving properly, Asus will commit to supplying the card!

 

You're right.

It shows in the lack of reviews, if we're lucky, one "normal" one, the sabertooth and two of the ROG boards get reviewed, the rest vanishes.

For me it's too much choice, they all do pretty much the same.
Unless you're clocking the nuts of them, then the ROG and TUF's do pretty much the same.