ASUS Rampage II Extreme - First Look

by Gary Key on 10/9/2008 12:00 PM EST
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  • Beno - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link

    motherboard manufacturers can choose to bond CPU voltage to memory or not
  • Beno - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link

    where are the water blocks? wtf
    the current rampage extreme have water blocks on it
  • Beno - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link

    or maybe i wont need blocks. because theres no memory controler in the north bridge?
  • htgoetz - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link

    Well, i had a lot of problems with this controller and some optical PATA drives. I only could resolve those problems by going for a board with a Marvell controller providing PATA interface.
    Because i still have some quite good PATA optical drives, using the JMicron JMB363 controller for PATA causes the attractiveness of this board to be much reduced in my eyes.
  • strikeback03 - Monday, October 13, 2008 - link

    Are you allowed to tell us if there is something other than the ICH10R underneath that gigantic heat sink? Otherwise that would seem to be an area they could reclaim board space in.
  • lizrdfishr - Saturday, October 11, 2008 - link

    Why do I see DDR2 boards with 16G limits and all the DDR3 boards max out at 8G?
  • Rebel44 - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link

    IIRC x58 has 24GB DDR3 limit.
  • HexiumVII - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    I can tell you guys right now, it will be a good heft more than $250.
  • Mr Roboto - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    Umm.. yeah, the current Rampage Extreme P45 boards are $389 at newegg.com. Ridiculous.
  • HexiumVII - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    I just want to say thank you as i clean off my pants.
  • asoccerplayer99 - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    I'm dying to know, what are those buttons/switches on the board next to the memory slots??
  • ghitz - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    I sure hope we will see some good mATX boards for i7 from Tier 1 mfg. at launch.
  • Concillian - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    Yawn. Let me know when you have something normal people would consider buying.

    Seriously, "performance" computing margins have increased, but returns have decreased compared with several years ago where SLi / Crossfire boards were expensive because they were over $100.

    Seriously, what do boards have now that makes them cost so much? a few more PCIe lanes? Other than that it's just higher FSB, but i7 removes that from the motherboard, yes? So just what IS it that makes boards expensive now?

    Just something I've had bouncing around in my head for a while now. Boards then had all the overclocking and voltage options they have now, they had Crossfire or SLi, they had on-board raid, SATA, and most of the same features, but they've doubled in price since S939 days. Why? Inflation accounts for some, but not a 100% increase in just a couple years.
  • icrf - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    That's a reasonable question. I'd like to know, too.
  • 3DoubleD - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    Second that. It is ridiculous right now. I have been looking into ASUS P45 motherboards and I'm just overwhelmed at the number of models. I can barely tell the difference between them. I'm not sure if I should be happy that they all offer the same large set of features or whether I should be worried that there is a large price difference for what seems to be a different heat sink design on 4 or 5 identical motherboards. Why do you charge $200+ for a board that has the same slots, ports, and features that a $130 board has? I heat sink redesign doesn't really justify it. I think Anandtech needs to pick up the pace on it's motherboard reviews to help us see the difference (not to mention we need a good CPU round up to clarify the performance differences between the various cache sizes, clock speeds, and number of cores of all the Penryn CPUs that have been slowly leaking out over the past few months).
  • Mr Roboto - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    Ha I had the same problem trying to tell what differences there are between the Asus P5Q, P5Q Pro, P5Q-E,P5Q Deluxe and P5Q Premium. It turns out it was very little for the extra $100-$150. A couple of RAID options, dual PCI-e and dual LAN. What a fuckin joke.
  • strikeback03 - Monday, October 13, 2008 - link

    Even better is that Asus website (at least the English version) is not the best designed, so if you try and go through their menus you won't necessarily find all the models. Google the model name and the first thing that pops up is the Asus page for it though.
  • Visual - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    http://anandtech.com/GalleryImage.aspx?id=4083">http://anandtech.com/GalleryImage.aspx?id=4083
    why do the two sets of pins appear different color?
  • Concillian - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    It's just the way the pins face coupled with the lighting.
  • takumsawsherman - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    This is gonna be awesome. I have no doubt this board will be near $300, and ASUS still won't give you Firewire800 for that price. Truly fantastic that the speed of the firewire port on this machine is about the speed of the firewire ports on a 10 year old mac.
  • piroroadkill - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    As much as I agree that Firewire 800 is really really awesome (it is); it's so seldom used that it may as well barely exist compared to USB. At least Firewire 400 had some initial exposure when that's all DV Cams supported.
  • takumsawsherman - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    Ah, but they still have the firewire port, don't they? So giving you the port, they give you the old one. Also, eSATA is pretty much storage only, and the connectors still leave something to be desired, vs. the very durable Firewire 800 cable.

    When you are paying $300 for a board, would it also not bother you if they had a USB 1.1 port for use with the Keyboard and Mouse, because you don't *need* 480Mbps for a keyboard and mouse. Unless, of course, you had other plans for your USB ports.

    Speaking of USB being slow, the speed of hard drives, scanners and the like over USB is horrible. If you are copying large files, or ghosting/acronising a machine, firewire is where it's at. While I have a couple of enclosures that have eSATA, most customers don't have eSATA, and the Macs all have FW800. This makes cloning faster, and I can service more systems in a day when I am not waiting extra time for patches to copy over, etc.

    Every Mac besides the Mini has FW800. That includes the $1200 iMac. When we are talking $300/board, they can be gracious and give you the best there is, not cutting corners at every opportunity.
  • 3DoubleD - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    Honestly, who cares about Firewire? USB offers 60 MB/s, which is more than enough for anything (flash drives, devices) except hard drives. In the case of hard drives, use an eSATA port for 300 MB/s. If you care about Firewire that much, buy a firewire card, you are in the small minority of users who actually use it. USB is the standard and when USB 3.0 is released Firewire800 will be completely forgotten (if that hasn't happened already).
  • bigboxes - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    Thank you. I remember some years back when I was building a pc that would do everything. I just had to have all the peripherals so naturally I had to install a four-port firewire card. You guessed it. I never used it. When it came time to upgrade my box I never put the thing back in. USB is definitely the standard and between eSATA and USB 3.0 you are never gonna need Firewire800 again.
  • CEO Ballmer - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    Works best when running Vista Ultimate though!


    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com">http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
  • Mclendo06 - Thursday, October 9, 2008 - link

    So, the release date is under NDA, huh?

    Let me put it to you this way...

    When might you be able to tell us the release date?

    Or, if that doesn't work...

    When could you tell us about being able to tell us about the release date?

    Feel free to take as many steps as is necessary to throw Intel's lawyers off your tail.
  • Clockw0rk - Thursday, October 9, 2008 - link

    The original Rampage Extreme seemed like it was designed with water cooling in mind -first- and air cooling after. Maybe this falls into NDA territory, but can we confirm that water blocks will come with the board?
  • AmberClad - Thursday, October 9, 2008 - link

    The heatsink is under NDA too?

    Why are you guys not permitted to say anything as far as the cooling results with that Vigor Monsoon heatsink? Or does that fall under i7 itself, and its TDP and thermal characteristics?
  • Nfarce - Thursday, October 9, 2008 - link

    A minimum entry fee of $250 to join the i7 Club starting with the chipset? Not too bad for a high end rig, especially considering what high end X48 and 790i chipsets are going for now. AT, can you give us an idea of when we'll see a full test? If, as you hint, it's between tomorrow and next month before retail release on all this hardware, It's obvious people out there waiting for a new build decision, myself included, would consider the performance increase over the current platform as what would make their buying decisions, irrespective of when they know it would actually be available.
  • Nfarce - Thursday, October 9, 2008 - link

    Oops, I forgot to add that I'm also using a two year old rig, a P965/E6600 set up. If i7 real world (gaming) performance over a very affordable P45/E8xxx current build is only about 10-15% difference yet has a 25-35% cost increase, I'll pull the NewEgg trigger for the former. This waiting is torture I tell ya!
  • marsbound2024 - Thursday, October 9, 2008 - link

    Depends on the apps for your real world performance. I think if you are someone like me who will be making use of some very multi-threaded applications, then you may certainly wish to invest to i7. But alas, I am waiting to see on some full performance reviews. :)
  • marsbound2024 - Thursday, October 9, 2008 - link

    I am anxious for a full review of the processors along with this motherboard--and competitor motherboards as well. I've been waiting to replace my mid-2006 build computer and have nearly given in to the temptation to just build a PC with a Q6600, but I am really waiting out for i7. I made the mistake of building a socket 939 based system in mid-2006 when AM2 was in its infancy. By the time mid to late 2007 came around, processor upgrades just weren't easy to find. "High-end" dual core 939 processors weren't available and I didn't think a 3800X2 or 4200X2 would really have been worth the upgrade. So alas, my single core 3800+ gets me by on what I use my PC for at the moment, including WoW on medium settings, but I plan on doing much more with my PC. I want to get back using Vue Esprit for 3D rendering, Photoshop CS4 if I decide to cough up the money for it, Magix MovieEdit Pro for animations and movies, finally play Crysis (yeah I can't believe I haven't played it yet either), and maybe dabble in some FruityLoops or Reason. I am a big fan of digital media and hope to be able to have an upgradeable PC that I can comfortably get two years out of. Now that I am twenty and have a better job than previously, I will happily shell out the two thousand dollars for a relatively high-end desktop PC that I've been wanting to for several months now. The performance difference is going to be HUGE from my current PC (2.4GHz 3800+, 7600GT, 1GB DDR--never got around to upgrading that, 250GB WD SATA3.0). Shooting for Vista 64-bit Ultimate. Sorry about the rant, but I am quite excited about the i7 as it is the point I've really decided to upgrade on. I once thought about Penryn (and would've already upgraded had my use been mostly single-threaded apps), but given "Nehalem" or i7's multicore performance boosts, I decided to wait it out.
  • ABurns - Thursday, October 9, 2008 - link

    I assume then that

    We cannot mention results yet, but they are certainly promising with the i7-965 overclocked.

    is the name of the 3.2ghz Core i7 mentioned earlier in the article (Actually, that has more to do with the 3.2GHz i7 overclocked)
  • mmp121 - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link

    How can we use the two nuggets of info and gleen what the MAX OC was?

    [quote]Actually, that has more to do with the 3.2GHz i7 overclocked to a healthy X.XGHz (Ed: Sorry, not yet!) with a few gigabytes of Qimonda's finest running at a leisurely 2200MHz.[/quote]

    I know there's no FSB anymore on the new core. One can assume that 1333 MHz / 4? = 333 MHz

    2200 MHz / 4? = 550 MHz

    so if the clock is locked on the CPU (guessing here)

    3.2 GHz / (1333 MHz / 4) = ~9.5 divisor ?

    so if we use the 550 MHz * 9.5 = ~ 5.2 GHz ?

    That just can NOT be right. I'm sure I'm missing something
  • marsbound2024 - Thursday, October 9, 2008 - link

    Go to Wikipedia and you'll find that the names of the processors have been released:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_i7">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_i7

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