ASUS Maximus V Formula Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. ASUS Maximus V Formula Motherboard3. ASUS Maximus V Formula Motherboard (Super High Res Gallery)4. ASUS Maximus V Formula Motherboard (Bios & Overclocking)5. Testing Methodology6. Synthetic: PCMark 77. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: 3DMark 119. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark10. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.011. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra 201112. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit13. Synthetic: SSD Performance14. Real World: 3D Rendering15. Real World: Media Encoding16. Real World: HandBrake 9.517. Gaming: F1 2011 (1080p)18. Gaming: Alien V Predator (1080p)19. Gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 2 (1080p)20. Gaming: Far Cry 2 (1200p)21. Gaming: Battlefield 3 (1080p)22. Gaming: Dirt Showdown (5760x1080)23. Gaming: Battlefield 3 (5760x1080)24. Gaming: Max Payne 3: DX 11 (5760x1080)25. Technical: Power Consumption26. Closing Thoughts27. View All Pages

Today we are looking at the Asus Maximus V Formula Motherboard, designed for the latest i7/i5/i3 Intel processors. The Maximus V Formula is a ‘no compromises' Z77 motherboard, aimed at the top 10 percent of enthusiast user who will be using the most expensive components with a focus on overclocking. We partner the Asus motherboard with a flagship, liquid cooled Core i7 3770k processor, a Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition graphics card and 16GB of Corsair Dominator 2,666mhz Platinum memory. Is the Maximus V Formula the foundation for the ultimate gaming system?

Asus are well known for producing some of the finest motherboards on the market, even though they are facing a tougher challenge lately from companies such as ASRock and Gigabyte. Their Republic Of Gamers series always receive special treatment by the engineering team, particularly in regards to overclocking and squeezing every ounce of performance from a high end system build in the bios.

ASUS Maximus V Formula Motherboard Overview:

• LGA1155 socket for Intel® 3rd/2nd Generation Core™ i7/ i5/ i3/ Pentium® / Celeron® Processors
• Intel® Z77 Express Chipset
• Fusion Thermal
• SupremeFX IV
• GameFirst II/ Intel Gb LAN
• mPCIe Combo + dual-band Wi-Fi/Bluetooth 4.0

The Maximus V Formula motherboard ships in a very distinctive red box featuring the Republic Of Gamers Artwork.

The box is a gatefold design, to give the potential customer an overview of the motherboard in a retail store environment.

The included bundle is extensive and contains the following:

• User's manual
• I/O Shield
• 2 x SATA 3Gb/s cable(s)
• 4 x SATA 6Gb/s cable(s)
• 1 x SLI bridge(s)
• 1 x Q-connector(s) (2 in 1)
• 1 x ROG Connect cable(s)
• 1 x 12 in 1 ROG Cable Label(s)
• 1 x mPCIe Combo card(s) with dual band WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n module + Bluetooth v4.0/3.0+HS module
• 1 x 2-in-1 RF Cable(s)
• 2 x Wi-Fi Ring Moving Antenna(s)

An overview of the Maximus V Formula motherboard, built around a black PCB. The red accenting looks great on the ports and slots, and is obviously the traditional ROG colour scheme. The board is an Extended Form factor size measuring 30.5 cm x 25.7 cm.

The ASUS heatsinks are huge and surround the VRM's at the CPU socket. The ‘Fusion Thermo' is a VRM cooler made from a combination of 100% copper water cooling channel with electro plated nickel barbs, and anodized aluminum finned air cooler.

There is a manual power and reset switch next to the DIMM slots, ideal for easy access inside the case. There are four (dual channel) memory slots on the board which support up to 32GB of memory. DDR3 2800(O.C.)/2666(O.C.)/2600(O.C.)/2400(O.C.)/2200(O.C.)/2133(O.C.)/1866(O.C.)/1600/1333/1066 settings are supported.

There are eight SATA ports on this board. Two two black ports on the right side are SATA 3Gbps, and controlled by the Intel Z77 chipset. The two red ports on the right are SATA 6Gbps rated and are also controlled by the Intel Z77 chipset. The four red ports on the left are SATA 6Gbps rated and controlled by the ASMedia Z77 controller.

There is support for Raid 0, 1, 5 and 10.

There are :

3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8 or x8/x4/x4), 1 x PCIe 2.0 x4, 3 x PCIe 2.0 x1 and a single x mini-PCIe 2.0 x1 slots on the Maximus V Formula motherboard.

Along the bottom of the board are audio connectors and several USB headers, alongside additional fan headers and the front panel connector.

The Maximus V Formula has the SupremeFX IV onboard audio controller, with a bundle 300 ohm headphone amplifier. The sound quality from this motherboard is well above average and an excellent choice if you value sound quality.

The rear I/O panel supports:

• 1 x DisplayPort
• 1 x HDMI
• 1 x eSATA 3Gb/s
• 1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
• 4 x USB 3.0
• 4 x USB 2.0
• 1 x Optical S/PDIF out
• 1 x Optical S/PDIF in
• 5 x Audio jack(s)
• 1 x Clear CMOS button(s)
• 1 x ROG Connect On/ Off switch(es)

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.

We had no problems with the final system build, booting up first time.

An overview of the system, showing the processor revision, bios version and default memory speed. Even though we are using 2,666mhz – most bioses have a fail safe post setting, which is why its showing 1,333mhz.

The advanced panel overview, showing various submenus to adjust various areas of the motherboard.

Various options are available in the ‘monitor' panel, confined to voltages, fan speeds and temperatures. An ideal first place to check after building your system.

The ‘Boot' panel, an important place to set up your new system build. I always disable the full screen logo post option.

The tool menu is used to flash and update the bios, as well as for saving and loading configuration profiles.

Overclocking this motherboard is extremely straightforward and we experienced no issues. The first time you manually select the turbo ratios, the board selected a step down setting list for when various cores are active. This is easy to override.

All of the voltage options are at hand, in one easy to access please. Other manufacturers need to take note, this is exactly how you do it.

No shortage of memory options on this board. If you want to see how far we managed to overclock the Corsair Dominator Platinum memory, then visit this page for more details. For the purposes of this review today we are using the native 2,666mhz XMP profile without further tweaks.

We know our Core i7 3770k sample well, and without insane voltage it is pretty much limited to 4.8ghz. The ASUS Maximus V Formula easily holds a 4,800mhz clock speed with a voltage increase to 1.3. There are various power settings to play with, but even at default settings, we experienced no issues.

Above, the Corsair Dominator memory configured via the XMP profile, at 2,666mhz.

System validation at 4.8ghz / 2,666mhz is available over here.

For this review today we are using an overclocked speed of 4.8ghz as discussed on the previous page.

Main Test System:

Processor: Intel Core i7 3770k @ 4.8ghz

Motherboard: ASUS Maximus V Formula
Cooler: Corsair H100 Liquid Cooler
Memory: Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB @ 2,666mhz (10-12-12-31-2N)
Graphics Card: Sapphire 6GB HD7970 Toxic Edition (fastest bios setting)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W.
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive.
Chassis: Lian Li X2000
Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Dell 2410
Boot Drive: Intel 120GB 520
Storage Drive: Patriot 240GB Wildfire.

Comparison Systems:

Processor: Intel Core i7 3930K
Motherboard: Asus P9X79 WS WorkStation
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT8 2400mhz memory
Graphics Card: AMD HD7770 CrossfireX
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2
Boot Drive: Crucial C300 128GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB Pyro SE

Intel i7 3960X EE
Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Cooler: Antec H20 920
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT 2400mhz memory
Power Supply: Enermax Platimax 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li PC-A77FR Aluminium Red Full Tower Case
Boot Drive: Patriot WildFire 120GB
Secondary Drive: 1TB Samsung

Intel i7 3820
Motherboard: ASRock Extreme4-M
Cooler: Intel reference cooler
Memory: 8GB Corsair GTX8 @ 2133mhz
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: Lian Li PC60
Boot Drive: Crucial C300
Secondary Drive: Patriot Pyro SE 240GB

AMD FX 8150 Black Edition
Processor: AMD FX 8150 Black Edition
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3
Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire

Intel Core i7 990X
Processor: Intel Core i7 990x
Cooler: Corsair H100
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1 Assassin
Memory: Kingston HyperX 6GB
Drives: Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Chassis: Antec Twelve Hundred

Intel Core i7 2700k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2700k
Cooling: ThermalTake Frio OCK
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard
Chassis: Silverstone Raven 3.
Power Supply: Corsair 850W.
Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory
Storage: Intel 80GB SSD (boot) / Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD.

Intel Core i7 2600k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2600k
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen 3
Cooler: Intel XTS-100H
Memory: ADATA 1600mhz DDR3 8GB (2x4GB)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 850W
Boot Drive: Intel 510 SSD 250GB

Intel Core i5 2500k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2500k
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 CPU Cooler
Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory 8GB (2x4GB)
Power Supply: Corsair 850W.
Boot Drive: Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD.

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3
Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire

Kitguru Gaming Comparison System:
Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Graphics Card: Sapphire 6GB HD7970 Toxic Edition (fastest bios setting)
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)

Some game descriptions are edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

An final score of 6,434 points, highlighting the excellent performance from this high end system build.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The overclocked 3770k pairs up well with the flagship Sapphire 6GB HD7970 Toxic Edition, delivering a final score of 39,498 points. A great result for a single GPU based system.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

A score over 10,000 points in 3DMark 11 is difficult to be ignored. This is a killer system delivering some outstanding benchmark results.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

At these high settings, the system powers through this intensive Direct X 11 benchmark, averaging over 104 frames per second.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here

	Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

A score of 196 points is class leading right now, the ideal solution for high definition media playback on a big screen.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Excellent all around results, scoring well in the CPU intensive benchmark tests.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

At 4.8ghz the Core i7 3770k is a formidable rendering powerhouse, scoring 9.76 points.

Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0 x64. The Patriot Wildfire SSD drive is on test today.

No performance issues from the SATA 3 ports on the Maximus V Formula, hitting almost 500 MB/s from both sequential read and write tests.

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We created a new 8200×3200 scene and recorded the time for the hardware to finalise the render.

Excellent results – less than 6 minutes to render our test file. Results are enhanced further by the class leading Corsair 2,666mhz memory we have installed.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are using the newest version which has been optimised for Sandybridge processors.

For testing today we are enabling graphics acceleration encoding.

The fastest result yet, 7 minutes and 1 second. This program doesn't fully utilise 100% of all cores so clock speed is very important for the final result.

We always like to mention, as a point of reference that an Intel ATOM powered system will take over 1 hour and 15 minutes to complete the same task.

Handbrake is a fantastic free program which we wanted to include to confirm findings with Media Espresso, earlier in the review. HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

We used the latest V 0.9.5 for testing today across all platforms. We encoded an DVD.MPG file.

Our final time of 4 minutes and 42 seconds is very good, and the fastest yet for this specific quad core processor family @ 4.8ghz.

F1 2011 is the newest Direct X 11 racing game from industry pioneers CodeMasters. The 2011 Formula One season is the 62nd FIA Formula One season. The original calendar consisted of twenty rounds, including the inaugural running of the Indian Grand Prix before the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Pirelli returns to the sport as tyre supplier for all teams, taking over from Bridgestone. Red Bull Racing are the reigning Constructor’s Champions. Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel is the defending Drivers’ Champion, one of five World Champions appearing on the grid.

Both systems are using the Sapphire 6GB HD7970 Toxic Edition at the higher bios setting. Full system specifications are listed on the testing methodology page earlier in the review.

A couple of extra frames per second from the overclocked i7 3770k system, averaging 97 frames per second at these demanding settings.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparable throughout reviews.

A minor performance increase from the newer Asus Maximus V Formula system, although the minimum frame rate has improved by around 3 frames per second. Noticeable.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

The Maximus V Formula system averages an extra couple of frames per second at these settings, not really noticeable in the real world it has to be said.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).

Excellent results, averaging 130 frames per second at these high settings.

According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware.

Thanks to the incredible frame rate power from the Sapphire 6GB HD7970 Toxic Edition there are no problems powering this demanding engine, even at these taxing settings. The Asus Maximus V Formula system scores a couple of frames per second more than our long standing overclocked Core i7 970 system.

Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

We enabled the game across three 24 inch screens at 5760×1080 resolution, with the settings shown above.

Absolutely no performance concerns, generating 3-5 frames per second more than our long standing graphics card review system.

According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware.

We configured the game to run on three 24 inch monitors at 5760×1080. We also dropped the Texture quality from ultra to high.

Not much difference in regards to the average frame rate although we noticed that the Asus Maximus V Formula system seemed to suffer less from bandwidth issues at this resolution, improving on the minimum framerate significantly.

Max Payne 3 is a third-person shooter in which the player assumes the role of its titular character, Max Payne. Max Payne 3 features a similar over-the-shoulder camera as its predecessors, with the addition of a cover mechanic, while also retaining much of the same run-and-gun style of gameplay. Max Payne 3 also marks the return of bullet-time in action sequences, for which the franchise is notable.

In bullet-time it is possible to see every bullet strike an enemy in detail. New to the series is a “Last Stand” mechanic, which gives the player a grace period after losing all health during which time the player may kill the enemy that wounded them in order to continue playing, however this mechanic is only usable if the player has one or more bottles of painkillers in their possession.

For the last gaming test, we set anti aliasing to 2x and Tessellation to High. At these settings, the game demanded 1813MB of memory.

At these settings, this engine is very demanding although both systems can power the game across three screens. There is a little more headroom from the ASUS Maximus V Formula system, averaging 46 frames per second and maintaining a frame rate above 30 at all times.

Power consumption is very important today, with people more aware of the rising costs of living. Adopting a more efficient computer will reduce the cost across a year. That said, someone running an overclocked, overvolted system will not be that concerned with power consumption.

We used a calibrated meter to measure the power at the wall. No monitors were factored into the readings. All systems included the same graphics card, memory configuration and hard drive population.

We measured wattage at the socket when running Cinebench R11.5 64 bit which loads all cores to 100% utilisation. The graphics card was inactive during the reading.

When overvolted and overclocked to 4.8ghz, the system takes 191 watts at the socket when primed with Cinebench R11.5 64 bit. This is around 20 watts less than the 6 core Core i7 3960k system at reference clock speeds.

For as long as I can remember ASUS have had a reputation for creating some of the finest high end motherboards aimed at the discerning enthusiast user. The Maximus V Formula is another stunning board from the company which exhibits class leading stability when overclocked to the limits. We used the latest bios, which has introduced noticeable improvements to the product. We waited a couple of weeks to finish our review as we experienced some issues with earlier revisions of the bios.

As we mentioned in our previous review of the Corsair Dominator Platinum 2,666mhz memory kit, we experienced problems setting this memory up when using a variety of motherboards. The ASUS Maximus V Formula managed to not only run at 2,666mhz, but to overclock the memory to 2,850mhz. While we didn't focus on that today, you can read our findings over here. If the memory is good enough, there are bios settings to push to 3,200mhz and beyond.

We did notice that there is a glitch with the XMP memory profile settings, as the board seems to automatically loosen the timings, degrading performance. It is best to manually set the parameters yourself. We noted this in depth with our Corsair Platinum 2,666mhz review earlier this week.

There is no doubt in my mind that ASUS still lead the way when it comes to creating intelligently laid out bios configurations. The Bios on the Maximus V Formula verifies my views as all the necessary options are simply accessible from a single, scrollable panel. Many competitor products move memory, timings and voltage settings into different areas of the bios which can make navigation a complete chore, especially after a more serious failure which requires a complete reset.

Our particular Core i7 3770k sample is pretty much limited to 4.8ghz unless we apply almost 1.4 core voltage, which is not ideal for the chip long term. The Maximus V Formula handled the 4.8ghz overclock without the need to change multiple power tuning options in the advanced panels. We simply increased the core ratio to '48' and voltage settings to ‘1.32' and the system was prime stable. It doesn't get much more painfree than this, especially for an inexperienced user.

At 4.8ghz, the performance from our system today was exemplary – although for a gamer it is somewhat overkill. The overclocked quad core processor is perfectly suited as the foundation of a platform for full time 3D rendering duties, or video editing demands.

We have no hesitation recommending this motherboard, but it is expensive and there are plenty of excellent options on the market today. If you don't need some of the ‘bells and whistles' then you could save yourself some money.

You can buy the motherboard from ARIA for £242.06 inc vat.

Pros:

• BIOS configurations are class leading.
• easy to overclock
• plenty of potential to push the components to the limits.
• Add on mSATA card is a nice idea.
• great design.

Cons:

• expensive.
• XMP profiles sometimes ‘loosened' by the bios, requiring manual tweaks.

Kitguru says: Another great motherboard release by ASUS – targeting the high end Z77 enthusiast audience.

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