ASUS Republic of Gamers and X79 ROG Review – Rampage IV Gene, Formula and Extreme
by Ian Cutress on August 3, 2012 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Asus
- X79
- ROG
ASUS are actively trying to embrace the gaming community in a way that is substantially unprecedented for a non-gaming focused company. Any gamer or user, with or without an ROG product, can sign up to the ROG forums. The ROG forums are filled with like minded users who enjoy their technology and their gaming, free to share ideas, modifications and the like. What sets the ROG forums apart from most is the active participation by ASUS-employed gamers who are there to offer advice and help solve problems.
These community moderators and helpers are both tech freaks and gamers themselves, and have the same passion and enthusiasm as the members. If the user is willing to listen, these moderators will talk to the community and individuals about how to fix their problem or improve their experiences of certain products, helping users get the most out of their products. All of this comes at no extra charge.
ROG Forums
The forums themselves are split, as you may imagine, between different component types and then Intel/AMD/NVIDIA as required. There is a main section for technical talk – help with suggestions for rig building, or a place for modders to show off their builds. There is also a section for gaming, for ROG forum users to discuss latest releases or tactics. A relatively recent addition to the forums is the ROG Pro section, which features help on MemTweakIt and ROG Exchange (explained later)
Articles
Unlike any other motherboard originated, gaming focused community, the community moderators at the ROG forums also write articles and guides for everyone. This can be as basic as installing a sound card, or more complex describing the myriad of overclocking options on product XYZ. These are not your typical guides – painstakingly written over pages and pages and then published online for everyone to use in step-by-step fashion and every section is explained. If there is a section that is not explained as clearly as you would like, the moderators or other forum users are more than keen to help (on a personal note, as long as the request is polite rather than a demand, users are more willing to lend aid).
As ROG is also aimed at overclockers, there are also series of blog posts aimed at what several of the internal ASUS overclockers and R&D have achieved in terms of competitive overclocking. 24/7 overclocking is more focused in the guides, but for extreme (liquid nitrogen) scores pushing the hardware to the limits, there are videos and explanations of what these world champion overclockers are doing.
Now, how about a look at our ROG X79 motherboards we have in for testing?
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34 Comments
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Flunk - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
Ivy Bridge is more of a notebook oriented update anyway. The much better integrated graphics don't really matter to us anyway.G-Man - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
Fantastic article, Ian! You must have been working on this for a long time. Thanks for a great read.B - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
Ian -I would like to point out that under that nice metal Creative X-FI chip badge is, in fact, a Realtek processor. The Soundblaster piece of this is a merely a software implementation. I have this motherboard and was quite disappointed to discover this.
Thanks for great and thorough article.
just4U - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
Indeed.. It's a little bit of a letdown. It will be nice if they are pushed away from the realtek chip now that Gigabyte is into similiar type boards which utilize the Creative recon chips.primonatron - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
The article should be edited to specificy that it's only a Relatek chip, not a Creative one, at this point it's just blatent false advertising.When doing the review, did Anandtech actually do a Windows 7 install on it themselves?
They would have known if they did.
IanCutress - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
As per my comment above, it states this in the tenth page. And yes, I do install Windows 7 fresh on every board I test. It would be crazy not to. I see the whole install procedure at least twice a week, as well as installing each vendors drivers and software. The ASUS install procedure for drivers is all one-button automatic, no user input required, no giant screens flashing up on the screen to ask to confirm this that or the other.Ian
primonatron - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
I would not put " ASUS have dug into their pockets to provide the Gene with a better-than-Realtek solution, in the SupremeFX III" since it IS a Realtek solution.IanCutress - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
Written in page 10:"In our SupremeFX III, we essentially get a Realtek codec (presumed ALC898), but by being stage III this chip is isolated from the rest of the board, has a separate EMI shield around the chip, its own PCB layer for audio tracing, a 1500 mF capacitor to reduce ripple, and gold plated audio jacks to minimize resistance. As a result, the SNR is increased to 110dB."
Ian
just4U - Saturday, August 4, 2012 - link
It also needs to be noted that soundchips getting decent software can be a fairly substantial bump.. atleast from my point of view. I seem to recall Creative nailing a company to the wall because they used software the emulated soundblaster stuff and they were reall popular 7 years back.just4U - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
I've been using these for several years... and have always found that they offer more then most standard ATX boards in lesser and similiar price ranges. Your not paying the Big bucks but you have your foot in the door.. (as it were.. lol)They can be problematic at times mind you.. I've found that quality control can be a bit of an issue with dead boards coming in now and again. We are dealing with sensitive electronics mind you so that happens.
I must say they do have some competition now with Gigabyte's M3s sniper boards, that do utilize a true recon3d sound chip from Creative (as opposed to a realtek chip with software emulation). My hope is that it pushes Asus towards a similiar move as the sound is a key feature for these baby boards.
Personally I think the Gene series deserves your silver award. While high end boards can be had from all makers getting a good solid feature rich gaming MATX board is not the norm and they are almost allways a pleasure to work with.
Great review Ian.