ASUS Republic of Gamers and X79 ROG Review – Rampage IV Gene, Formula and Extreme

No review of X79 motherboards and the ROG branding would be complete without having a look at the overclocking performance.  However, I would like to spend some time talking about overclocking as a whole.

As most enthusiasts know, overclocking is the attempt to get some extra speed for no increased cost.  When we buy hardware that is rated at a certain speed, chances are that it may go much faster, but the original retailer kept the speed low to increase yields and decrease returns.  But every so often, there's a chance where we can get a really nice bit of kit that overclocks quite well.

When we overclock, we tell the motherboard to make the component run faster.  In order to run faster, the component may need more power, which means more voltage.  The result of giving the component more voltage is that it dissipates more heat, so we need to disperse adequately that heat with better cooling.  We reach the limit when either the cooling is not sufficient, or the hardware will not go any faster, or we do not have the ideal settings.  The goal of this for most users is to get a speed out of their hardware that is also suitable for every day working, meaning that it has to be stable under all situations.  This usually takes the form of stress testing, which is in itself a mine field, with individuals having very different ideas as to what a successful stress test is (also a case of synthetics against reality).

I am not going to poke the 'stability' bear to get people angry.  I have a basic set of stability tests when I overclock for these articles, which cover a high-end real world usage (Pov-Ray) and a synthetic (OCCT).  While neither of these benchmarks stresses every part of the equipment for a million years, they are a quick test if anything is unstable (and as a reviewer, you have to balance throughput with testing) while getting to the high-end of temperatures after several minutes that the machine may experience.  I often find that even though I use more advanced cooling than the standard (water-cooling with very loud Delta fans), inadequate cooling is usually the hurdle to overcome for an overclock.

There is also another side of overclocking to which some of our readers will be familiar.  This is the side of extreme overclocking, to which I have mentioned several times in this review.  Extreme overclocking has nothing to do with stability - it is all about getting the best performance possible no matter what the conditions. 

It is like a drag race - drag cars are not designed for the road, they are designed simply for the 1/4 mile.  Similarly, extreme overclocking (and the overclockers) run their equipment barely stable enough to complete the tests (benchmarks) to get a result, and then compare results online.

Extreme overclockers will use exotic methods in order to achieve these unrealistic speeds - sub-zero cooling, such as dry ice, liquid nitrogen and phase change coolers are not uncommon in the extreme overclocking scene.  Nevertheless, with these cooling methods, they can take a common 2.5 GHz processor beyond 5 GHz for the benchmarks needed.  Not only will extreme overclockers do this with processors, but also with memory and graphics cards, in order to get the best scores in benchmarks where GPUs or memory are important (such as 3DMark or SuperPi). 

Extreme overclocking is a hobby for those that do it or a career for the lucky few.  ASUS employ a few veterans in the extreme overclocking field, as they are often very knowledgeable about how the hardware works, right down to the electronic level, and can potentially come up with ideas to get their products to the top of the extreme overclocking leagues (for the Halo effect), or something more casual for most users.  Sometimes, good ideas come from the enthusiast community than the company that builds the hardware!  It should be noted that for the overclocking leagues, various tweaks in hardware settings are allowed and some are disallowed, so more often than not extreme overclockers will try and push the boundaries with tweaks in order to get the best result.

I am part of the extreme overclocking crowd, albeit in a lower division, recently hitting 4th in the global league that restricts itself to air and water cooling only.  Part of being there is being knowledgeable about how the hardware works (for example, modifying the hardware with a soldering iron), knowing which hardware is more valuable for points (as it is a points based league), and how the benchmarks work (some benchmarks prefer Windows XP).  I see it as a very fun hobby (that can be cheaper than some other hobbies) while combining my passion for hardware.  I enjoy the overclocking community that I am part of as well as helping others to get interested in overclocking through local events as part of the UK team.

In the overclocking sections of motherboard reviews since I started, I have focused purely on the highest 24/7 overclock, with our quick stability tests as mentioned above.  With the ASUS ROG products, there are guides for easy overclocking, and guides for more extreme overclockers who want to get to grip with all the options available on the ROG motherboards.  There are also several thousand users on the forums willing to discuss the finer points of overclocks, as well as the upcoming ROG Exchange in order to help users with their systems.  This is on top of all the videos released by the ROG team, showcasing overclocking events with some of the best extreme overclockers in the world.  They are very much worth a look!

As an extreme overclocking overview of ROG would be prohibitively long and superfluous when the ROG Forums has all this information to hand, here I will be describing my experiences on overclocking the X79 motherboards.  My standard test bed is replaced with my extreme water cooling setup, and we are on an open test bed to provide better performance than overclocking in a case (which will retain heat).  So assuming that the CPU is of good quality, and then the maximum limiting factor should only be the cooling on the CPU.

Methodology for Overclocking and Results

Being of sound mind and simple action, our exploration into overclocking the ROG boards should cover most usage scenarios.  We will test the automatic overclocking options as provided by ASUS, followed by a manual attempt, all using an i7-3930K.

The automatic overclocking options for the ROG X79 boards consist of two options in the BIOS (Normal OC profile and Gamers' Profile), and three CPU Level Up options in AI Suite.

The manual attempt will consist of fixing the CPU voltage, and then raising the multiplier until the system is unstable.  Then the CPU voltage is raised in small increments until the system is stable again.  The CPU multiplier is thus raised further, until unstable.  All the time, the temperature of the stability tests are monitored until either the board taps out (reduces the multiplier due to VRM temperatures or other factors) or we decide the temperature on the CPU is uncomfortable for 24/7 use.