Asus Rampage IV Extreme X79 Motherboard Review

3DMark 11

3DMark 11 is the latest offering from Futuremark, taking full advantage of DirectX 11 by utilising tessellation features and volumetric lighting. It takes your graphics and CPU hardware to the edge to simulate the most extreme conditions whilst working as a stand point to compare results with other users online.

Under 3DMark 11 we see a slight increase from the Rampage IV on the Performance preset and the overclock gives us a small boost in both Extreme and Performance preset, but not by huge amounts.

Metro 2033

Metro 2033 is a first person shooter set in the metro system of a post-apocalyptic Moscow with survival horror elements. The game consists of highly intensive graphics which utilises DirectX 11, tessellation features and amazing depth of field to give stunning graphics with high resolution textures and extreme lighting and motion blur technology.

Metro gave very strong results across all of the boards tested with the socket 1155 based system actually performing the best.

Unigine Heaven 2.5

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine™ engine. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies and utilises the full effect of DirectX 11 and allows you to configure shaders, tessellation and quality settings to your own personal choice.

Heaven showed no real change between each system with almost identical results on both resolutions between each system.

F1 2011

F1 2011 is the latest instalment from Codemasters and is based upon the 2011 Formula One season. It utilises the latest DirectX 11 features including shadows, particles and reflections to offer the very best graphics in a fast-paced moving game with depth of field being a key focus. It relies heavily on all aspects of a computer system including GPU and CPU.

When looking at game-play in F1 2011, we saw some strange results with the overclock giving us a huge increase in frame-rate. We perform all of our tests multiple times to eliminate the chance of a fluke result, but each time the results were consistent.