Asus Maximus II Formula

Verdict:

The original X38-based Maximus Formula was one of the most popular of Asus' high-end Republic of Gamer-branded motherboards. With a new Intel chipset available, it's no surprise that there's also a new RoG motherboard in the form of the Maximus II Formula.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

There's some confusion over this name - we expected the board's name to be the Blitz II Formula, as the original Blitz Formula was based on Intel's P35 chipset, which is the precursor of the P45 chipset used here.

However, Asus has already called its X48 RoG board the Rampage, rather than the Maximus II, so it seems that the naming convention has been ditched. That said, X38 and P45 have similar features, so perhaps the name isn't entirely arbitrary. For example, both the P45 and X38 chipsets have official support for 1,333MHz FSB processors (1,600MHz FSB support is reserved for X48).

The shared features are only true to a point though as P45 has only 16 PCI-E 2.0 lanes, so can only give two cards in CrossFore mode 8 lanes of bandwidth each (SLI isn't supported, remember). X38 has 32 lanes of PCI-E 2.0, so can run CrossFire at full speed.

LAYOUT

The two full-length PCI-E 2.0 slots are widely spaced, as they're separated by two 1x PCI-E slots. A further 1x PCI-E slot and two PCI slots are placed either side of the two 16x PCI-E slots. Even so, a dual-slot cooler on the second graphics card will obscure access to one of the PCI slots.

Like a lot of RoG motherboards, the Maximus II Formula has its own 1x PCI-E sound card, although it has been upgraded from previous models and now features the ADI 2000B chip. This means that it now has X-Fi compatibility, so it has support for CMSS3D and the Crystalizer, which makes games and music sound livelier.

COOLING

The board's PCB is dominated by a massive set of linked heatpipes and heatsinks. However, despite their plant-like tendrils spreading all over the board, the heatsinks aren't particularly tall, so they don't get in the way when installing a large CPU HSF or a waterblock. The Formula part of the name means that this model supports DDR2 memory, while the forthcoming Extreme version will support DDR3.

Most of the I/O ports are mounted parallel to the PCB, making the cabling easier to manage. With the bundled backplates, you can have up to 12 USB 2 ports, two FireWire ports, six S-ATA II, one eSATA and two Gigabit Ethernet ports.

EXTRAS

As with any RoG motherboard, there's a whole load of extra features. The on-board power and reset switches are genuinely useful, as is the small external LCD POST code display.

Some of the features are more esoteric, such as the high number of BIOS options, and the various temperature and voltage monitors. There are more LEDs than can be found on the dashboard of a Japanese car; these display useful information such as which voltage (classed as normal, high or crazy) is flowing through the CPU, RAM, Northbridge and Southbridge.

THE BIOS

The BIOS has clearly been designed with experienced overclockers in mind, although there are a number of presets that can automatically overclock your CPU if you feel lazy or are too timid. However, as with most jobs in life, if you want it done properly, you should overclock your PC yourself.

You can send an astounding 2.5V to the CPU and 3.4V to the RAM, although we wouldn't recommend ramping up the voltage anywhere near that high unless you have a fetish for filling in RMA forms. The Northbridge, CPU PLL, FSB, GTL and Southbridge voltages can also be adjusted, depending on the requirements of your system and how far you want to overclock.

PERFORMANCE

Using its default BIOS settings, the Maximus II Formula turned in a respectable performance, achieving an overall score of 919 in our Media Benchmarks, a few points behind the P45-based Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4. Fitted with a BFG 512MB GeForce 8800 GTS graphics card, the Maximus II Formula tried to run Crysis smoothly at 1,280 x 1,024 with 2x AA, but came up a little short.

OVERCLOCKING TESTING

Leaving the Northbridge, FSB and PLL voltages at their default settings, and using air cooling, we only had to increase the CPU vcore to 1.525V to overclock our test CPU, a Core 2 Duo E6750, to its maximum clock frequency of 3.66GHz. This was achieved by boosting the FSB from 266MHz to 458MHz (1,832MHz effective). At these settings, the overall Media Benchmarks score jumped up from 919 to 1,204, just ahead of the Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4.

OVERCLOCKING DIFFICULTIES

We found that overclocking the P45 chipset is very different from overclocking the earlier 965, P35 and X38 chipsets. These chipsets were made using a 90nm process, so they could be easily overclocked to around 500MHz or more by increasing the Northbridge voltage to 1.6V or higher.

As the P45 chipset is made using a 65nm process, it's far less tolerant of high voltages. For example, although the system would POST, when we tried increasing the Northbridge and FSB voltage above 1.4V, Vista wouldn't load, complaining that various files were corrupt.

Fortunately, once the BIOS was reset to its default settings, the system loaded Vista without any problems, so at least the overvolting didn't corrupt the data on the hard disk, merely the data temporarily stored in RAM.

After speaking with Asus, and spending a lot of time hitting the reset button, we found the magic numbers to be 1.2855V for the FSB and 1.19275V for the Northbridge. With the CPU multiplier dropped from 8x to 6x, and as long as we didn't increase any of the other voltages, we were then able to raise the FSB to 480MHz. This would have been considered a brilliant overclock a few years ago, but many far cheaper motherboards are now capable of stably running a 500MHz FSB.

For example, the older Asus P5K Premium WiFi-AP is capable of running a 540MHz FSB and currently costs as little as £102.82 inc VAT.

Overclocking potential could, and probably will, improve with future BIOS updates, but it isn't particularly encouraging that neither of the two P45 motherboards we've reviewed so far could run a 500MHz FSB stably, while decent P35-based board typically can.

CONCLUSION

Giving a RoG motherboard such as the Maximus II Formula a kicking for not being the best overclocking motherboard is slightly missing the point. The Maximus II Formula sports a number of genuinely useful features that you simply don't find in run-of-the-mill motherboards.

These include the various software and hardware health monitors, the LCD POST code display, on-board power and reset switches, and Northbridge/Southbridge/VRM cooling. The revised sound card, which now has X-Fi compatibility, is another great feature, especially as it uses one of the 1x PCI-E slots, rather than one of the precious PCI slots, as a standard X-Fi would.

Even so, it's hard to award the Asus Maximus II Formula a full and thorough recommendation. We'd expect more from a motherboard sporting a price tag of £150 than flashing lights and a sack full of accessories - we'd also expect better performance and overclocking potential, both of which the Maximus II Formula fails to deliver using its current BIOS and P45 chipset.

You can buy the Asus Maximus II Formula from Scan Computers for £151.58 inc VAT (price correct at time of review)

To read more about the Maximus II Formula, visit Asus' website

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