Friday, August 6th 2010
ASUS Unveils ROG Rampage III Formula Motherboard
ASUS showed of the slightly less expensive ATX sibling of its Republic of Gamers (ROG) Rampage III LGA1366 motherboard series, the Rampage III Formula. The Formula model comes months after the high-end Extreme and M-ATX Gene models, and aims to fill in all the essentials of the ROG series into an overclocker-friendly design. ASUS claims that the Rampage III Formula delivers a "balance of gaming-related features at a superior value." The LGA1366 socket fits all Core i7 processors in the package, including six-core ones out of the box. The CPU is powered by an 8-phase VRM, it is wired to six memory slots for triple-channel DDR3 memory, which are powered by a 4-phase VRM. The board supports DDR3 memory with speeds of up to 2000 MHz.
Expansions slots include three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x16, NC, x16; or x16, x8, x8, depending on how they're populated), two PCI-E x1, and one PCI. 3-way NVIDIA SLI and ATI CrossFireX. The ICH10R southbridge gives out six SATA 3 Gb/s ports while an additional controller provides two SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Connectivity includes ASUS SupremeFX X-Fi audio, dual gigabit Ethernet (including one Intel NIC that provides teaming support), two USB 3.0 ports, Bluetooth, and a number of USB 2.0 ports.
ASUS exclusive features include ASUS Gamefirst! Multitasker, a feature that lets you manually allot available network/internet bandwidth and priority between applications and games, ROG Connect, which lets you control the OC settings from a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone, and an overclocker-friendly BIOS. ASUS said that it will roll out its latest creation soon. Probably right after Summer.
Source:
TechReport
Expansions slots include three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x16, NC, x16; or x16, x8, x8, depending on how they're populated), two PCI-E x1, and one PCI. 3-way NVIDIA SLI and ATI CrossFireX. The ICH10R southbridge gives out six SATA 3 Gb/s ports while an additional controller provides two SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Connectivity includes ASUS SupremeFX X-Fi audio, dual gigabit Ethernet (including one Intel NIC that provides teaming support), two USB 3.0 ports, Bluetooth, and a number of USB 2.0 ports.
22 Comments on ASUS Unveils ROG Rampage III Formula Motherboard
In this motherboard, if I've a sound card (PCI) and 2 GTX460 I'll have to place them next to each other with almost no space for cool air intake for the upper video card which will probably increase it's temperature by 10c+. Are soundcards really that useless that most vendors nowadays don't even think about the PCI slot ? (I'm planning on getting the Asus Xonar ST)
*Off topic*
I'm also planning on getting the Asus Rampage III Extreme, but I was wondering can I run SLI with one card on first slot and the second on the fourth slot ? I mean is there an SLI bridge which is long enough ?
It's electric x8. Also look at how the tracks are leading from lanes 9~16 from the third slot to those the second slot's lane 1~8 over the external switches. If the config was [x16, x16/x8, NC/x8], you'd see tracks going south-west from the second slot (from 9~16 of second slot to 1~8 of third).
So it's [x16, NC, x16] or [x16, x8, x8] depending on how they're populated.
But the names are starting to confuse me....as they all are starting to sound the same, i thought there was already a Rampage III?, or is that the extreme?, or is that the Maximus III?, to may III's and IV's all over the place lol.
At what point would need to use that 4 pin molex connector or do you have to use it ?.
As to the molex connector, anything over 2 VGAs should use it, and maybe even two cards may need it. I know my 24-pin connector can get hot running 3 cards, and we ahve seen in the past how 4 cards can kill a 24-pin connector and PSU both.
It's possible to read the labelling on the board there and the middle slot reads x8/x1 which I read as it being either x8 (shared with the bottom slot) or x1 when it's not shared.
:roll: