Overclocking

Overclocking with the ASRock X79 Extreme11 was a treat. I need far less voltage than I normally do with this particular chip, allowing me to lower the CPU voltage to 1.375 V instead of the 1.45 V or 1.4 V I've had to use on other Intel X79 Express products. 24 phases of power delivery may seem excessive, but this board does show that it can pay off to have so many phases, provided they are designed well!

Memory clocking was just as easy using the XMP profile. I did mention before that the ASRock X79 Extreme11 follows XMP profiles to the letter; that goes a long way towards ensuring that high-end XMP memory works as it should. Memory support is a big thing to me, and a problem that I help users out with far too often. I feel confident that nearly any current XMP-profiled stick will work well with the ASRock X79 Extreme11. I cannot say the same of some other products, unfortunately.

Overclocked Performance Summary

Cinebench provided a substantial performance increase when overclocked, something that resounds true through the entire series of Intel-based products. The ASRock X79 Extreme11 was again the best performer, but it really wasn't all that far ahead, either.


SuperPi 32m results were very good for the ASRock X79 Extreme11, beating out our other X79 result easily. Of course, there aren't many X79 results here, but that's going to change in the coming weeks as I debut my new testing regime this fall.


WPrime 1024M numbers further the results, showing that there is true power available when overclocking the ASRock X79 Extreme11, which sat easily as the fastest result.


We fired up CodeMaster's F1 2010 for a bit of 3D action, with the ASRock X79 Extreme11 securing a middle spot overall. It's also quite interesting to see it score differently compared to our other ASRock X79 results here, showing that, although boards may appear similar, overall design can affect things in a big way. The Fatal1ty X79 CHampion is a gaming board and does beat the ASRock X79 Extreme11 for this game, but the X79 Extreme11 excels in computer tasks which, it being a workstation-focused product, definitely fits the bill.


With Codemaster's F1 2010 starting to show its age, and proving less reliable in showing performance increases, we've added the Shogun 2 DirectX 9 CPU benchmark to our testing suite. In the months to come, it will get added to the main testing section. It does, for now, show a very large increase in performance when run on the overclocked ASRock X79 Extreme11, which finished behind the CHampion board again, but not by much!