Overclocking

Overclocking the memory proved to be an easy task on the Maximus III Gene. Our other comparison system, using an ASUS P7H55-M PRO, would not run four memory modules, or even two, with the XMP profile, which affected the P7H55-M Pro's final overall performance. A great contrast was provided by the Maximus III Gene, reaching 4.2 GHz fully stable, even with 4x 2 GB sticks of Dominator GTs @ 2000 MHz CAS 8 1T.



BCLK overclocking proved easy as well, with a max BCLK of 223 MHz being reached, however this was only possible with two DIMMs installed. Running 4 DIMMs @ 2000 MHz CAS 8 with a 200 BCLK should not be overlooked either; the Maximus III Gene did so without any complaints. I was also able to run benchmarks @ 4.4 GHz+, but as that speed did not pass the full suite of stability testing, results at 4.2 GHz have been used. The Gene easily passed all stability tests at 4.2 GHz, from IntelBurnInTest, to Prime95, while both the Gigabyte and ASUS boards failed to achieve this speed, 100% stable.



Metro 2033, as demanding as it is, does scale noticably with each increase in system performance. The Gene showed gains from both memory and CPU clocking, as expected, with the CPU speed increase showing the largest gains.



Like Metro 2033, SuperPI scales with increases to both CPU and memory, with CPU scaling showing the largest impact. Processor speed did prove much more significant in this test, with an increase of over 20%. While not completely linear with the MHz increases, it's pretty close, and this shows the Gene BIOS and hardware are definitely geared to maximum performance, without sacrificing stability.