#MEMORY CLEAN EXTREME REVIEW INSTALL#
#MEMORY CLEAN EXTREME REVIEW DRIVERS#
#MEMORY CLEAN EXTREME REVIEW FULL#

#MEMORY CLEAN EXTREME REVIEW FULL#

We started testing the Maximus with a dual-core E6750 so we could run the OCZ PC3-1600 that we reviewed here at full speed on an X38 chipset. Provided you use the supplied bracket that carries one Firewire and two USB ports then you’ll find that the Maximus Extreme offers all of the ports and connectors that you’ll need. There’s another option as you might want to use the third PCIe slot for a RAID 5 or RAID 6 controller card along with CrossFire graphics but that would be a very exotic choice. Let’s assume that triple CrossFire will be added in the coming months in which case the graphics cards will take up most of the space that’s available for expansion cards, giving you the choice of using the Asus audio riser card in the top-most PCIe x1 slot or you could use the single available PCI slot for an X-Fi. The Catalyst Control Centre recognised the third card and showed a desktop that potentially spanned six screens (two monitors per graphics card) but 3DMark06 showed lower performance with three graphics cards than it did with two.

Just to make sure we plugged in two HD 2900 XT cards in CrossFire and then added a Radeon X1950 GT to see what happened.

#MEMORY CLEAN EXTREME REVIEW DRIVERS#

Triple graphics cards are a completely different matter as ATI Catalyst drivers don’t support a third card, either for pure graphics or for physics, and we’re not aware of any games that currently benefit from a third card. However, if you’ve seen how Crysis performs on a single card, you might well feel the need to gang up two ATI cards in CrossFire.

Taken together the various Extreme features are all very nice but the big question is whether you need three graphics slots on a gaming motherboard? For that matter do you even need two graphics slots? The obvious answer is that a single graphics card is perfectly adequate for most, provided you run a GeForce 8800 or Radeon HD 2900. The other tweaks are cosmetic and add an illuminated Republic of Gamers logo to the Northbridge cooler as well as three sets of LEDS that announce to the world whether your CPU is running on Normal, High or Crazy settings. During POST it displays messages that show you how the process is going and if you hit problems you should be able to pinpoint where the fault lies within moments. This is a small LCD display that connects to a header on the board with wires that feed out through the I/O panel so you can sit the Poster on your desk or on top of the PC. If you hit problems with your PC, the Maximus range includes a handy gizmo called the LCD Poster. This is a fine idea as the Clear CMOS button is very easy to press in error when you’re installing a digital audio or Firewire device. These changes means you have to play hide and seek to spot the handful of new features that have been added to the Extreme as they are quite small details.įor instance there’s a flick switch next to the CMOS battery and front panel headers that enables and disables the Clear CMOS battery on the I/O panel. The illuminated Power and Reset micro buttons that have previously lived at the foot of the motherboard are now positioned between the IDE connector and memory slots. A few components have been moved around to accommodate the new cooler so the Firewire and USB 2.0 headers are in the corner of the board next to the six laid-down SATA II connectors. However, it is very low profile and won’t interfere with any graphics card that you may have installed. The Crosslink chip is Gen 1 so we have to wonder what will happen when you plug in two or three or ATI’s forthcoming Radeon R680 cards, which will support PCIe 2.0Īsus has modified its chipset cooling package to accommodate the Crosslinx chip so the Southbridge cooler on the Maximus is much larger than the regular Maximus cooler. X38 supports PCIe 2.0, or Gen 2 as it is known.

#MEMORY CLEAN EXTREME REVIEW INSTALL#

Crosslinx works its magic when you install a third graphics card as the main slot gets 16 lanes while the other two slots get eight lanes of PCIe each. If you install a pair of graphics cards in the two main PCIe slots then each card gets 16 lanes of PCIe 2.0 in the usual X38 chipset style. Extreme takes the Maximus concept to a new level by adding a third PCI Express graphics slot that’s controlled by a Crosslinx chip positioned next to the Southbridge. The third and final variant is the Maximus Extreme which is the motherboard that we’re reviewing here.

Memory clean extreme review