ASUS Maximus Extreme - the Extreme Benchmarker's Choice?

Final Thoughts

The release of the Maximus Formula/Extreme boards meant the P35 Blitz Extreme became an EOL (End Of Life) product rather quickly. Because of this, users were eagerly awaiting a board that could surpass the performance of the Blitz Extreme - without needing modifications. We were hoping that the ASUS Maximus Extreme was going to be the board to fulfill the needs of today's extreme benchmarkers. It comes very close, but in our opinion it still needs another round of refinements in the BIOS and board components to capture this market.

Our benchmarking results of the Maximus series have shown users with top-end water-cooling or cascade that ASUS has two boards to choose from, without suffering from the loss of any major tweaking or performance options on lower priced boards. Despite using DDR2 and a few component changes, the ASUS Maximus Formula is not too far off in performance results from its more expensive cousin, and is currently surpassing the Maximus Extreme in terms of available CPU speed when using sub-zero cooling methods.

Those who use LN2, or other methods of extreme cooling with capable processors, will have to modify either motherboard in order to attain higher levels of stable CPU speeds. With 45nm processors scaling so well, it has become commonplace to see LN2 and dry ice cooling allow speeds well in excess of the 4.9GHz CPU wall that manifests itself on our test board after initial boot up.

We have to commend ASUS in providing excellent component compatibility (out of the box), though we expected as much, because most of the issues have already been solved in the earlier released Maximus Formula board. ASUS directly ported in many of the BIOS fixes on the Formula board into the Maximus Extreme BIOS code. The latest BIOS, 0803, is a very mature and capable release in all around testing with a wide variety of components.

Both Gigabyte and DFI are planning revised DDR3 boards based on the upcoming X48 chipset to compete in this same niche market. Until the release of new X48 products, ASUS continues to dominate this sector. Preliminary reports from several competitors suggest that ASUS is the only company that will be using a PCI-E bridge chip to provide the additional x8 slot for Tri-Fire capability. In fact, the untested Tri-Fire potential of the Maximus Extreme may prove to be a solid design choice and help ensure a longer life span for their Extreme series lineup.

Early testing of the upcoming X48 based P5E3 Premium from ASUS has shown small gains over current X38 boards when pushed hard, bearing in mind that these gains are only memory sub-timing related. Although these gains will probably be miniscule in actual applications, consumers of these products generally want the fastest option available. After all, that is what this end of the industry is all about - potential speed improvements to improve benchmark results or added performance for high-end gaming. The rub here is that the pre-release BIOS for the P5E3 Premium has more tweaking options than the current Maximus series and provides slightly better performance. This leaves us a little confused as to which board the extreme user will gravitate towards.

In order to establish a true pedigree for the ROG hierarchy, a systematic product tier needs to be clearly established. Users should know without confusion exactly what each board is able to accomplish. Perhaps we are overshadowing the Maximus Extreme too much with these statements. However, after early testing of the Premium X48 series, we can only wonder what ASUS has planned for the next ROG lineup to improve upon the new Premium lineup.

Summing it all up, if you need a water-cooled Northbridge, the potential of Tri-Fire, and a board that offers superb stability and performance, we would choose this board in a heartbeat. For an air-cooled solution, the ASUS P5E3 Deluxe offers almost the same levels of flexibility with a very extensive feature set. Even though ASUS reduced a few voltage ranges and changed components on the P5E3 Deluxe, overclocking with air and most water-cooling setups will not fully expose any deficiencies with the Deluxe board.

For DDR2 users who employ extreme cooling for benchmarking, the Maximus Formula is a little slower at the same processor speed, but provides a little more overhead for CPU MHz scaling. In the end, we think ASUS almost nailed the upper-end performance market with this board. We do not hesitate recommending this board if it suits your needs and cannot wait to see what the next ROG series brings us in the way of performance and features.