.
Hardware Award
ASUS RAMPAGE III EXTREME
RRP: ASUS RAMPAGE III EXTEREME: $359.99
Website: http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=jy0uafxYBCrJwksC&templete=2
result of the better CPU score
on the GIGABYTE board. Next
was 3DMark Vantage, where the
R3E pulled ahead with 21030
marks, a full 400points clear in
front of the UD9. We believe the
UD9 is slightly behind the R3E on
3D based benchmarks because
of its two NF200 chips, these
have been known to slow 3D
results. Although if we were to
put 3 or 4 GPUs into both boards
we would find these NF200 chips
would actually give the UD9 a
considerable lead over the R3E.
A clearer picture was starting
to develop that highlighted the
differences between these two
boards as they seemed they have
reversed their traditional roles.
The UD9 is now the better
product for SuperPI and CPU
based benchmarks, while the R3E
is better in 3D based benchmarks.
This is definitely a sharp contrast
from earlier X58 boards where
the R3E was supreme in 2D and
Gigabyte come out on top in most
3D applications. We saw a potential
if not partial explanation when
we looked at Everest results and
found the UD9 had better read and
copy bandwidth and likely reason
why it was pulling a few seconds
ahead in SuperPI. Having said
that, the R3E didn’t do too poorly
and results were actually close,
as it still produced the best write
bandwidth and latency. So looking
back at our results, nothing really
separated these boards so far,
they both have their strengths
and weakness and an extreme
overclocker would probably want
both boards to achieve best results
across the board.
There are of course other areas
we needed to consider, like how
October 2010 The OverClocker 29