ASUS Maximus III Extreme (P55 Express) Motherboard

Test System

Processor: Intel Core i5 750
Mainboard ASUS Maximus III Extreme (Supplied by ASUS)
Memory: 4GB Kingston KHX12800D3T1K3/6GX (Supplied by Kingston)
Hard Disk: Kingston SSD Now M (Intel X25-M 80GB SSD) (Supplied by Kingston)
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 5870 1GB (Supplied by AMD)
Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper 212 (with an extra fan) (Supplied by Cooler Master)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Drivers: Intel INF 9.1.1.1015, Catalyst 10.2

Comments

The Maximus III Extreme that we tested was using a BETA BIOS. Although ASUS told us that this version (0605) was pretty much complete, they did emphasize that it was not going to the be the BIOS that will ship with the MIIIE when it hits the retail channel.

Our experience with the Maximus III in terms of build, setup and installation was good. I was concerned about how close the first PCIe slot is to the NF200 cooler, but in the end nothing was touching and heat build-up was not terribly bad. Running the system was another matter, as we are looking at a beta BIOS some of the performance we saw will undoubtedly improve with the final release. Still, it is not always easy to adjust for both good stock performance and good overclocked performance.

***Note: As this is the first P55 board that we have tested with the Radeon HD 5870 and this test has a GPU based section, we did not include performance numbers from other boards that used the GTX 285. We did include tests that had no reliance on the GPU for comparison. We also included performance numbers from our Core i7-980X testing with this review to give you a basis for comparing the numbers on the Core i5 750/ P55 combination.***