[H]ard|OCP reviews ASUS Rampage Formula Intel X48 based motherboard
ASUS has been on a roll with their Republic of Gamers lineup lately and now we take a look at their latest offering based on Intel's X48 chipset based Rampage Formula motherboard supporting Intel's yet-to-be-released 1600MHz Quad Pumped Bus.
ASUS is the world's largest motherboard manufacturer and though they have a staggering array of products, they sill manage to keep putting out some of the best motherboards on the market. ASUS is generally known for innovation, stability and quality. In my experience this reputation is well deserved even though ASUS has had some questionable models from time to time just like any other manufacturer. Really the ASUS Rampage Formula is little more than a Maximus Formula (which we loved) with an X48 north bridge instead of the X38 chipset. So the hardware is virtually identical however ASUS has made some BIOS tweaks this time around. What does this do for you the end user? I'm afraid the X48 is nothing more than a speed binned X38 chipset. It officially supports FSB speeds up to 1600MHz for Intel's Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor, which Intel committed to releasing in Q1'08. 20 days and counting! However as we've already seen the X38 can easily reach the speeds officially supported by the X48 chipset. So really, aside from the X48 having Intel's blessing at 1600MHz FSB, we aren't seeing much new here...
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