Overwhelm your acknowledgement with wireless overclocking experience! We're a sucker for ASUS marketing!
Such is the kingdom of motherboard manufacturers based in Taiwan that translation awkwardness gets in the way of what is otherwise an interesting feature. The above overwhelming acknowledgement is a quote verbatim from the product page for the Maximus III, and it makes us giggle like schoolgirls! But the real story isn't the amusing descriptions for features, but rather this new high-end P55 board.
ASUS is pretty experienced with this chipset, and with experience comes knowledge of limitations - namely, the PCIe lanes are so scarce as to be classified endangered. ASUS has worked around this by throwing one of NVIDIA's NF200 chips into the mix, giving Crossfire and SLI dual 16X bandwidth or three-way bandwidth at dual 16x with the third card at 8x. Arguably you'd just look to the X58 platform if you're after either multi-gpu technology, but hey, you've got choice now. There are also two molex connectors near the PCIe slots to boost electrical input and aid stability.
The usual I/O features are displayed on this board, with USB3 making a showing again as the must-have fashion of the season, though ASUS has also thrown in an optional Bluetooth module. This module (coincidentally described above) performs the same function as the ROG Connect USB cable, and allows basic tweaking of BCLK frequencies and voltage from an external lappy. Not exactly a must-have feature, but you can also use it as just a normal Bluetooth interface, so it's welcome.
The LGA1156 socket is treated to a digital VRM, the same as with ASUS' entire range of high end boards, which delivered stable power to the CPU that wavered slightly under overclocked load. The memory slots also support speedy sticks, and have their own power delivery system. This edge of the board also boasts the ProbeIt panel of hard voltage measurement points for essential components, giving easy feedback for overclockers with access to a multimeter.
Storage inputs cover seven SATA2 ports, six from the P55 Express chipset and the final one from a JMicron controller. The controller's second port is piped to the I/O panel for eSATA duties. Also here is the Marvell SATA3 controller that has seen use in every board we've looked at for the past few Issues, giving two SATA3 ports. The chip interfaces with a PLX bridge chip to boost PCIe lane bandwidth. IDE and Floppy are nowhere to be seen, but are not particularly missed.
Hard power and reset buttons make a showing along the bottom edge of the board, which are very handy when overclocking outside a case, and the five PCIe slots have plenty of room between them. There's a single PCI slot for backwards compatibility (and we imagine just because it was a hole that needed filling), with audio needs coming from the Via VT2020 chip.
Stock performance was a mixed bag, giving us very good memory bandwidth and latency that led to a very fast PiFast score, though the performance seemed to lose some of its edge as we overclocked higher. The maximum overclock we garnered was 4180MHz at 190x22 with 1.54375V, missing out on the 200+MHz potential we know the chip has, as seen with MSI's Big Bang Fuzion board.
Also slightly disappointing is the cost, rocking in at almost five hundred wingwangs. All the added chips (NF200, PLX, Marvell, NEC, Bluetooth to name a few) add up to be very expensive, and the digital VRMs aren't cheap either, bumping this board pretty high. For the price, this isn't really so attractive, but you won't see many more features packed into the P55 platform.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012