Asus Rampage Formula (X48) Thread

[GPA_Voltaire]

anyone know if I'll get the sound card if I buy the open box version of this?

[Robilar]

you should, its an integral part of the system (and the sound card will not work on any other board)

[RPIJG]

you had better call and ask, I'm pretty sure that you DON'T get it with an open box. I saw another thread, (I tried searching for you) and he got just the board, nothing else.

[GPA_Voltaire]

bah....i'll just try and get robilar's p5e then

[glenbuck1914]

Originally Posted by ParaSwarm

My card is OC to 770 core and 1075 memory. Haven't done any testing to find the maxes yet..

Overclocked to 3.6 ghz. Seems stable enough, got through 3dmark06 no problem. Some gains (love the new CPU score):

A gain of a little over 500 3dmarks. HDR/SM3.0 went up 500 points from the CPU overclock. Of course, my SM2.0 score is still ridiculously low. I don't understand why it sucks so bad. Hell, it's even worse than my score at 3.2ghz. I've never been able to get that SM2.0 score again. My 8800GTS got better SM2.0 scores.

Running on Catalyst 3.7 beta drivers. I was using the hotfix previously. Haven't noticed any real difference in scores. Also, since I overclocked to 3.6, I had to drop my RAM to 900mhz from 1000 since I'm at 450 FSB now, and my RAM is rated at 1000mhz. Edit: The crazy thing is, according to Everest, my read and write bandwidth for memory went way up, and my copy is only slightly lower. And my latency is lower of course. I wonder if this has to do with being at 1:1 ratio now. Weird!

Do you have any results saved from when you were running on one 4870?

The memory bandwith on this board I've found really strange too.

Common Performance Level, I can deal with. 7 is good for me. Anything above 8 though and the memory bandwith is around 7900 Mb/s...eeeewwww

This also causes the DETDRAM on my board with anything lower than 7. It took me 20 mins of booting the board up with 1 stick of RAM before I discovered this. Thank you ASUS for setting the default level @ 5

AI Clock Twister: Stronger supposedly gives better performance and lighter gives better stability. Not on my board it doesn't- Lighter increases the memory bandwith for me.

FSB Strap: 333 Mhz strap gives me best performance.

And finally my friend Row Refresh Cycle Time, (tRFC): 65.

The above options seem to give me best overall performance, but we have schizophrenic Asus mobo's, yours will probably be completely different.

[Robilar]

Originally Posted by RPIJG

you had better call and ask, I'm pretty sure that you DON'T get it with an open box. I saw another thread, (I tried searching for you) and he got just the board, nothing else.

What the heck would someone do with a supreme FX card? Its not really a sound card per se. It will not work on any other motherboard.

Also if you send the board back to Asus without it, they will not warranty it.

Open box is silly if it doesn't provide all components.

[RPIJG]

Originally Posted by glenbuck1914

The memory bandwith on this board I've found really strange too.

Common Performance Level, I can deal with. 7 is good for me. Anything above 8 though and the memory bandwith is around 7900 Mb/s...eeeewwww

This also causes the DETDRAM on my board with anything lower than 7. It took me 20 mins of booting the board up with 1 stick of RAM before I discovered this. Thank you ASUS for setting the default level @ 5

AI Clock Twister: Stronger supposedly gives better performance and lighter gives better stability. Not on my board it doesn't- Lighter increases the memory bandwith for me.

FSB Strap: 333 Mhz strap gives me best performance.

And finally my friend Row Refresh Cycle Time, (tRFC): 65.

The above options seem to give me best overall performance, but we have schizophrenic Asus mobo's, yours will probably be completely different.

I'm currently on tRD 9, because I haven't started tinkering yet. What BIOS are you running supposedly the newer BIOS were supposed to fix some of the quirky RAM compatibility issues.

[RPIJG]

Originally Posted by Robilar

Open box is silly if it doesn't provide all components.

And hence the definition of open box, newegg tells you, basically all you get is the board. Nothing else. Tough cookies. I however find that stupid since what the heck would people need I/O backplates for boards they don't have anymore?

[ParaSwarm]

Oops... yeah, meant 8.7 beta. 3.7 would probably be a little too old

Wow... looking at your results from having one card, your SM2.0 is better then the best I've gotten, and your HDR/3.0 is WAY higher. I had no idea identical graphics cards could be so different from each other. I've also had quite a few crashes ever since I put replaced my 8800 GTS with this. Have you had any graphics stability problems?

I think that settles it, I'm probably going to refund my card and go with Visiontek. I only picked up the HIS because they were the only card in stock at the time....

Thanks for all the input, this helped me out a lot

[RPIJG]

no graphics stability problems...

Suggestion, though you weren't soliciting. If you can find a copy of WinXP x86 try that and see what happens. I just feel like the "quirky" nature of the XP x64 might be hassling you. Try Vista x86. Don't have to buy just download one of the many evaluation unactivated versions, I just don't think it's your card. Most all of the cards that came out in the "first wave" were all made by AMD/ATI. My card doesn't say visiontek, if it wasn't for the box, it would just look like it came from AMD/ATI directly.