| Product: |
Asus Striker Extreme Republic of Gamers Series |
| Date: |
05.08.07 (150 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Too many
Disadvantages: Price
ABOUT ASUS:
ASUS is a name of quality. They are good at every thing from motherboards to graphics cards and from optical drives to laptops. What ever they manufacture, they do it very professionally. ASUS has got a big name in graphics cards and motherboards. They have always been innovative and impressive in the motherboard section. ASUS provides a host of features in their motherboards. No other manufacturer has been providing such a large number of features in a single motherboard. ASUS has been very in innovative in the design and layout of their motherboards. ASUS motherboards, without any argument, are the best overclockers. Their customer support is also very good. They provide timely BIOS updates to fix minor problems and fine tune their motherboards. In short, ASUS has got a very professional approach at their business.
INTRODUCTION:
Yet again ASUS has produced a brilliant motherboard. ASUS Striker Extreme lives up to the quality standards set by ASUS. This motherboard has a host of features to talk about. The layout of the motherboard is very good. It is based on the highest end Nvidia nForce 680i SLI chipset. It is a full ATX Form Factor(24x30cm) motherboard. It features LGA 775 Socket for Intel processors to be installed.
FEATURES:
* It support old Intel processor like Pentium 4 and Pentium D.
* It also support all Core 2 Duo family processors.
* It support 1333 FSB, which mean we can use the upcoming Intel processors having 1333 FSB with a BIOS update.
* It support a maximum of 8 GB of DDR2 RAM in Dual Channel.
* This motherboard has three PCI Express x16 slots, two of which you can use for SLI mode.
* It also has two gigabit Ethernet controllers.
* The motherboard has got a decent 8 Channel surround sound sub-system.
* It also has two Firewire ports.
* It has got 10 High Speed USB ports.
* It has got six SATA ports, having RAID capability.
* It also features two e.SATA ports.
ASUS SPEACIAL FEATURES:
* Array Mic
* Noise Filter
* ASUS EZ Flash 2
* MyLogo3
* Music Alarm
* Stack Cool2
BUNDLE:
* ASUS Striker Extreme Motherboard
* Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
* 3Dmark06 Advanced Edition
* Kapersky Anti-Virus
* 6 SATA cables
* 3 SATA power cables (6 SATA devices supported)
* 2-port USB 2.0 bracket
* 1-port Firewire bracket
* SLI Bridge
* IDE Cable
* FDD Cable
* Q-Connector
COOLING:
The board comes with a cooling solution that ASUS names as Stack Cool 2. It is a series of fan-less heatsinks on the various chipset chips connected by a pipe. The Heat Pipe design effectively directs the heat generated by the chipsets to the heatsink near the back IO ports, where it can be carried away by existing airflow from CPU fan. This ensure efficient cooling without generating any noise.
OVERCLOCKING:
ASUS tends to use the Phoenix AwardBIOS with their motherboards, and the Striker Extreme board is no exception to that rule. The BOIS provides very easy and extensive settings to tweak the motherboard at your heart content. The AI NOS can overclock your processor from 3 to 10% without going into the BIOS. The AI Booster has overclocking options for the gamer from 115% to 120%.
In the BOIS you can find a number of overclocking settings under the "Extreme Tweaker" menu.To overclock the system manually rather than rely on the ASUS A.I feature you need to set the A.I Tuning feature to “Manual”. This then opens up access to the system clocks, FSB and memory config, overclocking and over voltage menus.
System Clocks menu is the first menu on this list. Here you can adjust the PCI Express frequencies for all PCI Express x16 slots as well as the reference clock for the SPP to MCP connection.
FSB and Memory config menu comes next. AsUS Striker Extreme supports overcloking of FSB and Memory independently of each other. To do this you need to set the FSB – Memory clock mode to “Unlinked”, this then allows you to change the FSB and memory clock at different rates to each other. You can change the FSB from 533 to 3000 MHz in 1 MHz increment. You can also change the memory from 400 to 2600 MHz in 1 MHz increment. You can also tweak the memory timings. You can change tRCD from 1-7, the tRP from 1-7, the tRAS from 1-31 and can change the command per clock to 1 or 2 per clock.
Over Voltage menu comes last. You can change the settings as follows:
Vcore Voltage: 0.83125v to 1.9000v in 0.00625v increments
Memory Voltage: 1.8v to 3.245v in 0.025v increments
1.2v HT Voltage: 1.2v to 1.95v in 0.5v increments
NB Core Voltage: 1.2v to 2.75v in 0.5v increments
SB Core Voltage: 1.5v to 1.85vin 0.5v increments
CPU VTT Voltage: 1.2v to 1.55v in 0.5v increments
In short, ASUS Striker Extreme is an excellent overclocker and can beat any other motherboard when it comes to overclocking.
FINAL WORDS:
To date I have got no problem with this motherboard. I love ASUS for producing such an excellent motherboard. Although it is pricey but I can say with surety that the money you give on it is worth it. I strongly recommend this motherboard for all the extreme gamers and overclockers. It is a perfect motherboard for enthusiasts.
Summary: Excellent! You will love it.
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