![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, December 02, 2009
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ASUS Maximus III Formula Motherboard Review
ASUS brings us yet another Republic of Gamers branded motherboard, this time in the new Intel P55 Express chipset flavor. The ASUS Maximus III Formula promises not to disappoint with its robust feature set, solid design, and excellent pedigree.
TurboV EVO
ASUS included their TurboV EVO utility with the Maximus III Formula. This utility has been around for a short time and is actually one of the better included utilities that ASUS or any board maker has offered. Unfortunately ASUS decided to make it so that it is now linked to the horrid ASUS Ai Suite "launcher". Using the default installer on the disk, you can't install TurboV EVO any longer. So ASUS has taken a step back here if you ask me. Enthusiasts do not like bloated applications with bad interfaces. That being said once you get TurboV EVO installed you can disregard the AI Suite after that.
TurboV EVO basically has three modes. Manual, Easy and "Auto-Tuning". The utility has all the basic settings you normally need for basic overclocking. The voltages and BCLK use arrows to adjust the values up or down. That's essentially it. The "More settings" or advanced mode button gives you even more settings as you can imagine. CPU PLL, CHA CTRL, CHB CTRL, CHA Data, CHB Data, and PCH voltage settings. The Easy mode just gives you a BCLK arrow style adjustment and that's it. Everything else displayed is "grayed" out and is little more than informational at that point.
The auto tuning mode is pretty simple. You simply hit the red start button and grab a sandwich. The flow chart shows what steps of the process the software is on so you have some indicator of the auto overclocking software's progress. The more settings button provides your memory strap setting and a flexible or auto voltage setting. That's about as easy as it gets. Turbo Key is a simple setting found at the top tabs of the application. This is basically for configuring hot keys for your overclocking profiles.
RC TweakIt
RC TweakIt is a new utility I've never seen before. This leverages the ROG Connect feature supported by the Maximus III Formula. You can connect the ROG Connect cable (which resembles a USB cable) from the reserved ROG Connect USB port to the standard USB port on another machine such as a laptop. This utility is really very simple and is essentially the same thing as TurboV EVO but with monitoring added to it. What's cool about this is that you can actually overclock your PC while it's in Windows (or any other OS) from a remote machine. You can also monitor voltages, fan speeds, and temperatures from the remote machine as well. Just like TurboV EVO you can save and edit overclocking profiles if you desire. What's nice about this is it actually displays many of the profile settings so that you can more easily identify what each profile does in case you didn't label them very well.
Among the coolest of RC TweakIt's features is the ability to monitor and display POST codes in real time. This is potentially very useful for diagnostic purposes. You can display the POST codes in either code form or string form. The latter is just translating the POST codes into what is surprisingly clear English. There are of course quite a few shots of the software above but there isn't a whole lot I can really say about it. I think it's generally self explanatory.