Asus Crosshair IV Formula Motherboard

This motherboard is from the Republic of Gamers (ROG)

edition motherboards released by Asus. Layed out in the ATX form factor, it

sports compatibility with the AM3 socket for the AMD Athlon and AMD Phenom line

of processors. The board supports both ATI CrossFireX and SLI multi-GPU

technologies and dual channel DDR3 memory up to 1866 MHz, through overclocking,

which enables it to unleash a rich gaming experience for graphic intensive

games. On board SATA 6Gbps and USB 3 support are present. Core unlocking and

overclocking capabilities have been fully extended with the board having onboard

buttons for these.

The motherboard scored a more than impressive 14623 in

3DMarks 06, which means a great graphics performance. In PCMark 05, the score

was 10243, so it is a decent performer when it comes to basic office apps. In

CineBench, the scores were 14303 CB-CPU, while in POV-Ray the motherboard

rendered an average of 76382 PPS over 2.57 secs; which means a decent display.

These results completely overshadow the performance of the Asus Maximus III Gene

mobo reviewed in the February 2010 issue of PCQuest.  Plus, this one comes at a

more affordable price than the Gene.

Bottomline: It satiates the gaming needs by

providing superb performance at an attractive price.

* Test Bed: 120GB SATA 7200 RPM hard disk, AMD Phenom X2

(3.36 GHz) Processor, 2GB (1800MHz) Patriot DDR3 RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT

graphics card, Windows 7 Ultimate.