Kenkickr's Crosshair III Formula Review

Received my Asus Crosshair III Formula AM3 yesterday so thought I'd start this review with some packaging and board pictures.

Box and accessories:

Here she is in all her majesty direct from Newegg(off the UPS truck)



2 boxes in a box, now that's cool!


Here are the accessories in box #2: I/O Shield, USB + 1394 bracket, 5 SATA cables, IDE cable, LCD Poster, USB and Switch Adapter, Supreme FX X-fi card, Driver/App disc, and Manual(Bible). The Driver/App disc is very well loaded. Of course you get all your drivers but two nice items are Kaspersky and 3dmark06. Something that disappointed me is there are no crossfire adapters since this board isn't cheap but most ATI brand cards come with atleast one.


The MOTHERboard

Here she is but first here is a link to the specs:http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=181&l3=896&l4=0&model=3063&modelmenu=2






And the SupremeFX X-fi card. This is not a real Creative card but uses an ADI HD codec with the Creative Console on top of it.


Installed
The lighted items are the SupremeFX X-fi card and the Northbridge. The Northbridge actually goes on and off.


Here is the LCD Poster. Here I have the backlight on but through the bios you can turn the backlight future off.


Those little green LEDs you see, those are to show what kinda voltage you are giving the CPU, Memory, NB, and SB. Green is Normal, Orange is High, and Red is Crazy. Kinda neat if you ask me.





BIOS

Now onto the bios. First here is the startup screen. One of the coolest I've ever seen!


I'm not gonna show all the Bios screen except what I think are crucial.
Extreme Tweaker menu:



Advanced Menu:



The LCD Poster and LED Control menu I feel is really neat. In here you can control the Backlight(On/Off) either at bootup or just intial power on. Also you can change what it displays(Time or Temp/Volt/Fan speed...but not all which is kind of a bummer).



Power Option menu:


Tools:
I still think EZ Flash is one of the greatest inventions. It makes BIOS flashing...FUN!


Benchmarks: Stock CPU

AMD Phenom II X2 550 @ stock(3.1Ghz, HTT2Ghz)
Asus Crosshair III Formula
Crucial 4gb kit DDR3-1333 @ 1600 8-8-8-20-40
2x Asus 4830 RBE modded 700core/1000mem
WD Black 1TB

Synthetic
CPU-Z


Hyper Pi


Sandra CPU Architecture Test:


Sandra Multi-Core Efficiency Test:


Sandra Memory Bandwidth Test:


Sandra Memory Latency Test:


Hard Drive Test:
HDTach 8mb Test


HDTach 32mb Test


HDTune


Kribibench Office Test(3d modeling test)


Cinebench v10 x64


3dMark06


3dMark Vantage


Devil May Cry 4 Benchmark(1680x1050, MSAA 4x, DirectX 10)


Tom Clancy's HawX(1680x1050, AA x4, AF x16)


Far Cry 2(1680x1050, AA x4, High Detail Ranch Medium Demo, DirectX 10)


F.E.A.R.(1680x1050, AA x4, AF x8 Everything High, No Soft Shawdows)


Half Life Lost Coast(1680x1050 AA x4, AF x16, Everything as high as it can go)


CoD: World at War Super Fi(1680x1050 AAx4)


Overclocking
Stable OC using Multiplier:
CPU-Z shoot


3dMark06


3dMark Vantage


Far Cry 2 Medium Ranch(1680x1050, DirectX 10, 4x AA, Everything on High)


Working on Max FSB and Max OC.

I debated for a couple days between this and the other Asus 790FX but finally decided on this one since I've never had a reason to have more than two cards in my system. Also the crosshair looks to have a LOAD of fan headers on it.

Now we'll have to see if I keep my PII X2 550 or PII X3 720!

The only reason I got it is because a friend is in bad need of a system but with limited funds, his HD died on a 7yr old system, so I sold him some of what I have and I'm updating. Girlfriend isn't happy...Oh Well

When I get it I'll be updating the OP with benchmark info and I should be using a X2 550.

Started review of this sexy board

I ran out of time to really play around with it cause I wanted to get Win7 installed so I could checkup on the Cubs/Brewers game last night but I couldn't find my Wifi driver.

Oh yeah LifeonMars, I grabbed Far Cry 2 for ya so you can see some multithreading benchies with the 550.

There's still more to come, should have bios images up tonight.

Sorry guys but I didn't get a chance to tonight. Just visiting with friends this evening but will get some Bios pics and OCing results up in the morning. Also wanted to update to the 0503 bios before starting since it has some goodies in it.