ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition Review
by Ian Cutress on January 5, 2014 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Asus
- X79
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test bed:
Thank you to OCZ for providing us with 1250W Gold Power Supplies.
Thank you to G.Skill for providing us with memory kits.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU, Corsair H80i CLC and 16GB 2400C10 memory.
Thank you to ASUS for providing us with the AMD GPUs and some IO Testing kit.
Thank you to ECS for providing us with the NVIDIA GPUs.
Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with the 500W Platinum Power Supply for mITX testing, BlackHawk Ultra, and 1600W Hercules PSU for extreme dual CPU + quad GPU testing, and RK-9100 keyboards.
Thank you to ASRock for providing us with the 802.11ac wireless router for testing.
Test Setup
| Test Setup | |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-4960X ES 6 Cores, 12 Threads, 3.6 GHz (4.0 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards | EVGA X79 Dark ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition |
| Cooling | Corsair H80i Thermalright TRUE Copper |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series Corsair AX1200i Platinum PSU |
| Memory | 2 x Corsair Vengeance Pro 2x8 GB DDR3 2400 10-12-12 Kit |
| Memory Settings | XMP (2400 10-12-12) |
| Video Cards | ASUS HD7970 3GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers | Catalyst 13.1 NVIDIA Drivers 310.90 WHQL |
| Hard Drive | OCZ Vertex 3 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| USB 2/3 Testing | OCZ Vertex 3 240GB with SATA->USB Adaptor |
| WiFi Testing | D-Link DIR-865L 802.11ac Dual Band Router |
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply, while in a dual 7970 GPU configuration. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, which is suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
While this method for power measurement may not be ideal, and you feel these numbers are not representative due to the high wattage power supply being used (we use the same PSU to remain consistent over a series of reviews, and the fact that some boards on our test bed get tested with three or four high powered GPUs), the important point to take away is the relationship between the numbers. These boards are all under the same conditions, and thus the differences between them should be easy to spot.
X79 always loses out on idle power usage compared to the newer platforms. The RIVBE, with the movement of functionality onto the OC Panel, actually does reasonably well in our power measurements.
Windows 7 POST Time
Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we are now going to look at the POST Boot Time - this is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows 7 starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.) These results are subject to human error, so please allow +/- 1 second in these results.
By moving overclocking controllers and features onto the OC Panel, ASUS is able to speed up our Windows 7 POST time test. 15 seconds is a lot faster than the RIVE, for example.
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21 Comments
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JlHADJOE - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
Wait, so the Auto-OC actually beat your manual OC results? Impressive!The table says Auto-OC managed to get 47/47/46/46/45/45 stable where your manual OC maxed out at 45, and it also got 45x100 stable at less volts and lower temps than manual.
Razorbak86 - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
The PovRay score for the 45x100 manual OC was higher, the voltage was lower, and the OCCT temp was lower. I'd say the 4.5GHz manual OC beat the Auto-OC hands down.JlHADJOE - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link
Auto OC: 45x100, 1.400V BIOS, 1.408V load, 77CManual OC: 45x100, 1.425V BIOS, 1.440V load, 80C
Slightly higher Povray is probably just variance, or down to something other than the CPU (perhaps XMP timings). I'd say the Auto-OC was better.
IanCutress - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
For the manual OC I only adjust the voltage, CPU multiplier and the CPU load line calibration, which is pretty much what most users will do when manually overclocking unless told otherwise (or there's another setting you must adjust). It's clear the Auto-OC does a bit more under the hood (VCCSA/VSSIO voltages most likely) - at the expense of a higher voltage (to catch more processors). In my test, I also only focus on all cores the same speed, and the stress test attacks all cores, rather than single cores that might be higher turboed. There is scope to go playing around with all the settings, which is what the ROG forums are there to do for users who have only one motherboard every couple of years to organise :)jasonelmore - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
I've found that disabling the C States of power saving features such as speed step has drastically improved my max overclock on the Rampage IV Extereme BESamus - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
$500!? yeooow.Gen-An - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
Ian,Have you seen any noticeable difference in memory OC using the Black Edition vs the original RIVE with the same CPU and RAM? People on various forums are saying the BE is more optimized for IB-E and memory OC, but I haven't been able to find anything definitive to support that statement.
jigglywiggly - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
why's the first picture skewed lol?great review as always ;D
IanCutress - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
I haven't stressed the RIVE with Ivy-E and high (2800+) memory yet, although this motherboard was designed with Ivy Bridge-E as the focus after ASUS finished the Maximus VI range. So if there are optimisations for Ivy-E above the RIVE that are more than just BIOS, the RIVBE should have them. So while I don't have any data, I expect that would be the case. Now whether faster memory is actually useful for a given workload is a different matter...Gen-An - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
Just interested for the OC fun factor, 24/7 I run DDR3-2400 C9.