The incredibly difficult to find, or afford, ASUS Maximus Extreme is the DDR3 supporting, top of the line X38 based, packed full of extras flagship of ASUS’ Intel boards.  AnandTech took on the task of testing all that it is capable of, including running Vista stably with 4GB at DDR3 1800 and a FSB of 450MHz.  When they broke out the extreme cooling, they could boot at 5GHz or more the first time, but after that they saw some interesting behaviour.

“ASUS caters to this upper-end niche market with its ROG (Republic Of Gamers) product line. As the ROG motherboard line has evolved, ASUS has tried to satisfy the extreme users and gaming enthusiasts alike with excellent board layouts, stable operation across a wide variety of conditions, and unlocking additional BIOS tweaking functions not found on their other motherboards. The ROG boards that bear the ‘Extreme’ suffix after their name are generally the ones that ASUS provides with the best components and widest range of voltage and BIOS options. The Maximus Extreme we are reviewing today shares many of the engineering principles employed on the Maximus Formula that we tested last month. The most obvious difference between the two boards is that the Extreme version features DDR3 support, as opposed to DDR2 on the Maximus Formula. We expect that overall FSB limits on both boards will be similar due to the same overall circuit topologies employed in most key areas of the board.”

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