Quote Originally Posted by CryptiK View Post
I have no idea why this board doesn't perform as well as the P5Q-Deluxe, nor do I understand why there has not been sufficient bios development to keep it competitive. You are correct in saying Gigabyte seem to have done a much better job than Asus regarding bios development for their P45 boards, with 600 - 650 FSB being easily achievable and also they have great ram overclocking ability.

The maximus II formula is absolutely terrible at ram overclocking, I cannot get it to do DDR 1220 CL 5 no matter what. This is equivalent to the max on the Asus P5Q-E, a low-end board compared to this so called 'high-end' ROG board. My P5Q-Deluxe benched the same kit of ram at 1333 and I could load windows at 1380 and POST at 1400 using only 2.3v!

I cannot explain it, this board is supposed to be high end, hence it's 'ROG' classification and massive price tag, yet my P5Q-Deluxe (and everyone else's - go look at the P5Q-Deluxe thread for more examples) is better at FSB overclocking and way better at ram overclocking. The M2F also takes more vNB to run a given FSB and PL (tRD) compared to the P5Q-Deluxe. on the M2F it took 1.37v vNB to load windows at 570 FSB and it was very unstable, whereas I could bench 3D etc at 572 FSB at only 1.26 vNB on my deluxe.

Unless they can make this board at least as good as the P5Q-Deluxe at both FSB (620+) and ram overclocking (1300 - 1400+) then this board should stayed away from. Sure it can do average clocks and average FSB, but it is no fun, and definitely not deserving of its 'high end' classification.

Needless to say, when my P5Q-Deluxe returns from RMA, I will be changing straight back to it and getting rid of the maximus II formula.
I totally agree with you, I spent some nights trying to get the max out of my 2x2gb PC8500 Dominators and I found that MIIF couldn't go any higher than my old P5B deluxe. Stock frequencies needed less voltage, but this is not exactly what I'm expecting from this board.

I played for hours with the "advanced settings" but I always ended up leaving them on auto. The only improvement was by delaying 100ps on B1 slot.

I found the best divider to be 3:4, all others were less stable or unable to boot (even @ PL 10). I found also some fsb holes, I can do a 420MHz stable but 421 won't post, with 430MHz back stable again. The same was for 450MHz, with the system becoming bootable again at 460MHz.

The only setting which actually made me gain some fsb MHz was tWTW_S. Loosening it from 4 to 5 I got about 7/8MHz without almost no bandwidth loss. Clock twister settings were again a no go: no noticeable bandwidth gain from light to normal and no boot with strong/stronger (even at stock DRAM frequencies).

I didn't try pull-in settings, but I don't think they would make the situation look different..