ASUS Maximus II Formula - new P45 king?

[CryptiK]

I guess I should have been more clear when I was speaking about the Rampage Formula. I meant the average FSB for quads is around 475, and it appears very difficult to stabilize quads over that, with most topping out around 495 FSB. This may be due to the poor GTL control which I have mentioned before, causing the need for high vNB, and reaching the limit of safe vNB level around the 495 FSB mark. At high FSB speeds they just seem to struggle with quads from what I have seen, even if you thrash the board in an attempt to keep up. Their BIOS is too sparse, and lacks the functionality it should have and needs. I'm not saying the board is no good at all, it's just not my cup of tea.

I would not purchase a UT or LT DFI, they are not mature enough hardware wise, and their clockgen limits their overclocking ability of both duals and quads. I don't feel DFI has too many options, if you know what you are doing with them, setting them up can be done rather quickly. I don't like the fact they have compatibility issues with a few graphics cards, that complicates things.

I still am very wary of Gigabyte, and although the UD3P/R and EP45-Extreme are doing well, I don't think I could put my gear onto them, I'd be too concerned the boards would flake out taking my gear with them.

The Rampage Extreme is probably the best X48 board available, massive FSB and ram clocks (DDR3 of course) and low tRD are par for the course. Whether or not they have used high binned X48 chipsets and clockgens I'm not sure, but they outperform any other X48 available, and their BIOS options are great.

I think the DFI DK-T2RSB Plus is probably the best DDR2 X48 board available now, it clocks both quads and duals better than the UT & LT's as it uses a revised clockgen, the same one used on the Rampage Extreme, and has a solid digital PWM circuit - more than 560 FSB stable has been done. It clocks ram very well, and is highly tweakable. It's also under $300, and even if the RF is slightly better and could be proven to be, there is no way it's $220 better, as it costs around $520 here. For another $100 I could have the Rampage Extreme, which actually is easily $100 better than the RF.

That's just my opinion, the rampage formula will appeal to some, just not me.