I have owned a Maximus II Formula, Rampage Extreme and Rampage II Extreme.
There are some things I was and am definitely not satisfied with.
Maximus II Formula - The Maximus II Formula did not have working Pull-In's in any of the BIOSes - I contacted Asus and I was told the Pull-Ins increased memory performance by 0.3 - 0.38% ! This is just plain ridiculous, I know how Pull-Ins are supposed to work, they make a massive difference when enabled vs disabled, they work fine on my Rampage Extreme and DFi board. I can send you the email response I got from Asus regarding this issue and explaining the less than 1% gains if you like. Sure, maybe a 16 year old pure gamer would just enable them and 'think' their board was faster - I tested them and they made no difference at all, sometimes the board was slower with them enabled. This is not good enough. Also the board fell behind other cheaper boards for example the Gigabyte UD3P/UD3R. The Maximus II Formula was in no way worth what it cost.
Rampage Extreme - fantastic board, blew every other X48 away - this is what a ROG motherboard should be. It was a pure performance board, the features were great but it just delivered on all fronts. Just needed mosfet backplates implemented in the cooling solution like the P5Q-Deluxe has, and the NB cooler was not very good - we prefer function over form any day of the week.
Rampage II Extreme - This is not as complete a package or as good a board as the Rampage Extreme (X48). First massive issue - I cannot set the RTL (round trip latency) to a set value - it can be advanced or delayed, but a specific value cannot be chosen and 'locked in'. This is simply not good enough from a memory overclocking/bencher/enthusiast point of view, and certainly not good enough considering the price point and nature of the ROG board. The EVGA Classified allows you to set a specific RTL Value on all 3 ram channels, so I expect to be able to do the same on the Rampage II Extreme. I and many others would appreciate if this could be implemented in the next BIOS released for the this board.
There is also the famous 'cold boot' problem on the Rampage II Extreme - this is certainly not good enough, and infuriates many users who paid top dollar for the board, only to be faced with an unstable system after a pull power off at the PSU or power outlet and left for a few hours. We expect more from Asus, and if you don't deliver it, you will lose a lot of customers.
There is one issue that affects all ROG products I mentioned above - where are the mosfet backplates on the ROG boards? The P5Q-Deluxe has them, why not the ROG boards? They prevent board warping and provide better mosfet cooling offering better reliability as a result. Please use them in future, and release some for the Rampage II Extreme at least so we could add them to the board.
The LCD poster is great, tweakit and probe it are also great features, just make the tweak it joystick more solid, it is a little flimsy.
You see, even non-enthusiasts and pure gamers come to sites like Xtreme Systems to see what the enthusiasts think before buying a product, and if we don't like it or find big problems like I have described above, they won't buy the product. So impress us, give us what we ask for in terms of features and performance, and not only will we buy the products, others will too.
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