When ASUS unveiled their Republic of Gamers (ROG) series of products, they stated their mission clearly: "deliver the most innovative and best performing PC solutions to enhance the usage experience for power users".  There's a lot in that statement to live up to, but ASUS was confident in their abilities.  Over the years that we have covered many of their products, and we've seen a fair share of hardware that performed at or exceeded our expectations.  Thus, when NVIDIA upped the core-logic ante last year with the introduction of the 780i chipset, one of the first boards we checked out was the ASUS P5N-T, which can be viewed here.  

Although the P5N-T didn't exactly wow us, with performance more or less on par with a board based on the previous 680i chipset, ASUS has had a couple of months to get intimate with the 780i chipset to fit it into their ROG model, ultimately creating the Striker II Formula.  It makes perfect sense; the 780i is a gamer's chipset, that offers support for 3-way SLI, PCI Express 2.0, and NVIDIA's ESA.  And as expected from an ROG board, there are additional bells and whistles integrated into the board as well.  But will the Striker II Formula rise to the mission statement and "enhance our experience"?  That's what we will be aiming to find out in this article.

ASUS Striker II Formula Motherboard Specifications and Features

At first glance, the ASUS Striker II Formula is, well, striking.  A bevy of copper heatsinks and tubing rise from the dark board used as the backdrop.  Also, no garish neon colors are used for the main connections; blue and white are the order of the day both for the DIMM and expansion slots.  Although the chipset cooling solution may look formidable from a top-down perspective, in reality it has a very low profile and shouldn't cause any issues when installing third-party CPU coolers.

Consistent with NVIDIA's reference design for the 780i, the slot configuration of the Striker II consists of three PCI Express x16 slots, two in blue and a white one sandwiched in between, two standard PCI slots, and a single PCI Express x1 slot.  An additional x1 slot colored black is notched in the cutout of the main heatsink, and is used with the SupremeFX II audio card.  The overall layout is similar to that of previous ROG boards such as the Maximus Extreme or Blitz series, except addtional heatpiping exists alongside the DIMM sockets and there aren't any mounts for water-cooling apparatuses.

The CPU Socket area seems a bit congested, what with all the fin-type radiators and power regulation.  The FETs and polymer capacitors are smaller than those used on other boards, but should have an improved lifespan and enhanced thermal capacity.  Along with the addition of the ASUS Energy Processing Unit or EPU, the increased number of FETs should provide a more stable and efficient working environment by providing more power when under load and improving efficiency when idle.  Even the DDR2 gets a 2-phase power treatment, ensuring longer lifespan and better overclockability due to cooler temperatures and better efficiency. 

The slot layout that we described earlier works fine for most scenarios, such as a single card or dual GPUs in SLI.  The blue X16 slots are PCI-Express 2.0 compliant and a longer floppy SLI cable can connect the two cards even though there is a distance between them.  Running a 3-way SLI setup, however, limits any further expansion hopes.  With the GeForce 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra cards utilizing dual-slot coolers, installing three such cards would completely cover all other slots.

Alleviating some concern about installing larger cards, the IDE and 6 SATA II ports are all on a right-angle along the front edge of the board, directly facing the drives themselves.  The SATA ports wind up stacked like a pile of bricks which saves some room on the board and makes cabling a bit neater, if not more annoying when trying to remove the lower placed cable.  The power connectors, floppy drive connector, and USB and front panel pins are also placed along the edge although in the standard orientation.   Although their placement is rather standard, we particularly liked the positioning of the 12V Power connection, as it keeps that pesky cable from interfering with other components and works well with cables routed underneath.

ASUS does something different with the I/O backplane in order to accomodate not only the cooling mechanism, but to embrace progress as well.  Rather than place two PS/2 ports on the back, there's only one, used for the keyboard.  It's rare these days to find anyone using a PS/2 mouse, so ASUS replaced that port with two, more useful, USB ports.  These ports are in addition to the four other USB 2.0 ports, a set of Gigabit LAN jacks, a single Firewire port, and optical and digital audio output.  With little room to spare, there's no space for an eSATA port, so that might be missed by some users.  In an obvious nod to the power-user, there is an illuminated Clear CMOS button right there on the backplane, and Power and Reset buttons on the board near the front panel pins.  Now, obviously, most people will find little use for these in typical usage, but as an analyst I can say these came in pretty handy during testing.

Although we mentioned the various extras when we covered the packaging in the introduction, we thought a few pictures of these devices in action would be helpful.  First, additional cooling can be had by installing 2 fans directly on top of each of the radiators around the CPU socket.  As the 780i (and the 680i before it) runs a bit hot, any extra cooling is always welcome.  The integrated audio and analog ports are handled by the SupremeFX II riser card, plugged into a specially located PCI-Express x1 slot above the main graphics card.  Finally, we've got the LCD Poster connected to a set of pins just to the left of the PS/2 port, programmed with our own message, and a couple images of the lighted components onboard, including the SupremeFX II card, the ROG logo placed over the heatsink, and the power and reset buttons.

We also took a look at some of the utilities on the disc that came with the ASUS Striker II Formula.  Futuremark's 3DMark06 Advanced Edition and Kaspersky Anti-Virus are known entities, so we focused instead on the ASUS AI Suite.  This application is more or less a fancy GUI that allows the user to optimize their system without getting their hands dirty in the BIOS. 

The majority of the screen is taken up by a digital representation of the FSB and CPU speeds, with the current load listed underneath.  Real-time temperatures and fan speeds are displayed above, but voltages seem to be limited to CPU Voltage.  Serving as a starting point, the buttons on the lower left side launch separate utilities including AI Gear 3, AI Booster, AI Nap, CPU Level Up, and Q-Fan 2.

AI Booster takes the chore of overclocking and makes it a one-click wonder.  You can choose percentages you want to overclock your system by, such as a tame 5% or a robust 20%.  The downside is this effects the CPU speed only without being able to raise voltages or set memory dividers.  Depending on the chosen hardware, it's possible that the settings will work without any further tweaking.  CPU Level Up, which we will encounter later in the BIOS, is a more thorough overclocking application - as long as you have one of the CPUs listed in the picture.  If so, CPU Level Up will provide a more comprehensive overclocking experience, tuning frequencies, voltages, and memory timings to work within that setup.  AI Gear 3 works hand-in-hand with the EPU chip that automatically adjust processor frequency and core voltage for different computing needs.  Using the Gearshift, the user can choose from Turbo, High Performance, Medium Power Saving, and Max power saving modes.  These only come into play when not overclocking the system, however, as the application will not even launch when doing so.  Not pictured are AI Nap and Q-Fan 2, which put the PC into sleep mode or control fan speeds for either better cooling or quieter operation.

Of course, one can access all of the same functions in the BIOS, which is fully featured.  Using a variant of a Phoenix-Award BIOS, the main screen looks like almost any other allowing the user to set the system date and time, language, as well as give a quick readout on the drives, memory, and even the CPU installed (under system information).  Befitting a board geared towards the PC enthusiast, the very next section is labeled "Extreme Tweaker" and it contains just about all of the options needed to get the most out of your hardware.  It's also the first, but not last time, that we will come across the CPU Level Up choices.  There are some non-extreme settings found here as well, including enabling or disabling voltage warning LEDs found on various spots on the motherboard or lighting up the ROG Logo.  

Moving onward, AI NET2 checks for ethernet cable issues by testing one or both of the cables connected to the LAN jacks during the POST routine.  Just about all onboard devices can be enabled or disabled including setting up SATA RAID, HD Audio, as well as the LAN and FireWire capabilities.  This section also covers the LCD Poster, allowing the user to turn it on or off, provide a backlight, or choose their display.  The default option is to show the current time, but this can be changed to show a short text string entered on the next line.  This is probably where some of the latter items on the Extreme Tweaking page should have went, but it's not a huge issue.

Getting back to the Extreme Tweaker, this BIOS practically screams overclocking as the very first two options involve some kind of pre-set routines.  CPU Level Up will optimize the board's voltages and memory dividers provided the CPU is one of a chosen few: E6600, E6700, X6800, or E6850.  It will be interesting to see if newer CPUs are added in future BIOS revisions.  Using the AI Overclock Tuner, a manual attempt can be initiated, or the user can choose from Auto, Standard, AI Overclock or, wait for it, CPU Level Up.  Auto and Standard are just other terms or optimal or default settings, and don't necessarily fall under the OC guise.  AI Overclock enables the same options found in the AI Booster, providing percentages to raise the CPU speed by, but without any other tweaking.  Once you've chosen your desired overclocking options, you can save them under an O.C. Profile which can be restored at another time.

Selecting a manual overclock is where it all gets exciting, as this enables the manipulation of clock speeds, voltages, and other goodies to get that CPU cooking.  Memory timings are actually located here as well, which might throw some people off if they don't associate the two.  A quick check under Power will show you the current voltages and temperatures - a good section to keep an eye on to head off any potential issues when raising bus speeds.  Over Voltage allows the boosting of the voltage for each component, including some values that should be considered dangerous to the lifespan of the hardware.  Here are some of the ranges:

CPU Voltage: CPU PLL Voltage: CPU VTT Voltage: Memory Voltage: NB Core Voltage: SB Core Voltage: 1.2v HT Voltage: Bridge Core Voltage:

1.10V-2.40V (0.0625V steps) 1.50V-3.00V (0.02V steps) 1.20V-2.46V (0.02V steps) 1.50V-3.40V (0.02V steps) 1.20V-3.00V (0.02V steps) 1.50V-1.85V (0.05V steps) 1.20V-1.95V (0.05V steps) 1.20V-1.55V (0.05V steps)

Choosing a voltage in the BIOS not only colors it green, yellow, or red in the BIOS, warning you of danger, but LEDs placed around the board will also light up as well.  These LEDs can be separately configured to display any three of the voltages listed above.

Using the options available in the ASUS Striker II Formula's BIOS, we set out to try and improve upon our original overclocking results with the P5N-T.  We popped in our Core 2 Duo E6550 and started raising the FSB a few MHz at a time until we hit a snag at 1725MHz - exactly the same speed we saw last time.  We started boosting the CPU and chipset voltages and could manage 25 extra MHz, but at a cost of stability.  Although Windows would load, invariably within seconds the system would lock up or BSOD.  We backed the speeds down 1MHz at a time until we reached 1733MHz, equating to a 3.03GHz clock for the CPU.  Considering the numerous options this BIOS provided, we had expected to reach higher.

How we configured our test systems: When configuring our test systems for this article, we first entered their respective system BIOSes and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High performance Defaults". We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set memory timings for DDR2-800 with 4-4-4-12 timings. The hard drive was then formatted, and Windows Vista Ultimate was installed. When the Windows installation was complete, we updated the OS, and installed the drivers necessary for our components. Auto-Updating and Windows Defender were then disabled and we installed all of our benchmarking software, defragged the hard drives, and ran all of the tests.

HotHardware's Test Systems  Intel and NVIDIA - Head To Head

System 1: Core 2 Duo E6550 (2.33GHz - Dual-Core) Asus Striker II Formula (nForce 780i SLI Chipset) 2x1GB Corsair DDR2-800 CL 4-4-4-12 DDR2-800 GeForce 8800 GTS 512 On-Board Ethernet On-board Audio Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 7,200 RPM SATAII Windows Vista Ultimate NVIDIA nForce Drivers v9.46 NVIDIA Forceware v169.25 DirectX Redist (November 2007)	System 2: Core 2 Duo E6550 (2.33GHz - Dual-Core) MSI P6N Diamond (nForce 680i SLI Chipset) 2x1GB Corsair DDR2-800 CL 4-4-4-12 DDR2-800 GeForce 8800 GTS 512 On-Board Ethernet On-board Audio Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 7,200 RPM SATAII Windows Vista Ultimate NVIDIA nForce Drivers v15.08 NVIDIA Forceware v169.25 DirectX Redist (November 2007)	System 3: Core 2 Duo E6550 (2.33GHz - Dual-Core) Asus Blitz Formula (Intel P35 Chipset) 2x1GB Corsair DDR2-800 CL 4-4-4-12 DDR2-800 GeForce 8800 GTS 512 On-Board Ethernet On-board Audio Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 7,200 RPM SATAII Windows Vista Ultimate INTEL INF Update v8.3.1.1009 NVIDIA Forceware v169.25 DirectX Redist (November 2007)

Futuremark PCMark Vantage  http://www.futuremark.com/products/pcmarkvantage/

For our first round of benchmarks, we ran all of the modules built into Futuremark's PCMark Vantage test suite which was updated using the November 2007 Hotfix.  Vantage is a new Windows Vista-only benchmarking tool that we've incorporated into our arsenal of tests here at HotHardware.  Here's how Futuremark positions their new benchmarking tool:

"The PCMark Suite is a collection of various single- and multi-threaded CPU, Graphics and HDD test sets with the focus on Windows Vista application tests. Tests have been selected to represent a subset of the individual Windows Vista Consumer scenarios. The PCMark Suite includes CPU, Graphics, Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and a subset of Consumer Suite tests."

The overall PCMark Vantage score is derived from the subset of individual scenarios and suite tests, calculated in total "PCMarks".  Here are the overall results:
 

We continue our test coverage with the remaining modules from the comprehensive PCMark Vantage suite of benchmarks.   Unlike the majority of our benchmarks, Vantage takes nearly and hour and a half to complete its round of tests, hitting upon all facets of hardware and drivers to come up with its results.

Futuremark PCMark Vantage  Synthetic Benchmarks

Courtesy, Futuremark:  "Gaming is one of the most popular forms of entertainment for all ages. Today’s games demand high performance graphics cards and CPUs to avoid delays and sluggish performance while playing. Loading screens in games are yesterday’s news. Streaming data from an HDD in games – such as Alan Wake™ – allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action. CPUs with many cores give a performance advantage to gamers in real-time strategy and massively multiplayer games. Gaming Suite includes the following tests: "

Gaming 1 - GPU game test
Gaming 2 - HDD: game HDD
Gaming 3 - Two simultaneous threads, CPU game test, Data decompression: level loading
Gaming 4 - Three simultaneous threads, GPU game test, CPU game test, HDD: game HDD

PCMark Vantage's Gaming benchmark has the 680i and 780i based boards deadlocked in this department, but the Asus Blitz Formula leapfrogged both of them to take the top spot.  So far, the 780i and P35 boards have been bouncing around at the top.

Music 1 - Three simultaneous threads, Web page rendering – w/ music shop content, Audio transcoding: WAV -> WMA lossless, HDD: Adding music to Windows Media Player
Music 2 - Audio transcoding: WAV -> WMA lossless
Music 3 - Audio transcoding: MP3 -> WMA
Music 4 - Two simultaneous threads, Audio transcoding: WMA -> WMA, HDD: Adding music to Windows Media Player

POV-Ray, or the Persistence of Vision Ray-Tracer, is an open source tool for creating realistically lit 3D graphics artwork. We tested with POV-Ray's standard included benchmarking model on all of our test machines and recorded the scores reported for each.  Results are measured in pixels-per-second (PPS)throughput.

3DMark06's built-in CPU test is a multi-threaded DirectX gaming metric that's useful for comparing relative performance between similarly equipped systems.  This test consists of two different 3D scenes that are processed with a software renderer that is dependent on the host CPU's performance.  Calculations that are normally reserved for your 3D accelerator are instead sent to the CPU for processing and rendering.  The frame-rate generated in each test is used to determine the final score.

Futuremark 3DMark06 - CPU Test  Simulated DirectX Gaming Performance

CPU performance based on 3DMark's results also placed the three boards in a very close knit group, with the Blitz Formula once again in the lead.  On the bright side, the Striker II Formula has moved up into second place, 13 points behind.  We're still looking at a margin of difference less than a single percent, however.

LAME MT MP3 Encoding Test  Converting a Large WAV To MP3

Benchmarks with Crysis SP Demo and ET: Quake Wars DirectX 10 and OpenGL Gaming Performance

For our next set of tests, we moved on to some in-game benchmarking with the Crysis SP demo and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. When testing processors with Crysis or ET:QW, we dropped the resolution to 800x600, and reduced all of the in-game graphical options to their minimum values to isolate CPU and memory performance as much as possible.  However, the in-game effects, which control the level of detail for the games' physics engines and particle systems, are left at their maximum values, since these actually do place some load on the CPU rather than GPU.

Gaming frame rates, at least, are more favorable to the ASUS Striker II Formula and seeing as how this is a product of the "ROG" line that's probably a good thing.  In Crysis, the Striker II edged out the Blitz motherboard by just under a frame.  The roles were reversed in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, however, with the Blitz taking the lead by just over two frames.  In both gaming engines, the 680i board placed last.