Asus Blitz Formula and Extreme P35 Motherboards
Our Summary and Conclusion
Performance Summary:
Both the Asus Blitz Extreme and Blitz Formula performed very well throughout our entire battery of benchmarks. In some of the synthetic tests and in the game tests, the DDR3-1333 equipped Blitz Extreme was the best perfomer thanks to the increased memory bandwidth afforded by its faster RAM. In the desktop application benchmarks, however, which are more sensitive to latency, the Blitz Formula took the top spot more often than not.
Blitz Extreme:
The Asus Blitz Extreme represents the pinnacle of DDR3-enabled P35-based motherboards in our opinion. The board features an innovative cooling apparatus that's equally effective with air or liquid-cooling, it's highly overclockable, it has an extensive set of BIOS options, and the Crosslinx PCI Express switch makes it an ideal solution for ATI's CrossFire multi-GPU technology. The Blitz Extreme also proved to be a good performer at stock settings, it was completely stable, and it includes some handy extra's like on-board power / reset / and clear CMOS switches and the LCD Poster. Unfortunately, the Blitz Extreme isn't available just yet so we don't have street pricing, but we expect it will be in the $330+ dollar range when it finally arrives. That's pretty steep, especially considering DDR3 RAM is still relatively expensive, but if we were too recommend a high-end motherboard that supported Intel's latest processors and DDR3 to any of you, this one would be it. We're giving the Asus Blitz Extreme a well deserved Editor's Choice Award.
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Blitz Formula:
We're also giving the DDR2-enabled Blitz Formula an Editor's Choice award for many of the same reasons - it's just as fast or faster in most cases, it's also very overclockable, and it proved to be very stable as well - but we also like it becuase it offers an easier upgrade path to those of you who already own DDR2 RAM and are looking to ditch a P965 or 975X-based motherboard in favor of the newer P35, which will officially support future 45nm Intel processors. The Blitz Formula isn't available just yet either, but we expect it to sell in the $270 to $299 dollar range, which makes it a better value than the Blitz Extreme as well.
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