ASUS Blitz Extreme & Formula Motherboards

Throughout all of our benchmarks regardless of what we are reviewing, testing is done in a clean and stand-alone version of Windows XP Professional with SP2. Prior to testing, these conditions are met:

• Desktop and scrap files are cleaned up, including emptying of recycle bin.
• No virus scanner or firewall is installed in the stand-alone installation.
• Computer has proper airflow and room ambient temp is >80°F.

The testing rig used for todays benchmarking is as follows:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 at 2.4GHz
• Motherboard: ASUS Blitz Extreme, ASUS Blitz Formula
• Memory: OCZ 2GB NVIDIA 7200 (DDR2), OCZ 2GB DDR2-1333 Platinum (DDR3)
• Video: ASUS 8800GTX 768MB
• Sound: Onboard HD Audio
• Storage: Seagate 7200.10 320GB
• Etcetera: Antec P182 Chassis, Windows XP Professional SP2
• Cooling: Corsair Nautilus 500
  Compared Motherboards
  • ASUS P5K Deluxe
  • ASUS P5K3 Deluxe
  • eVGA nForce 680i
  • Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R
  • Intel XBX2

Please note that for our DDR3 motherboards, we use DDR3-1066 speeds with 6-6-6 timings, and for our DDR2 boards we use DDR2-800 4-4-4.

SYSmark is an industry leading system benchmarking tool, which is completely automated but utilizes real-world tests. It installs common applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel, Photoshop CS2, 3DS Max, SketchUp! among others.

SYSmark grades the performance of the system by how well it could handle different operations. Systems with more than one core will benefit in the tests, since there is a lot of multi-tasking throughout. Once the test is completed, it will provide you with an overall score, in addition to showing areas where the computer excelled.

Intel’s XBX2 is a great board for a workstation, as you can see. Neither of the Blitz boards could knock it from it’s throne, although the Formula came very close. The graph below shows a total breakdown of the overall scores for each board.

As far as the individual tests go, neither Blitz board outperformed another, but the results are certainly what we had expected. On the next page we will jump right into a few Futuremark benchmarks.