Asus Maximus IV Extreme - Z

birty1992

birty1992

birty1992

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23 Jan 2012
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Hey guys, i recently bought an Asus Maximus IV Extreme - Z (FOUND HERE:) http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-475-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990 Mobo from Overclockers, and i mean it wasnt cheap, itfact it was rather expensive.
Ofcourse not a week after ordering i hear about Gen3/PCI3.0 Thats upcoming, and instantly i thought oh for god sake not even a week old and im already outdated, however after a little research it seems the younger brother of my board

The Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z (FOUND HERE: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-494-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990 will get Gen3/PCI3.0 technologies with a bios upgrade, So this got me to thinking surely my bigger and more expensive motherboard will also recieve this magical GEN3/PCI3.0 bios update, but i cant find anything at all on it! So im wondering if anyone has heard any word from Asus or knows for a fact weather my board will ever be GEN 3 Ready?

Thanks for any help guys :)
 
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Because the Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z has just two PCI-E16X slots and has the Gen3 PCI-E switches it will indeed support PCI-E3.0 with a suitable Ivybridge CPU.

As your board has a NF200 chip to add extra PCI-E lanes to increase the number of slots from 2 to 4 then you don't get PCI-E3.0 as this NF200 is not capable of passing this signal through.


* PCI-E3.0 has been tested vs 2.0 using the new ATI7970 card and the difference seems to be little.

* Your board will still accept Ivybridge from BIOS version 0902 - http://event.asus.com/2011/mb/PCIe3_Ready/
 
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It's possible that it will support PCI-E 3.0 but if it did it would only be on the first x16 slot due to the use of the NF200 chip.

I wouldn't get too worked up about it.

None of the S1155 motherboards Gen3 slots become Gen3 unless you fit an Ivy Bridge processor. With Sandy Bridge processors they operate as Gen2.

Current Gen3 cards don't appear to suffer from being used in Gen2 slots.
 
Ok first of all thanks for the rapid response! Im not really too worries about it, because im guessing that when it comes to the point where PCI3.0 is actually worth looking into, ill be thinking about a new build anyways, say in 3/4 years? Sound good? :)
 
Who knows mate, even tests online comparing SLI/Crossfire at 8X/8X vs 16X/16X show little difference, might be a while before that bandwidth is needed.
 
birty1992 said:
Ok first of all thanks for the rapid response! Im not really too worries about it, because im guessing that when it comes to the point where PCI3.0 is actually worth looking into, ill be thinking about a new build anyways, say in 3/4 years? Sound good? :)
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Sounds good.
 
So what do you guys think of my board, did i make a good choice? :) Its my first 1155 build, all my others have been 775 So this is a big boost in tech for me, Ill be using a 2500k i5, which arrives tomorrow, with 8GB (2x4gb) 1866mhz Corsair Vengeance memory a GTX 260 Goldensample which will soon also be replaced, stock cooler for now till i get the funds for a Corsair h100 then ill do the overclocking :)
 
Its a high end board and I bet it overclocks well too, do to the high quality components and high number of VRM power phases (20) feeding a stable voltage to the CPU while remaining cool:), you can run more than two GFX cards if you wanted also which is more than the standard two found on most Z68/P67 boards.
 
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Well Ive got the GTX 260 currently and downstairs ive got a 7800 GTX which is my oldy, I was thinking if it would be worth it to run these in SLI or weather the improvement would be zero if any :)
 
TBH if you're only going to be using 1 graphics card I'd have spent less than half, maybe even nearer a third, of the amount on a motherboard.

I've heard that the Maximus IV Extreme - Z is a great overclocker but you'd struggle to find a Z68 board which won't overclock your processor to at least 4.5GHz.
 
birty1992 said:
Well Ive got the GTX 260 currently and downstairs ive got a 7800 GTX which is my oldy, I was thinking if it would be worth it to run these in SLI or weather the improvement would be zero if any :)
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You cant run two different family GPU's such as that in SLI, with Nvidia they need to have the same core and also Vram capacity. time for an upgrade:cool:
 
I learnt something today lmao! Thanks, So does that mean that my new card that ill be getting next month the GTX 560Ti will not run with a GTX 260? thanks again :D
 
birty1992 said:
I learnt something today lmao! Thanks, So does that mean that my new card that ill be getting next month the GTX 560Ti will not run with a GTX 260? thanks again :D
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Not in SLI.

Edit:

You could perhaps use the GTX 260 as a PhysX card but I've no idea if that's a good idea or not.

We should also be seeing some more new AMD cards within the next month so if you fancy a change you could see what they offer.
 
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Surveyor said:
You could perhaps use the GTX 260 as a PhysX card but I've no idea if that's a good idea or not.
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I believe Linus tech tips, did a PhysX test and you need something decent like that sort of speed (GTX260/250/460 etc) to do the main card justice and not actually reduce performance, things like old 8800GT/9600GT apparently made things worse.
 
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stulid said:
I believe Linus tech tips, did a PhysX test and you need something decent like that sort of speed (GTX260/250/460 etc) to do the main card justice and not actually reduce performance, things like old 8800GT/9600GT apparently made things worse.
Click to expand...

I think the OP was planning to use the GTX 260:

birty1992 said:
So does that mean that my new card that ill be getting next month the GTX 560Ti will not run with a GTX 260?
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I've found this board to have a couple of annoying niggles.

Boot time is quite loooooong. You get ROG splash screen *something* another ROG splash *something* then windows. And that's only if you disable the marvell storage in the bios (the top two red sata 6gb/s ports). If you don't disable them you get another *something* and ROG splash.

I've also had an intermitent issue wherein ALL of my usbs would completely die, Apparently it's related to having a usb hub connected to usb3 ports (I have logitech g19 keyboard with built in hub). But I seem to have fixed that by switching the usb3 controller over to the NEC one in bios.

Just so you're aware, the board can't be used without a dedicated graphics card.
 
OptimaLnrg said:
Boot time is quite loooooong. You get ROG splash screen *something* another ROG splash *something* then windows. And that's only if you disable the marvell storage in the bios (the top two red sata 6gb/s ports). If you don't disable them you get another *something* and ROG splash.
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Can't you switch off the splash screens in the BIOS?

I'm sure I've been able to do it on every motherboard I've owned in recent years.
 
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