ASUS Maximus III Extreme LGA 1156 Motherboard Review

Test Results

First up, take into consideration that these benchmarks were done with the beta 0705 BIOS for the Maximus III Extreme. Since the Core i5 670 doesn’t have a 2:12 memory divider I ran the memory at 1660 7-7-7-21-1T as it wasn’t stable at 6-7-6-18-1T. The more interesting matchup of the set was the difference between the Core i5 670 and the Core i7 860. Even though the memory was running at slower speeds on the 670, the differences between the IMC on the 860 and the interlink connected off-die memory controller of the 670 became painfully obvious. Sandra 2010 and Super Pi 32M illustrate this perfectly. Outside of these observations, though, the Maximus III Extreme does quite well through the suite more or less trading blows or slightly following the other P55 options in 3D while doing quite well in the 2D benchmarks.