ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition Intel X79 Motherboard Review

The Legit Reviews Test System

Before we look at the numbers, let’s take a brief look at the test system that was used. All testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 8 Enterprise 64-bit and benchmarks were completed on the desktop with no other software programs running. We completely overhauled our test setup for the Intel Core i7-4960X processor launch, so we are starting over from scratch when it comes to testing everything. For this review will be comparing Intel Z77, Intel Z87 and AMD FM2 platforms. These platforms are aimed at mainstream users and all feature integrated graphics, so it will be interesting to see how the systems compare. We understand that there is a significant price difference between some of the processors we will be testing, but the platforms are targeted to the same consumer group.

Here is a quick look at the CPU-Z information for our main test system that we’ll be doing the testing on.

The Intel Core i7-4960X LGA1150 processor was running on the ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition and was running the latest BIOS version 0403. The Corsair Dominator Platnium 16GB 2133MHz memory kit was set to XMP 1.3 memory profile settings, which is 1.5v and 9-11-10-27 2T memory timings at 2133MHz. The Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB SSD uses 19nm NAND and was using M310 firmware.