Quite possibly the best-featured motherboard Asus has ever produced, the Rampage III Extreme is everything its predecessor should have been, and then some.
The “and then some” comes courtesy of an NEC PD720200 USB 3.0 controller that wasn’t available when the first LGA 1366 Republic Of Gamers product was introduced. Retained from previous models is the ROG Connect dual-function USB header that allows tuners BIOS-level access from a second PC, no matter what programs or operating system the Rampage III Extreme is running.
The Rampage III Extreme adds support for four dual-slot graphics cards, a feature that simply must be present before any motherboard can claim to be the “ultimate gaming platform.” Supporting four x16 cards from 32 of the X58 northbridge’s 36 total lanes is accomplished by dropping the first and third x16 slots to eight lanes whenever a card occupies the second and fourth x16-length slots, respectively.
Yet even though 4-way CrossFireX and 3-way SLI are supported, Quad SLI is not (at least out of the box). Nvidia has decided to require two of its NF200 PCI Express bridges to enable the feature, and Asus includes these on workstation-class P6T7 WS SuperComputer motherboard. Competitive overclockers who love the Rampage III Extreme's other features might be interested in its announced ROG Expander, which adds NF200 controllers to the Rampage III Gene through a daughter board. That's going to be a separate purchase though, adding to the cost of this board.
As with most "Republic Of Gamers" products, the Rampage III Extreme's most prolific features are designed exclusively for competition-level overclocking. The Rampage III Extreme lives up to that purpose as well with dual eight-pin CPU power inputs. Gone is the space-consuming and marketing-driven array of 16 tiny voltage regulator phases, replaced by Asus’ Extreme Engine Digi+ collection of eight digital-analog hybrid phases that it claims respond more quickly and accurately while operating more efficiently at high loads. A Q-Reset button next to the CPU’s power connectors allows builders to cut CPU power temporarily to recover from a “cold-bug” boot failure when using sub-ambient cooling.
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