Maximus VI Formula Discussion Thread

[Raja]

Maximus VI Formula Overview and Discussion Thread
The Maximus VI Formula should be available to purchase in a few weeks. A motherboard many have been waiting for, and for good reason. Plenty of cool features on offer, we won't go into them all, but have picked out some of the salient ones for you to check out below:

Board layout and features at a glance:



Gaming Features



SupremeFX






The Maximus VI Formula sports a specialized audio solution called SupremeFX. Based on Realtek’s latest ALC1150 chipset, the Cirrus Logic DAC and the TPA6120 headphone amplifier and an optimized PCB layout - isolating PCB layers and spacing sensitive traces away from other areas of the motherboard. Shielding is also utilized to minimize spurious noise from entering signal lines. High quality capacitors are used for power supply decoupling to minimize ripple and provide a low impedance at audio critical frequencies. The end result is a 120dB SNR, placing the Maximus VI Formula's onboard audio solution on par with the best discrete soundcards available.


On the software side, the latest addition to the package is Sonic Radar:






The Sonic Radar GUI


Sonic Radar is a HUD that is useful in FPS games. It shows a visual representation of where sounds are coming from. The location of footsteps, gunshots, explosions and anything else is shown in the 360 degree HUD while gaming:




BF3 – Sonic Radar showing direction of audio effects



The HUD can be made more transparent and its location on the screen changed. Sonic Radar very useful feature when gaming with stereo headsets, where surround effects are simulated and may not be easy to pinpoint.



On the subject of headsets, Perfect Voice has been added to improve the clarity of VOIP calls. It’s a software based filter that uses digital signal processing to remove noise pickup from your mic while making a call:






DSP helps reduce ambient noise for clearer comms


Perfect Voice works with any plug in microphone/headset to clean up voice transmission during calls.




ROG RAMDISK




With high density memory modules and kits becoming the norm, many of us have an abundance of free memory on our systems that never gets utilized. ROG RAM Disk has been coded to take advantage of that free space to help speed up the system.





ROG RAM Disk GUI


Unlike many free RAM drive tools, ROG RAM DISK has no size limitations – up to 80% of the free memory (not used by the OS) can be configured as a RAM drive.


To get you an idea of how fast a RAM drive is, check the screenshot below:





10000 MB/s sequential write speeds


Applications stored on ROG RAM DISK are written to hard storage (HHD/SSD) when the system is prompted for shutdown.



Of course, re-installing games to the RAM DISK would be a painful experience. That's why ROG RAM DISK has a feature know as Junction Mode.








Setting a junction point to a game folder allows critical game files to be transferred to the RAM DISK without interfering with the original installation. Just point the software at the game folder and it will take care of the rest. This way, critical files such as maps can be accessed directly from the RAM DISK, speeding up load times.



Discussing features is fine, but what really matters for many users in knowing a board can overclock and run stable. How about 24 hour stability testing? Here's a few screenies from JJ, showing the Maximus VI Formula running different memory configs and CPU overclocks:




Over 24 hours AIDA64 passed at 4.7GHz DDR3-2800 16GB 4x4




Over 24 hours AIDA64 passed at 4.6GHz DDR3-2133 32GB 8X4





4.8GHz DDR3-2400 AIDA 1 Hour - right at the limits of the CPU and cooling






Use this thread to discuss/share results when you get your boards folks 🙂

[JackNaylorPE]

AusRoG wrote:
It's another lame review that just goes over the stuff you can read elsewhere. I like it how these guys quote Asus own product statements all over the "review". Somebody needs to do a real review that actually tests the special/unique features of the board: Crosschill, SupremeFX etc. I would like to see an evaluation of SupremeFX Formula against other onboard solutions and some discrete sound cards. Come on Anandtech or Toms Hardware.

I find THGs reviews among the "fluffiest" ....seems they a reluctant to strong opinions about anything and don't delve very deep. I'd love to see someone take a hard look at the aluminum Crosschill everyone is so worried about .... had a car with 260k miles steel block, aluminum heads, copper rad .... engines at power plant where I worked were installed in 1958 .... same deal .... no sign of corrosion. If proper precautions taken galvanic corrosion is really no big deal. I'm not worried about it but would love to see some science.

[AusRoG]

JackNaylorPE wrote:
I'd love to see someone take a hard look at the aluminum Crosschill everyone is so worried about .... had a car with 260k miles steel block, aluminum heads, copper rad .... engines at power plant where I worked were installed in 1958 .... same deal .... no sign of corrosion. If proper precautions taken galvanic corrosion is really no big deal. I'm not worried about it but would love to see some science.

With engines you have "anti-freeze" added to the water, in many countries or types of engine applications freezing is not a problem but the other equally important purpose of the stuff is to stop corrosion. Swiftech's HydrX coolant is derived from marine racing engine anti-freeze according to their own website. Other coolants similarly add inhibitors, but it's not simple to know which ones will be good enough over the long term. Personally I will probably end up using the Crosschill with Mayhems XT-1 and just see how it goes. If there is any corrosion it will be on the (more anodic) aluminum Crosschill block and not on the rest of my expensive copper/brass/nickel WC kit.

[Nodens]

Entry level card is still better. Any sound card is better than onboard codecs.

An on-board codec is basically a rudimentary DAC/ADC (Digital to Analog Converter/Analog to Digital Converter) that uses HSP (Host Signal Processing) to process audio streams on the CPU.

A discreet sound card uses high quality DAC/ADC with much higher quality OpAMPs etc and discreet DSP (Digital Signal Processor).

The difference is simply immense in signal to noise ratio, harmonic distortion, DSP features etc etc

Granted these ROG boards go to extreme lengths to increase audio quality with an on-board codec, there's only so much you can do without PCB real estate. The simplest of things to understand is EMI (ElectroMagnetic Interference) alone. A discreet soundcard can be isolated from EMI in a much better way than an on-board codec which is surrounded by the motherboard's PCB traces.

You can compare SupremeFX with other on-board implementations and you'll see it's simply amazing in this department. But you can never compare it to discreet soundcards:)

[JackNaylorPE]

Nodens wrote:
Entry level card is still better. Any sound card is better than onboard codecs.

But in this instance...doesn't installing sound card like Xonar kill SLI

[Kronvict]

JackNaylorPE wrote:
But in this instance...doesn't installing sound card like Xonar kill SLI

Not if you install the sound card in between the SLIed video cards in a sandwich config like i did or at the very top PCIe x1 slot (which would block the ROG logo if it mattered). It's not ideal but it works.

[JackNaylorPE]

Kronvict wrote:
Not if you install the sound card in between the SLIed video cards in a sandwich config like i did or at the very top PCIe x1 slot (which would block the ROG logo if it mattered). It's not ideal but it works.

It's the PCIe 2 cards like the Asus PCIE SSD thing that screw things up...... are all Asus boards short of the 4-4 SLI MoBos so affected ?

[jeroompje]

After i switched my raid-0 windows 8 disk from Sandforce to Samsung 840 pro, trim works again op my Z87 system.
On a single Force GT trim still does not work..

Jerome.

[Nodens]

jeroompje wrote:
After i switched my raid-0 windows 8 disk from Sandforce to Samsung 840 pro, trim works again op my Z87 system.
On a single Force GT trim still does not work..

Jerome.

As suspected there's some sort of incompatibility with the specific drive. Contact Corsair about it:)

[jeroompje]

Nodens wrote:
As suspected there's some sort of incompatibility with the specific drive. Contact Corsair about it:)

I contacted them on 2 different ways, but they don't listen or help me.
So they will have many complaining customers in future.

[acefblue]

There is a new bios(0804) for M6F on its product page. Hope it would be helpful for the system stability like described.