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 🙂

[Raja]

Fat32 formatted flash drive in one of the USB ports, press F12 to save screenshot in uefi. Convert to jpeg then upload somewhere for us to see.

[Denoppo]

ImageShack experiment
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/822/yg9.png/

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/8788/yg9.png

[OverClokx]

Finished my build late last night.

No issues on setup, bar the fan headers giving me a bit of trouble since I didn't have any Y Connectors for my front case fans, but I ended up making it work. 🙂

[Denoppo]

OK Rajas while I am looking for a host site - do you know one as I have never used one? I have re-installed Windows 7 Ultimate from my optical drive. I then downloaded all the drivers except Chrome from the ASUS DVD as the NIC does not work out of the box until I do so. Re-installed Internet Exporer 10 and navigated to ASUS ROG forums. Windows still takes me to the American Megatrends bios page to enter F1 once into the UEFI I navigate to my SSD 840 Pro hit exit and enter to save - although the SSD is never saved. Been doing this for hours now. I did save screen shots to flashdrive. Also my mouse now does not work while in UEFI can you help me to get that back so that I can maneuver better? Windows still does not boot until I go into UEFI first. Will look for a picture hosting site. Is there a resolution you need as my native is 2560X1440 and don't want to send that hi-rez screenshot unless it don't matter

[Praz]

UEFI screenshots are saved as 1280x1020 as that is the only resolution the UEFI outputs. Once converted to jpeg attach the screenshots to your post. No need for a hosting site.

[warmmilk]

Denoppo wrote:
ImageShack experiment
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/822/yg9.png

Your optical drive is plugged into position 1 and your ssd is plugged into position 6. I was having a similar issue intermittently with my hdd plugged into 5 and ssd (boot drive) plugged into 6. what happens is the board looks at the sata plugs in order, so its trying to boot from your optical drive. technically it should save your preferred boot drive, but it seams to not be working for you.

the solution is to plug your ssd into the sata port that your optical drive is plugged into, and your optical drive into position 2-6. and yes, position 1 intel sata port is 3 down, its the one on top.

I found it pretty stupid that I couldn't find Asus's sata port positions anywhere in the manual... seams like a pretty basic thing to include. Honestly I'm pretty disappointed in this particular product and with all the bugs I'm getting. The took an extra few months after Z87 release to get this out to market, you'd think they'd have most of their issues figured out. Almost every feature that was a selling point for me on this board has a bug and is not working or not working correctly.

[Denoppo]

In fact no matter what I do when I exit the UEFI pop up states - You have made no changes to bios and this seems to be the key. Can something be wrong with the save function?

[Denoppo]

Thanks Warmmilk, Over a period of 2 days I have switched cables no luck and moved my SSD to various Intel ports not Asmedia and they are reporting properly in the UEFI. In this screenshot my SSD is in the far left position - SanDisk Cruzer in the center and the ASUS optical drive I installed Windows from twice now is in the far right. Yes in the bot menu they are reporting the position of the ports. Even with the SSD only installed and nothing else, Windows will not boot unless I go thru American Megatrends and hit F1 to get to UEFI to select SSD and to try and save but it wont save but once I exit UEFI Windows magically appears.
Just to try again I will unplug the flashdrive and the optical drive and place the SATA cable in Intel position #1 which is third SATA III down top position.

[warmmilk]

Denoppo wrote:
Thanks Warmmilk, Over a period of 2 days I have switched cables no luck and moved my SSD to various Intel ports not Asmedia and they are reporting properly in the UEFI. In this screenshot my SSD is in the far left position - SanDisk Cruzer in the center and the ASUS optical drive I installed Windows from twice now is in the far right. Yes in the bot menu they are reporting the position of the ports. Even with the SSD only installed and nothing else, Windows will not boot unless I go thru American Megatrends and hit F1 to get to UEFI to select SSD and to try and save but it wont save but once I exit UEFI Windows magically appears.
Just to try again I will unplug the flashdrive and the optical drive and place the SATA cable in Intel position #1 which is third SATA III down top position.

For the record, you will still prolly get the American Megatrends on the first start up after you do this, but it should work fine after that. At least thats my experience with it.

[Denoppo]

When I hit the Start button and open up My Computer It shows -
Hard Disk Drives (2)
Local Disk (C:) and System Reserved (E:)

When I open Device Manager under Disk drives It shows as ATA Samsung SSD 840 SCSI Disk Drive. Is this right shouldn't the 2 names match up ? Windows shows it as a Hard Drive and Device Manager shows it as a ATA SCSI shouldn't they match up. Just grasping at straws here. I keep thinking after hours and hours shouldn't UEFI save your changes after you select the SSD and save to exit? Isn't this what it is supposed to do?