Which tools are useful?

[ByTheTime]

Hi all,
I just finished my new PC build. It runs an ASUS MAXIMUS VI GENE motherboard. I decided to go with ASUS because my old ASUS notebook worked great for over 5 years without a problem.

But I have some questions 🙂

1. Which tools on the motherboard DVD are actually usefull? I'm not a fan of installing everything. I only installed the drivers yet. Which tools are usefull for performance tweaking/overclocking?

2. How to get ready for Win10? Should I just look for Win10 drivers on the motherboard page and download the one's I have already installed (just for Win7)?

3. Where can i find my BIOS/UEFI version? I want to know if I need to update.

Thanks for your help 🙂

[Nate152]

Hello ByTheTime

Welcome to the ROG forum.

Nice choice on an ROG board for your build, I know you're going to have fun with it.

To answer your questions:

1) I don't install anything from the motherboard disc and it's best to do your overclocking within the bios. For GPU overclocking you can use GPU Tweak, Precision X or Afterburner. Real temp 3.70 is a good cpu temp monitoring program and I also use ROG cpu-z for cpu voltage monitoring.

ROG Real bench is good program to use for stress testing when overclocking.

ROG Realbench

http://rog.asus.com/rog-pro/realbench-v2-leaderboard/

ROG cpu-z

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/CPU-Z-ROG.shtml

Real temp 3.70

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/Real-Temp.shtml


2) Depending on the windows version you have will depend on what version of windows 10 you'll be upgrading to, you should get the download for windows 10 in the windows update. Look for an announcement or keep checking the download site for windows 10 drivers/updates.

3) The last four digits of your motherboard's serial number is the bios version or you can check in the bios on the tool tab in the ez flash.

[Korth]

ROG CPU-Z is just TechPowerUp CPU-Z with a ROG-themed cosmetic overhaul, yes? Does it add any ROG-specific features or functionality not found in generic GPU-Z?

I like using multiple graphic engines for benchmarking, measuring raw fps while loading the GPU and CPU together can vary a lot from engine to engine and game to game, having a variety of results to compare allows for better performance comparisons/predictions when looking towards untried software. And more online databases to link into with a wider pool of user reports/feedback than any single benchware tool.

Unigine (cinematic or interactive Heaven and Valley environments), the amusing Catzilla, and dull-plodding-efficient Cinebench are all pretty good for GPU "stress testing" and judging real-world performance. So are top-heavy games like Crysis, BF, etc.