Rampage VI Extreme (LGA2066, Intel X299) - info, experience, BIOSes etc.

[FlanK3r]

Intel public HEDT CPus with platfrom Intel X299 at Computex 2017. The CPU reviews are still under embargo for short time ,-). But some informations are officially out and OK with Intels NDA.

Intel X299 is really highend chipset for enthusiast CPUs. This year very powerfull, much more than anyone hoped. Because this year is AMD also very strong at CPU side (Announced not only 8 cores with SMT, but also up to 16C with SMT for AMD X399), Intel will launch step by step 6C/12T, 8C/16T, 10C/20T....Everything?:) Nooo, continue it with 12C/24T, 14C/28T, 16C/32T and new flagship 18C/36T !!!


New LGA2066 will be new one after 2011v3...Great value is, you can put in two generation CPUs. More info bellow.
1) Kabylake-X with new CPUs Core i5 X a Core i7 X. Those CPUs are KabyLake-X. Its basically Kabylake with more capacitors and bigger heatspreader. This could help with higher overclocking than classic Kabylakes. Kabylake-X have support only for dualchannel mode (up to 2666 MHz 1.2V). After XMP mode or manualy tweaking you can except everything between 3600 MHz to 4400 MHz at DRAM effective frequency.
2)Skylake-X, are HEDT processors Core i7 X and new Core i9 X. Starting as 6C/12T and up to crazy 18C/36T
There is support for Quadchannel memory. Based at first results on web, the memory clock we can expect overclocking of RAM around 3200 to 3800 MHz. All depends on type of memory chips, quality of IMC particular piece of CPU.

APEX series replaced Extreme series in extreme overclocking segment (yes, all fans of DICE, LN2 and LHe are focus directly at this board). This board broked many WRs after first day 🙂 There is example with informations about records from 31.5.2017.


APEX series replaced Extreme series in extreme overclocking segment (yes, all fans of DICE, LN2 and LHe are focus directly at this board). This board broked many WRs after first day 🙂 There is exmaple with informations about records from 31.5.2017. Rampage Extreme is for enthusiast, wattercooling setups, casemodders etc. Strix series is ideal part for daily overlcocking (of course, it can handle LN2 too !) and gamers, streamers...

Rampage VI Extreme - eATX size

-looks awesome, the rainbow AURA effects! But there is also small display for current information about CPU clock, temperatures or speed fans...

The motherboard support again up to 128 GB DDR4 DRAM in up to quadchannel (depends at your CPU - if KB-X or SK-X). In right upper corner are helpfull buttons START, RESET, PCIe and DIMM switchs. Also switch for slow mode, retry and safe button, RGB header and also great ROG DIMM.2 slot for NVMe M2 discs. So Extreme can be realized with Liquid Nitrogen also, if is it your hobby sometimes 😛 Look at crazy numbers of voltage meassuring points.

At the bellow are button to swicth the BIOS (two BIOSes here), many USB ports, MEM OK, again RGB header. Under frontplate near the PCH is place for next M.2



-part of IO. The IO shield is integrated and from left to right there are CLR CMOS button, BIOS Flashbakc button, Wi-Fi+BT device with support 802.11ad standard! Many USB3/3.1, LAN, audio outputs with backlight


-Rampage in the glory 🙂

And last video with short description from GamersNexus

[DragonPurr]

clindsay616@gmail.com wrote:
For those of you that are primarily interested in gaming are you sticking to the 7900X instead of the higher core counts? I was thinking of holding out for the 7940X but if all I am going to be playing is games without streaming or rendering if the 7900X is the best CPU for R6E

My other parts of my rig are
2 x 1080ti StrixOC GPUS
1tb Samsung 960pro
32gb G.SKill 3600 TridentZ RGB
Asus ROG PG348Q 34in Monitor

Thanks!

The 7900X is PLENTY powerful for a gaming-only rig, even if you stream and encode at the same time, although I am absolutely certain that some people will unnecessarily build a gaming-and-streaming rig using the 7980XE and 128-GB of RAM for bragging rights on their YouTube channel. I seriously doubt that you will see even a microscopic bit of difference between the 7900X and 7940X for gaming performance. The quad-core 7700K still beats the 7900X for FPS on more than half of the games, with the 7900X winning by 1 or 2 FPS on some games. And if you game, stream, render and encode, edit photos, and program and compile large software packages all at the same time, I applaud your multi-tasking skills, but you are not doing all those tasks with optimum effectiveness, and you are very likely impacting your gaming fluidity even with an 18-core CPU.

You could make the case that the 7940X gives you a little better "future-proofing". But look at how you will be using your build for the next 5 years. Most games cannot even take advantage of 6 cores right now, and full 10-core game support is at least a few years away. Will you also eventually create content using videos, photos, audio, etc? Also keep in mind that faster DDR5 RAM will likely start to appear on chipsets and mobos by 2020, three years from now, with performance and much faster bandwidth to support advanced VR apps. "Future-proofing" really only lasts for up to 4 or 5 years. And after you make your R6E build, the main way to "future-proof" for the next few years is to simply not ogle at all of the shiny new gear that appears each year.

And here is another variable to consider: the 6-core i7-8700K and Z370 mobo will be available later this year. The 8700K is about 30% to 50% faster than the 7700K on some leaked multi-core benchmarks, and it will even race past the 18-core 7980XE for gaming performance, for a better gaming build that costs $1600 less (or $1000 less than the 7940X).

EDIT: Yes, a Z370 mobo does not have the lanes like the 7900X with a R6E, but you would still have a better-performing gaming-only build while spending at least $600 less.

[Exzelsior]

While you already made the best points, I'd tl;dr how future proofing and gaming are a paradox anyway, even for the platform...
If intel hadn't put the 7820x out with only 28 lanes, it would be the best gaming option to go with. If board vendors would put in a little more effort the 28 lanes would also be enough. As it is it depends what you want to do gaming respectively multimedia wise, if the 7820 or the 7900 make more sense, above you potentially become slower and slower.

Regarding the Z370 board, if the rumors about 24 pcie 3.0 lanes on pch are true, they're actually a lot better than 7820x builds, only with 2 cores less...
They also explained the U.2 thing there, intel routes the 4 pcie lanes directly through the dmi, that's why they are shared in x299 boards, so M.2s can use the same feature, only there are only 4 lanes for this reserved, meaning you obviously can only do one at a time...
I'm wondering if Z370 can do more and how that works. I'm also wondering if the 8700k uses the new mesh or still ringbus.

All in all both intel and amd run an awkward strategy for their hedt plattforms. x299 is pretty much the competely wrong way for gaming only. The same can be said for threadripper, which even in the games that support more cores sucks against the ryzen 1800x.
The reason I'm going with the rampage is the connectivity. but I'm a bit doubtful by now how exclusive this will be. There might be z370 boards in the works that actually come with 10 sata slots if they have that many pcie lanes and plugging in 3 lan cards for link aggregation and 10gbit isn't magic either. It's a bit like intel is crapping on x299 and board vendors have to pipe the death march to it...

[DragonPurr]

Exzelsior wrote:
While you already made the best points, I'd tl;dr how future proofing and gaming are a paradox anyway, even for the platform...
If intel hadn't put the 7820x out with only 28 lanes, it would be the best gaming option to go with. If board vendors would put in a little more effort the 28 lanes would also be enough. As it is it depends what you want to do gaming respectively multimedia wise, if the 7820 or the 7900 make more sense, above you potentially become slower and slower.

Regarding the Z370 board, if the rumors about 24 pcie 3.0 lanes on pch are true, they're actually a lot better than 7820x builds, only with 2 cores less...
They also explained the U.2 thing there, intel routes the 4 pcie lanes directly through the dmi, that's why they are shared in x299 boards, so M.2s can use the same feature, only there are only 4 lanes for this reserved, meaning you obviously can only do one at a time...
I'm wondering if Z370 can do more and how that works. I'm also wondering if the 8700k uses the new mesh or still ringbus.

All in all both intel and amd run an awkward strategy for their hedt plattforms. x299 is pretty much the competely wrong way for gaming only. The same can be said for threadripper, which even in the games that support more cores sucks against the ryzen 1800x.
The reason I'm going with the rampage is the connectivity. but I'm a bit doubtful by now how exclusive this will be. There might be z370 boards in the works that actually come with 10 sata slots if they have that many pcie lanes and plugging in 3 lan cards for link aggregation and 10gbit isn't magic either. It's a bit like intel is crapping on x299 and board vendors have to pipe the death march to it...

Yep, if the 7820X had 44 lanes, it would be the best gaming CPU because it has the single-core speed of the 7700K. But now the i7-8700K is the best gaming CPU, by far, if you are not going to game while streaming and rendering.

There are already Z270 mobos with 8 to 10 SATA ports. My MSI Z270 XPower Titanium has 3 M.2 slots and 8 SATA ports, and you can still use all three M.2 slots with 7 of its 8 SATA ports.

My x299 builds are strictly pure workstation builds. The top 5 reasons that I am going with the R6E for workstation builds are:
#1 Aesthetics
#2 Aesthetics
#3 Aesthetics
#4 2% to 5% better performance compared to most $300 X299 mobos
#5 Improved networking.

The preference for better aesthetics may sound superficial. But let's face it, if the R6E did not have the RGB and armor plating so it looked just like the Apex around the PCIe slots and with the same I/O cover, far fewer people would pay the extra $220 USD over the Apex just for a slightly better performance and better networking. I have also been a glass artist for 25+ years, and I plan to add some interchangeable color-shifting iridescent fused glass plating onto the mobo as color accents to complement the RGB and armor.

[Exzelsior]

DragonPurr wrote:
Yep, if the 7820X had 44 lanes, it would be the best gaming CPU because it has the single-core speed of the 7700K. But now the i7-8700K is the best gaming CPU, by far, if you are not going to game while streaming and rendering.

There are already Z270 mobos with 8 to 10 SATA ports. My MSI Z270 XPower Titanium has 3 M.2 slots and 8 SATA ports, and you can still use all three M.2 slots with 7 of its 8 SATA ports.

My x299 builds are strictly pure workstation builds. The top 5 reasons that I am going with the R6E for workstation builds are:
#1 Aesthetics
#2 Aesthetics
#3 Aesthetics
#4 2% to 5% better performance compared to most $300 X299 mobos
#5 Improved networking.

The preference for better aesthetics may sound superficial. But let's face it, if the R6E did not have the RGB and armor plating so it looked just like the Apex around the PCIe slots and with the same I/O cover, far fewer people would pay the extra $220 USD over the Apex just for a slightly better performance and better networking. I have also been a glass artist for 25+ years, and I plan to add some interchangeable color-shifting iridescent fused glass plating onto the mobo as color accents to complement the RGB and armor.

I have to admit for me the reasons for x299 is the sheer amount of multitasking I'm doing. A 4 core might pull off gaming at the top of the chart but the moment I run 3 monitors with 2 lines of tabs in the background I want to see how it holds up the fps gap to an 8 core. Also I kind of run machines for like 10 years and Z270 is a dead end. After 3-6 years I get a new one but the old one will live on as secondary, alt and whatever I come up with (I always have plans and if I get children the next 1 2 years they'll need babys first gaming pc, no mobile can hold up to swinging guns in doom)

Now with this build I want to explore streaming and I already do 3D modelling and animation as well as video editing and quite some other crazy stuff. That's why I'm not even miffed I now need a 7900x tbh, it's more like a reinforcing reason to throw 1000 bucks at it. (somedays I just think, why not run a spectrogram right now and boot up a vm to try something on a cms I'm building while the game still runs. wtf you say? But I want to...)


I'm looking at the extreme because of the sheer amount of connectivity. I want to copy my 48tb of storage this machine will have to a nas someday so onboard 10gb ethernet comes in quite handy for doing that and then accessing it again. This will also be the access point for some other portable devices with a secondary closed network, so the wireless networking also is quite useful. Then there are at least 4 pcie cards(gpu, tv, sound and unfortunately sata). By pcie slots the field is already very limited now, because a rog 1080 ti is 3 slots high. Also I have a ton of stuff I'm connecting via usb.
I'm not against esthetics, I'd even say I dislike how there comes no rgb strip with the extreme like with the xe, but that plays second fiddle to everything else.

In this case money is no object, so the few fps more this board gets at lower temps are all the argument I need in a machine deemed to run 10 years. What would be nice is a review from oc3d for the strix xe, because if that plays in the same league(it's rev2 of the e, so there has to be at least some improvement), I might consider changing my mind and give up on the 10g ethernet, but that's really just because I'm becoming impatient to wait^^.

What sucks is that they now come around the corner with the 8700k, which might be enough for my needs and that the extreme takes so damn long to ship here, that there might be a maximus X in store with more sata ports and the same 10g ethernet before I get my extreme...
While I studied I had to keep the x4 from 2011, so the 8700k would also be a huge step up, I'd just rather do a workstation build with gaming in mind tbh instead the other way around. To split the tasks up in 2 machines is too inconvenient, I already do that too much with all input heavy stuff...

/absentminded ramblings 😛

[DragonPurr]

Exzelsior wrote:
I have to admit for me the reasons for x299 is the sheer amount of multitasking I'm doing. A 4 core might pull off gaming at the top of the chart but the moment I run 3 monitors with 2 lines of tabs in the background I want to see how it holds up the fps gap to an 8 core. Also I kind of run machines for like 10 years and Z270 is a dead end. After 3-6 years I get a new one but the old one will live on as secondary, alt and whatever I come up with (I always have plans and if I get children the next 1 2 years they'll need babys first gaming pc, no mobile can hold up to swinging guns in doom)

Now with this build I want to explore streaming and I already do 3D modelling and animation as well as video editing and quite some other crazy stuff. That's why I'm not even miffed I now need a 7900x tbh, it's more like a reinforcing reason to throw 1000 bucks at it. (somedays I just think, why not run a spectrogram right now and boot up a vm to try something on a cms I'm building while the game still runs. wtf you say? But I want to...)

I'm looking at the extreme because of the sheer amount of connectivity. I want to copy my 48tb of storage this machine will have to a nas someday so onboard 10gb ethernet comes in quite handy for doing that and then accessing it again. This will also be the access point for some other portable devices with a secondary closed network, so the wireless networking also is quite useful. Then there are at least 4 pcie cards(gpu, tv, sound and unfortunately sata). By pcie slots the field is already very limited now, because a rog 1080 ti is 3 slots high. Also I have a ton of stuff I'm connecting via usb.
I'm not against esthetics, I'd even say I dislike how there comes no rgb strip with the extreme like with the xe, but that plays second fiddle to everything else.

In this case money is no object, so the few fps more this board gets at lower temps are all the argument I need in a machine deemed to run 10 years. What would be nice is a review from oc3d for the strix xe, because if that plays in the same league(it's rev2 of the e, so there has to be at least some improvement), I might consider changing my mind and give up on the 10g ethernet, but that's really just because I'm becoming impatient to wait^^.

What sucks is that they now come around the corner with the 8700k, which might be enough for my needs and that the extreme takes so damn long to ship here, that there might be a maximus X in store with more sata ports and the same 10g ethernet before I get my extreme...
While I studied I had to keep the x4 from 2011, so the 8700k would also be a huge step up, I'd just rather do a workstation build with gaming in mind tbh instead the other way around. To split the tasks up in 2 machines is too inconvenient, I already do that too much with all input heavy stuff...

/absentminded ramblings 😛

I previously built multi-function multi-tasking PCs that did everything from gaming to workstation to office to home use. But now I split everything into three specific purposes: i7 gaming laptops and i7 desktops for work, office, sofware development, general home use; three x299 workstations for the processing of 4K videos and thousands of digital RAW photos from Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, 7D Mark II, C100; and one gaming build using a 7700K, MSI Z270 XPower Titanium, and two MSI GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X GPUs.

Speaking of "swinging guns in doom", the most hours that I ever devoted to a single video game was Doom II. I spent countless hours playing Doom II, and making mods, WADs, and maps. But I was also single back then 😛 Ever since Doom II, the games and graphics have gotten better, but I have been playing less and less each year. I game less than 2 hours every week now. I am not upgrading to Volta if Nvidia releases it next year, and instead will just coast on my two 1080 Ti's for 4K 60-Hz gaming for awhile.

I am building three x299 workstations so I can split all the photos and videos amongst all three PCs for load-balancing, and by using 34 (10+10+14) cores separated on 3 PCs, I will get far better CPU and I/O throughput than just using one or two 18-core builds. The photo and video editing is also very iterative, so the processing and reprocessing times are far slower if you queue up everything on just one 18-core PC. And it helps that some software such as DxO OpticsPro allows for installation on 3 PCs. I have 11 desktop PCs in one home office (including the 3 x299 builds to be done), 8 of the PCs are on two 4-port DisplayPort KVM switches, 2 older PCs are on one 2-port VGA KVM switch, and the gaming PC sits by itself. I also have 6 laptops, 2 tablets, 5 high-end photo printers, 4 office printers, 2 high-res scanners, and about 280-TB of hard drives, most being 4-TB to 8-TB drives in 2-bay and 4-bay enclosures that are all JBODed and manually mirrored using my collection of custom Python scripts to manage everything. But I can still find any file within a few seconds stored on any of those 80+ hard drives using my own flat-file database setup. If someone manufactured an NAS that held 100 hard drives, I would consider buying it.

Raja has previously mentioned that the Strix x299 XE is still mostly identical to the non-XE. It just seems like the VRM was slightly improved with a better heatsink and an included VRM fan, and that's it for differences:

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?95877-Strix-X299-XE-!!&p=673383&viewfull=1#post673383

It is tough to avoid temptation from each year's new toys though!! If I had known at the start of this year that the 8700K and Z370 were going to be this nice, I probably would have waited instead of doing the Z270 7700K gaming build. But then... next year, I may also be saying "Aww, I should have waited... 😛

Oh, and regarding aesthetics and why I like the styling of the R6E and plan to further embellish the mobo by adding glass plating, here are some glass curved sushi plates that I have been making this month to be given to friends as Christmas gifts this year. The cat plate uses real 24-carat gold foil fused onto the glass. If you look at these glass plates under different lighting conditions, like the indium-coated R6E armor, the glass can either look like iridescent solid metal or it can look like a totally different transparent glass when light shines through it. And when you look at the glass plates from different angles, their colors change like a chameleon. I will be adding similar fused glass to my R6E mobo:

https://imgur.com/a/fk6Ve

[Exzelsior]

Epic stuff your handywork, I might consider cutting a hole in my lian li if I ever find something like the LA one for a window.
Also nice homeoffice^^. I have 5 machines here including everything and the place is already crowded, you must have a palace of computer technologies^^.

Thx for the info on the xe, that settles it on the r6e then, unless something major drops before I get it...


Someday I want to do some sort of database and file mananger myself, not sure I'll do it in python though. Atm I'm fine with the size of my storage and have everything managed in a raid 10. It's mostly movies, images, series and music, so the necessity for a db is smaller. I don't think it will ever grow beyond the need of 100tb and that's already including 4k/3D/hfr rereleases in the next years. I'm looking at a diskstation 2400, 3600 or selfbuilt fileserver in a rack(a lot of plans).
It would be nice to have some kind of management though that goes beyond what oses can handle, where I can simply store even more information on the files and set different tags, that work in all oses and give me an option to acces the right player there without the oses involvement, as well as the right method to play. Splitting this up into server and client with my own vpn would be even better, but my programming is kind of rusty to say the least...

[mpoffo]

BroPhilip wrote:
In stock at Amazon Sept 20!!!

Not exactly sure how long they were up but it appears Amazon US is currently out of stock again.

[DragonPurr]

mpoffo wrote:
Not exactly sure how long they were up but it appears Amazon US is currently out of stock again.

When I first saw BroPhilip's screenshot, Amazon actually listed it as "In Stock on September 21, 2017", not the "September 20" that was in BroPhilip's image, as if the shipment has been delayed by one day. But now when Amazon removes the [Add to Cart] button and replaces it with the "Currently unavailable" label and [Email Me] button, this suggests to me that however many units they are expecting for next week's shipment have now been sold out.

B&H has had their "Preorder" button displayed for many weeks now:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1356680-REG/asus_rog_rampage_vi_extreme.html

But for new releases of computer gear, B&H receives far fewer units than Amazon and Newegg. For camera and video gear though, B&H is my favorite retailer.

[BroPhilip]

And so it begins....

[DragonPurr]

BroPhilip wrote:
And so it begins....

So here is my Friday Question Of The Day:

What does the i9-7980XE offer, when compared to the 14C i9-7940X and 16C i9-7960X, other than 2 to 4 extra cores, more threads, and incrementally more cache???

In other words, what extra goodies does the "XE" name give you that the other "X" version HCC chips do not already have? All three of these CPUs have the same TDP, the same CPU die size, the same thermal paste, etc, etc.

My answer would be that it is just Intel's way of marketing their top-of-the-line X-series CPU and the "XE" offers nothing unique. I was originally also considering the 7980XE, but I have since decided against it, and I plan on getting the 7940X. I am building three workstations, and I already have two 7900X CPUs.

When you compare the 7980XE to the 14C i9-7940X and 16C i9-7960X, the 7940X hits the sweet spot for performance and value. The 7940X has a higher base freq, a higher Max Turbo freq, and along with a higher T-Junction temperature tolerance that is 8 degrees-C higher than the 7980XE, I think it will also have the highest overclocking headroom for a $1400 price, compared to $1700 and $2000:

https://ark.intel.com/compare/126695,126697,126699