ROG Rampage II Extreme Breaks Two 3DMark Vantage World Records

They have only just been released to the market, but the new Intel® Core™ i7 processor and ASUS ROG (Republic of Gamers) Rampage II Extreme have already proven to be a formidable pairing—one of world record-breaking proportions. This was demonstrated in empathic fashion at the recently-concluded DreamHack Winter 2008, where top Swedish overclockers Marcus "Kinc" Hultin and Robert "Crotale" Kihlberg—using the aforementioned hardware—stole the show with a record-setting score of X21996 (Extreme preset) in 3DMark Vantage, Futuremark's authoritative graphics performance benchmark software. They also performed impressively in the Performance and Entry presets, garnering massive scores of P36302 and E69043 respectively. On a separate occasion—armed also with an ROG Rampage II Extreme—Vince "k|ngp|n" Lucido broke the single graphics card world record in the Vantage Performance preset, setting a score of P21607.

To attain their world record-setting scores, these overclockers relied in no small part on their factory overclocked ASUS graphics cards. Kinc and Crotale used three ASUS ENGTX280 TOP graphics cards in a 3-way SLI configuration, while k|ngp|n used a single ASUS EAH4870X2 TOP graphics card. Both world records were set with PhysX disabled.

(Kinc and Crotale's world record-breaking score in the 3DMark Vantage Extreme preset)

(k|ngp|n's world record-setting score in 3DMark Vantage (Performance preset) with a single graphics card)

These world records validate the real-world applicability of the ROG Rampage II Extreme's overclocking-oriented features. Particular credit should be paid to TweakIt, an easy-to-use joystick-like control on the motherboard that enables overclockers to make real-time changes to their systems' core frequency, voltage and other parameters—even while the benchmark utility is running. At no point does software come into play, as the tweaking is completely hardware-based. With such hassle-free tweaking, coupled with the ability to relay information, such as the system frequency, to overclockers in real-time via the LCD Poster, changes can be performed on-the-fly during CPU tests—resulting in improved tweakability and thus extraordinary benchmark scores.

“After four years of extreme overclocking, TweakIt is the first feature that I feel really changes the dynamics of overclocking," said Marcus "Kinc" Hultin, shortly after achieving the X21996 feat with teammate Robert "Crotale" Kihlberg. “But most important of all, it is a feature that improves 3DMark performance indirectly. Since you can change clocks while running any application, you can use higher CPU frequencies for the less CPU stressing game tests, and then lower it for the CPU tests. We would not have been able to reach X21996 without TweakIt."