Show us your Unigine Heaven benchmark scores!

Thanks Steve. I'm always happy to help those like yourself who are happy to learn :)

And as you know, I aim to point users in the right direction for them with the best compromise for budget.


I'm toying with the idea of doing a small HTPC for my dad that he can have near the TV. I'm thinking of using a m-ATX Asrock board for that.

The ROG boards are definitely appealing boards, but I've always managed to find alternatives that suited my requirements. Usually based around fitting my bloody PCI-E soundcard that had to go anyway

But yeah, I do like the buzz you get from having the high end board :) It's largely a placebo effect I believe. You can trust that whatever you do to the board, within limits, it will handle all you ask.

I've found that as long as you can tweak the ram, voltages for all sorts of functions and control over phases and power, you can get good performance out of it.

Mine is a Work Station board. So whilst it's not primarily aimed at overclockers, it has most, if not all the functions and quality bits as the ROG series. The bloody price is similar

Plus it's nice to know quad sli is an option. Not going to go quad, but nice knowing that if a free 670 fell in my lap I'd think about it.


I'd love to do product reviews. I'd be one of 'no BS' guys that aren't biased or bought. I have the time and capability

I want to be your helper. Nothing more I'd like to do; especially with you. I always had the same impression as you about the ROG boards, until I got one. I have had UEFI bios since they came out with the B3 version in sandy Bridge. I had owned an Asrock and 2 Asus boards. I was not concerned in the least about tweeking a UEFI BIOS. On first startup with this board I went straight to BIOS. I was shocked. I didn't know what to do. There are still settings there that I have no idea what they are or what they do. Needless to say, I was shocked. But, I still can't say much bad about the Asrock board. It was and still is, rock stable. I'm running a second rig with my 2600K with it. The only negative I can say is that it will overclock OK, but will never match an Asus board. I never was able to boot my 2500K more than 4.6 with it. When I got my first Asus board I bench tested it before the build. During the bench test I had the 2500K stable at 4.8 with less voltage than the Asrock needed at 4.6. But, it's a good board and very stable. Would make a good HTPC rig. This Maximus has 4 or 5 pages of nothing but ram timings, if you can believe that. But, your concerns about it, the bottom X16 slot is an X4 electrical slot that runs X1 by default, I believe. They claim it can take 4 cards, but 3 is max on the new double wide cards. But the spacing on the slots is as good as you could get. And, I still think it is faster every time I see the Extreme behind the maximus name. It darn well should be for what I paid for it.

I like and trust ASUS boards too. My first build was with an ASUS A8V and I bought it for no reason other than it had the socket (AMD 939) for a CPU that was recommended.

I've tried Gigglebye and ASrock but would buy ASUS again but not the others.

essenbe said:

I want to be your helper.

You've certainly been helpful so far mate :)

One of my star pupils

On first startup with this board I went straight to BIOS. I was shocked. I didn't know what to do. There are still settings there that I have no idea what they are or what they do. Needless to say, I was shocked.

A bit like a monkey with fire at first isn't it? I must admit there are still a few options that are a bit grey to me. Grey to everyone lol.

Still, it's nice to have them.


For a htpc build I'd actually underclock rather than overclock. So a bells and whistle overclocking board isn't needed.

This Maximus has 4 or 5 pages of nothing but ram timings, if you can believe that.

Oh I believe it. The sad thing is though, for the vast majority of us, we don't need to touch anymore than the "1st information" section of timings. The others are there for the very serious RAM tweakers

But, your concerns about it, the bottom X16 slot is an X4 electrical slot that runs X1 by default, I believe. They claim it can take 4 cards, but 3 is max on the new double wide cards. But the spacing on the slots is as good as you could get. And, I still think it is faster every time I see the Extreme behind the maximus name. It darn well should be for what I paid for it.

Most boards with 4 slots are like that. It's strange that my board is x8/x8/x8/x8 when a dedicated gamer board misses out. Iirc, the spacing on the two boards are pretty much the same.

With dual SLI, running in slots 1/3 - I didn't hear my cards. It'd be the same for yours. And with these PCI-E 3.0 boards, being 'relegated' to x8 3.0 is the same as x16 2.0 so there's next to no penalty.

And it is faster. It's Extreme lol.

The first screenie is from my Fx6100 oc'd to 4.5Ghz, Gpu's +50 core, +300 Mem.
Second screenie is with my 8350 @ stock, Gpu's stock
I'll get another one up 2moz when i've tweaked things a tad. My cpu was definately holding me back enit.

Looking pretty promising there then mate!

paulpicks21 said:

Looking pretty promising there then mate!

Enit chap
I couldn't hit that 3k no matter what i did before but it looks an easy target now lol.

ganjiry said:

The first screenie is from my Fx6100 oc'd to 4.5Ghz, Gpu's +50 core, +300 Mem.
Second screenie is with my 8350 @ stock, Gpu's stock
I'll get another one up 2moz when i've tweaked things a tad. My cpu was definately holding me back enit.

Looks real good mate!

Great scores, Ryan.

Cheers chaps It oc's nice too