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Overclocking

The Asus Crosshair II Formula reached a very respectable 245MHz "FSB" speed with a 13x multiplier on our 65nm 5000+ X2. It could probably have gone somewhat higher with a reduced core and HT multipliers, but this was a good enough result for an AM2+ chipset.

Please note that 245MHz was stable with a GPU, however it was not sufficiently stable without a GPU when I used the on-board graphics. I decided to present the IGP overclocked results anyway, as an interesting point of comparison; but as no enthusiast worth his salt would run an overclocked gaming rig with on-board integrated graphics, I did not search to find the maximum stable "FSB" with the integrated graphics

To run at 13x245 I used the following settings:

• Vcore at 1.475V
• Vddr at 2.1V
• "FSB" at 245MHz
• CPU Multiplier at the default of 13
• used a Noctua 12 cooler with two 63CFM fans in a push/pull configuration

Power Consumption

There was a noticable savings of approx. 30W when not using a GPU for desktop use at stock speeds, however the system was not stable for our max power utilization test when using the IGP, so I can only say that I expect the differential would have remained when overclocked.

Enthusiasts who are looking to use up to three powerful GPU's are not going to worry about power consumption, however for your information, here are the results:

When idle at stock, there is a 35W savings for not using a GPU, and 24W when loaded.

Conclusion

The Asus Crosshair II Formula is a very interesting board.

The performance and overclockability is quite good for an socket AM2+ board - who knows, maybe when the 45nm Shanghai processors arrive, it may overclock well into the stratosphere.

I liked the little touches - the power and reset switches on the motherboard, the clear CMOS on the back panel - and of course all the solid state caps. While the heatpipes and heatsinks did get hot during the overclocking tests, they did not get to the "burning" stage that the Nvidia 680i and 780i got to - and the board recovered gracefully when I tried to overclock it too high.

What I did not like were the right angle SATA connectors, how close the DIMM slots were to the CPU, and the fact that if someone inserted three double slot GPU's they would not have any other usable slots left; it should be possible to do better with the real estate of a ATX board. Of course, if users limit themselves to two GPU's, there is some expandability left.

I was pleasantly surprised at the integrated graphics performance - it provided a very playable gaming experience at 640x480, and the frame rates were sufficiently high that many games  would probably also be quite playable at 800x600. I also like the potential of Hybrid SLI later allowing the PCIe GPU's to be disabled and the use of the on-board video for the desktop; it could really save some power.

Frankly, this seems like a nice board for a gamer who wants SLI on an AMD platform, and may also make a good platform for high-end home theatre PC systems.