Conclusion

Overall		+	-
The ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme is an astonishingly good looking motherboard from ASUS' ROG family. It surely belongs to the best boards out there in the market for AM3 sockets. The performance it shows is great and also overclocking is a lot of fun. Furthemore it has the HydraLogix chip onboard that allows you plug in NVIDIA and AMD cards simultaneously ranging from GF 9000 / HD 4000 series until the latest models.		- Performance - Design - Overclocking - BIOS - Bundle
Layout		+	-
The motherboard design belongs to the best ASUS ROG can offer, and it the engeneers seem to have thought a lot about the actual placement of the different connectors. Furthermore The possibility to measure voltages directly on the motherboard and disbale/enable PCIe-slots are much also highly appreciated especially from an overclockers point of view. We only spotted one thing that might come in a bit annoying over time. The northbridgefan is quite noisy, fortunately we can unplug it.		- ROG Buttons - Free space between CrossFireX and CrossLinx 2x - USB3 / SATA3 - 8 Fan connectors - 5 x PCIe - PCIe switch - Activity LED	- No internal USB3.0 header - Northbridge fan disturbingly noisy
Performance		+	-
The Crosshair IV Extreme outperforms every other motherboard we've tested so far, no matter if you're looking at 2D benchmarks or 3D benchmarks. Regarding the Lucid HydraLogix chip, the performance increase if you're using up to two cards is good. With three cards being used simultaneously the values can drop significantly.		- 3D Performance - 2D Performance - Lucid HydraLogix	- Lucid HydraLogix
Overclocking		+	-
This board also offers nice overclocking features. There really are a lot of settings in the BIOS and you can therefore tune this board into every direction you want it. Also the TurboV software is very handy and makes things quite easy and comfortable. If you should be a friend of gadgets this board can also be overclocked using a smartphone or a notebook.		- 376 MHz Reference Clock - Voltages - BIOS
Recommendation		+	-
Generally we can recommend the ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme to extreme overclockers, PC-enthusiasts as well as gamers. If you're the kind of person looking for high-end parts then the Crosshair IV Extreme will be a very good choice.		- PC-Enthusiasts - Overclockers - Extreme Overclockers	- Office PC

The ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme can be bought at Digitec to a price of CHF 325.- (est. EUR 232.-).

Rating

Page 1 - ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme	Page 9 - SuperPi/WPrime
Page 2 - Specifications	Page 10 - Games
Page 3 - Presentaion/Layout/I/O/Bundle	Page 11 - Software / Hardware ROG
Page 4 - BIOS	Page 12 - Temperatures
Page 5 - Test Setup	Page 13 - Overclocking
Page 6 - FutureMark	Page 14 - Lucid HydraLogix
Page 7 - SiSoft Sandra 1	Page 15 - Conclusion
Page 8 - SiSoft Sandra 2

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Author :Christian Ney, c.ney@ocaholic.ch Copy edited and translated : Christian Ney, c.ney@ocaholic.ch & Marc Buechel, m.buechel@ocaholic.ch