Asus Striker Review at [H]

[Guest]

Striker Review

Many people have been waiting for some official review, so here's one! Includes tones of Bios Shot.

Benchies are against 680i and P5WDH and some MSI for Fx62...

Overclocking

Overclocking with the Striker Extreme has been challenging to say the least. Our board just didn't respond very well at all at speeds over 400MHz FSB for Kyle or myself in independent testing configurations. Our results shadowed each others using different CPUs, RAM, video cards, and high powered PSUs.

The system would sometimes POST at 400MHz FSB, but it wouldn't actually boot to Windows. In cases where it would, the system would hard lock and have to be powered off. There are a fair amount of overclocking options in the BIOS, and the general stability of the board leads me to conclude that these problems are more than likely BIOS related, and not a matter of hardware quality, although that is unclear still. We did get overclocking documentation of exactly how ASUS described the Striker should be overclocked and neither Kyle nor myself could make the ASUS recommended overclock settings work either beyond our 400MHz ceiling.

There is a clear CMOS switch on the motherboard to aid in making testing easier. Unfortunately, this switch doesn't seem to do anything. On more than one occasion I'd have to remove the battery and wait 10 minutes before I could actually get the CMOS to clear. (Our readers have notified us that the board must me powered fully down before the CMOS switch will work. Apparently we did not read the manual on this. Sorry.) I had difficulty in achieving overclocks beyond 387MHz FSB. I had even more trouble when I used unlinked mode for my memory's bus speed. Using the linked mode, which meant the board was locked into a 1:1 CPU/Mem ratio, I achieved the best results.

The ASUS Striker Core 2 Duo motherboard is overpriced and underperforms compared to the eVGA and BFGTech 680i solutions in the marketplace based on NVIDIA’s reference 680i motherboard design. There is no way we can advise you look to the ASUS Striker as a Core 2 Duo enthusiast solution. Simply put the ASUS Striker strikes out.

I hope future BIOS improves this by A LOT!

 

[Doughbuy]

I saw that a couple days ago. They weren't thoroughly impressed, and I didn't care too much because that mobo was way out of my price range anyways. If you want a 680i board, just get a eVGA or the Asus P5N32E-SLI...

 

[Guest]

Tottaly agree!

Looks like I will end up with a P5N32-E SLI with possible 'upgrade' to ICFX in a few month.

280$ Can, no taxes/shipping is the price I can get the P5N32-E. I think that's a decent price for the amount of stuff you get. Should satisfy my OC need also.

 

[ocnewb]

Well i hate to sound pessimistic here, but i have a hard time trusting a review from someone who couldn’t figure out how to get the BIOS reset switch to work. I mean honestly who tries to reset their BIOS with the machine running?

 

[papi4baby]

Big surprice there. What were you guys expecting way better performance because of all the bells and whistles that come with it, i guess all the copper makes it alot better :lol:
The computer(motherboard) market is going the Honda Civic way, just slap a GT-R sticker on it, you will gain 50 more HP :lol:

 

[Doughbuy]

If you've seen the hundreds of other excellent review they did, then you wouldn't be saying that...

 

[Guest]

I kinda agree, but the thing is they did not try to make it work. They tryed it, thought the board was locked and removed the battery.

But yeah [h] is reputable...

And even then if they were not, that review would be enough to keep me from spending 400$ on a board!

 

[Tyhr]

For 400 bones, I'd expect OC'ing to be easier for noobs, not just as difficult or more.

Is it lame to admit I actually liked the leds at the back of the screen, LoL.

 

[Guest]

also cool little bit. For those who haven't heard of Asus Commando 8)

Part of the ROG line of boards this has to be the best ram overclocker i have tested to date. 1300+ DDR is quite possible with this board with good memory and 1100+ with 4x1gb flex from OCZ was fully 24hr prime stable.

I have a feeling this may be the ultimate i965...check the link for a pic, as i quoted for RD600 i will be testing over the next few days, if Asus allow benches to be posted you will have more info soon.

 

[rwaritsdario]

Actually [H] did the review with the initial BIOS, it sucked. They warned Asus because they didnt want to publish something so beta but since a new BIOS never arrived so there we have it... an utter failure.

Considering the price on the Commando I wouldnt get my hopes up. Anything closing to $210 will be crashed by 680i once it reaches the actual MSRP. Without mentioning the advantages of the new chipsets over P965.