For some time now Asus has tried to widen their market space targeting almost all possible markets with cheaper motherboards from AsRock to hitting the middle, high-end, and elite market space. The top of the line motherboards were released for the AM2 market as Crosshair and for the Socket 775 as the Striker motherboard under their Republic of Gamers label and the Asus gaming series. As you might know Nvidia recently released their follow up to the 680i chipset with the 780i and with it motherboard manufacturers have put out new versions of their motherboards including Asus with the new Striker II ultra-high end enthusiast motherboard. Today we look at the Asus Striker II Formula motherboard and give you a review of Asus newest high-end product.

As we mentioned in the intro the Striker II is based off of the new Nvidia 780i chipset. What is new overall about the 780i? Well unfortunately not that much. You might have read a 780i motherboard review right now and the chipset hasn't undergone too many changes. PCI-E 2.0 is now supported although at the moment that doesn't seem to show better performance although it is something Nvidia needed to move towards, their ESA or Enthusiast System Architecture is supported though that will also is going to come to 680i motherboards, triple SLI support which might be interesting for gamers, and probably the most significant impact is that new 45nm Penryn processors from Intel which appear to be incompatible with the 680i chipset.

Since Nvidia haven't changed their Northbridge chipset or their Southbridge chipset their solution to bringing PCI Express 2.0 support involves a new chipset added onto the board, the nForce 200. This is linked with the Northbridge to allow 32 lanes for PCI-E 2.0 which can be split between the two 16x PCI-Express slots and giving 1GB/s of bandwidth. It should be noted however that the third PCI Express slot is not 2.0 compliant but again we have yet to see any real benefit from PCI-E 2.0.

All of this adds up to some but not a lot of major changes with the 780i with probably the major difference being 680i users are in the dark when it comes to Intel's Penryn which is too bad because it does offer much better overclocking, cheaper pricing, and lower power consumption in addition to some performance improvements. This however does warrant more so a purchase of a 780i motherboard.

Luckily Asus though have made some large improvements over the Striker. First of all the huge copper design has actually shortened a bit at least in height coming down about an inch which should clear up any problems with very large heatsinks for processors. Instead more copper seems spread out over the entire motherboard with the nForce 200 also seeing a copper plate over it next to the Southbridge. Much like the 680i though things get very, very hot and overclocking the motherboard compounds this. At 1.92GHz FSB we hit 77 degrees Celsius and an untouchable heat. Asus have done a good job with their cooling and the blame lies on Nvidia for the excessive heat. It would have been nice to see a die shrink of the chipsets down to 65nm from 90nm which would have helped control the heat and power consumption level of the chipsets. Republic of Gamers logo also fit over the copper heatsink with a light underneath it to highlight it on the main middle heatsink which now takes up all the area between the CPU, video card, and RAM slots.

The Striker II also features a number of LEDs onboard the motherboard which warn the user of possibly dangerous voltage settings. There are four LEDs on the motherboard which are color coded going from green/yellow/red that see what identify what the voltage status is from normal, warning, to dangerous levels on the physical motherboard which Asus calls the Voltiminder.

One of the reasons the Striker II is such a good overclocker is due to the 8 phase power design and what Asus call El Capless. They've removed a number of the cylinder capacitors on the motherboard and instead replaced them with chipstyle polymer aluminum electrolyte capacitors which are normally used in server systems for better spacing and overall thermal dynamics.

Another feature is Asus EPU technology which digitally monitors and tunes CPU power supply as need requires which Asus claims in combination with AI gear can save 58.6% of power usage in some settings.

The audio is another add-in PCI-Express card this time called the SupremeFX II with eight channel support.

The LCD poster has also been moved externally into from the Striker, connecting onto the motherboard to a nice LCD readout with a stand. This can alert users to errors if the system has problems starting and help locate exactly what is causing the problem.

And as with Asus other high-end motherboards there are onboard switches for "Reset", "Power On", and "Clear CMOS" functions all done with the push of a button. The "Clear CMOS" button is now in a much better position on the front panel of the motherboard so one can reach it even if the motherboard is in a case. This is a helpful feature for those enthusiasts who keep their motherboard outside of a case especially in heavy overclocking or testing situations.

The Striker II also now features native DDR2 1066 support with two phase power support in order to lower power consumption and also reduce heat. Other features include the standard C.P.R. to bring back systems automatically if you overclock has failed, Asus O.C. Profile to save and load custom BIOS settings, dual-gigabit LAN, Firewire connector on the back panel including an expansion with another firewire connector in addition to two more USB ports, and finally the board.

The hardware and software bundle is also amazing for the Striker II Formula. Besides Asus' software and drivers they also include the full version of Relic's excellent Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, a great follow-up to Company of Heroes. And if you want to give your new high-end system a benchmark to go through they include the full version of Futuremark's 3DMark 2006 SE, and Kaspersky Anti-Virus.

The rest of the accessories include a Ultra DMA 133/100/66 cable, floppy cable, Serial ATA cables, Serial ATA power cables, IO/Shield, 3-way SLI bridge, Asus SLI bridge, Asus Optional Fans, LCD poster, SupremeFX II Audio card, 3-in-1 Asus Q-Connector Kit, cable ties, and the Firewire and USB 2.0 module.

Now let's move onto the BIOS.

Here are screenshots of some of the BIOS options in the Striker II. You'll notice a few unique ones described below as well as a green, red, and yellow font indicating normal, dangerous, and warning voltages.

As always Asus has a very good BIOS in their Extreme Tweaking section allowing one to manage tons of settings. One of these new features is the CPU level up feature which automatically sets the settings for a certain type of CPU, increasing the FSB, voltage, etc., to meet the clock speed of those processors.

The CPU voltage setting can be adjusted from 1.1v-2.4v at intervals of .00625V, the CPU PLL voltage's range is from 1.5V-3.0V at intervals of .02V, the CPU VTT Voltage has a range of 1.2V-2.46V with intervals of .02V, memory voltage with a range of 1.8V-3.4V with intervals .02V, NB Core range of 1.2V-3.0V in intervals of .02V, the SB Core Voltage with a range of 1.5V-1.85V and intervals of .05V, 1.2V HT of 1.2V to 1.55V with intervals of .005V, bridge core voltage with a range of 1.2V-1.95V at intervals of .05V, DDRII Controller Ref Voltage range of +30mv to -30mv with intervals of .01V, DDRII Channel Ref Voltage range of +30mv to -30mv with an interval of .01V.

Although the 780i should perform almost exactly the same as the 680i we ran through some benchmarks to give you our system performance and also overclocked the motherboard as far as possible.

Our test system was Windows XP Professional SP2 with 8.1 Catalyst ATI Drivers and nForce 9.46 drivers.

All of this is within range of other 680i based boards and is a good performer.

Here's the RightMark analysis of the sound card.