Overclocking The Rampage III GENE

The ASUS Rampage III Gene is a small form factor Micro ATX motherboard that packs a powerful punch! This board begs to ask how well a small form factor system can overclock. Here you will see if the Gene will live up to the expectations of its legendary big brother the Rampage III Extreme. At the hart of the Rampage III GENE is its the X58 chip set capable of Quad SLI, and Quadfire-X the LGA1366 socket board is capable of triple channel DDR3 and up 24GB of memory.

System Specifications

ROG AV8 open air case (22.22c Ambient Air Temperature)
ASUS GTX 580 Graphics Card 
ASUS Rampage III Gene Motherboard 
Intel Core i7 980X Extreme edition 3.33GHz Processor
Corsair Dominator GTX3 3x2GB 2000MHz C7 Triple Channel Memory
Corsair F60 Solid state 60Gb drive
Antec 1,200W High Current Pro Power Supply
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit Service Pack 1

Processor: Intel Core i7 980X
Core Voltage: 1.144V
Temperature: 27c
Core Speed: 3.33GHz
Uncore Speed: 2670MHz
Base Clock Speed: 133MHz
Quick Path Interconnect Speed: 3200MHz

System Memory:

3x Corsair Dominator GTX 4 2533MHz 2GB

Voltage: 1.66V
Temperature 25c
Speed: 1333MHz
Divider “Ratio”: 2:10
Timings: CL9-9-9-24 74 1T

Click to enlarge

4GHz Core i7 980X

Processor: Intel Core i7 980X
Core Voltage: 1.360V
Temperature: 75c
Core Speed: 4.0128GHz
Uncore Speed: 2889.2MHz
Base Clock Speed: 160.5MHz
Quick Path Interconnect Speed: 2889.3MHz

System Memory:

3x Corsair Dominator GTX 4 2,533MHz 2GB
Voltage: 1.66V
Speed: 963MHz
Divider “Ratio”: 2:12
Timings: CL9-9-9-28 98 2T

Extreme Tweaker BIOS Settings

Set Tuning mode to Exteme OC
Set AI Overclock tuner to manual
Increase CPU multiplier to 30X
Enable CPU Load-Line Calibration
Increase CPU voltage to 1.3V
Set DRAM bus Voltage to 1.65
Disable CPU Spread Spectrum
Disable PCIE Spread Spectrum

Advanced CPU configuration

Disable Intel SpeedStep
Disable Intel C-State Tech

Press F10 save changes and exit, press F8 and boot off of your MemtestX86 disk wait for atleast 1 full pass of error checking to complete before contunuing to boot windows.

If no memory errors are found, boot to windows and run Prime 95 Torture test select In-place large FFTs. Install Core Temp we do not want the Maximum CPU temperature to exceed 80*C. I recommend an error free pass of Prime 95 for 24hr to ensure system stability.

Random Access Memory Overclocking
Now we move into memory overclocking. Set DRAM Timing Control to Auto then manually change the DRAM clock frequency to the rating of you memory in this case *2133MHz. Also change the DRAM voltage to match the rating of your memory *1.65V
and press F10 to save and exit.

Boot into windows and open CPU ID to verify your memory clock speed.

Run a stress testing program like Prime 95 or a quick test like Wprime. To ensure stability I suggest creating a Memtest X86 CD to check for memory errors.

Originally posted by V2-V3, TeamROG OC Moderator.