backtop

Hardware ASUS Announces Striker Extreme
Anh Tuan Huynh (Blog) - November 8, 2006 7:05 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 38 comment(s) - last by Clauzii.. on Nov 11 at 7:11 PM
NVIDIA's nForce 680i SLI for the extreme enthusiast

ASUS today announced its new Striker Extreme motherboard for extreme enthusiasts. The new Striker Extreme is part of ASUS’ new Republic of Gamer series engineered for enthusiasts with a touch of style. The new Striker Extreme features NVIDIA’s recently announced nForce 680i SLI core-logic and rated to run processors up to a 1,333 MHz front-side bus. Intel quad-core processors and NVIDIA Quad-SLI technologies are also supported on the Striker Extreme.

The Striker Extreme features plenty of extras to please enthusiasts as well. ASUS has equipped the Striker Extreme with an LCD Poster on the back I/O for easy system boot-process diagnostics. In addition to the LCD Poster the back I/O features EL lighting for easy identification of the ports in dark areas. Speaking of lighting the Striker Extreme features LED’s strategically placed around the motherboards that will light up the motherboard with a flip of a switch—located on the rear I/O. To further ease tweaking ASUS has equipped the Striker Extreme with three onboard switches. Power, reset and reset CMOS switches are available directly on the motherboard.

The last unique feature to the ASUS Striker Extreme is the SupremeFX audio card. This audio card is home to an Analog Devices SoundMAX high definition audio codec. With onboard SoundMAX high definition audio, users can experience true EAX 2.0 positional audio and future support Sonic Focus technologies in Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Vista.  Also bundled with the Striker Extreme is a stereo array microphone that works with SoundMAX noise cancellation algorithms. Also supported by the onboard audio is DTS Connect technology for multi-channel audio encoding.

Other notable features of the ASUS Striker Extreme include three PCI Express x16 slots, one PCI Express x1, two PCI, six SATA, two e.SATA, 10 USB, two 1394a and support for dual-channel DDR2 800/667/533 memory.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
Explain to me why..
By SilthDraeth on 11/9/2006 1:01:17 AM , Rating: 2
A $400 EXTREME Enthusiast motherboard still has legacy keyboard and mouse ports?

Am I the only one that wishes those ports would just disappear?

I know that some people still do not have USB keyboards, and mice, but I doubt this board targets those people.




RE: Explain to me why..
By QueBert on 11/9/2006 6:06:56 AM , Rating: 5
I don't know man, I dropped $250 on my Logitech diNovo, which oddly enough has PS2 for the keyboard. Unless this breaks I plan to keep it as my KB forever. I'd hate to buy a MB next year and have it not have a PS2 port :(


RE: Explain to me why..
By Lord Evermore on 11/9/2006 10:05:32 AM , Rating: 5
No you're not. But I bet I'm also not the only one who wishes people would stop complaining about ports that take up all of a cubic inch of space on a board and a half inch on the IO panel, and do in fact still come in handy at times. USB configuration fails in the OS? OK, just plug in a PS/2 keyboard and fix it. It's not like they're serial ports or parallel ports which almost nothing uses anymore, and for which you can buy a cheap PCI card if you need.


RE: Explain to me why..
By Odeen on 11/9/06, Rating: 0
RE: Explain to me why..
By mindless1 on 11/10/2006 2:40:36 AM , Rating: 4
Funny, most of us don't find this a problem nor sapping performance. Are you sure you aren't jumping to conclusions?


Price
By gramboh on 11/8/2006 10:11:17 PM , Rating: 4
$399US at ZZF, ouch! I've never seen an ethusiast board much above $300US, only server boards.




RE: Price
By Assimilator87 on 11/8/2006 11:34:00 PM , Rating: 3
I have a feeling that motherboard manufacturers are part of a price fixing scheme just like the DRAM manufacturers. My Abit AN7, which is one of the best Socket A motherboards was only $95, but nowadays enthusiast boards cost $200 minimum and usually hang around $250. It's rediculous.


RE: Price
By Jedi2155 on 11/9/2006 12:26:33 AM , Rating: 2
I agree on this....$300 for that maybe, but $400 is just insane.


RE: Price
By clayclws on 11/9/2006 4:40:10 AM , Rating: 2
You used to be able to buy high end graphics card with that. I remember my GeForce Ti 4600 was only RM1200 (USD324). Man, how prices have rised beyond affordable.


RE: Price
By JNo on 11/9/2006 11:31:15 AM , Rating: 2
risen?
risible...


LCD is neat.
By Clauzii on 11/8/06, Rating: 0
RE: LCD is neat.
By Chillin1248 (blog) on 11/9/2006 2:05:34 AM , Rating: 3
Unmovable, it is a diagnostic display mainly which is located on the rear connection panels of the motherboard (back of the case). Though I am sure that some intrepid programmer will be able so that if you had a G5 keyboard which has a LCD screen you can read the same info.

-------
Chillin


RE: LCD is neat.
By Clauzii on 11/9/2006 7:00:15 PM , Rating: 1
ALL keyboards should have LCDs:

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/

And the fact, that this keybord hooks on to the PC as a storage(!) device, opens up possibilities, the PCs should have had from the start.


RE: LCD is neat.
By mindless1 on 11/10/2006 2:42:43 AM , Rating: 2
It looks a lot like one of those neat ideas that ends up breaking down in actual use after awhile.


RE: LCD is neat.
By Clauzii on 11/11/2006 10:25:32 AM , Rating: 2
???


RE: LCD is neat.
By Lazarus Dark on 11/9/2006 2:24:32 AM , Rating: 2
yea, I don't look at the back too much. On the mobo visible through a window would have been a better idea, I mean they put "mood lighting" on the mobo why not the lcd visible from the window too. also would have given room for more airflow out the back over those heatpipes. I would like to see a pic of the lighting effect inside a dark case, i'm afraid it might look cheesy.

also disappointed theres no wifi/ap. I'll half to take up one of those ethernet ports now for internet. I actually had a use for dual ethernet. well maybe i could just add a $30 usb wifi dongle instead.


RE: LCD is neat.
By Clauzii on 11/9/2006 1:21:18 PM , Rating: 1
With this MB-price, I think it should have been on a cable for freedom of placement. Moving the whole PC to look at the LCD - kinda not so "Exclusive" on a $399 part.

PS: I'm not bashing this board or anything like that, but I would expect something smarter on a MB that's carrying a pricetag of a small and complete PC.


RE: LCD is neat.
By Clauzii on 11/11/2006 7:11:56 PM , Rating: 2
Nothing wrong there!


Great looking/performing board, but....
By natewildes on 11/8/2006 9:00:19 PM , Rating: 2
The northbridge/southbridge heatpipes/heatsinks look they'll block the majority of 3-rd market coolers, and the intel stock cooler looks like it'll be a tight fit!




RE: Great looking/performing board, but....
By CoreGamer on 11/8/2006 10:01:10 PM , Rating: 2
The people who this board was targeted for probably dont use air cooling ;)


By mindless1 on 11/10/2006 2:44:05 AM , Rating: 2
Quite untrue, the whole point of having the radiators around the CPU socket is to leverage the airflow from the heatsink fan.


By Thmstec on 11/8/2006 10:03:28 PM , Rating: 2
But they won't be using aircoolering, they will for sure be using water-cooling! /sarcasm


Heatpipes
By Lord Evermore on 11/9/2006 10:13:07 AM , Rating: 2
The heatpipe craze is just getting out of hand. Geez. Does the southbridge really need a heatpipe when it's just that one little thing, and adds its own heat to the other chips? And the MOSFETs being in the same loop as everything else? Cheaper and just as effective to put a wider heatsink on the southbridge (of course making sure it didn't block a video card), and separate heatsinks for everything else.




RE: Heatpipes
By mindless1 on 11/10/2006 2:49:08 AM , Rating: 2
Aren't you overlooking that Asus tends to make several geekier versions of the same board? The board you're talking about would probably be the next notch down in price, but otherwise almost identical.


RE: Heatpipes
By Stele on 11/10/2006 6:15:53 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Aren't you overlooking that Asus tends to make several geekier versions of the same board? The board you're talking about would probably be the next notch down in price, but otherwise almost identical.

I'd love to agree with you there, but sadly it's highly unlikely to be the case. Which is a shame since the ROG boards tend to have some neat features (such as polymer electrolytic capacitors and perhaps to a lesser extent the SupremeFX audio daughterboard).

Indeed, it would have been perfect if Asus made a version of ROG boards exactly identical save for the 1337 (to some: lame) EL I/O panel and LEDs ... or, perhaps more to the point, implement the aforementioned neat features to non-ROG products as well. For some reason, the logistic and technical benefits of doing so seem unimportant to Asus. Argh.

Such a non-ROG version of the board would, I think, be great for the rest of users who'd rather not pay an unnecessary premium for slightly questionable features - which often merely serve to give manufacturers the excuse to jack the price of the board up to the sky. IMHO Lord Evermore's point about features costing 3 dollars to put in but adding 50 to the price is a very apt one, and is probably one reason Asus continues to keep the polymer capacitors and audio daughterboard exclusive to the ROG products - it helps lengthen the list of 'exclusive features' in order to justify the insane prices. Oh well.

I wonder if the EL I/O panel has been improved to illuminate not just the port labels but also the port openings as well (all it'd take is a thin EL outline around each of them)...

And where does one connect the included kitchen sink to?


Note to Asus
By Operandi on 11/9/2006 12:40:37 AM , Rating: 2
Quality products don't need lame marketing titles like "Republic of Gamers" and "Striker Extreme". Leave the marketing to likes of DFI and let the board stand on it's own merits.




RE: Note to Asus
By hubajube on 11/9/2006 12:16:22 PM , Rating: 3
Who cares about the name as long as it does the job!


Striker Extreme
By marcusDOS on 11/9/2006 3:32:08 AM , Rating: 2
Check specs at ASUS website http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=3...
they pretty munch convincing.




RE: Striker Extreme
By Googer on 11/9/2006 4:32:21 AM , Rating: 3
There is a small cult of people who still love using vintage keyboards. Older keyboards (various 15+ yr old dell, IBM, gateway, CVT Avant Stellar, etc) have a stong tactical feel that I have not been anble to find in any other modern USB keyboard. When one comes out, I will be the first to consider replacing my antique.


Remove the SupremeFX Card
By AggressorPrime on 11/9/2006 12:30:54 AM , Rating: 2
The one thing I don't like about the motherboard is the SupremeFX card. It is worse than X-Fi and gamers use X-Fi. If they replaced that slot with a normal PCIe 1x slot or a PCI slot, people would have more room for expansion. Considering one gets 3 BFG GeForce 8800 GTXs that are watercooled, he would have room for an X-Fi, a Bigfoot network card, and a PCIe 1x TV/FM tuner card. There are still more things that systems need (like AI cards). Everything else looks awesome though.




RE: Remove the SupremeFX Card
By Lord Evermore on 11/9/2006 10:09:57 AM , Rating: 2
AI cards?

Is kinda lame to make that a non-standard PCIe x1 slot, but I guess they assume if you paid for the board, you'll use that sound card no matter what. And of course it costs them 3 dollars to put it in, and adds 50 to the price.


wow
By soydios on 11/9/2006 1:15:15 AM , Rating: 2
That has to be the most over-the-top motherboard I've ever seen.
The heatpipes look like a CNPS9700 will fit inside them, so I'm fine with that!
I find it very cool that this motherboard retained a lot of features from the Asus concept motherboard from ~six months ago (I don't remember it's name, but the rear LCD panel, rear LED lights, and onboard switches are from it).




RE: wow
By marcusDOS on 11/9/2006 3:19:01 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
(I don't remember it's name, but the rear LCD panel, rear LED lights, and onboard switches are from it).

Yes and you mean the "Crosshair", R.O.G.'s moster AM2 mobo. You can check specs here http://rog.asus.com/ for the AM2 version. And that makes this one the LGA775 version. This mobo is the same as the P5N32-SLI Premium/WiFi-AP (nforce 590 SLI) with the exception of the WiFi. All the goods from ASUS and the "gaming specialty" from the Republic of Games. My thoughts are that this mobo would be great with the WiFi included, but w/o that is just another fancy mobo.
(But that's just me :P)


Where are the nie mATX boards?
By VooDooAddict on 11/9/2006 10:25:10 AM , Rating: 2
Am I the only one wishing for highend mATX boards?

If I want mATX SLI my only choice is still the mATX s939 EVGA nForce4 board.

The only mATX nice Core 2 Boards I've found use the G965 instead of the overclockable P965




RE: Where are the nie mATX boards?
By mindless1 on 11/10/2006 2:52:25 AM , Rating: 2
Yes you are the only one. Squishing two video cards worthy of SLI together then cramming against the floor of a case isn't so great an idea, and most people that into gaming will want a sound card, and the mATX will tend to put the northbridge in an awkward position where it might conflict with the long video cards.

I'm not suggesting it wouldn't be possible to do it (as I don't know), but suspect you'd have to strip the board down quite a bit in features, leaving it anything but high-end at that point. Features take up board real-estate too, not just slots.


The Finland Edition?
By jsantala on 11/9/2006 4:54:56 AM , Rating: 3
Is this the Finland Edition or what? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland




beast
By AnotherGuy on 11/8/2006 10:34:39 PM , Rating: 2
it definitly looks like a beast thoe... but not $400 worth it :/




S-ata-ports
By ATWindsor on 11/9/2006 4:51:39 AM , Rating: 2
I wish it had more sata-ports 8 internal is minimum for a board of this class IMHO

AtW




"Nowadays you can buy a CPU cheaper than the CPU fan." -- Unnamed AMD executive

DailyTech Poll
Which web browser do you use on your primary personal machine? 






44 Comments









botimage
Copyright 2009 DailyTech LLC. - RSS Feed | Advertise | About Us | Ethics | FAQ | Terms, Conditions & Privacy Information | Kristopher Kubicki