We've already taken a good look at the Maximus III Formula motherboard, but the kind folks at ASUS have now decided to shed a little light on a couple of undocumented features.
Before we get to those, a quick recap on the board. The Maximus III Formula, part of ASUS' Republic of Gamers range, will be an ultra high-end P55 board for Intel's socket LGA1156 processors launching next month - namely Core i5, and, technically Lynnfield-based Core i7s at a later date, too.
The red, black and white board has the aesthetics to suit many a gamer, and it's armed with a trio of PCIe x16 expansion slots - supporting both SLI and Crossfire, in single x16 or dual x8 configurations. With all 16 processor-provided lanes occupied, the third PCIe x16 slot is facilitated by the chipset and operates at x4.
With Intel's CPU architecture leaving no need for an IOH (Input/Output Hub), there's plenty of room to work with - and that's helped by dual-channel memory slots, as opposed to the tri-channel layout found on the majority of X58 boards.
So what makes the Maximus III Formula stand out from ASUS' other P55 boards? Well, one feature - that also appeared on the Maximus II Formula - is "Speeding HDD". The board features a total of 10 SATA connectors, but the two you see highlighted in red are of the Speeding HDD variety and allow for attached drives to be easily configured in RAID.
Another enthusiast-specific feature is the "ROG Connect" port you see to the right of the the board's USB ports. It'll allow you to connect the board to another system, say a notebook or netbook, from which you'll be able to link to the board's embedded iROG and make hardware-level tweaks in real time. Useful for the overclocking crowd, we reckon.
It's a board choc-full of high-end functionality, but that might just prove to be its biggest problem. ASUS hasn't yet announced pricing, but we wouldn't be surprised to see this board arrive close to the £200 mark. If so, the enthusiast might be inclined to take the step up to full-fat X58.
