Stability

We reset the BIOS to its default settings and to Foxconn's advantage, for a change testing with all of the memory slots filled mean just three modules and not six. We fired up Prime95 torture test on every core and overlayed 3DMark06 looping over the top of it to test the entire CPU-memory-graphics subsystem.

Without any extra cooling on the motherboard (except a small fan for the memory), we left the board for 24 36 hours (I missed a day) to come back and find it was still churning away and was entirely responsive with neither Prime95 or 3DMark06 failing. This is a great result for Foxconn - underneath, the BIOS is solid and at its core it's a very stable board.

Power Consumption

With a specific Core i7 920 CPU, 6GB (3x2GB) of memory, a GeForce GTX 280 graphics card and the BIOS set to its default values we tested with the Intel C-States enabled for the CPU throttling function. Since the Foxconn doesn't feature any other hardware/software control for the VRM area unlike other brands. All the power saving is left entirely to Intel's Core i7 CPU.



When idle, the power consumption isn't too bad, briefly matching the performance of other boards and even undercutting the Asus P6T Deluxe with its EPU² enabled. Under load we found the Foxconn took a while to warm up and plateu out while it increased its power consumption. To start, it frittered around the 245W mark, but after 30 minutes under load it had steadily increased this to 270W where it remained. At this power use, it guzzles some 30W more than every other X58 board we've tested which is not entirely surprisingly given the high quantity of high performance hardware included, but it does go against Foxconn's claims for "greater efficiency" somewhat.

Overclocking

The Blood Rage was happy to run stably with a QPI of 215MHz with our Core i7 920 using a 12x multiplier - well above what we rate to be "average" at 200MHz, but this isn't unexpected for a board specifically catered to do this sort of horsepower. To achieve this, we needed to add 160mV to the CPU VTT, increase the QPI PLL voltage to 1.997V (from 1.8V) and raise the X58 IOH voltage to 1.3V (from 1.1V).

For the same 920 CPU, now using its maximum multiplier of 20x, we found it could achieve a QPI Base Clock of 200MHz and a clock speed of 4GHz solid, adding 240mV on the QPI and vCore to 1.5125V and with the Base clock at 200MHz, this meant the memory ran at 1,600MHz. Compared to another extreme overclocking board like the Asus Rampage II Extreme, it's about ten percent slower performance in total overclock availability with the same hardware setup.