Layout and features II
Part of the Republic of Gamers (ROG) line, the board has a few decent features for the enthusiast The iROG chips interface with the BIOS and give granular control over practically every facet pertaining to performance.
Look at the bottom and enthusiasts will be glad to see the red 'START' (power) button, along with board-mounted reset and 'MemOK' buttons.
We've talked about the spatial restrictions that the two x16 PCIe slots impose and there's no way around that.
Piling on the features, a bunch of chips add in FireWire 1394a support and better-than-standard audio through the use of Creative's SupremeFX X-Fi on-board sound.
Chunky heatsinks, allied to a heatpipe, run fairly coolly even when the board is overclocked and running full tilt.
The I/O section is a manifestation of the features on the board, of course, and we have eSATA, FireWire, USB, Gigabit LAN, eight-channel audio, and optical-out. Handily, ASUS also adds in a clear-CMOS button, meaning you don't have to open up, presumably, a small-form-factor chassis if resetting the BIOS.
Summary
A board small on size but high on features, ASUS has done a good job integrating them all without too much pragmatic concession. In effect, the Rampage II GENE represents in a well-featured full-ATX board in a mATX form factor - and that's precisely the design aim, we imagine.