I really liked that I could see the current voltages and temperatures right where I was performing their adjustments. However, the voltages displayed in a single line are a little hard to perceive. You have to focus and determine that 1.111 V is the processor core voltage, 1.819 V - CPU PLL Voltage, and 1.085 V- QPI/DRAM Core Voltage. Just like in case with the memory timings, it would be much more convenient if these voltages were displayed in a separate table column, each opposite to the corresponding parameter.

Processor core voltage can now be set as is, if the “CPU voltage Control” parameter is set to Absolute (VID), or in a relative form. In case of Relative (Offset) setting, we will simply add the chosen value to the nominal CPU Vcore. By the way, it is very convenient that you don’t have to use “+” and “-“ keys or navigation arrows to go through the list of supported values in the drop-down menu. You can enter the desired number using your keyboard and the mainboard will set the closest value to the number entered. If the setting is too high, it will be highlighted yellow and then red. In some cases you may get a warning message.

Overall, despite a few drawbacks we pointed out in the “Extreme Tweaker” section, its new functionality looks very impressive. We will get back to some of the drawbacks later, and now let’s move over to the “Advanced” section.

As we have already promised, this is where you can find the extra “CPU Configuration” sub-section. However, we are primarily interested in a different sub-section: “LCD Poster Control”. It allows configuring the information that will be displayed on the external LCD Poster display, changing the operational mode for the LED indicators or turn them off completely.

In the “Power” section the biggest changes occurred in “Hardware Monitor” sub-section. Now when you get there, you won’t see any parameter values, but just a list of additional sub-sections.

To see the current voltages, you have to access the first sub-section.

The second sub-section will tell you how much the temperatures have increased and will allow setting maximum allowed temperatures in the interval from 70 to 100 °C. There is a 10 °C increment. You can turn this feature off completely, if you want.

The next sub-section will show you the rotation speed of the connected fans, and the last one allows configuring the fan rotation speed control.

Everything is perfect, except the addition of several new sub-sections. True, if you gather all available parameters in a single “Hardware Monitor” section, like it was before, there will be so many of them that the entire list won’t fit into a single screen. So what? “Extreme Tweaker” section is also pretty big, but everything is right there when you need it and you don’t have to jump from one section to another looking for the necessary settings. And in “Hardware Monitor” section they did it the other way around, making us jump from sub-section to sub-section. I believe they should have left the older data representation form when everything was in a single section.

Now let’s go over to the section called “Tools”, where we will find a number of familiar sub-sections and a few new things.

I consider Asus EZ Flash 2 utility for BIOS updating built into the BIOS itself to be the most informative, functional and convenient of all programs like that. Its interface, however, reminds me of the file manager that is why it is fairly easy to find the presaved BIOS version for further upgrade. It supports not only removable media but also standard hard disk drives, it can read the data from the partitions formatted in NTFS. During the BIOS updating procedure you will get the date and version number for the current and new BIOS version together with the mainboard model name it supports. This time we didn’t notice any serious changes in the functionality, however, more aggressive and intuitively clear use of color makes this utility even more informative. Once you’ve started the BIOS updating procedure, the old version is erased and the bar at the bottom gets dark, after that the new BIOS version is loaded and the bar fills with yellow color. Green color indicates that the BIOS has been successfully updated and the procedure completed without errors.

The Asus O.C. Profile window looks very similar. This utility allows using external media to save BIOS settings profiles. It also allows creating copies of the settings profiles and even exchanging the profiles with other users. But in reality the built-in memory is still used more often.  This feature has also undergone some long-awaited and noticeable changes recently: instead of two profiles you can now save up to eight, and you can even provide each of them with its own unique name that will remind you of its contents.

I believe you will agree with me that the BIOS of Asus Rampage Gene II mainboard is absolutely outstanding. Far not every full-size overclocker mainboard can boast an impressive set of features like the one we have just seen by this small microATX solution. However, this is not the end of our BIOS discussion yet.