Intel has a fairly straightforward roadmap. Each year is a new architecture followed a shrink of the architecture the next year, this has been known as a “Tick-Tock” cycle. This year we are greeted with the “Tock” in the form of Haswell. These new chips come with their own new sockets (LGA 1150) and new chipsets (Z87, B87, H87 and so forth). With every new product launch from Intel, the market is flooded with a new generation of motherboards from all vendors, each with its own USP and each trying to make a niche for itself in the overcrowded and oversaturated market, and this is where our journey begins today.
Asus has done a fantastic job of segregating its products to fit all the price brackets. Best known of all these sub-brands is the infamous Republic Of Gamers or ROG as its more affectionately known. The ROG lineup consists of broadly two product lines, the Rampage line which caters to the socket 2011 and the Maximus line which caters to the other sockets. The Maximus line is further divided into the Extreme (Top End no holds barred, everything except the kitchen sink type motherboard), Formula (The slightly less potent cousin of the Extreme), Gene (The M-ATX cousin of the Formula) and this year it also includes the Impact (A potent M-ITX board).
Today, we shall take a look at the Gene and see if it can deliver its promise of being the a small, but powerful motherboard given its M-ATX form factor.
