ASROCK K7S8XE+ REVIEW

"We are testing the ASROCK K7S8XE+ motherboard which is the latest Socket A motherboard from Asrock using the SIS748 chipset. The ASROCK K7S8XE+ will be compared to the earlier ASROCK K7S8X and motherboards using the VIA KT600 and Nforce2 Ultra chipsets. We also test the onboard sound on the ASROCK K7S8XE+ to see what the performance hit of using onboard 6 channel Xear3D sound has on performance. The games we will be benchmarking to show the performance of the ASROCK K7S8XE+ are:- Comanche4, Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament 2003 and X2 the Threat."

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

PROCESSOR	AMD ATHLON XP 3000
	AMD ATHLON XP 2500
	AMD ATHLON XP 1700
VIDEO CARD	SAPPHIRE RADEON 9600
ATI DRIVER	CATALYST v4.2
MOTHERBOARD	ASROCK K7S8XE+
	ASROCK K7S8X
MEMORY	512MB CRUCIAL PC3200 DDR
OPERATING SYSTEM	WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 1
DIRECTX VERSION	v9.0b

"WE HAVE USED A RESOLUTION OF 640x480 TO PREVENT THE RESULTS BEING VIDEO LIMITED. THE PERFORMANCE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ASROCK K7S8XE+ AND THE OLDER ASROCK K7S8X WAS QUITE SMALL WHEN USING THE SAME CPU. THE MAIN BENEFIT OF THE NEW ASROCK K7S8XE+ IS THAT IT CAN USE THE MORE POWERFUL PROCESSORS LIKE THE AMD ATHLON XP 3000 BECAUSE THE ASROCK K7S8XE+ CAN USE A 200MHZ FSB."

COMANCHE4

ASROCK K7S8XE+

	48
	45
	35

ASROCK K7S8X

	43
	34

ATHLON XP 3000 ATHLON XP 2500 ATHLON XP 1700

COMMENT - "Using the Athlon XP 2500 the ASROCK K7S8XE+ beats the ASROCK K7S8X by 5%, however when using the Athlon XP 3000 the ASROCK K7S8XE+ outperforms the ASROCK K7S8X by 11%."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Fullscreen Enabled
32Bit Colour Depth
Anti-Aliasing Disabled
Terrain Detail High
Object Detail High
Texture Quality High
Water Quality High
Shadows High
Particle Density High

QUAKE 3 ARENA

ASROCK K7S8XE+

	260
	240
	191

ASROCK K7S8X

	219
	177

ATHLON XP 3000 ATHLON XP 2500 ATHLON XP 1700

COMMENT - "Using the Athlon XP 2500 the ASROCK K7S8XE+ beats the ASROCK K7S8X by 9%, however when using the Athlon XP 3000 the ASROCK K7S8XE+ outperforms the ASROCK K7S8X by 16%."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Default GLdriver
GL Extensions on
1024x768 Video Mode
32Bit Colour Depth
Fullscreen on
Lightmap Lighting
32Bit Texture Quality
Demo four.dm_66

HIGH QUALITY
Geometic Detail Medium
75% Texture Detail
Trilinear Texture Filtering

UNREAL TOURNAMENT 2003

ASROCK K7S8XE+

	68
	63
	50

ASROCK K7S8X

	59
	48

ATHLON XP 3000 ATHLON XP 2500 ATHLON XP 1700

COMMENT - "Using the Athlon XP 2500 the ASROCK K7S8XE+ beats the ASROCK K7S8X by 7%, however when using the Athlon XP 3000 the ASROCK K7S8XE+ outperforms the ASROCK K7S8X by 14%."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Antalus Benchmark
Character Shadows Enabled
Decals Enabled
Dynamic Lighting Enabled
Detail Textures Enabled
Projectors Enabled
Foliage Enabled

X2 THE THREAT

ASROCK K7S8XE+

	47
	44
	34

ASROCK K7S8X

	39
	31

ATHLON XP 3000 ATHLON XP 2500 ATHLON XP 1700

COMMENT - "Using the Athlon XP 2500 the ASROCK K7S8XE+ beats the ASROCK K7S8X by 12%, however when using the Athlon XP 3000 the ASROCK K7S8XE+ outperforms the ASROCK K7S8X by 18%."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Fullscreen Enabled
Auto Quality Enabled
Anti-aliasing Disabled
Bumpmaps Enabled
Shadows Disabled

ONBOARD SOUND PERFORMANCE

6CHANNEL SOUND WITH XEAR3D DISABLED

	-26%
	-10%
	-8%

6CHANNEL SOUND WITH XEAR3D ENABLED

	-29%
	-13%
	-15%

QUAKE 3 ARENA SERIOUS SAM SE UT2003

LOWER IS BETTER!

OTHER MOTHERBOARDS

SISOFTWARE SANDRA (INTEGER MEMORY)

	2860
	2913
	2851

SISOFTWARE SANDRA (FLOATING MEMORY)

	2630
	2677
	2665

3DMARK 2001 SE

	13790
	13528
	14476

QUAKE 3 ARENA

	278
	250
	284

SIS748 VIA KT600 NFORCE2 ULTRA

COMMENT - "This section of the ASROCK K7S8XE+ review was completed after this review was originally completed. The results shouldn't be compared to the results obtained in the other sections of the review. The system used to benchmark all three of the motherboards was a xp3000 cpu, pc3200 memory and a geforce fx5900 xt video card. As you can see in the new section the ASROCK K7S8XE+ compares well against the KT600 and Nforce2, however this was due to the use of a performance bios which offers greater performance than the "official" bios available from the Asrock website. Although the K7S8XE+ loses to the Nforce2 it does beat the KT600 when using game benchmarks, when you consider the low cost of the K7SXE+ it has to be the winner out of the three motherboards!"

CONCLUSION - "The XP2500 shows a very impressive increase over the XP1700 which ofcourse is to be expected. The use of efficent memory settings has allowed the SIS748 to dominate the SIS746FX in all of the benchmarks. The difference between the XP2500 and XP3000 was much smaller than I had expected and I believe that the cause is the Radeon 9600 video card used for this review. Both of the motherboards tested in this review worked without any problems at all, the SIS746FX became unstable but only with extreme memory settings. The only major difference between the two motherboards is the SIS748's ability for safe overclocking and it's offical support for the 400mhz front side bus. This allows the SIS748 to use the full Athlon XP range unlike the SIS746FX. The ASROCK K7S8XE+ motherboard has met all of my expectations and is a great feature packed motherboard, when you consider it's low price it's performance and stability are even more impressive."

ULTIMATE HARDWARE AWARD THE ASROCK K7S8XE+
90%