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Update: This review has been updated with mention that ASRock plains to change the BIOS, and of course you can use a DVI-to-HDMI dongle for video out. In our rush to the Phenom II editor's day the scores also got flipped for a few numbers between the ASRock K10 and 780Full HD. Correct scores are now up.

With high profile launches of AMD's 780G and 790GX chipset some may forget that Nvidia also offers a very formidable integrated graphics solution as well with the GeForce 8200 and 8300. We've looked at a few of these boards so far and today we have another to look at with the ASRock K10N78-1394.

This ASRock board isn't a micro-ATX board as some might expect for a board with integrated graphics but instead is full ATX. The board uses Nvidia's GeForce 8200 chipset which is a little below their GeForce 8300 chipset which is also out right now.

The ASRock features solid state capacitors, supports CPUs up to 140W so the most power hungry AMD has out so far, features ASRock Duracrap for longer life, and ASRock states is AM3 CPU ready. Obviously there are no AM3 CPUs out yet but we should start seeing them in the market in the new year. A 2.6GHz Hypertransport Bus is feature on this new Nvidia chipset.

Other features include Hybrid SLI which allows for the integrated graphics to work with additional Nvidia graphics card in the PCI-E slot for of course SLI, DX10 support, DDR2 1066 memory, and decoding of H.264 HD content.

Onboard expansion inculdes 6 SATA ports, a Firewire header, 4 DDR2 memory slots, three PCI slots, two PCI-Express, one 16X PCI-E slot, and one IDE connector.

External includes one Gigabit Ethernet port, six USB 2.0 ports, a PS/2 mouse and keyboard port, E-SATA port, Firewire port, VGA output, DVI output, and 7.1 analog audio output. There is no HDMI video output so HTPC enthusiasts this might not be the right board for you but a DVI-to-HDMI dongle can address this.

The hardware bundle is the basics with two SATA cables, a molex-to-SATA power adapter, IDE cable, floppy cable, and I/O shield.

Here are the technical specs from ASRock.

CPU - Support for Socket AM2+ / AM2 processors: AMD Phenom™ FX / Phenom / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core / Athlon X2 Dual-Core / Athlon 64 / Sempron processor
- Supports CPU up to 140W
- AMD LIVE!™ Ready
- Supports AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet Technology
- FSB 2600 MHz (5.2 GT/s)
- Supports Untied Overclocking Technology
- Supports Hyper-Transport 3.0 (HT 3.0) Technology
- AM3 CPU Ready
Chipset - NVIDIA® GeForce 8200
Memory - Dual Channel DDR2 memory technology
- 4 x DDR2 DIMM slots
- Supports DDR2 1066/800/667/533 non-ECC, un-buffered memory
- Max. capacity of system memory: 16GB*

*Due to the operating system limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® XP and Windows® Vista™. For Windows® XP 64-bit and Windows® Vista™ 64-bit with 64-bit CPU, there is no such limitation.
BIOS - 8Mb AMI BIOS
- AMI Legal BIOS
- Supports "Plug and Play"
- ACPI 1.1 Compliance Wake Up Events
- Supports Jumperfree
- SMBIOS 2.3.1 Support
- CPU, DRAM, Chipset Core, HTT Voltage Multi-adjustment
- Supports Smart BIOS
Audio, Video and Networking
Graphics - Integrated NVIDIA® GeForce 8200
- DX10 VGA, Pixel Shader 4.0
- Max. shared memory 512MB
- Dual VGA Output: Support DVI-D and D-Sub ports by independent display controllers
- Supports HDCP function with DVI-D port
- Supports 1080p Blu-ray (BD) / HD-DVD playback with DVI-D port
- NVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD Ready
Audio - 7.1 CH Windows® Vista™ Premium Level HD Audio (ALC888 Audio Codec)
- Chipset embedded HDMI Audio
LAN - Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
- Giga PHY RTL8211CL-GR
- Supports Wake-On-LAN
Expansion / Connectivity
Slots - 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (green @ x16 mode)
- 2 x PCI Express x1 slots
- 3 x PCI slots
- Supports NVIDIA® Hybrid SLI™
Connector - 6 x SATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5, JBOD), NCQ, AHCI and "Hot Plug" functions
- 1 x eSATAII 3.0 Gb/s connector (shared with 1 SATAII port)
- 1 x ATA133 IDE connector (supports 2 x IDE devices)
- 1 x Floppy connector
- 1 x IR header
- 1 x COM port header
- 1 x HDMI_SPDIF header
- 1 x IEEE 1394 header
- CPU/Chassis FAN connector
- 24 pin ATX power connector
- 8 pin 12V power connector
- CD in header
- Front panel audio connector
- 2 x USB 2.0 headers (support 4 USB 2.0 ports)
- 1 x USB/WiFi header
Rear Panel I/O I/O Panel
- 1 x PS/2 Mouse Port
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard Port
- 1 x VGA/D-Sub Port
- 1 x VGA/DVI-D Port
- 6 x Ready-to-Use USB 2.0 Ports
- 1 x eSATAII Port
- 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED)
- 1 x IEEE 1394 Port
- HD Audio Jack: Side Speaker / Rear Speaker / Central / Bass / Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone
Other Features / Miscellaneous
Unique Feature - ASRock OC Tuner
- Intelligent Energy Saver
- Hybrid Booster:
- CPU Frequency Stepless Control
- ASRock U-COP
- Boot Failure Guard (B.F.G.)
- ASRock AM2 Boost: ASRock Patented Technology to boost memory performance up to 12.5%
Support CD - Drivers, Utilities, AntiVirus Software (Trial Version)
Accessories - Quick Installation Guide, Support CD, I/O Shield
- Floppy/ATA 133 Cables
- 2 x SATA Data Cables (optional)
- 1 x SATA 1 to 1 Power Cable (optional)
Hardware Monitor - CPU Temperature Sensing
- Chassis Temperature Sensing
- CPU Fan Tachometer
- Chassis Fan Tachometer
- CPU Quiet Fan
- Voltage Monitoring: +12V, +5V, +3.3V, Vcore
Form Factor - ATX Form Factor: 12.0-in x 8.4-in, 30.5 cm x 21.3 cm
- Solid Capacitor for CPU power
OS - Microsoft® Windows® XP / XP Media Center / XP 64-bit / Vista™ / Vista™ 64-bit compliant
Certifications - FCC, CE, WHQL

This ASRock BIOS is similar to their others and allows you to load a number of pre-installed BIOS options. One thing we didn't like when overclocking adjusting the values returned to zero for the voltages which is a problem if you don't know the voltage of the Northbridge for the GeForce 8200 offhand. ASRock says this will be updated in a BIOS update.

We overclocked our Phenom 9950 BE to 3GHz, which is about average for what we've obtained for this CPU.

Here is our test system

Our test system was Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 with Catalyst 8.10 drivers and Forceware 180.

We've covered the GeForce 8200 Southbridge before and as usual with Nvidia chipsets it is fast with no problems. We decided to compare to another 780G ASRock board, this one with no sideport memory to see how the 780G and GeForce 8200 compete on a more level playing field.

The 8200 based K10N78-1394 does a lot better than we expected when you remove Sideport memory of the 780G from the equation but the 780G board still comes out on top.

World in Conflict is a popular strategy game and we used the built-in timdemo to benchmark the game. The 780G wins again and by a few more frames per second.

Power consumption for idle was measured 5 minutes into the Windows desktop and load was with the Crysis GPU benchmark.

We've looked previously at a number of ASRock AMD based integrated motherboards and today we have yet one more from the company who have been on a role lately. Today we'll be looking at another 780G based motherboard but this time one that mixes things up from their previous effort with the A780GXE/128MB.

Since AMD launched the 780G chipset earlier this year there's been some confusion about SidePort memory, what motherboards have it and what don't, what size, and how fast it is. This is fairly important as well at least when it came to integrated graphics as without it there is a major drop off in performance. The ASRock 780GXE contains 128MB of DDDR2 sideport memory on board which can run at 1066MHz. This should help quite a bit with gaming scores or if you don't want to use any of your system's memory then it'll resolve that as well. The other major feature of the 780GXE board is support for 140W TDP processors which helps if you find one of these around. AMD is starting to phase out the 140W 9950BE to 125W now but who knows when that might creep up again the future.

The board's layout is quite good for a budget and integrated motherboard. Not much should actually get in the way here. One problem that might occur is if you're using high-end RAM which extends 3-4" in the air and a very-highend heatsink it might be hard to place RAM in the closet slot. Other wise it shouldn't be an issue. Not much cooling is needed for the 55nm AMD chipsets so the few heatsinks are more than adequate.

I/O ports on the back consist of a PS2 mouse and keyboard port, VGA-Output, DVI-Output (ASRock also includes a handy DVI-to-HDMI adapter), six USB 2.0 ports, an E-SATA port, Firewire, 1 Gigabit Ethernet jack, and analog HD audio output. Isn't it great that motherboard companies finally started putting 6 USB 2.0 ports on the back? Long overdue and now even on boards under $100.

Onboard expansion there are headers for more USB and Firewire ports, a PCI-Express 1x slot, two PCI-Express 16x slots, and three PCI slots. As with all ASRock boards with SLI or Crossfire they still feature the older switch card to go between Crossfire and single card mode. We wonder the if the costs of adding this part to the motherboard is more than what it would be to feature a board that automatically detects it. For most people who it'll only matter once or twice in the motherboard's lifetime so it's not a big deal but still we hope the next-generation of ASRock motherboards move past that.

Standard accessories are included here including I/O shield, a few SATA cables, IDE cable, and more.

We see a fairly standard ASRock BIOS here which is quite good overall. One thing I like is that the multipliers no longer have to be keyed in and start at the defaults rather than the lowest value possible.

Even without the advanced overclocking features of the SB750 chipset we were easily able to hit 3.1GHz stable on the ASRock with our power hungry 140W CPU which we raised the voltage on anymore. How other sites have such trouble getting up to 3GHz we're not sure of as with the BE processors we've had no problems.

Here are the spec from ASRock.

CPU - Support for Socket AM2+ / AM2 processors: AMD Phenom™ FX / Phenom / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core / Athlon X2 Dual-Core / Athlon 64 / Sempron processor
- Supports CPU up to 140W
- AMD LIVE!™ Ready
- Supports AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet Technology
- FSB 2600 MHz (5.2 GT/s)
- Supports Untied Overclocking Technology
- Supports Hyper-Transport 3.0 (HT 3.0) Technology
- AM3 CPU Ready
Chipset - Northbridge: AMD 780G
- Southbridge: AMD SB700
Memory - Dual Channel DDR2 memory technology
- 4 x DDR2 DIMM slots
- Supports DDR2 1066/800/667/533 non-ECC, un-buffered memory
- Max. capacity of system memory: 16GB*

*Due to the operating system limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® XP and Windows® Vista™. For Windows® XP 64-bit and Windows® Vista™ 64-bit with 64-bit CPU, there is no such limitation.

BIOS - 8Mb AMI BIOS
- AMI Legal BIOS
- Supports "Plug and Play"
- ACPI 1.1 Compliance Wake Up Events
- Supports Jumperfree
- SMBIOS 2.3.1 Support
- CPU, DRAM, NB Voltage Multi-adjustment
- Supports Smart BIOS
Audio, Video and Networking
Graphics - Integrated AMD Radeon HD 3200 graphics
- DX10 class iGPU, Pixel Shader 4.0
- Max. shared memory 512MB
- Integrated 128MB side port memory for iGPU
- Dual VGA Output: Support DVI-D and D-Sub ports by independent display controllers
- Supports HDCP function with DVI-D port
- Supports Full HD 1080p Blu-ray (BD) / HD-DVD playback
Audio - 7.1 CH Windows® Vista™ Premium Level HD Audio (ALC888 Audio Codec)
LAN - PCIE x1 Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
- Realtek RTL8111C-VCO-GR
- Supports Wake-On-LAN
Expansion / Connectivity
Slots - 2 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (green @ x16 mode, blue @ x8 mode)
- 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot
- 3 x PCI slots
- Supports ATI™ CrossFire™ and Hybrid CrossFireX™
Connector - 6 x SATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, and JBOD), NCQ, AHCI and "Hot Plug" functions
- 1 x eSATAII 3.0 Gb/s connector (shared with 1 SATAII port)
- 1 x ATA133 IDE connector (supports 2 x IDE devices)
- 1 x Floppy connector
- 1 x IR header
- 1 x COM port header
- 1 x HDMI_SPDIF header
- 1 x IEEE 1394 header
- CPU/Chassis FAN connector
- 24 pin ATX power connector
- 8 pin 12V power connector
- SLI/XFire power connector
- CD in header
- Front panel audio connector
- 2 x USB 2.0 headers (support 4 USB 2.0 ports)
- 1 x USB/WiFi header
Rear Panel I/O I/O Panel
- 1 x PS/2 Mouse Port
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard Port
- 1 x VGA/D-Sub Port
- 1 x VGA/DVI-D Port
- 6 x Ready-to-Use USB 2.0 Ports
- 1 x eSATAII Port
- 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED)
- 1 x IEEE 1394 Port
- HD Audio Jack: Side Speaker / Rear Speaker / Central / Bass / Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone
Other Features / Miscellaneous
Unique Feature - ASRock OC Tuner
- Intelligent Energy Saver
- Hybrid Booster:
- CPU Frequency Stepless Control
- ASRock U-COP
- Boot Failure Guard (B.F.G.)
- ASRock AM2 Boost: ASRock Patented Technology to boost memory performance up to 12.5%
Support CD - Drivers, Utilities, AntiVirus Software (Trial Version)
Accessories - 1 x ASRock SLI/XFire Switch Card
- Quick Installation Guide, Support CD, I/O Shield
- Floppy/ATA 133 Cables
- 2 x SATA Data Cables (optional)
- 1 x SATA 1 to 1 Power Cable (optional)
Hardware Monitor - CPU Temperature Sensing
- Chassis Temperature Sensing
- CPU Fan Tachometer
- Chassis Fan Tachometer
- CPU Quiet Fan
- Voltage Monitoring: +12V, +5V, +3.3V, Vcore
Form Factor - ATX Form Factor: 12.0-in x 9.6-in, 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm
- Solid Capacitor for CPU power
OS - Microsoft® Windows® XP / XP Media Center / XP 64-bit / Vista™ / Vista™ 64-bit compliant
Certifications - FCC, CE, WHQL

Here is our test system

Our test system was Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 with Catalyst 8.9 drivers.

We tested the transfer rates of our Western Digital 750GB to tested AMD's SB750 southbridge. We compared this board to the high-end Asus board with the SB750 chipset and 790FX Northbridge with no integrated video.

Pretty close but the Asus has a slight edge in hard drive tests.

Next we tested external USB 2.0 transfer rates with a WD Raptor hard drive.

Next we tested game performance against Gigabyte's 780G motherboard.

So thanks to the high-clock of the sideport memory we see a very slight gain over the Gigabyte 780G motherboard.

Power consumption is up next. Idle measurements were taking at 5 minutes idle into Windows Vista desktop, load was measured with Valve's map creator benchmark which stresses all four cores. The Asus board was using a Radeon HD 4670 video card as it has no onobard graphics.

Even though we've looked at a lot of ASRock motherboards there's still one that we have yet to look at, ASRock's A780FullHD which is basically a vanilla 780G motherboard. That said the board seems to be no slouch but doesn't have any sideport memory. Let's see how it performs.

The board resembles other ASRock motherboards and other 780G micro-ATX boards. There's not much one say about the layout, it definitely works and nothing should get in the way with the only major cooling on the Southbridge and even then just a small heatsink. Even this though is more than enough for the SB700 which runs cool.

Onboard the card features two PCI slots, one PCI-Express slot, one 16X PCI-Express slot, 4 DDR2 1066 RAM slots, six SATA ports. External expansion slots include a VGA adapter, DVI adapter, USB ports, Gigabit LAN, and 5.1 audio. No E-SATA or Firewire here or Digital Audio out but pretty decent.

I/O ports on the back consist of a PS2 mouse and keyboard port, VGA-Output, DVI-Output (ASRock also includes a handy DVI-to-HDMI adapter), six USB 2.0 ports, an E-SATA port, Firewire, 1 Gigabit Ethernet jack, and analog HD audio output. Isn't it great that motherboard companies finally started putting 6 USB 2.0 ports on the back? Long overdue and now even on boards under $100.

Accesories are a little trim with a few SATA cables, IDE cable and floppy, man, I/O shield, and SATA to molex power adapter. This is one of the smaller bundles we've seen of the new ASRock board but this seems to be a minimum 780G board.

-=

Here are the technical specs from ASRock.

General
CPU - Support for Socket AM2+ / AM2 processors: AMD Phenom™ FX / Phenom / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core / Athlon X2 Dual-Core / Athlon 64 / Sempron processor
- Supports CPU up to 140W
- AMD LIVE!™ Ready
- Supports AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet Technology
- FSB 2600 MHz (5.2 GT/s)
- Supports Untied Overclocking Technology
- Supports Hyper-Transport 3.0 (HT 3.0) Technology
Chipset - Northbridge: AMD 780G
- Southbridge: AMD SB700
Memory - Dual Channel DDR2 memory technology
- 4 x DDR2 DIMM slots
- Supports DDR2 1066/800/667/533 non-ECC, un-buffered memory
- Max. capacity of system memory: 16GB*

*Due to the operating system limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® XP and Windows® Vista™. For Windows® XP 64-bit and Windows® Vista™ 64-bit with 64-bit CPU, there is no such limitation.
BIOS - 8Mb AMI BIOS
- AMI Legal BIOS
- Supports "Plug and Play"
- ACPI 1.1 Compliance Wake Up Events
- Supports Jumperfree
- SMBIOS 2.3.1 Support
- CPU, DRAM, NB Voltage Multi-adjustment
- Supports Smart BIOS
Audio, Video and Networking
Graphics - Integrated AMD RV610 graphics
- DX10 class iGPU, Pixel Shader 4.0
- Max. shared memory 512MB
- Dual VGA Output: Support DVI-D and D-Sub ports by independent display controllers
- Supports HDCP function with DVI-D port
- Supports Full HD 1080p Blu-ray (BD) / HD-DVD playback
Audio - 5.1 CH Windows® Vista™ Premium Level HD Audio (ALC662 Audio Codec)
LAN - PCIE x1 Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
- Realtek RTL8111C
- Supports Wake-On-LAN
Expansion / Connectivity
Slots - 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (green @ x16 mode)
- 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot
- 2 x PCI slots
- Supports ATI™ Hybrid CrossFireX™
Connector - 6 x SATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10 and JBOD), NCQ, AHCI and "Hot Plug" functions
- 1 x ATA133 IDE connector (supports 2 x IDE devices)
- 1 x Floppy connector
- 1 x IR header
- 1 x COM port header
- CPU/Chassis FAN connector
- 24 pin ATX power connector
- 4 pin 12V power connector
- CD in header
- Front panel audio connector
- 2 x USB 2.0 headers (support 4 USB 2.0 ports)
Rear Panel I/O ASRock DVI I/O Plus
- 1 x PS/2 Mouse Port
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard Port
- 1 x VGA/D-Sub Port
- 1 x VGA/DVI-D Port
- 6 x Ready-to-Use USB 2.0 Ports
- 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port
- HD Audio Jack: Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone
Other Features / Miscellaneous
Unique Feature - ASRock OC Tuner
- Intelligent Energy Saver
- Hybrid Booster:
- CPU Frequency Stepless Control
- ASRock U-COP
- Boot Failure Guard (B.F.G.)
- ASRock AM2 Boost: ASRock Patented Technology to boost memory performance up to 12.5%
Support CD - Drivers, Utilities, AntiVirus Software (Trial Version)
Accessories - Quick Installation Guide, Support CD, I/O Shield
- Floppy/ATA 133 Cables
- 1 x SATA Data Cable (optional)
- 1 x SATA 1 to 1 Power Cable (optional)
Hardware Monitor - CPU Temperature Sensing
- Chassis Temperature Sensing
- CPU Fan Tachometer
- Chassis Fan Tachometer
- CPU Quiet Fan
- Voltage Monitoring: +12V, +5V, +3.3V, Vcore
Form Factor - Micro ATX Form Factor: 9.6-in x 9.6-in, 24.4 cm x 24.4 cm
- Solid Capacitor for CPU power
OS - Microsoft® Windows® XP / XP Media Center / XP 64-bit / Vista™ / Vista™ 64-bit compliant
Certifications - FCC, CE, WHQL

We see a fairly standard ASRock BIOS here which is quite good overall. One thing I like is that the multipliers no longer have to be keyed in and start at the defaults rather than the lowest value possible.

We're seeing fairly standard over clocks with all the 7xx chipsets from AMD and this ASRock even though MicroATX and a little cheaper overclocks quite well reaching 3.1GHz with the Phenom 9950 BE.

Here is our test system

Our test system was Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 with Catalyst 8.10 drivers.

We tested the transfer rates of our Western Digital 750GB to AMD's SB750 Southbridge. We compared this board to the high-end Asus board with the SB750 chipset and 790FX Northbridge with no integrated video.

Not a huge difference between a very expensive motherboard and a cheaper ASRock at least in Southbridge testing.

Next we tested external USB 2.0 transfer rates with a WD Raptor hard drive.

Next we tested game performance against Gigabyte's 780G motherboard.

As you can see you do lose quite a bit with the loss of Sideport memory from the board. If you're looking to do gaming you'll probably want to look at least a 780G with sideport memory if not a 790GX.

Power consumption is up next. Idle measurements were taking at 5 minutes idle into Windows Vista desktop, load was measured with Valve's map creator benchmark which stresses all four cores.