Jignesh Satapara

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.