Albatron's K8X800 Pro II (VIA K8T800)Review!

[Mem]

Link.

the K8X800 Pro II isn't as chic as some of the high-end Athlon 64 boards currently on the market. Still, the board's 7.1 channel audio, Serial ATA RAID, Gigabit Ethernet, and impressive performance give the K8X800 Pro II a decidedly high-end feel without a high-end price tag. At only $125 online, the K8X800 Pro II is one of the most affordable Athlon 64 boards around, and you get a lot for your money

Not a great overclocker but decent price and specs.

 

[Diogenes2]

Originally posted by: Mem
Link.

the K8X800 Pro II isn't as chic as some of the high-end Athlon 64 boards currently on the market. Still, the board's 7.1 channel audio, Serial ATA RAID, Gigabit Ethernet, and impressive performance give the K8X800 Pro II a decidedly high-end feel without a high-end price tag. At only $125 online, the K8X800 Pro II is one of the most affordable Athlon 64 boards around, and you get a lot for your money

Not a great overclocker but decent price and specs.

I guess it depends on where you read ( ain't it always.. )...

Most Overclockable Product award for their excellent design and stability at high clock speeds. Although ABIT's KV8-Max3 have good BIOS tweaks, it did not overclock well enough. If it did, we would have given it this award without much fuss. At the end, we're awarding this title to Albatron's K8X800 Pro II, EPoX 8HDA3+ and ASUS K8V Deluxe.

The Athlon 64 Motherboard Shootout

I dug this up because I am putting together a 64 rig, and this board had a couple of features that the more expensive boards did not offer.

I'll try to post an honest assessment when I find out how it goes...

 

[Vette73]

I have this board and recommend it to everyone looking for a Athlon64 board

 

[richardycc]

I've just got this board too for a htpc, it's working great so far, it won't post for some reason, and the voice genie sucks, I can't hardly hear what it is saying, anyway, it's working now. hey, a newbie question, my dvd drive has digital audio output in the back, how should I hook up the sound so I can have the purest digital sound output from the built-in sound card?

 

[Diogenes2]

Originally posted by: richardycc
I've just got this board too for a htpc, it's working great so far, it won't post for some reason, and the voice genie sucks, I can't hardly hear what it is saying, anyway, it's working now. hey, a newbie question, my dvd drive has digital audio output in the back, how should I hook up the sound so I can have the purest digital sound output from the built-in sound card?

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the DVD audio stream is embedded in the Data stream from the DVD and is seperated by your DVD decoder ... ( WinDVD, PowerDvd etc.. ) So the quality will be dependant upon your speakers ad the settings of your sound control panel settings...


The digital-out jack on the DVD drive is for Audio ( Music ) CD's and would be connected to an SPDIF ( input ) to get a digital rather than analog signal that is passed via the regular CD audio cable..

In Win2000/XP you can go to your hardware manager and in the properties tab of your DVD/CD drive/s and set them for " Digital " audio and accomplish the same thing as the digital connector...

Hope this helps..

 

[Bullhonkie]

After reading the reviews on this board (including the xbitlabs and hardwarezone shootouts) I've decided to go for it. I feel it's hard choosing between all the A64 boards out right now because not one of them has everything I'm looking for, where in the past on S478 and SocketA there were at least a few boards that fit the bill.

In the end it just came down to the feature set and the (supposedly) good overclocking. I plan on using this A64 rig for my main system which does a little bit of everything, but primarily gaming - and only mild overclocking on air cooling.

For those of you who have this board, could you tell me what RAM you've gotten to work (or not work) with it? I know A64's can be very picky with memory. I plan on getting 2x 512MB Mushkin PC3200 or PC3500 Level One and I'm hopeful that quality memory won't have any problems, but you never know.

Thanks for the links!

 

[Odeen]

The only real strike against it is using a PCI networking chip instead of the MAC provided by the chipset (thus decoupling it from the PCI bus), but at least they use a quality chip instead of Realtek.

 

[slag]

I'm seriously thinking about it.. but new hardware is just a few weeks away also..

 

[Diogenes2]

Originally posted by: slag
I'm seriously thinking about it.. but new hardware is just a few weeks away also..

But that's always the case...

Have the new rig up and running..... Had a few bumps, but nothing I could really pin on the MOBO..
My Radeon 9600XT was crapping out at FSB above 220, but I seemed to have solved that by replacing
with 9800 Pro..

Compared to my old set-up: Abit NF7-Swith 2700+ @ 2.3g , this new machine flys..


------------------------------------------------
Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2300mhz ( 10 x 230 1.55v )
Albatron K8X800 ProII
1gb ( 2 x 512 ) Generic PC4200 at 8-4-4-3
Saphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128
IDE Drive = WestDig 80gb ( WD800JB ) x 2
Sata Drive = Samsung 160gb ( SP1614C ) x 2
NEC 8X DVD+RW/-RW Model ND-2500A
ENERMAX 460W ( EG465P-VE )

 

[Vette73]

I have the same board and have been worried about overclcoking with the PCI/AGP moving up with it. Do you have anything in your PCI slots, and does the on-board sound and SATA still work at 220 or higher??

 

[Diogenes2]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975
I have the same board and have been worried about overclcoking with the PCI/AGP moving up with it. Do you have anything in your PCI slots, and does the on-board sound and SATA still work at 220 or higher??

I have a Leadtek capture card, a PCI modem and a Turtlebeach Santa Cruz... ( The onboard sound was fine above 220, but the Santa Cruz has some features I like.. ) Not having any problems with these, that I can tell..

I moved some large files across two IDE drives and ripped a 9gb DVD, and had no errors..

I really haven't tested the SATA, I'm having a problem with the one cable I have, and need to get a replacement..

I wouldn't recommend putting any critical data at risk while testing higher FSB's..

 

[Vette73]

^

Well I bumped mine up to 215 (the highest it will go before going over 35Mhz PCI) and everything seems to be working a ok, even thouhg sandra says it is running at 214Mhz FSB.

I did notice that Sandra said my CPU volt was 1.6 but I have it set at 1.55. So this board might be over volting the cpu by default. I am going to drop mine down by .025. I also uped the AGP volts by .1.

I have a TV tuner card and a Radeon 9800 and the rest I am using onboard stuff.

 

[mcveigh]

I have this in a system and it crashes daily.

3400+ raptor 74GB hd
1gb corsair XMS LL

it crashes and windows xp pro says t was a driver but I don't know. I traded the 400 watt seasonic powersupply for a 380 watt antec with no difference.

anyone think I should get some different ram?

 

[Vette73]

^

I take it you have 2 slabs of RAM? If so take one out and run memtest with it. If it passes then use the computer with that one slab and see what happens.

I USE to have 2 slabs of 512mg (1gig total) in my system and under hard gaming or encoding it would lock up. I tested both slabs of ram and they are good, but the Athlon64 system has a hard time running 1 gig of memory at PC3200 speeds.

So try 1 slab that test good or lowwer your ram speed to PC2700


Also what is in your system, video card, tuner, etc....???

 

[Diogenes2]

Well, I'm disappointed to report that the SATA controller goes belly-up above 220... I tried bumping the SB volts, but it didn't help...



I know I need to get over it and enjoy the way this board performs at 220 ..... But the overclocker in me won't give me any peace..

I use to overclock BX and KT400/600 boards, and had success with PCI as high as 40 and AGP at 80.. I guess all the stuff that's packed into the new SouthBridge, is going to keep those numbers from happening anymore...


Oh well....:disgust:

 

[Vette73]

Yea it has been known that most SATA gets flaky at just about anything over stock PCI clocks.

My 215FSB is 100% stable and everything works, including my 2 SATA harddrives and onboards sound, etc....