Foxconn A78AX-S and abit AX78 - value motherboards on the AMD 770 chipset

Author: Aleksandr Mitrofanov
Date: 30.06.2008

Performance and conclusions

It turned out that while determining the starting HTT speed, both the boards set it at an ideal precision.

In our test setup, we used the following hardware:

Test setup
CPU	AMD Athlon64 3500+ Socket AM2 2.2 GHz (Orleans core, stepping DH-F2)
Cooler	Gigabyte 3D Cooler GP Edition
Video card	ASUS 8800 GT (GeForce 8800 GT; PCI Express x16) Driver version: 169.25
Sound card	-
HDD	Samsung HD160JJ
Memory	2x 1024 MB GoodRAM DDR2 GP1066D264L5/2GDC
Power supply unit	FSP 550 W
OS	MS Windows XP SP1

Let's first take a look at the results of synthetic benchmarks.

Was measured in Kb/sec, i.e. the more, the better.

Now on to the gaming benchmarks.

The performance of the motherboards is absolutely identical, and the only thing that surprised us is that the results for 3DMark 2001 proved to be lower than the results for 3DMark 03.

Final Words

Both the boards fall within the value sector and indeed offer quite an affordable price. At least, abit AX78 is already available at the Moscow retail at a price about ~$80. The price for Foxconn A78AX-S is still unknown, but we believe it should also be at about $80. The thing is that there is even the Foxconn A78AX-K model (~$70) which differs from the -S modification by the cheaper 6-channel audio subsystem.

But which motherboard is better? From the seller's viewpoint, the best buy is the Foxconn motherboard since it offers the more improved south bridge SB700. And it costs a bit less, which is really important for buyers of AMD systems who save on every dime. From the buyer's viewpoint, the abit board is better. Although it costs $9 more, it uses the outdated south bridge. On the other hand, it gives more freedom in configuring the system: it offers more DIMM slots, two slots for installation of PCI-Express video cards, better cooling system, and functional overclocking tools.

As regards the package bundle, we haven't yet got the data on the box contents of the abit motherboard. The package bundle of the Foxconn product fully meets the price.