Albatron K8X800 Pro II Athlon 64 Motherboard

The Albatron K8X800 Pro II is essentially the K8X800 with more bells and whistles.  So if you like our review of this motherboard it might be worth checking out the standard K8X800 or K8X800 Pro in addition to this motherboard since they are strikingly similar.

The Pro II version of this board comes with a few goodies.  My personal favorite is the audio riser cad which adds fiber lines in and out, as well as a few other connections to add to you already decent sound card on the board itself.  You’ll also get a USB Riser Card, FireWire riser card and a final riser which houses your Com Port 2 and the Game Port.  Also included is a SATA Data Cable, SATA Power Converter, a manual, metal back plate for your case and a shiny Albatron sticker.  We all know the sticker is worth it alone.  Below is table for those interested in comparing the Pro I / II and non-Pro boards together.

Now that we’ve shown you the differences between the bundles, let’s talk briefly about the technology included on the actual motherboard itself.  As you can see below we have a chart to help you understand which version has what parts.  One thing to note is the motherboards are identical chipsets and as such all have the same 8X AGP as well as the same 800 MHz Front Side Bus.  The Pro II really has potential since it has all the features I’d personally want as a LAN Party enthusiast such as 3Com’s Gigabit Network Card for the amazingly quick connections to our game servers, FireWire ports for capturing video from your digital video camera and some diagnostic tools that we just crave!  You’ll notice BIOS Mirror has become almost standard from many companies but are often named just slightly differently such as Dual BIOS or something similar.  If you’ve ever had the joy of accidentally screwing up upgrading your BIOS you’d understand the importance of having a backup.  However this isn’t the most common problem it is nice to see that manufacturers are looking at ways to ensure you don’t need to replace this motherboard sooner than you should need to.  Voice Genie was the first of its kind when Albatron released this technology roughly a year or so ago.  Have you ever wondered why your computer wouldn’t boot to find out your memory wasn’t all the way seated?  Well with Voice Genie a kind woman will inform you that the memory may not be correctly installed.  Essentially this replaces the dreaded beep codes which represent the status of your motherboards boot-up sequence.  Though this is a useful feature, I found it to be rather annoying when pin-pointing a problem.  The repeated woman telling you what is "wrong" gets old after the second time.

Differences between models:

Now there are some things that you should remember when deciding which version you’d like to purchase.  One question should be am I going to upgrade or create a Gigabit network.  These networks have been coming down in price but are still relatively expensive and this cost should be considered.  Will I use the FireWire ports and do I have a tendency to flash the BIOS often to get the best performance?  Will I install new hardware often enough to need the Voice Genie to tell me what isn’t installed correctly?  You should definitely take these questions into consideration in what you really want from your motherboard.  Remember, there is no performance difference between the models other than having extra features.  It’s up to you if you need or want these extra bells and whistles.

Select a Page Page 1: Introduction Page 2: Hardware Page 3: Benchmarks Page 4: Conclusion