The ABIT SR7-8X Motherboard Review
SiS and Abit, a Powerful Combination

By, Jeff Bouton
September 22, 2002

HotHardware Test Systems Pentium 4  All the Way!!

 

Overclocking the ABIT SR7-8X Motherboard Get On The Bus!

When it came to overclocking the SR7-8X, our experience was surprisingly disappointing.  With such a feature rich BIOS that practically begged to be overclocked, this motherboard was temperamental throughout the entire process.  The highest FSB we were able to attain was 146MHz. and even at that, the system encountered serious errors.  On each attempt, we encountered familiar errors while booting Windows.  In the past, all we had to do was tone back the settings a little and the errors would go away.  With this particular board, however, the errors would not go away even if we set the BIOS to safe settings.  Each time we tried to go beyond the 146MHz. range the system would crash when Windows would first load with a message stating: 

Windows could not start because the following file was missing or corrupt:  \Windows\System32\Config\System. 

This is not an uncommon message when overclocking a system, but as we said earlier, usually we simply ease back on the overclock settings and things are fine.  We first encountered this error when we reviewed the Shuttle XPC SS51 a few weeks back and the only common thread is that both system had SiS chipsets and the same Pentium 4 processor.  We suspected the RAM and hard drives may be the culprit, but even after we changed these components, we continued to have the same outcome.  After several hours of trying to get a balanced, stable overclock, and at least 4 reinstallations of WindowsXP, we threw in the towel.  So throughout the remainder of this review, we've opted not to include any overclocking scores. 

Before we move on, we do want to say that when we did a search for this motherboard in Google, a number of reviews came up that reported the same low overclocking results, but none spoke of the O/S being corrupted. From what we can tell, there have been mixed results and rumors of a revision to the chipset are rumbling out there.  With any luck, there will be updates in the future and the revised board will put on a better show.

OK, so the SR7-8X struck out in the overclocking arena, but that doesn't mean that the board is a total loss.  We still have a slew of tests to run to see how the system performed under normal conditions. 

On to the benchmarks!

 

Benchmarking with Sisoft Sandra 2002 Pro Starting with the Synthetic...

We always like to start things off with a few tests from Sandra 2002 Pro SP-1.  This is an excellent synthetic benchmarking program for assessing a system's potential when compared to their extensive database of reference systems.  Let's take a look at some of the basics, then we'll put the system to the test in the proving grounds.

 

CPU 2.26GHz.

Multimedia 2.26GHz.

The CPU and Multimedia performance of the Abit SR7-8X with the Pentium 4 2.26GHz. Northwood B installed was quite good.  Notice that the system detects the processor as a 2.27GHz., which is most likely due to some slightly more aggressive timings in the BIOS.  With both tests, the system easily surpassed the Athlon 2200+ scores and encroached on the Pentium 4 2.4GHz. territory.
 

The memory performance was also quite good with this system, although it did not equate to the other systems on the list when running at 333MHz. DDR.  Once we kicked the memory speed up to 400MHz. DDR, the system leapt forward, equaling the performance of virtually every reference system except for the Intel I850 chipset with 1066 RAMBUS memory.  Overall, the system put up a good showing and should prove to be a solid performer. 

 

Hard Drive Performance

The hard drive performance of the SR7-8X was nothing out of the ordinary, giving us a fairly stock score, not great, yet not bad.  So let's move on to some more taxing tests and see how this system shapes up.
 

Quake 3 and MadOnion's 3DMark2001SE