Soyo K7DRAGON vs The Gigabtye 7DXR


The Soyo K7DRAGON vs The Gigabtye 7DXR - Page 4

Soyo's K7-DRAGON -vs- Gigabyte's 7DXR
The KT266 and AMD760 Square Off!

By, Marco Chiappetta
October 25, 2001

Ziff Davis Media's Business Winstone 2001 and Content Creation Winstone 2001 benchmarks are used to simulate "real-world" application performance...

More Performance
More of What You're Lookin' For!

BUSINESS WINSTONE:

Business Winstone 2001, and CC Winstone, run a few popular business and Content Creation applications through a series of activities and monitors how long the system takes to complete those activities.  Based on timings, the test calculates the system's performance scores accordingly.

The K7-DRAGON just barely outpaced Gigabyte's offering in ZD's Business Winstone tests.  Virtually any quality motherboard coupled with a good amount of RAM and fast processor is capable of running any of today's Business-Type applications adequately though.  Nonetheless, scores this high are very good for a Windows Millennium based system.

The Content Creation tests are somewhat more intense...let's move on and see how these boards hold up...

CONTENT CREATION WINSTONE:

The Content Creation Winstone scores posted by both of these boards were excellent, especially considering we were running Windows Millennium.  This time the Gigabyte GA-7DXR nudged slightly ahead of the K7-DRAGON, but a performance differential this small is unperceivable during "real-world" usage.

Throughout all of our testing, both the Soyo K7-DRAGON and Gigabyte 7DXR were rock solid.  The only crashes to speak off occurred when we pushed our Athlon beyond it's overclocked limits.  If stability is your main concern,  you won't be disappointed by either of these products.

CONCLUSION:

Now for the $64,000 question...How do you choose between two boards of this caliber?  I have to admit, I'm torn.  Normally, the performance gain (even though it is very small) associated with the AMD 760 based Gigabyte 7DXR would be enough to sway me towards the 7DXR.  The K7-DRAGON, however,  has more features, better on-board sound and is much easier to overclock with and configure...not to mention it's black PCB and purple slots are just plain "cool"!  Ultimately, I think I'll take the high road and leave the decision up to you.  Both boards are excellent and worth considering if you're about to build or upgrade an AMD based system.  The only drawbacks to owning either of these boards is the impending release of many higher performing VIA KT266A based motherboards.  We give both the Soyo K7-DRAGON and the Gigabyte 7DXR a HotHardware Heat Meter rating of...

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Tags:  dragon, 7D, DX, AG, BT, K

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