Video Hardware Acceleration is a major advantage of RockNES X, very few NES emulators support it and it gives a substantial boost in video performance. This hardware acceleration allows for liquid smooth video and Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing (FSAA), providing you have a video card which supports it. FSAA is a much needed feature on NES emulators, it allows the video card to smooth out jagged edges in the NES graphics, which are highly visible on computer monitors. If you have a high end video card, this feature alone makes RockNES X worth the download.

      Compatibility with library of NES titles isn't a big issue for most of the better NES emulators, but compatibility with newer operating systems such as Windows 2000 and XP is. A few “classic” NES emulators were developed during the Windows 3.x / 95 era when Windows NT was not viewed as a viable gaming platform, thus many of the past emulators were not optimized to run on it, the majority of which were DOS-based. RockNES X scores an excellent compatibility rating across the board on almost all Windows 9x / NT platforms as well as compatibility on the majority of NES titles, RockNES X also supports flawless emulation of Japanese Famicom Disk System (FDS) ROMs.

      The audio is another high point of RockNES X, the audio can be set anywhere from the lowest possible quality to reduce processing load on older systems, to the highest quality to provide full, clear and rich sound on higher end systems where the processing load isn't an issue. Very few titles run into any problems with RockNES X's audio emulation.

      RockNES X's GUI is a basic Windows GUI plus a few bells & whistles. One nice feature of the RockNES X GUI is the ROM manager window, when set to the proper ROM directory, RockNES X displays all of the NES ROM files in that directory in a detailed view providing Size, Mapper, Battery and Trainer information. All of the option windows are presented in a very clean and easy to understand manner, this is certainly one of the best NES emulator GUIs.

      Now comes the ugly part, RockNES X's netplay feature. For online gaming, this feature is virtually useless, at VTE the netplay feature was tested with one business ADSL connection acting as the server and one high end Cable connection acting as the client. Even with the high speed connection both ways, this emulator's netplay ran horribly, the slow speed made it unplayable. The only part of the netplay that actually worked was the simple chat window. The only place I could possibly see the netplay feature getting any use is over an un-congested LAN.

      Whether it be for a high end or a low end system, this is the emulator of choice. RockNES X presents the most well-rounded emulation experience. The only downside to RockNES X is the practically non-functional netplay function.