Re: EPoX 8K3A+

Science Mark

These are what can be expected of a 1.4GHz T-Bird Athlon. While I didn't have it in the picture, the Science Mark score was 122.78.

These scores are very similar to what I had with the AOpen AK77 Pro (KT266) with it overclocked! especially in the memory department. Remember, this is at stock speeds and timings. The results between the KT333 and KT266A chipsets would undoubtedly be less pronounced, according to the information I've seen in other reviews on KT333 boards.

Overclocking

I was pretty much limited by the memory I had, and thus topped out my FSB at 151MHz, CAS2 in Normal timings. While the stick was Samsung chips rated for DDR333 @ CAS 2.5, I feel that while I could've dropped my multiplier, I wouldn't have been able to up the FSB enough to compensate for the loss. The options are amazing, even though I didn't get to make much use of them. I ended up running the CPU @ 10.5x 151 for a speed of 1.585GHz. I'd have liked to hit the 1.6GHz mark, but my chip doesn't seem capable of doing that without a watercooling setup. I have seen people hitting 200MHz FSB's with this board, though an AGP divider issue seems to have a problem with air-cooled systems hitting between 195-200+ range. Hopefully this will be addressed in a future BIOS update. I'd also like to mention again that I am using a BETA BIOS dated April 3, 2002, which addresses the FSB issue with any frequency between 134-165MHz.

Final Words

Well, this is my first Epox motherboard, and it's quite an impressive one at that. This is a relatively cheap motherboard, running $120-$130 with shipping on-line and is well rounded in the features. I felt Epox has left out certain extra's like Firewire (IEEE1394) and LAN to keep this board ready for overclocking. A newer version of the board, dubbed the 8K3A2, will have USB 2.0 onboard, among other things. The HighPoint controller is a pleasure to work with, though I'd watch out if you use or plan on using rounded cables. While there are issues that need to be addressed (no AGP voltage adjustment), Epox has gotten one thing down: Stability. This board was stable throughout all the testing, and only crashed with excessive overclocking. The only real downer to this board that cannot be easily remedied is it's layout. The worst part of the layout is the location of the IDE ports. For full-tower users, I would be especially wary of this board, everyone else, it doesn't matter. If Epox keeps up on tweaking out the BIOS, this will be an even better board than it is now, and it's a very solid one currently. If you're in the market for a KT333 board, this is one of the best deals you can have. For overclockers, this offers a lot of headroom and tweaks to keep them busy. I am proud to recommend the 8K3A+ to an overclocker with a little patience.

The Good

6 PCI slots --No AMR/CNR/ACR slots --HighPoint HPT372 RAID --ATA133 support --AGP retention clip --Vcore up to 2.2V --FSB options up to 255MHz!

The Bad

AGP card too close to DIMM slots --IDE controllers at bottom of board --no AGP voltage control

Rating: 4.5 out of 5