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EPoX 8KHA+ KT266A


Date
: 12/10/01 – 08:26:44 PM

Author
:

Category
: Motherboard

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: EPoX
Price: $175

Introduction

Some time ago VIA released the successor to the very popular KT266 chipset called KT266A.  Due to a lack of strong chipset performance in it's predecessors, demand was high for this one. Especially in memory benchmarks, the earlier VIA chipset was getting it's bottom kicked by the others. That was one of the main reasons why AMD decided to keep their own chipset available to motherboard manufacturers. As you know, AMD released the 761 northbridge just to give 3rd party manufacturers enough time to come up with one of their own chipsets. When VIA released the KT266, people were a bit dissapointed because the AMD chipset was kicking the living daylights out of it and AMD had no other choice than to keep their own chipset in circulation.

Luckily VIA did a better job with the KT266A than they did with the KT266 and memory scores were up to speed with the competition. That's also the reason why AMD is no longer offering the AMD 761 northbridge as a solution for socket A boards with DDR support. EPoX, one of the best motherboard manufacturers currently around, has jumped on the KT266A bandwagon and released a KT266A right away. Being a pioneer sometimes means you are faced with buggy products that need several revisions to perform good and stable, but EPoX has proved with the 8KHA+ that being a pioneer can also mean being a succesful "entrepreneur".

With EPoX being the first manufacturer releasing a KT266A board, they are hoping to get a bigger market share in the motherboard market.  They'll have a street-length advantage on other manufacturers that are releasing their KT266A solutions around mid december. Should you wait for the others?  Or should you go out and buy yourself the 8KHA+? O² gave the board a run for it's money and comes up with the answers for your questions …

Page 2 : Specifications

Specifications

I already revealed that the 8KHA+ is based upon the VIA KT266A chipset, but what else has this board to offer? Only one way to find out and that's by entering the wonderful world of specs :).

CPU

- Supports AMD socket A processors: Athlon, Duron, Athlon XP and Athlon MP
- Processors based on 200/266MHz FSB

Chipset

- VIA KT266A northbridge
- VIA VT8233 southbridge

Memory

- 3x DDR SDRAM slots supporting PC1600/PC2100
- 1.5GB max. supported

Misc

- 1 AGP slot supporting AGP 1x, 2x and 4x
- 6 32-bit PCI slots
- 2 UDMA100 IDE channels for a total of 4 IDE devices
- 2 PS/2 connectors
- 2 USB ports (4 additional optional)

Dimensions

- 305mm x 245mm (lxw)

Additional features

- Supports Hardware Monitoring Function by VT8233
- Supports exclusive KBPO (KeyBoard Power On)
- Supports CPU Vcore/VIO setting via BIOS
- Supports CPU Clock settings via BIOS
- Supports STR(Suspend To RAM) power saving Function
- Supports Wake-On-LAN Function
- P80P Debug(POST) Card onboard design with LED display

The EPoX 8KHA+ is quite an amazing motherboard if you look at the specifications. The board has support for all socket A CPU's currently available, like the brand new Athlon XP 1900+. EPoX used a standard 0/1/6 layout for the board, meaning the 8KHA+ has 6 full size PCI slots, one AGP slot, and no ISA slots whatsoever. All the recent motherboard are using this layout, because to be honest almost nobody uses ISA, and an additional PCI slot comes in handy :).

The heart of the unit is of course the VIA KT266A chipset, which exists out of two major parts: a northbridge and a southbridge. The northbridge is the KT266A whereas the southbridge is called VT8233. This powerful southbridge offers native UDMA100 support, integrated AC'97 audio and some other smaller features like hardware monitoring capabilities.

Memory expansion shouldn't be a problem either as the board comes with 3 memory slots capabable of holding up to 1.5GB DDR memory. Depending on your processor, you can use either PC1600 or PC2100 memory. Although 3 memory slots should be enough for the average user, I think it would have been very nice to see a fourth slot, just like the upcoming ABIT KR7A which is also based upon the KT266A. If you look closely you can see that there are traces of where another memory slot could be installed. Who knows why they didn't? Instability, price, …?

Another feature I missed when going over the specs was onboard RAID. EPoX normally installs a High Point RAID controller on all of it's motherboards (most of the time they offer a "+" version which means it has RAID) but this board does not have RAID and there isn't a RAID version available either. If you really want RAID you will have to sit tight and wait for the 8KHA2+ which is basicly the same motherboard but it comes with optional RAID (and some other stuff I guess).

Like all motherboards out there, the EPoX one has 2 onboard USB ports and if needed you can get yourself the optional USB bracked which adds another 4 USB ports to the list. Personally I don't need more than 2 USB ports because my keyboard and monitor have built-in USB hubs, but I reckon some folks will need it … so for those peeps, there is the optional bracket. Some manufacturers include such brackets in the box, but remember that they are included in the pricetag so you are paying for them … now you only pay for it if you really need it.

A feature that has been around for a while at EPoX is the onboard debug card. In short, it means you have a 2-digit LED display onboard that generates a code to tell you what is wrong with your computer. For example, "FF" means everything is ok. This is very handy when you inserted the RAM wrongfully, your AGP card is not sitting straight, … or any other failure that might occur. Other manufacturers are incorporating this handy tool as well, and I can only applaud to them because I wouldn't not be able to live without one of these anymore.

Page 3 : Layout

Layout

The layout of a motherboard is important as well … people who work with computers a lot (I mean build them, install new hardware, …) know that I am speaking the truth and nothing but the truth. The first point of critisism is the location of the ATX power connector. Instead on installing it at the edge of the board, EPoX decided to put it in the upper half of the board, to the left of the chipset and underneath of the CPU socket. Although it won't bother you too much if you never work on the inside of your rig, it sure doesn't look good and it might stand in the way of heatsinks or hurt the airflow. Case Modders won't like this either.

My second remark is the placement of the memory slots. When you install you AGP card first and your memory second, you'll run into trouble. The bottom lever won't be able to be released with my VisionTek GeForce 3 card installed. Although I am talking about a few milimeters, it will be a pain when you have to remove the card before you can adjust the memory configuration.

It's not all bad of course: the IDE connectors are installed well, at the right side of the board aligned vertically and above them, the floppy connector. EPoX installed three fan connectors on the 8KHA+. Two of them are situated around the ATX power connector whereas the third one sits at the right bottom.

Installing giant, out of proportion heatsinks shouldn't give you much trouble either. The engineers did a fine job here, leaving enough space around the processor's socket to install heat suckers like the Swiftech MC462A or other heatsinks of the biggest caliber.

A small note: the AGP slot comes with one of those sweet retension clips that holds your video card secured in the slot.

Page 4 : BIOS

The BIOS

BIOS … short for Basic Input Output System. Over the years, the BIOS evolved from being hard to use without too many options to a very easy to use piece of software with more features than you could ever wish for. Each manufacturer has it's own way of formatting their BIOS. In the end personal taste is what makes you decide which one you like best. Personally I dig the ABIT and EPoX layouts whereas I don't like working with the BIOS layout Asus implements in their boards.

Now to cover the BIOS on the 8KHA+. It offers any setting you can possible ask for: alter voltages, FSB, multipliers, hardware monitoring, setting up the RAM, … you ask, EPoX provides :).

For the RAM you can choose between several presets: Normal, Auto, Fast, Turbo, … resulting is faster/slower settings depending on the memory you are using. Apart from that you can also configure CAS, timing, interleave, … settings. The list is too long to mention! Just look at the screenshots below and you'll get my drift.

EPoX also introduces the option to display the main hardware monitoring numbers during POST. This means the CPU temp, case temp, voltages, … are shown at the bottom of the screen while starting your computer. This is great to quickly check if the CPU is still being cooled the way it should be.

Of course you can up the voltage of the processor in order to achieve better overclocking results. Just like all other boards out there, you are limited to 1.85v for the core, unless you want to solder some resistors on the board. If needed the DDR voltage can be upped to, which is sometimes needed when you run your memory way out of specs!!

Page 5 : Overclocking

Overclocking

EPoX has been among the few lucky ones that builds great boards for overclocking. The 8KHA+ is no different from their other units and offers a great set of overclocking options. The main BIOS settings are the CPU/DDR memory voltage settings but of course also the multiplier adjustements.

The front side bus can be increased in 1MHz steps and with the latest BIOS you can go all the way up to 200MHz!! And the good part is: the EPoX has a 3/4 multiplier so your add-on cards will run within specs :). We were able to run our Crucial DDR memory at 200MHz with the DDR voltage maxed out to 3V but the board was not 100% stable. My guess is that the RAM is having a hard time, but can you blame it? I mean, Crucial sells it as PC2100 memory (133MHz) and I am running it 66MHz over specs.

The fastest setting that would run all the benchmarks rockstable was 162MHz. Note that this was with the memory set to "Turbo". It would run at higher FSB's as well, but than the memory settings needed to be set slower which means the performance gain you get from the FSB is lost to the settings …

The EPoX sure is a great overclocker … let me tell you that :).

Page 6 : Benchmarking

Benchmarking

Test rig:

- EPoX 8KHA+ motherboard
- AMD 1.4GHz Athlon CPU
- 256MB Crucial DDR PC2100 memory
- VisionTek GeForce 3 video card
- Accton NIC
- Windows 2000 + SP2 + VIA 4.35 + Detonator 21.83 drivers

3D Mark 2001

As usual we are using MadOnion's gaming benchmark suite that tortures the system just like any high-end game would. Let's see what the EPoX could do for us :).

As you can see the 8KHA+ together with the KT266A chipset is kicking the hell out of the AMD 761 northbridge and the old KT266 chipset. Way to go EPoX and VIA.

Quake 3

Second bench we're running … Quake 3. Pretty aging game, but still king of the shoot'em up genre if you ask me. Many new games are developed on the Q3 engine anyway (Return to Castle Wolfenstein for example).

Again the EPoX 8KHA+ performed very well and provides us with excellent scores!!

Sisoft Sandra

Note that we only did the memory tests since the cpu tests are as good as identical to any other motherboard (keeping the margin of error in mind that gives you a slight variation each time you run the test).

These are the best memory scores I ever laid my eyes on (not counting the Intel P4 teamed up with RAMBUS memory :)).

Page 7 : Conclusion

Conclusion

EPoX has managed two things: be the first manufacturer to release a KT266A board and secondly, delivering a good performing motherboard that remained stable during all our testing procedures. Although EPoX made some mistakes in the layout and the board lacks onboard RAID, I am still left with the feeling that this is a great buy if you are looking for a KT266A motherboard. If you really need onboard RAID, I suggest waiting for the upcoming 8KHA2+ board which will be identical to the 8KHA+ but with onboard RAID. Otherwise I don't see why you should wait any longer with the 8KHA+ at your disposal for a good price. Mission accomplished EPoX!

Good

- KT266A performs very well
- Stable as a rock
- Good overclocking options

Bad

- No RAID available
- Layout hick-up's