Print this article

EPoX 8K3A+ KT333


Date
: 05/1/02 – 08:02:42 PM

Author
:

Category
: Motherboard

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: EPoX
Price: $175

Introduction

A few months ago, VIA released the successor to the popular KT266A chipset. Their latest chipset goes by the name KT333 and it is targeted as VIA's new poweruser chipset for socket A systems. With the KT333, VIA is now officially supporting DDR 333 memory, running at 166MHz instead of 133MHz. One of the very first manufacturers to get us a KT333 socket A motherboard was EPoX, a company well known for their highly overclockable motherboards featuring truckloads of goodies. EPoX' KT333 board is called
EP-8K3A
and starts where the 8KHA+ left off … As our review revealed, the 8KHA+ was a definite winner, so expectations for its big brother are high! Did EPoX manage to fulfill people's expections? Did they succeed in their mission to produce a worthy successor to the 8KHA+? Only one way to find out … Here at O², we gave this new kid on the block a thorough workout to see how it would act up and wrote a report on it.

Page 2 : Specifications

Specifications

- Supports Socket A Processors.
AMD Athlon & Duron.
- VIA Apollo KT333 AGPset.
- I/O Controller.
1 Floppy drive controller,
1 Parallel port (EPP, ECP),
2 Serial ports.
- USB
2x USB 1.1 connectors (2 extra through optional back-panel cable – This cable is included with the EP-8K3A+ and available optional with the EP-8K3A mainboard)
- Award PnP BIOS
- Standard ATX form factor: 305mm x 245mm ATX.
- UltraDMA-100+33 EIDE Controllers
- Additional UltraDMA-100+33 RAID controller x2 (Only for the EP-8K3A+)
- 3x DDR-SDRAM Slots for PC2700: 3GB max. supported.
- PS/2 connectors: 1 PS/2 mouse, 1 PS/2 keyboard.
- 6 (32-bit) PCI, 1 AGP: AGP supports 1x, 2x and 4x modes.
- Built-in AC97 Digital Audio (by ALC201A Realtek ): Dual full-duplex Direct Sound channels, FM synthesis for legacy compatibility, supports game and MIDI port. The 8K3A+ is offered with 6 Channel Sound, by Realtek ALC650.
- Extended Functions for Greater Value!
Supports Hardware Monitoring Function by W83697HF
Supports exclusive KBPO (KeyBoard Power On)
Supports CPU Vcore setting via BIOS
Supports Memory Voltage setting via BIOS
Supports CPU Clock setting via BIOS
Supports STR (Suspend To RAM) power saving Function
Supports CPU Multiplier setting via BIOS
Supports Wake-On-LAN Function
Post port onboard design with LED display

As usual, EPoX offers two versions of the EP-8K3A: the EP-8K3A and the EP-8K3A+. The "plus" version does not only have an additional RAID controller, it also comes with 6-channel sound instead of the default AC'97 decoder that can be found on the EP-8K3A.

Of course the KT333 chipset supports all socket A processors: AMD Duron, AMD Athlon, AMD Athlon XP and AMD Athlon MP CPU's. As I said in the introduction, the KT333 officially supports a front side bus of 166MHz, which is 33MHz more than the KT266A. The board offers you the possibility to run the CPU asynchronious to the memory: your CPU can use a FSB of 133MHz whereas the memory is running at 166MHz! Any setting between 133MHz and 166MHz offers this feature. If you decide to overclock your motherboard past 166MHz, note that the memory speed has to be identical to the CPU bus speed. If your processor can't handle that increase of speed, you might be obligated to unlock your multiplier and run the processor at a lower multiplier setting. The 8KA3 offers several other sweet (overclocking) options, but I'll reveal those later on.

The board comes with the default 2 USB 1.1 ports, and thanks to the included USB bracket (optional on the EP-8K3A), two more ports are available, offering you a total of 4 USB ports. Although 4 USB 1.1 ports are satisfactory for most people, it would have been nice to see some USB 2.0 ports on there as well … or maybe a FireWire port?

Talking about expandability: 6 PCI slots are available, as well as a AGP slot equipped with one of those nice video card retention clips. As far as memory expansion goes, EPoX' KT333 board has 3 DIMM's supporting a total of 3GB PC2700 (backwards compatible) memory.

What else does a poweruser want on a motherboard? Right! Onboard RAID! EPoX' engineers heard you and they fitted the High Point HP372 RAID controller on there, supporting a total of 4 hard drives in RAID0, RAID1, RAID0+1 or no RAID at all (hook'em up like normal hdd's). A total of eight IDE devices should be more than enough to meet up with your baddest dreams no :)?

A very handy feature that can be found on most EPoX motherboards, is the onboard diagnostic LED display: this device generates a "code" to inform you on the error that has caused your system to stop booting. No more guessing at where the problem is located, just look at the display and you're ready to fix the cause. Note that it is only installed on the "plus" version …

This pretty much covers everything I wanted to mention about the board's specifications … so let's take a look at the layout and the BIOS that comes with the 8K3A shall we?

Page 3 : BIOS & Layout

BIOS & Layout

Let's start with the BIOS shall we? As usual, the board comes with an Award BIOS offering all the options we're used to: memory timings, CPU settings but more important, CPU voltage up to 2.20V (other boards are mostly limited to 1.85V so I don't need to mention that this additional voltage increase will open many new overclocking doors), DDR voltage up to 3.20V (again, other manufacturers limit this to 2.70V most of the time). Thanks to the above tweakable settings, the 8K3A is one great overclockers motherboard! Be aware that when you run your processor at a core voltage of anything over 1.90v, you will need VERY good cooling, preferably watercooling or something alike because your CPU
will
get very hot. The DDR voltage is very handy as well, because it will get you another 15-25MHz extra from your RAM compared to the same RAM at 2.7V. Of course your memory will get hot as well, so please make sure to have a fair amount of airflow passing over it … otherwise instability or even damaged hardware might be a consequence you will have to suffer.

All those voltage options reveal that the EPoX 8K3A is one heck of an overclockers dream … but without the necesarry front side bus and multiplier changes, they won't do you any good. EPoX lets you increase your FSB all the way up to 250MHz, and if your CPU is unlocked you can set it to anything between 8x and 15x. To find out what I was able to obtain, you'll have to hang tight until we reach the "overclocking" section ;). On to the layout chat …

EPoX did a fairly good job with the layout of this board, although there are a few minor remarks. For example, the placement of the ATX power connector: it sits on the bottom left side of the CPU socket, which means your powercable will most likely hang over the cooler … not good for airflow and looks.
Another point of critisism is the space around the CPU socket, especially on the left side. Those mofets are coming fairly close to the socket and if you install extreme air coolers, you might run in trouble. I installed a Dr. Thermal EXTREME (kindly supplied by Crazy PC) and it fitted in just … make sure to check the size of your heatsink before ordering is the message I want to send out.

The IDE connectors were placed ok, same goes for the floppy connector. Nothing to complain here. The memory bank closest to the CPU socket will interfear with your video card, so installing/removing memory in that slot will result in removing your video card.

On to the overclocking part …

Page 4 : Overclocking

Overclocking

As I mentioned numerous times before in the review, the EPoX 8K3A is one sweet overclockers board! Thanks to the excellent voltage options, highly tweakable memory settings and of course the CPU settings, this board will make all your dream come true. When combined with the right hardware, you
will
see pigs fly and benchmark records being broken! So how high was I able to push my memory and CPU with this board?

The memory, which was from our trusty old friend Crucial, was being able to run rockstable at 180MHz with memory settings to "Fastest". In "Turbo" modus I was limited at 170MHz to remain rockstable. In order to achieve this, I set the DDR voltage to a whopping 3.20V. This resulted in my memory getting hot, but nothing a nice amount of airflow could cure :). I was able to boot windows at 185MHz but as soon as I started the SiSoft Memory Benchmark, I got a blue screen … I am pretty sure that the limiting factor was my memory, because I heard reports from people running at 200MHz FSB and more … Note that this Crucial RAM is rated PC2100 (133MHz) so I don't think anyone can complain when they get 180MHz out of it!!
To test the boards memory stability, I installed three 256MB DIMM's (also made by Crucial) on the board … Again 180MHz was doable! Rockstable is the word we are looking for here …

Now what was I able to get from my CPU? Thanks to the increase of core voltage, I was able to push the TBird 1.4GHz all the way up to 1.63GHz whereas before, instability signs occured at 1.57GHz. To achieve these results I had to use a core voltage of 2.0V. Although the board will go up to 2.20V, I decided not to use this amount of voltage when combined with an aircooled heatsink … it would be too much … As an experiment I cranked the voltage up to 2.20V: POST @ 1.75GHz!! Unfortunately, the system crashed while loading Windows because of heat issues. If I whack my watercooler on there, I'm sure we'll see speeds of +1.7GHz becoming stable!!

All in all I can honestly say that this is the best socket A overclockers motherboard I ever layed my hands on!! If you want to overclock the hell out of your AMD processor, this board is a MUST!

Let's see what numbers we can expect in the benchmark departement shall we?

Page 5 : Benchmarking

Benchmarking

First, a short list of the hardware I used to give the 8K3A+ a run for its money …

EPoX 8K3A+
AMD Athlon TBird 1.4GHz
256MB Crucial PC2100 DDR
VisionTek GeForce 3
Accton NIC
Microsoft Windows 2000 + SP2

MadOnion's 3D Mark 2001

16-BIT

32-BIT

MadOnion's 3D Mark 2001SE

16-BIT

32-BIT

Quake 3

Demo 001

Torture Demo

SiSoft Sandra Memory Benchmark

Benchmarks are clearly showing that the EPoX 8K3A+ is one fast motherboard. When compared to the KT266A based motherboards, the KT333 is taking the lead by a nice margin!

Page 6 : Conclusion

Conclusion

EPoX did a great job with the EP-8K3A and the EP-8K3A+. Both boards offer an excellent platform for any poweruser/tweaker/overclocker out there who wants to get the most out of his box! Besides the lack of USB 2.0 and the few layout flaws, these boards have everything you could wish for!! Personally I would opt for the "plus" version as it comes with the addition USB bracket, giving you 2 more USB ports, the onboard RAID controller, the 6-channel sound and the diagnostic LED. Either way you go is great, but the "plus" just increases the fun-factor :). If it isn't obvious by now, let me announce that this board is carrying our O² Power Award home … this is the
best
socket A motherboard currently available!