Epox 8K3A review

Motherboards/AMD S462 by Gamer @ 2002-04-26

Review of Epox latest motherboard, featuring the new VIA KT333 chipset. Is it an overclockers dream come true? find out in this review.

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Overclocking and Conclusion

Results


Sysoft sandra

I must say, the results are reasonable.
Keep in mind that my FSB isn't on 195 mhz, because my proc isn't unlocked.
You can set your memory speed to 133 or 166 mhz, even if your FSB is only 133 mhz.
Although your bandwidth is limited by your FSB, it gives a certain improvement.

The motherboard is stable at high memory speeds, especially with Samsung DDR PC2700 Twinmoss memory.
The highest memory speed that I can select is 195 mhz on normal settings. With an unlocked CPU, 200 mhz is easily within reach.

Overclocking

Like we mentioned earlier, the Northbridge only has a passive cooling, but this doesn't give a problem. The temperature doesn't exceed 21° Celsius stressed.
The motherboard is jumperless, so that eliminates a lot of work. You can setup everything in the BIOS.

One handy feature that wasn't on previous Epox motherboards is the Watching-Dog timer

It works as a charm and almost does away completely with having to reset your BIOS after you have selected a settings one step to high (alternatively you can hold the INS key and then press the reset button, this will set the cpu/mem settings to default and allows the PC to boot, this works both on the 8KHA+ and 8K3A)

The processor used is an Athlon XP 2000+ with custom watercooling.

At first, the FSB was limited to 142 MHz, but that problem is now solved by upgrading the bios to the latest version, which can be found at the Epox support site.
The maximum FSB is 250 mhz, but that isn't very realistic imho ;)

This board overclocks very easily. The FSB is now 155, which results in a CPU speed of 1874 mhz.
The max DIMM voltage is 3.2 Volt, so you can really max out your memory.
Although this should be done carefully, since these are deadly voltages without decent memory cooling.
The Temperature sensor isn't very accurate, because I saw values changing 3°C in one second of time. This is a known problem, it can fluctuate over 10°C! After surfing the net I came across this thread which only confirms the strangeness of the temp readings.
Vcore can be changed from 1.65 Volt to 2.2 Volt, which is a big advantage, because you don't need to do a voltmod anymore ;)
The latest bios update adds a 1/5 divider, so you can have an FSB of 166 with a pci and agp bus at 33 mhz (agp 66 MHz)

At this moment I can run my XP 2000+ stable at 1939 mhz, exactly the same as on my voltmodded 8KHA+

Conclusion

This motherboard IS an overclockers dream, without moddin anything you get 2.2v vcore and 3.2v vmen, the board runs stable at 200Mhz when used with High Quality ram and it performs better then it's older brother the 8KHA+
If you are into overclocking, give this motherboard a good consideration for your next purchase!

Update:
While reading different forums we encountered people experiencing very weird CPU temp readings.
Macci, known for his High 3Dmark scores, moved the temp sensor under cpu to a different place on the motherboard. The cpu temp however didn't change when reading from the P2 diode in motherboard monitor 5.
So in conclusion this Epox mobo reads the temperature straight from the XP internal diode!
Check the full thread here

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