A very nice board, at a nice, nice price...
Written: Jan 27 '01 (Updated Jan 27 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A very nice board, at a nice, nice price...
Cons: STR function of ACPI malfunctions for a lot of users, no support past 1GHz
The Bottom Line: Fantastic quality and great speed has never come in at a cheaper price thanks to the Epox 8KTA series.
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| kfj001's Full Review: EPoX EP-8KTA |
When it was time for me to throw out my dinosaur (by today's standards) Socket 7 system, and upgrade to a killer AMD Duron for my video gaming, I had NO idea what motherboard to buy, but I had criteria...
What I needed...
My criteria for a motherboard were quite liberal; a cheap Duron/thunderbird capable board.
I found such a board at my local computer fair. The board came with a Duron 700 chip at $197 (good price, at the time) and included an onboard sound system. I decided to go for it.
What I got
The Epox 8KTA series boards are quite a nice "entry level" board into the world of Duron/Thunderbird (Socket "A"). The board supports all AMD Duron/Thunderbird chips until 1GHz; a very nice "upgradability" feature (for the price).
The integrated sound system (VIA 686 Chip) is a decent sound system, period. I'm not an audiophile, nor do I wish to be, but I know a lousy sound card when I hear one. This is NOT a lousy card. The onboard Via686 sound chipset produces quality, amplified audio. Because the board is integrated (on the PCI bus) system resources to produce audio aren’t quite as high as the cheapo-depot PCI soundboards you find in your local retail store (with chips from companies like “ESS”). However, don’t go expecting the quality and efficiency found in sound cards like Creative Labs Soundblaster Live; this isn’t a video gaming card.
The sound card was really just a nice surprise. Really, all I wanted was a new board that supported the AMD Duron and Thunderbird processors. What simply caught my eye about this board was its price.
The almighty dollar.
I didn’t want to spend an absolute fortune on this board. It WILL be obsolete in six months when the world of computing changes (again) on me. This board was really just the means to enter into the world of 600mhz+ computing.
I looked at boards from FIC, and Soyo, and noticed that the “budget” board all had the same problems; narrow chip support, and lousy quality.
Let’s face it, VIA has NOT had the best rep when it came to its chipsets. When VIA began making the “nitty-gritty’ components of Socket 7 boards, people quickly found out that Microsoft Windows wasn’t quite “tolerant” of a non-Intel chip. VIA began to create “drivers” for their chipsets, which most Windows users found to be a pain to deal with because just having the VIA Chipsets in itself created instability in the system (VIA has since repaired the undesirable effects generated by VIA chipset drivers for Windows).
But VIA was considered the best of the non-Intel bunch. Fortunately, there are NO Intel chipsets for Duron/Thunderbird based motherboards.
The boards I was looking at (in my price range…) were either from FIC, or Epox. I had a horrible time with my prior FIC board, and gravitated immediately to the Epox board sitting next to the FIC board I had rejected.
The EP-5kta+ board was a meager $79 (great for a Socket “A” board) and also came with a Duron chip (for a total of $197, and tax…)
MY experience with the board.
I run Windows 2000. I just got fed up with Windows 98 “melting down” from software testing, software uninstalls and my CD writer software (notorious for destroying Windows components.)
The migration to the new board was seamless. I removed my hard drive from the PC case, deconstructed the unit, and replaced the motherboard.
Plugged everything in… Fortunately, this board is predominantly “soft-set” when it comes to the board, chip and memory “details”. I was very happy to note that the board supports PC-100 as well as the newer PC-133. I set the “dip switch” unit on the board to auto-detect my various devices (and their clock speeds) and began to reconnect everything.
Upon rebooting, I noted that there were NO post-test errors to be found, at all. Nothing “mis-configured” or “improperly detected”. The system just began to (attempt) to boot. I decided to take a peek into the BIOS settings, just to see if everything had been detected as I thought it had.
Indeed, it had been. The processor was detected as a Duron 700 (which it is) and the two SDRAM chips were detected as PC-100 @ 64mb ea. (Which they were) I was pleasantly surprised at this obvious feat at “auto detection”.
Windows…
Windows 2000 does NOT require VIA chipset drivers like Windows 95, and 98 do. I was very happy to see that Windows auto detected all my new main board hardware (sound, IDE, PCI stuff) without blue screening, hard locking or doing other annoying “Windows things”.
The performance was, well, excellent. I was quite pleased to see the power and performance of this board in such an immediate time after booting the system. I was thoroughly pleased.
Store to, duhhhhhh…
Modern APM standards (the power management of modern PC’s) are typically defined by ACPI (software power management). ACPI supports a lot of cool things that laptop computers have done for years to save battery power, without annoying the user to “shut down, please, my battery is failing” notices. A remarkable feature of ACPI is “Store to RAM” suspend dynamics. The ability for your computer to cut power to every single component, except the RAM modules on the main board. This idea means you can instantly turn off your PC, AND instantly restore your user session without using too much battery power (or “wall power” in the case of this system) because only the computer’s memory is powered, not the fans, not the processor, nor the hard drive, video card, or anything else.
This is what I conceder to be a “really cool feature”, and Windows 2000 & the BIOS supported it.
Of course, I can’t get it to work, period.
Apparently, in order for your computer to shove it’s user sessions into active memory, while shutting-down other components, you have to own very quality RAM, and it MUST be uniform quality throughout all modules (if you have multiple modules).
It also has been a recorded (and as of yet, unfixed) problem with people who own PC-133 SDRAM modules, and attempt to use STR (store to RAM) mode with their boards. Epox has claimed they are working on the problem (they have been working on it since the predecessor to this board was found to have the same problem, with STR not working at all).
I couldn’t really care less (actually, I could, but I don’t.) about STR mode, but it IS a feature of this board, which doesn’t work. And broken features are still something broken, no matter how insignificant.
Summary
This is an excellent board. The quality is just that; QUALITY. The board’s quality is also of an affordable one, so you don’t have to budget for a new board, THEN chip, THEN everything else.
Being able to accept PC100 & 133 RAM makes this board quite versatile when “migrating” from an older system. Although the performance of separately clocked RAM and CPU’s has not been benchmarked specifically (as far as I know anyway) I can’t say this is a good, or bad thing.
But if your looking for an excellent Thunderbird/Duron board that supports up to (and including) 1GHz of computing power at a fantastic price, Epox makes that board.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 79
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Epinions.com ID:
kfj001
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Member: Kyle
Location: Buffalo, NY, USA
Reviews written: 138
Trusted by: 30 members
About Me:
"Testing", "Destroying", it's all just one big, gray line to me.
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