Solid Board
Written: Feb 01 '01 (Updated Feb 01 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Overclockable, stable, ISA slot (tough to find), all slots accomodate full-length cards, inexpensive!
Cons: Don't try to use an oversized CPU fan, layout's not the greatest.
The Bottom Line: Definitely worth the price, very solid, nice to have an ISA slot and the overclockability factor. You can upgrade to an Athlon processor in the future with this same board.
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| jghanisco's Full Review: EPoX EP-8KTA |
I finally upgraded from my old standard 233mhz Pentium, and after MUCH deliberation, decided on a duron system. I've built this from scratch, and have been ecstatic at the response of this setup. I first bought a Tyan Trinity MB, but after TWO different boards, gave up. Apparently their boards are very picky with RAM, so I believe that may have been my problem. Anyway, then I started looking at a new board, and decided on the EP-8KTA+. I'm sure you know about the basics: 3 DIMM slots, 6 PCI, onboard audio, etc. I'll touch on these, but go into some other areas.
The basics that sold me on purchasing this board:
1) 1 ISA slot: as scary as it sounds, it's difficult to find many options out there on mid to high-end MBs that have an ISA slot. I still have a 56K ISA modem, and don't want to spend on a PCI one until I get DSL or something, so this was a necessity for the time being. The board still has 6 PCI slots, so you're not being screwed out of an extra slot with the incorporation of the ISA. The good thing is that no space was taken up with an AMR slot, which is an audio slot that appears will never amount to anything in the future. Quite a few boards have used up resources to have this.
2) Price: Hate to say that 30 bucks makes a difference, but this board has broken the sub-$100 barrier, and if you're going to go for the Asus or Abit or MSI boards, you're going to be in the $130-150 range. Made the difference to me!
3) Overclockability: Unlike most of the boards out there, you can't change the bus speed except from 83mhz to 100mhz to 133mhz, depending on the memory you're using. BUT, you can change the multiplier rating with dip switches, which allows you to overclock the cpu. I went up to 800mhz with PC100 memory without it crashing, but don't want to burn out my CPU, so stopped!
4) onboard Audio: I have a PCI card that I put in, but I find it very nice to have onboard Audio at the beginning, just so you don't have to mess with installing all your cards early on. And for those of you out there without a sound card you're carrying over, the audio device has worked flawlessly.
As for extras, it does have the standard 4x AGP slot, and the cool thing is that it has the AGP lock device. Still confuses me why that's a necessity, but I did notice that it makes sure that the card is seated correctly. Next, it comes with a nice bit of software bundled with it, such has Norton Ghost and some health meters. It comes with your standard floppy and IDE cable (ATA-66). Also, it has all the standard keyboard soft-power on, and all the other little things that motherboards come with these days. The ports are colored all pretty colors even! (ok, I'm stretching that one!) The other thing I noticed is that the BIOS has been updated every 3 weeks on their web site, so they are constantly updating this board's information. Finally, there is an LED light on the board that turns on the minute the power is started... nice to see something on the board say something nice when it starts up.
As for the drawbacks, they're mostly minimal:
a) power supply connector is in the middle of the board, so you have to pass over your cpu fan and it's right next to quite a few big capacitors.
b) can't connect a large fan on the cpu, because of the capacitors right next door.
c) can't use 66mhz SDRAM... quite a few boards do allow you to use this, but this board wouldn't accept my 32mb stick.
Anyway, the board powered up perfectly from the get-go, and has worked like a dream since I've put it up. Definitely a nice board, especially compared to something like the Tyan that I used previously!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100
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Epinions.com ID:
jghanisco
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Member: Joseph Hanisco
Location: Houston, TX
Reviews written: 32
Trusted by: 7 members
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