Good product, good support, epox does it again
Written: Nov 18 '00 (Updated May 31 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy setup/installation, good support, good board layout
Cons: chipset with some known problems, slot A cpus are being phased out of production
The Bottom Line: Excellent layout, reliable support in Epox sponsored newsgroups and tech support emails that are actually answered.
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| suemccartin's Full Review: EPoX EP-7KXA Motherboard |
After previous experience with other Epox motherboards I also chose their product for my leap from super 7 to the Athlon. This was the first board to come out with the, at that time, new VIA KX133 chipset.
As with all Epox products, the bios setup offers a huge variety of settings that can be customized by the user for various reasons. The board has a minimum of jumpers, most everything is set automatically and can be customized via the bios. The board supports 3 PC100 or PC133 SDRAM memory sticks and Athlon cpus up to 850 mhz (officially, people on the newsgroup have reported using faster cpus with great success). The board has two usb ports on the ATX face plate and a connector for two additional usb ports (with a non standard five pin connector. You can use a standard one but you have to reverse the second connector to make it work). The board has the usual these days of mostly pci slots but it also has one ISA slot for older cards and an AGP slot that is 4x compliant (note that windows 98 needs a registry hack before 4x mode will work properly, windows me has fixed this problem).
I for one like the way the board is laid out. Memory slots are easy to reach, the cpu doesn't get in the way of the slots or drive bays and motherboard connectors are clearly marked for function and pin 1 location.
Some people have complained about the location of the ide and floppy connectors but if you simply connect the cables to the board before you put it in the case that problem won't arise. This board being the first to use the new chipset has seen a few problems, but then all new boards using new chipsets do. For the features, stability and support, I feel this board is a very good value for the money.
With the exception of one sound card (based on the Aureal chip I believe) and many brands of GeForce MX cards that will not work in it, there have been few reports of incompatible hardware. If you will be using a high performance video card such as a full GeForce 1 based card, a high quality AMD approved main power supply is recommended with this board. Epox provides a newsgroup where other owners of this board answer questions as well as an epox tech and they also offer email support and a page where drivers and bios updates can be downloaded.
AMD has stated that they will not be producing the classic slot A Athlon for very much longer (in favor of the socket A Thunderbird, there were a very few slot A thunderbirds produced which may or may not work in this board). Once that happens, you can count that the price on this board should drop considerably. Fortunately there are tons of the classic athlon cpus floating around and probably will be for quite some time at computer shows and discount outlets. This is a great board that was easy to install and setup and is quite stable in everday use.
update 5-31-01: some notes on slot A thunderbird support. It's been generally agreed that slot A t-bird chips will work on this board up to 800 mhz. Some people have been able to get a 900 t-bird chip working on this board but not many. The slot A t-bird uses slightly different timings than the classic athlon and thus may or may not work. There is really no way to tell other than to put it on the board and try it. It apparently depends much upon where the chipset was produced and where the cpu itself was made. Also note that the Ep7kxa only officially supports up to 850 mhz cpus. There is also the ep7kxa+ version of this motherboard but they seem to be hard to find for sale in the united states. The plus board will officially support classic athlon cpus up to 950 mhz.
If your heart is set upon a slot A t-bird the only chipset that will support it officially is the AMD 750/751 which is primitive when compared to the kx133 as it only supports 100 mhz memory bus and no 4x agp support.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
suemccartin
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Location: Florida, USA
Reviews written: 292
Trusted by: 36 members
About Me:
Been building computers for 10+ years. I work to support my computer habit.
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