The EPoX EP-8K7A is great for Over Clocking!
Written: Aug 20 '02 (Updated Apr 04 '03)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: You can Over Clock with this motherboard!
Cons: Limit of two DDR memory slots!
The Bottom Line: If you are wanting a motherboard that can be over clocked than this maybe the motherboard worth checking out.
|
|
|
| surferdude7's Full Review: EPoX EP-8K7A Motherboard |
The EPoX EP-8K7A is Socket A motherboard made for the AMD Athlon & Duron processors. It is made for an ATX case and an ATX power supply, an AT power supply will not plug into this motherboard. The board measures 12 inches by 9.8 inches.
It uses the Award PnP (Plug-n-Play) BIOS that is Flash upgradeable for future upgrades if needed. It is made for the faster DDR memory chips.
The EPoX EP-8K7A has a 200/266MHz Front Side Bus.
~~~ The Board Specifications ~~~
Chip Sets
This motherboard uses the AMD-761 & VIA 686B AGP set.
EIDE
The EPoX EP-8K7A has Ultra DMA-100 EIDE Controllers and backwards compatible with PIO mode 3/4 & Ultra DMA-33/66. It has two EIDE connections each one will support 2 devices giving you a total of 4 EIDE devices.
Memory
There are two memory slots made for the DDR memory, each slot can hold up to 512MB of PC1600 or PC2100 DDR RAM, for a total of 1024MB of memory.
I/O Controller
The motherboard supports 1 Floppy drive controller, 1 Parallel port (EPP, ECP) and 2 Serial ports.
Other Ports
There are two onboard USB ports and two more USB ports if you purchase a cable giving you 4 USB ports from the motherboard.
There are also two PS/2 connections, one for a mouse and the other for a keyboard.
Slots
There are No ISA slots just, six PCI 32-bit slots and one AGP slot that supports modes 1x, 2x and 4x.
Audio
The motherboard has a built-in AC97 Digital Audio.
The built-in sound card has Sound Blaster Pro compatibility.
Supports
The EPoX EP-8K7A motherboard supports CPU Vcore & Vio setting with jumpers, plus CPU multiplier and clock through the BIOS options.
Extra Functions
KBPO (Keyboard Power On) Use the keyboard to power on the system.
USDM (Unified System Diagnostic Manager) In Windows it lets you monitor things like system temperature and more.
VT82C686B chipset is for monitoring hardware functions.
P80P Debug (POST) Card onboard with an LED display.
Over Clocking
The EPoX EP-8K7A gives you the opportunity to over clock which some boards do not offer.
~~~ Overall ~~~
This motherboard is about a year old that belongs to one of my friends that I helped install when he bought it brand new. About a month after installation he asked me to over clock it and at the time I was hesitant but said I will see what we can do. Running an Athlon 1.2MHz processor we got it to perform at 1.47MHz and after almost one year later there have been no problems with the motherboard and the processor.
I thought this motherboard would be outdated by now but looking at their web site shows it can take most of the new AMD processors. It can run all of the Duron processors and up to the 2200 Athlon XP, I don’t know if they can be over clocked. My friend is thinking of adding the Athlon 2000 XP to the Motherboard, so if he does I will update this review and let you know if it can be over clocked too.
The only real cons to the motherboard are the limit of only two DDR slots and there are no ISA slots.
The price of $139 was about one year ago, it can be found for under $100 today.
There are new updated drivers and Bios updates if you need them for the newer AMD processors, so please check out their web site.
This is an exceptional motherboard because you can still upgrade to the latest processors today!
Thank You for reading my review!
Here are some of my Computer Hardware Reviews!
Western Digital 100GB EIDE Hard Drive
ATI ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500 Graphics card
Visiontek Visiontek XTasy 6564 AGP 64MB Card
AMD Athlon XP 2100
AMD Athlon XP 2600 Retail
AMD Athlon XP 2700 Processor
Asus A7N8X Motherboard
Here are some of my other Computer reviews!
Dell Dimension 8250 Series
Dell SmartStep 200 Series Notebook Computers
HP Omnibook XE3 PIII Notebook Computers
HP Pavilion N3410 Notebook Computer
emachines T2080
The Sony VAIO R505DL Super Slim Pro Notebook
The Parts for Building a Computer from Scratch!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 139
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
surferdude7
|
 - Top 10 |
|
Location: Elizabethtown, Ky.
Reviews written: 374
Trusted by: 1166 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.