Overclockers Dream- Epox's EP-8 w/ N-Force 2 technology Barton = Dream!
Written: Sep 17 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Excellent build, overlockers dream w/ ease of adjustment- GREAT MANUAL- Epox has done something great!
Cons: nothing: cheap, easy to install, manual was written in coherent english! Read the Review!
The Bottom Line: 100 bucks total (free ship)- Absolutely can't be beat- Overclockers Wet Dream, super easy and convenient, and an ENGLISH SPEAKING manual writer! Read on!
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| nick1326's Full Review: EPoX EP-8RDA Motherboard |
This is my first venture into motherboard reviews, but I've had quite a long history of successfully rebuilding my computer and to date, I've not had such good results as I have had with Epox's EP-8RGA motherboard. Epox's EP-8 series of motherboards includes a wide range including 8RDA, 8RGA and so on- they are all built with N-Force 2 architecture and intended for use with AMD's Athlon/Athlon XP/Duron Socket-A chips. I teamed up this particular motherboard with a humble AMD 2500 Barton Athlon XP and achieved some astounding results, but more on that later.
The EP-8 series is classified by features, thus the slightly different names. For instance, the 8RDA is the standard AMD-socket A motherboard w/ N-Force 2 chipset. However the 8RGA (which I have) is the same motherboard with 1 exception, it has an on-board G-Force-4 graphics card built in to the motherboard, which can be deactivated if you use an AGP card. In addition, all EP-8's have a " " model which includes onboard LAN card- usually the costs between 1 and 10 dollars more- if you need a LAN card for cable modem or broadband connections, the is a convenient way to save a PCI slot, by having the LAN built into the motherboard directly.
I chose the 8RGA because I was long overdue for a graphics card and felt like doing it all-in-one.. While the onboard card falls well short of state-of-the-art, it does a really good job, especially if you have a respectible amount of RAM- I will go into exact specs on the box I built up on this board, but first the spec sheet on the EP-8RGA from the Epox website:
"
Specifications
Processor AMD Athlon, Athlon XP, Duron
Core Logic nforce2 Platform Processor Chipset
BIOS Award/Phoenix BIOS v6.0
Max. FSB 333MHz
Memory 3 x DDR SDRAM PC3200, 3GB max.
Form Factor ATX
Expansion Slots
AGP 1, 8x
PCI 6, 32-bit
Ports
PS/2 1 mouse, 1 keyboard.
Serial 2
Parallel 1
USB 4 onboard, 2 optional. USB 2.0
Floppy 2 drives max.
IDE 2 x E/IDE Ultra DMA/133, 4 drives max.
Controllers
Sound Realtek ALC650E 6-channel full-duplex integrated sound
Video GeForce4MX Graphics
Special Features
AGP voltage settings are adjustable by BIOS
CPU clock settings are adjustable by BIOS
CPU V-core settings are adjustable by BIOS
Hardware Monitoring Function provided by Winbond
Keyboard Power On (KBPO)
Memory voltage settings are adjustable by BIOS
P80P Diagnostic LED
Suspend To RAM (STR)
Wake On Lan (WOL) "
The machine I built up consists of exactly this: CPU, AMD Athlon XP 2500 w/ Barton front side bus (FSB), 8RGA, Lite-on 52x/32x burner, Western Dig ATA100 80GB HD, 1 Gigabyte of PC2100 RAM (which overclocked substantially well thanks!) Toshiba DVD ROM and an Imation SCSI 20X CD-R burner which I converted from External to internal by simply removing the case and installing in a 5.25 bay- it uses a 50pin SCSI connector. The system is pretty straightforward and plain-jane, but runs HELLA-FAST, especially compared to my older T-bird 700 CPU on a KT7A-raid.
First, the board has some really nice overclocking features, such as FULL (and I mean FULL) flexibility to change any aspect of FSB, RAM synch, RAM timing, CPU speed, multiplier etc... The 2500 Barton is really nice because with this board the multiplier is not locked. This is the case on some other boards, but not all others- so If you want a BARTON chip to overclock, the 8RGA is a good way to do it. You can even choose FSB speeds in 1 unit increments which is REALLY nice because you can squeeze out every last bit of performance from both your RAM, CPU and FSB- you can adjust RAM synch also, so even if you want to run a faster FSB speed, you can reduce the RAM synch to accomodate the type of RAM you have.
More about RAM and overclocking: First, far more important than simply overclocking your chip, you must factor in RAM speed and FSB speed. The BARTON architecture by AMD is a fantastic type of FSB which can be lightening fast due to its size and the fact that the cache is on-die, or located on the actual CPU- Not externally on the CPU-base. The Barton's 13 micron design is lightening fast and the cache is super fast, so the faster your RAM the more you'll be able to pull out of your system- forget about simply overclocking the CPU- you need to be able to get information in and out & on and off the CPU quicker, which is what th FSB and RAM speed affect. My RAM is decent (though not by tech-geek standards) but I have a decent 1 gigabyte amount of modest PC2100 DDR RAM- 2100 is rated for a 266 FSB speed, which equates to 133FSB on the motherboard (the number gets doubled unherently)- so 133Mhz would equal 266 or the fastest speed to RAM is rated to go. HOWEVER, because of the imcredible flexibility of the motherboard, I was able to SERIOUSLY overdrive my RAM- I was successful driving the RAM at up to 210!!! This equal 420 FSB SPEED- as compared to 266 rated!!! This was the limit. Basically the chip's Default CPU speed of 1826 is achieved by using a 333 FSB x 11 (multiplier) which yields 1826 actual OR about 2500 Mhz speed if you want to compare to a pentium- which is why they call it a 2500 -> The CPU clocks 1826 actual, but because of the super caching speed, it compares to a 2500 pentium. However with my 210 FSB speed I achieve 210 x 11 or 2310 CPU clock- 2310 Mhz compared to rated 1826... 125% - At this actual clock speed, the system rated me at 2800 in pentium terms. To go further, the board allowed me to change the multiplier of the chip, which is adjustable in 1/2 unit increments (NICE touch EPOX!) I was able to achieve a max stable multiplier of 13.5 - so 13.5 x 210 = 2835!!!! 155% of rated CPU speed- WOW, what an awesome overclockers dream - at this speed the system rated my at 3300 in pentium terms!!!! YEAH BABY! (wow, I sound like a tech geek). I backed of my max's to arrive at a very stable 195 FSB and 12.5 multiplier- 2437.5 CPU clock, rated at 3100 .. Windows XP runs super-stable (if you can believe that)
Overall, with all the adjustability of the motherboard, its hard to believe I paid 100 bucks on newEgg!!! The on-board graphics, while not anywhere near SOTA is quite decent, a substantial improvement over my antiquated Rage-Fury 128! The board utilizes system RAM to share for graphics- I allocted the 128GB max to my card, which works quite well and still leaves plenty of RAM for system use. An excellent way to benchmark your system is to use 3D-Mark- 3D-Mark can be downloaded from all over for free- it runs your system quite hard to find out just how decent it measures up... plus its fun to watch- unlike some boring diagnostic tool, it runs samples of intense games and animations to find out where your system bottlenecks.. Very fun to watch. You also get a report card at the end of the 6minute test. Very useful and cool.
All in all, I can't possibly complain about this board. My hard drive works great with the ATA100 EIDE, unlike my old KT7A which even though rated for ATA100 had a seperate controller BUS channel and never ran right! The stupid hard drive hard to be connected using regular UDMA instead of ATA100 which always upset me. I got the board for 100, the CPU cost a rock-bottom 92 bucks! Absolutely lightening fast and very stable-you just can't beat this board for overclocking Athlon's OR for just using regular clocking and enjoying the ease of on-board peripherals such as graphics card and LAN... Hook up and install are super easy AND the board comes with a VERY VERY VERY good manual- I can't stress this enough, some manuals absolutely SUCK with other boards- it's obviousl Epox went the extra mile and hired a fully-fluent english speaking tech-geek to write the menaingful and useful manual- and idiot could make this work.. Trust me, even though I speak the jargon, I just may be one! laughs! I am thrilled with this purchase and for under 200 bucks, I got a great board and CPU which have rejuvenated my aging system and make it feel like brand new! This is like letting your oil-change and all oil-maintainence go for 40,000 miles then suddenly installing a new engine! WOW- can't recomend this board enough!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100.00 total
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Epinions.com ID:
nick1326
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Location: Long Island, NY
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