Epox 8K7A Socket A Motherboard Review - PAGE 1

I have to say I am not very impressed with the review.

The reviewer states that he's using a 100/200 MHz FSB chip, (the Duron/750) but then wonders why his memory benchmarks are lower than what's listed in Sandra. From the image I saw, the only DDR reference marks listed below it were PC2100 marks. If you're using a 100/200 MHz FSB chip, you're essentially making that DDR into PC1600. Also, I find the overclockability of this board to be excellent. I am using the beta BIOS, granted.. but I am running stable at 170x6 (1020 MHz) from an ADEA-core Athlon/750 at 2.1 volts. I also have the memory voltage maxxed to my pair of 256 meg Crucial CAS 2.5 PC2100 DIMMs. The memory timing options in the BIOS are adjustable enough that I can get this memory to work at such high FSB settings. Of course, my memory marks come out a bit different..



I would suggest that the reviewer spend a little more time and effort in putting the board to the test. Rating it rather poorly by comparison to other testers because of the slow CPU used for testing seems a bit unfair to the board.

I agree entirely.
Its fine to draw a comparison of the duron vs current high end processors (which he clearly states this board is meant for), but not to just review it with a Duron.

A waste of my time!

I am concern about the limit of 2 DDR Ram slots, I just came back from a computer show in Long Island,NY and 1) the board is nowhere to be found at the shows here, 2) The memory people didn't have any PC2100 larger than "256" they said they have it but . . . . . . so if I purchase this board I am basically limited to the typical "256"
I like what I have aread about the board, and it is one of the board I am considering to use if I build my system. The other board is the Gigabyte GA 7DXr, which was impossible to find at the show and on the net.
Henry

2 DDR slots shouldn't be THAT big of a concern. I'm running a pair of 256 meg PC2100 DIMMs right now, and let me just say that half a gig of RAM is sufficient for me. This is used primarily as a gaming/game mapping rig, with some light graphics work thrown in. I can put the system to the test, if need be.

Completely correct....I made the mistake of the using the 2100 DDR comparison on the memory benchmark rather than the 1600. As soon as I can get my hands on an Athlon I will redo the review on this board.

Really this review was more geared to just a general analysis. It was not geared toward overclockers and the ability of this board to be seriously overclocked (though I still have my doubts). And as stated in the review all benchmarks were to be taken with a grain of salt due to the use of the Duron chip.

quote slen

the ability of this board to be seriously overclocked (though I still have my doubts

Mine was running fine at 170 MHz FSB with the beta BIOS.. I backed it off because I *thought* it was unstable, but it turned out that the thing that was giving me problems does it no matter what. (I mean, we ARE talking about Tribes 2 here.. if you fart at it it'll UE and crash.. not to mention I edit maps for it now, and the editor is even more bug-laden than the rest of the game) Everything else ran fine when I had it up that high.

This message was edited by Would71 on Jul 17 2001.

I think its overclocking-ability is quite good, I can run a TB 1400MHz at 11x145MHz=1600MHz, I think that´s okay.
But only on Win98II, on Win2k I´m not able to get a good-running System at 10,5+133MHz=1400MHz, I don´t know why. While playing Sound, the System stocks. While running 3D-Mark 2000 1.1, the System stocks. No blue-screen, no errors, just making noise (sound) or stopping for a second ten or fifteen times a minute. Does somebody know a solution

The problem of a stoppage on Win2K every so often might be that if you have a NIC and no IP address assigned to it, win2k may be looking for a DHCP server every once in awhile to get a number. Assign a number even if you don't need one to get win2K to stop the activity.

Also look for any programs running at boot that are no needed. I had win2K stalling about every 10 secs or so for about a quarter second. It didn't do it right away and turned out to be a program that installed itself with something else I installed.

Cut all programs first.

Startupcop will work with win2k as there is no msconfig in
win2k.

AS

I purchased the Epox 8K7A+ mother board in Sept. 2001 and have never had more problems with a motherboard in my life.
I have an AMD 1.4ghz processor with 266mhz Front Side DDR memory with 1 Gbyte of DDR installed. I have downloaded all new drives and BIOS from Epox's web page and installed them.

1. I have tried 4 different video cards and only 2 work. 3DFX Banshee(32meg) and Hercules 3D Prophet(32meg)work while the nVIDIA G-Force MX200(32meg) and ATI Radeon 7200(64meg) do not work.

2. I tried two CD-W drives and neither will write at the 24x speed and must be lowered to either 4x or 8x to work. When the drives are mounted on another system they work fine.

3. I mounted two 100 Gbyte WD 7200rpm dirves on the board and they would not work with the following operating system. Windows XP and Windows 200 would not see the hard drives while Windows 98 and Windows ME would see the drives. I also updated the mother board BIOS to the lates verstion available(Oct. 2001).

4. I am running Adobe Photoshop 6.0 and I have serious problems with the top end plugins. Some times plugins will start and other times they will not start.

I purchased this motherboard to be a top end machine to us in my Photography business and found that I spend more time working on it than using it for my business. The people at Epox do answer my inquires in about a week but so far all they have said is down load new board drivers and they indicate that the hard drive problem is a BIOS problem and they have not yet fix it.

I have tried each of the above items on my 1.7ghz pentium 4 board and every item works correcly on that platform.

All in all this this mother board looked supper when I purchased it, but turned out to be full of bugs when you start pushing the application limits.

I purchased the mother board from Motherboards.com and they have been totally useless in trying to help me through and of the problems.

I know what you mean after getting 2 bad 8k7a from Legendmicro doing the RMA thing they sent me the SAME boards back and didnt fix a thing needless to say I have ordered the mobo from somewhere else.

I have a question regarding this mobo setup.

This is my first new system since my old celeron 533hz. Gateway, and the first one which I will be building from a kit.

I ordered a kit from Americomp, with the following items:

Epox ep-8k7a+ Raid
AMD Athlon xp 1800 1.53 ghz.
Thermaltake 6 cooler
256 mb Samsung non-ecc DDR 266 pc2100
ATX mid tower w/ 400w power supply
Case Fan
and a Chaintech geforce2 mx400 64meg agp

Now....

I am familiar with building/replacing internal items, and am halfway to getting my A+ certification!!! but...

I have no idea how a raid setup is enabled/disabled. I know what the books say, but I have no hands on pratice...

I currently only have one 30 gig hard drive, and I am out of upgrade cash, so I want to use this drive until I can get new ones.

Can I disable/ not use the raid setup until I get enough cash to buy the two 100 gig drives I really want? Is this a BIOS option?

Ps I got the whole kit for $350 bucks, and it comes with a 1 year warranty. Sounds like a great deal here.

As for what I will use the machine for, it is 80% internet, 10% CAD (REALCAD, EASYCAD)and photoshop, 5% gaming (dungeon seige, warcraft 3, empire earth) 5% word processing.

Thanks for your help,


Chris

Actually that deal is not as good as you think, sorry to break it to you. Your graphics card is kinda weak considering the rest of your system, I think you could of at least gotten a Geforce 4 MX440, I mean a MX400 is pretty slow. You didn't exactly get ripped off either, so don't lose sleep over it, but u may wanna swap up that videocard to say a radeon 7500 or MX440.

-Gxcad

The onboard raid should be completely optional so that you can use whatever drives you want.

I know the geforce 2 mx is weak, but I am kinda outta cash. Couldn't afford the extra $$$ right now for anything better. It will tide me over until I can get the $$$ for a low-end Geforce fx next summer.
I still think the deal was decent.

If anyone knows a good guide to OCcing athlons for idiots please post it!

working out the best prices from Pricewatch I could have saved $100, on everything.

Mobo $64.00
Athlon $64.00
Volcano 6 $18.00
Ram $52.00
Case/ps/fan $27.45
GF2 400 $31.00
------------------
Total $255.45

The drawback is that you don't get warranties on most of these things when you buy em individually, and I have to put the whole shebang together. I'd rather pay someone for the warranty and assembly



Chris

This message was edited by element115 on Nov 23 2002.