Epox 8K9A2+ Motherboard Review - PAGE 1

I too was pretty excited about this board when it first came out but there's been a few bugs that still need to be work out the first is low voltages both in bios and on motherboard monitor 5, second theres been a problem with hard corruption above 200 fsb it needs a 1\6 divider and only has a 1\5 but I hear some people have been able to fix the problem with hard drive corruption by running relax memory timings or by changeing the pio mode to one number lower in bios (e.g. 133\4 100\3 66\2 33\1) so just pick one lower then you hard drive ata speed this seems to be helping from what I hear. I also have noticed the northbridge chip seems extremly warm when overclocking above 166 fsb some people have actually said it felt like it was going to burn them after a few seconds of touching it, my board only came with the heatsink on the northbridge chip I did not get the magic light version that would really help cooling it off, but overall I've been pretty happing with the board its rock soild at 166 up to 195 on my board. I thought the review neoseeker did just have included benchmarks when overclocked I'm sure that what most people are buying it for and I think it would have showed strong scores has the peformance seem to really jump up on this board as soon as you oc' it. I'm going to keep it for a while and wait for some new bios to come out cause this boads got potential. Enjoy


EPoX 8K9A2+
T-bird 1.4(8.5x203) 1725mhz
goliath heatsink
corsair xms 512 cl2
gainward geforce 2 mx400
ibm 60gxp 20gb x2
raid 0
pacific digital 24x12x40
52x cd-rom
hitachi 21 monitor
digi-doc 5
Q4 full tower case modded
raidmax 500w

Hey there, thanks for the comments. I think the board has potential too, which is why I think it deserves further investigation. The AN19E doesn't have a 1/6 divider either, and I'm still wondering whether the KT4 Ultra has finally come up with a BIOS upgrade that enables the 1/6 divider at 200Mhz as MSI has told me they would.

Drive corruptions without the 1/6 divider are a common problem, and I'm sort of skeptical that looser memory timings would solve anything since you're running your PCI at such high speeds (which is the likely source of the corruption), but different PIO settings might do something.

Hey how do you like your Goliath for cooling at such high speeds? And what voltage are you using to get your chip stable?

I've love this goliath heatsink and I've had tried a bunch this ones the first run goliaths with the sceaming delta 50 cfm fan and its actually sucking instead of blowing on the heatsink when these heatsinks first came out about a year ago there where several post on this idea and mine is a full 3'c cooler running that way. The processor is an AMD Thunderbird AYHJ-A 1.4 ghz it came factory unlocked and has been an awesome chip I have used it in several MSI boards before this epox and this chip been great in all of them must be just one of those lucky ones I have set the voltage to 1.95 in bios but motherboard monitor (and the bios) only report 1.91 @ 39'c, load temps may go up to 44'c but no more then that. The boards in a full tower case with a 120mm delta intake fan and right behind the heatsink sits a 92 mm delta so air flow in the case is vary high. Also I am using the new beta bios that was provided by an epox tech on another web site it dated 11\29. Good Luck everyone.

Hey I really liked this review I felt it was a lot better than the majority of hardware reviews I've seen here at neoseeker. Hopefully newer reviews will continue to be as well written and detailed. One thing should be noted and that is in the test setup the Seagate harddrive is claimed at ATA133, this is definately false as the Seagate harddrive used is a Barracuda V, and as such is definately ATA100 (with Serial ATA150 versions coming soon) either way, not ATA133.

-Gxcad

This message was edited by Gxcad on Dec 13 2002.

Hey Gxcad . I'm glad you like it. We're trying to improve our quality drastically.

Most of our recent reviews are of this higher quality. We have a better test lab setup, a more standardized results collection methodology, and we're working on better presentation. So far it's increased the output and the quality of results by quite a bit, and our conclusions are likewise improved. You can thank Deviate for his thoroughness of benchmarking as a part of the equation, and Entity and I have been working on the new graph style and organization. Other Neoseeker regulars may have also noticed that we're doing a slightly different presentation of images, so that BIOS pics, in particular, give a much clearer idea of features even before being clicked and enlarged. <g>

Jamey:

Sounds like that Goliath is really cooling that chip nicely. I can't believe you have such low temp scores when oc'ing so much. But with those fans, I'm thinking it might drive me nuts with noise, since I keep my system on all night. I'm actually really eager to get some speed controllable fans for my case, so that I can turn them down at night when the CPU is mostly idling.

This message was edited by Redemption on Dec 13 2002.

Just as a note. We may be changing both the AN19E and 8K9A2+ articles to reflect a more accurate picture of what's happening when the multiplier is "unlocked". I've been contacted by John Carcich who maintains a detailed analysis of the Tbred/Palomino overclocking scenario up until this point, and he pointed out that since Thoroughbreds have their L1 bridges left "closed" (or unlocked), the chips are already factory unlocked to an extent.

I'll explain further in our update and corrections to the article, which will take place when I finish my investigation.

I have read a lot of positive things for the EPoX EP-8K9A2+ and I'm thinking of buying one. I have one question about the board; How much room does the AGP slot have for a Geforce4 4600 with a Zalman ZM80-HP Video Chipset Cooler (http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/frozencpu/vid-10.html?mv_pc=3414) attached to it? I'm hoping it will fit because I think I'm going to like this board a lot. Please reply or email me.

Thanks,

Justin
"Who said 15yr olds can't be overclockers;)"