As I was telling in my previous reviews, Epox had advanced greatly with motherboards for overclockers. It has almost succeeded in creation of the most "overclockable" MoBo on KT266A chipset. The EP8KHA+ is virtually a masterpiece. It is characterized by its outstanding stability, good performance and overclocking easiness (I don't forget to mention the POST code led indicator). But despite all of the above benefits, this board has one drawback. I am telling about the absence of a model equipped with RAID controller that lead to a certain recession of demand. Some customers who needed high disk system performance were choosing competitors' models (Abit, Asus etc). The crisis on high-tech market seem to come to its end, anyway it is not reasonable to lose such important segment. An opportunity to correct this mistake had appeared after VIA KT333 chipset was issued. A new board, based on this chipset, was called 8K3A and is produced in 2 modifications either with or without HPT372 onboard RAID controller. These are called EP 8K3A+ and EP 8K3A respectively. Unfortunately, I have the latter one, so I can't analyze how the RAID controller works on Epox. However the 8K3A is rather interesting by itself. In particular many users want to decide if they should upgrade their KT266A board to KT333. This is a main point of my review.

But before talking about the board, we'll take a look at its chipset.

KT333 chipset
The situation with KT333 issuing can be described as "much ado about nothing". Indeed first information about its characteristics looked very promising. In particular AGP 8x support and absolutely new V Link 2X bus with 533 Mb/s bandwidth were announced (contemporary version of V Link has a ratio of 266 Mb/s). Furthermore, a new south bridge was announced with built-in USB 2.0 support. So if all of the above were actualized, it would happen that VIA introduced the most efficient chipset.

After that, items were changed or disproved. But prior to official KT333 announcement much information about KT333-based MoBos mushroomed up. Soltek, Biostar, MSI, Gigabyte, Asus and even Jetway announced their models. However their characteristics were rather mediocre: the same AGP 4x, the same V Link with 266 Mb/s bandwidth, and above all VT8233A south bridge was used on all boards.

Thus we may conclude that VIA refuses to issue a revolutionary chipset but offers slightly improved KT266A instead. Actually this step can be explained by the fact that actual output of PC2700 memory is not high because of insufficient CPU bus bandwidth, which is 2.1Gb/s. So we can expect all the promised novelties in either KT333A or KT400 chipset. Until then we have KT266A chipset with PC2700 memory support.

However there is one particularity. I am speaking about chipset revision, or, to be more specific, about revision of north bridge. Originally, MoBo manufacturers received "CD" revision of VT8367 north bridge, which is, as I have already told, a slightly improved KT266A. Later VIA started sending "CE" revision bridge, which obviously has "CD"-compatible pin layout. This revision already supports AGP 8x and 533Mb/s V Link 2X. Nevertheless, all the KT333-based boards, which are now on sale have VT8233A south bridge which supports only 266Mb/s V Link and does not have built-in USB2.0 support. As the result, "CE" north bridge and VT8233A south bridge successfully work together due to V MAP technology (Modular Architecture Platform) and V Link 2X reverse compatibility. But bandwidth between them amounts 266Mb/s. In order to apply USB 2.0, VIA suggests to use additional VT6202 chip.

The situation will change when a new VT8235 south bridge is issued which will support V Link 533Mb/s and USB 2.0. Whereupon manufacturers will issue new motherboards with fully operational V Link 533Mb/s and built-in USB 2.0.

VT8367 north bridge, CE revision

Chipset summary

North bridge:
· AMD Athlon and AMD Duron support;
· FSB 200/266/(333 unofficially) MHz, EV 6 DDR support;
· Supported memory: PC1600/PC2100/PC2700 DDR SDRAM, 66/100/133 MHz SDRAM and VCM SDRAM up to 3Gb (4Gb when using registered DIMM);
· AGP 1x/2x/4x mode support;
· Only single-processor configuration support;
· Up to 6 PCI slots;
· ACPI support.

VT8233(A) or VT8233C south bridge with onboard 100/10 Mbit/s Ethernet controller:
· ATA 33/66/100 support (ATA 133 support with VT8233A);
· 6 USB ports support;
· 6-channel AC'97 sound and modem support;
· ACR (Advanced Communication Riser) slot support;
· Onboard I/O controller;
· Onboard hardware monitoringThe bridges are connected by means of V Link high-speed hub architecture with 266Mb/s bandwidth.

Let us move to our board when we know everything about the chipset.

EpoX 8K3A specifications.

CPU

• AMD Socket A (Athlon/Duron) support
• FSB 200/266MHz support
  

Chipset

• VIA KT266A chipset
• VT8367 north bridge
• VT8233A south bridge

System memory

• Three 184-pin slots for DDR SDRAM DIMM
• Maximal memory capacity: 3Gb DDR SDRAM
• PC1600/PC2100/PC2700 memory support

Expansion slots

• Six 32-bit PCI 2.2 slots

Overclocking possibilities

• CPU core voltage and memory voltage selection
• Clock multiplier selection
• FSB frequency variation from 100MHz up to 255MHz with a step of 1MHz

Disk subsystem

• Onboard UltraDMA133 IDE controller (two Bus Mastrer IDE UltraDMA66/33 channels with support of at most 4 ATAPI devices)
• LS-120 / ZIP / ATAPI CD-ROM support

Onboard sound

• Full AC'97-compatible soft sound controller

BIOS

• 2Mbit Flash ROM
• Award BIOS v6.00 with Enhanced ACPI, DMI, Green, PnP Features and Trend Chip Away Virus support

Accessories

• One FDD port
• Two serial ports and one parallel port
• PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports
• Infrared port (built-in IrDa TX/RX connector)
  

Monitoring

• CPU and chipset temperature monitoring
• Voltage monitoring
• Cooler ratio monitoring + Magic Health technology

USB support

• Two built-in and two external USB ports

Power management

• ACPI/APM
• Wake on -modem, -mouse, -keyboard, -LAN
  

Power supply

• Standard 20-pin ATX power connector (ATX PW)

Dimensions

• ATX Form Factor, 305mm x 245mm (12" x 9.63").

Package

Box contents:
· Motherboard;
· CD with drivers and software;
· One ATA-100 cable; FDD cable;
· 88-page user manual in English;
· Brief manual.

While examining the box I felt that Epox had tried to cheapen the ready-made product to the limit. An extra bracket with 2 USB ports is not included (compared to 8KHA+), no ATA-33 cable. There is a small sticker with Epox logo, which will certainly please company's fans. Epox's idea to hybridize a box with an ordinary handbag seems to be very successful. Only the color has changed: the box is made of translucent green plastic (on my box one side is colored in olive).

As usual, I don't have claims about user manual. Everything is described in detail, particular attention is paid to BIOS setup. As an appendix there is a list of all the POST codes of built-in diagnostics and a description of some multimedia application (I'd rather have a good RAID-array setup manual instead of the latter). In the matter of CD contents, there are very few changes: new VIA driver version and RAID controller driver set. The rest of the software remained the same: PCCillin 2000 antivirus, Acrobat Reader and Norton Ghost. The lattermost program has an individual description in the user manual.

• Page1 - Introduction
• Page2 - Layout
• Page3 - BIOS And Overclocking
• Page4 - Testing
• Page5 - Conclusions