Can someone help me understand this Anandtech article on the Epox 8kha+?

[Caveman]

The following verbage below came from an anandtech article on the various
266A MoBo options for the AMD Athlon XP...

I have the board talked about (the EPOX 8KHA+). When I bought it in
November, there were "rumblings" of voltage divider bios fixes for o/c
although they were'nt yet documented. Acording to Annand, you can get
voltage dividing bios updates for this board.

Q: Where do I find this update?

Q: Anandtech talks about the voltage divider capability is used so you
don't fry your peripherals but then gos on to explain that they toasted a WD
HD duriung testing. HUH??? I thought that was the whole point of the
voltage dividing wizardry -- from preventing such mishaps. I'm confused...

Can anybody lend a hand?

-------------------
EPoX came out with the 8KHA+ with only one competitor in mind - ABIT.
Before the release of the ABIT KR7-RAID, the EPoX was one of the best KT266A
boards out there, providing possibly the best overclocking ability and also
stability.

Shortly after the KR7-RAID hit the market, EPoX started to leak out a beta
BIOS, which is the one that we used for our roundup. The BIOS is not
officially under the EPoX web page but you can easily find it floating on
the Internet.

The BIOS, with release date 11/30/2001, provides the ability for you to
practically push the FSB of the board to over 200MHz, which has been
confirmed by a lot of sources. This is made possible by two very important
features by EPoX, the 1/5 and 1/6 PCI bus divider and also the 100/133
memory bus divider. With these two settings, you can be running your FSB at
200MHz while maintaining the memory and PCI buses at 150MHz and 33MHz
respectively. The memory could be compensated by the new PC2400 or PC2700
parts, and the PCI bus is still within spec.

However, we could only achieve as high as 185MHz in our test labs before the
system lost its stability. Although it was still far from the 200MHz mark,
it's already one of the highest FSB speeds achieved, and it's also a good
indication that 200MHz FSB systems are not that far away.

unfortunately, high speed overclocking could also come in a big price.
During our overclocking test we actually corrupted one of our Western
Digital hard drive at around 190MHz, resulting in a loss of all the data on
the hard drive. This could be disastrous if you contain valuable information
on your hard drive. Therefore, make sure you perform overclocking with
caution at all times.

There are plenty of voltage settings available for both the CPU core and the
DDR memory, which makes overclocking even more interesting. But just like
the ASUS A7V266-E, we also noticed that the EP-8KHA+ is running the CPU at
0.05V over all the time, so you have to careful on the CPU cooling as well.
The board also has the hexadecimal indicator showing the status of the
system during boot-up, so you can find out what's wrong with the system if
it doesn't boot up correctly.

The board also has 6 PCI slots, where ABIT is the only other company that
achieved this design. 2 sets of extra USB connectors are available for 4
more USB devices, and EPoX includes header for one set of connector.

During our initial roundup, the board suffered severe compatibility issues
with the NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500 video cards, but the problem has been solved
with the recent BIOS update. We now have no problem installing Windows 2000
using the Ti500.

However, our biggest complain against the EP-8KHA+ is the lack of 4 DDR DIMM
slots and onboard IDE RAID controller. With these two features EPoX would be
able to raise themselves even higher. Fortunately, EPoX seems to listen to
all the enthusiasts out there, and they will be releasing an updated version
of the EP-8KHA+ soon. The new board, named EP-8KHA2, will have 4 DIMM slots
and the new Highpoint HPT372 IDE RAID controller. If the board can maintain
high stability with all 4 DIMMs populated, it would be in a really close
game with the ABIT KR7-RAID.

 

[foofoo]

the bios update can be had from the epox webpages at
bios
for the second question. he corrupted (not toasted) the hard drive because he was driving the bus at a much higher speed then the drive could handle due to the overclocking that he was talking about. this caused the corruption, not overvoltage.
or at least that's the way i read it.
hope that this helps.

 

[Ionizer86]

Here is the fixed link to official final 8KHA+ bioses.

Here is a config guide on AMDMB for this board.

Basically, the clock generator on this board allows for 1/5 and 1/6 dividers for the PCI bus speeds and 2/5 and 2/6 dividers for the AGP bus speeds. PCI normally runs at 33mhz, which works with the 1/4 divider (1/4 * 133fsb = 33mhz) But if you overclock your bus to 166, 166* 1/4 = 42mhz. At 42mhz, most PCI cards don't run. The dividers that the clock gen supports will allow stable operation at 166 and 200mhz buses (at 200, the 1/6 divider kicks in).

Unfortunately, all this has been a large rumor so far. The clock gen indeed supports 1/5 and 1/6 dividers, but no bios has been implemented that allows the dividers to kick in. It's rumored that the 11/30 bios allows these dividers to kick in (the bios is not a final bios, just a beta one). EPoX engineers were supposed to make a final bios that did the dividers, but they never did (possibly cuz KT333 came out). Some sites say the 11/30 bios has the divider, but others tried PCI cards that gives the PCI bus speed, pointing out that the bus is 42 and not 33mhz like it should be. But we don't know for sure yet since the situation is ridiculously weird.

Read the config guide for more info. It also has a link to the beta 11/30 bios with rumored dividers for your tweaking pleasure. Give 166 a try...if you're daring.

 

[Caveman]

Thanks for the help guys... Yeah, the 11/30 bios seems to be the curious one... The thing I find so weird in all of this is that anantech would publish the data as though there is no speculation. The other thing I still don't get is why the hardrive would get corrupted... Why would overclocking hurt a hardrive that is compensated for by voltage dividers. I still don't get that part - the verbage about hurting the HD is in the same context as "how great and safe" the voltage dividing capabilities of the board are...