Epox 8k3ae or Epox 8k5a2?

[Hankysmoo]

I'm in the market for a new socket a motherboard and was wondering if I should buy the epox 8k3ae for $14 cheaper or just get the 8k5a2? USB2.0 doesn't seem like a feature that I would need so it basically boils down to the onboard audio and performance of the two. Any advice? TIA

 

[Vette73]

Whick ever one has the 8235 Southbridge would be my choice.

They should be ABOUT the same as overclocking gos, but get the newwer southbridge.

 

[Insane3D]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975
Whick ever one has the 8235 Southbridge would be my choice.

They should be ABOUT the same as overclocking gos, but get the newwer southbridge.

I agree. The 8K5A2 has the newer 8235 southbridge that offers USB 2.0 and a upgraded 533 mb/s V-Link connection. The 8K3AE is still using the 8233A southbridge.

 

[CraigRT]

8k5a2.. think to the FUTURE!!

 

[russr]

What is the 533 mb/sec V-link connection?

 

[Rafael]

It's the comunication between the northbridge and southbridge.

Raf

 

[Insane3D]

Originally posted by: Rafael
It's the comunication between the northbridge and southbridge.

Raf

Yep, Rafael is right. It's basically a dedicated high speed connection between the Northbridge and Southbridge of the chipset. In the "olden days" , the two components were connected via the PCI bus. This connection method had very limited bandwidth, and it left very little for the remaing PCI peripherals. As the chipsets and CPU's got faster and faster and started utilizing things like high speed DDR/RDRAM memory, the NB to SB connection became more and more important. So, as a result, most modern chipsets use a dedicated connection now between the two components, and leave the PCI bus to the peripherals. I hope that explains it for you...