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First post - Need Help chosing 266A Motherboard for Athlon XP

A

Audax

Junior Member
Hi there,

This is my first post to this message board. I'm about to upgrade my K6-2 300mhz Epox Socket 7 system to an Athlon XP 1800. I've been very happy with my CPU and my Epox board to date and never had an issue with it. So I was more than happy to upgrade to an Athlon XP and purchase the Epox 8KHA+ motherboard until I started reading the reviews. Although the Epox ranks highly in respect to speed so do others such as the Abit KR7A Raid. So here are my questions

1) what experiences have people had with the Epox with performance and stability. I'm not into overclocking yet so I'm not concerned with overclocking stability as such. I just want a fast system for gaming.

2) I heard that Epox is releasing an updated 8KHA+ with Raid and 4 DIMM slots. If so do you know when, and it is worth waiting for this board?

3) IS the Abit board the better board and worth investing the extra money (for Raid and the extra Dimm slot) since newer chipsets are on the horizon. Note: I read that the 333A boards will only offer minimal performance increases over the 266A.

4) two computer dealers told me to stay away from the Epox and pushed the MSI 266A Pro2 RU, while another swears by it. Is the MSI really the better board? Some reviews say otherwise because of the bios it uses and is a little slower.

Thanks for any comments

😕
 
most kt266a boards are very good, as far as stability and performance you should be happy with any of them

i like the epox 8kha+ if im wanting a low end board without alot of features

i like the soyo dragon+ if im wanting a nicer board with tons of features (features include: high quality sound, better then most sound cards: RAID: LAN: smartcard reader that also brings 2 extra usb ports up front)


*** edit *** i had to add one other thing about the soyo dragon+ 🙂 it has the best dang manual ive ever seen for a motherboard, hehe it belongs on the bookshelf in the living room!!!
 
Hi there Audax,

I just got the Epox 8kha+ board this week and have had a great time with it so far. I haven't really run it at stock speed but overclocked it's been very stable so far (which generally means it'll be even more stable at stock speeds). Performance-wise, most every KT266A board will rank within 5% or so of each other. That small of a difference won't be noticeable to a user. The things to look for in a KT266A board are price and features.

The Abit KR7A-RAID does have more features and is a great board. I've had mostly Abit with one or two IWill and Asus boards over the past few years and just went with Epox for the first time last week. The Abit board is pretty costly but if you actually plan on using the 4th DIMM slot and RAID, it may be worth the price. Another board you might want to look at is the Shuttle AK31A or AK35GTR. Both have 4 DIMM slots and the AK35 has RAID onboard.

You will find a ton of people on these and other forums (such as amdmb.com) talking about the Epox board since it's amazingly popular right now (hey I even bought into the hype this time 😉). If you have any problems with it you can bet that someone else has already had that exact same problem and figured out a solution.

Basically most KT266A boards are fairly stable and only differentiate themselves in features and price. Filter out all the boards that don't have "must have" features and then go from there based on price, brand preference, and user opinions.

Let us know what you choose!
Gaidin
 
Epox 8KHA+ is one excellent board I`ve been using mine with my XP 1700+ CPU since last November and do lots of gaming etc , it has been rock solid,it`s also very easy to setup since you only have one jumper(100/133mhz FSB) to worry about,my friends have also got the same Epox model and they too have had no problems.

I`m typing on mine now and it has never given me any problems period 🙂.

Btw Audax welcome to AT(Anandtech) forums.

🙂
 
Thanks for the advice guys. It's much appreciated. The decision on the motherboard had gotten more difficult than I expected. The Epox 8K7A+ is leading in terms of preference at the moment, mainly because I feel I may not need the extra features and is almost half the price of the Abit and just as fast. Not to mention that some of you guys are previous A-bit owners and love the Epox. That's saying something.

Also the way it's been explained to me is that if you look at upgrading every couple of years then the Epox is fine, because by that stage I may need another system. Even though some of the boards have 4 DIMM slots and the Epox has only 3 they all apparently can be upgraded to similar CPU's, and this will be the telling factor and not memory limitations a couple of years from now.

It's also interesting that some techs have tried to sway me away from Raid as it doesn't affect game preformance and can be more of a head ache than it's worth. Great for large single file transfers but not lots of small little ones. A friend of mine bought an Epox board with Raid Obtober of last year and had lots of grief with win98, but none with XP.

In terms of other boards having high quality sound, is it better than a Sound Blaster Live as this is what I have currently (and bought recently)?

I'll let you know how I go with my decision. Thanks again.

Audax
 
One minor thing, the Epox 8kha+ is the board people are recommending, not the 8k7a. 🙂

You hit it on the head there about the RAM and CPU upgrading. Three DIMM slots can hold 1.5GBs of RAM on the Epox (or 3GBs if you use 1GB sticks though those aren't really consumer level yet). Realistically you'd probably only put say 256MB sticks in there so you'd probably max out at 768MBs of RAM. With the CPU the socket will change and enough new memory technology and other features will be updated enough to warrant getting another MB in 1-3 years (more like 1 year in most of our cases I'm guessing 🙂). If you find out you need a feature like RAID later you can always buy a card though the integrated ones always come cheaper.

The MBs with onboard hardware sound with chips from Cmedia are actually pretty good to listen to. They are not quite at the SBLive level imho though some will say they sound pretty much the same. It's perfectly usable sound. Now the ones with the generic Via AC'97 audio like the Epox are nowhere near the SBLive in terms of quality though honestly since I have an SBLive I haven't had a chance to use the Epox audio yet. My old IWill KK266 had the Cmedia hardware sound and it was very good for integrated imho.

Gaidin
 
Epox 8KHA+ is really good for $69 shipped at Newegg.com (refurbished section). Can't beat such a deal. And it's very stable with the latest BIOS.
 
The Soyo K7V Dragon+ looks pretty promising too, I just ordered it from Newegg today... Been reading some reviews, there are some minor complaints about the arrangement of the capacitor,CPU socket and RAM slots, which wouldn't cause much trouble if you just slap on a good HSF. Some problems are encountered by people with the BIOS and others, but with the updates from SOYO they have no problems with it and are very happy to own that MOBO!

Anyways, just trying to open up for more options (and I hope I'll be satisfy with that mobo), and welcome to AT!
 
Welcome to AnandTech, Audax!

I too had an Abit board (loved it, wife has it now) and upgraded to the Epox 8KHA+ mobo. It's rock solid at 154 fsb, just be aware that it's a power hog ( it likes quality psu's, has fits it they aren't) and the memory is a bit harder to "seat", you have to apply more pressure to make sure it's seated properly.

As for the ide raid that is the rage, the major problem with it is that ide hd's don't hold up nearly as well or long as a scsi drive, and when one fails, you've lost all your data (unless you backed it up onto another separate drive). When you consider the extra cost of having raid, and the chance of losing you data, the increase in speed just doesn't justify the cost in terms of time and energy to recreate what you've lost. IMHO 🙂

Most of the problems I've seen about the 8KHA+ stems from low quality psu's and ram not seated properly, the speed is great, the jumperless design is sweet, and I'm planning on building several systems for friends using this board. Enough said, I think I'm starting to repeat 🙂
 
I bought a RAID-equipped mobo (KR7A/RAID) with no intent to implement either RAID mode or for ATA133 IDE device compatability.

The feature of RAID-equipped mobos that many people seem to miss is the flexibility of configuring four IDE ports and elimination of any master/slave device configs on a typical system.

I don't agree that RAID mobos are a problem for gamers.

I do agree that the KR7A is way overpriced. If I were making the choice today, I'd probably buy the Shuttle AK35GTR.

Hope this helps!
 
Thanks again for the welcome and the comments regarding the Epox. Sorry about the mistaken identity. I was referring to the 8KHA+ - getting confused with all the boards and I'm new to this - last time I upgraded was over two years ago to a K6-2 300 on an Epox Socket 7 MB (no problems at all by the way). Well it's looks as though I'm definitely swaying towards the Epox right now with the Soyo Dragon plus second and the Abit third. Thanks again for the comments.

Audax
 
Not so fast my friend!

I too was a long time ABIT lover (with a pair of BX6s) until I started talking to the Tech Reps at a few of the smaller shops. Lots of bad ABITS, mostly DOAs. I have a SolTek SL75V2 running a XP 1700 and it is a very nice board and purple too. Very OC friendly MB and very stabile. The V4 adds ATA133 support and it is still purple.

That being said, I also have an IWILL XP333-R Rev. 2.1 and it is without a doubt the better MB. It is also an inch or two wider, in case you have a small case. The Highpoint RAID is very smooth with a pair of D740X 40GB HDs and if you don't want to run RAID you can disable it with a jumper.
 
I really like my Epox 8KHA+. It has been a good solid, fast and stable board for me. If they are planning on making a version that has RAID and an extra DIMM slot it will most likely be worth the wait.
 
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