"this board is the best SDRAM solution to AMD Athlon and Duron Processors"

[senior guy]

Quote from review of EPoX EP-8KTA3 (KT133A) mobo by Tweak Town:

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/epox_8kta3/

Really sounds like a fantastic board and I'm anxious to buy it for my new build, but hard as I've looked, just can't find one yet!

 

[spencer]

It'll definitely be my next mobo once they are available. I currently have the 8KTA+ and it has been great.

 

[StickHead]

Bunta has them, but back ordered the day they posted them on their webpage. 8KTA3 is $129, and the 8KTA3+ is $139. Little high, also don't forget shipping, in my case about $11.

 

[dougjnn]

My only concern with this Epox board is the "clutter around the CPU socket A" which Tweaktown discussed.

Anyone have any views on what heatsinks will fit on this one? An Alpha 6035? Taisol?

 

[senior guy]

How does EPoX quality and support stack up against Asus and MSI???

 

[AMD4ME2]

I'll have to wait and see what other reviews are like before I make the jump.. It would appear that this board is excellent, however as we have all seen with the MSI boards, initial reviews may not be what we need to base our purchases on. I'm still waiting to see what comes of the "Turbo" and KT7A boards from MSI and Abit.

 

[dougjnn]

The rig I REALLY want is a 2 Palomino 1.4ghz @1.7 SMP job running 266 DDR. Probably based on the 760mp chipset with a via southbridge, unless Via comes up with an Smp chipset I haven't heard about.

But I figure it will probably be at least the fall before those are out, bios debugged, and off of their first released, scaracity pricing.

Smart move I think will be to get a KT133A mobo and Tbird 1.0@1.2 and then just sell it for 25% down or so.

BTW, I've been asking around what labeled speed is smartest to buy on a Tbird if one wants to end up 1.2ghz or at least 1.1ghz with air cooling (probably Alpha 6035 with a quieter a slightly less eff. Sunon fan)?

A 900, 950, 850, or should it be a 1.0? Any guestimates? I know there are no guarantees, except for the labeled speed, but I'm looking for educated guesses.

 

[spencer]

dougjnn,

I have the taisol CGK742092 on my 8KTA+ and it fit without any problems. The 8KTA3 looks the same around the socket so it shouldn't have any problems accepting most heatsinks.

 

[dougjnn]

Thanks for the heatsink fit info.

Where did you score your Taisol man? The only place I can find that lists them (on pricewatch) is sold out!

 

[DaddyG]

KT133A mobos that lookk very promising besides ASUS are SOLTEK, EPOX, MSI and a first for Ocing, Gigabyte. The Gigabyte mobo offers the same Promise RAID as the MST Turbo. I believe that this is the first time that Gigabyte has offered an OCing mobo, but if it has the usual high quality and reliability of other Gigabyte mobos, its a winner.

 

[shiner]

Don't jump too fast guys.....wait for some reviews.

 

[spencer]

dougjnn,

I got mine from inflowdirect.com but they are currently out of stock. I think nerdsbyte.com is taking preorders on them right now. The Taisol online store is showing them in stock right now but they are high priced.

 

[senior guy]

The thing that's holding me back is that it's "sister" (KT133) board didn't do well in the "Socket-A VIA KT133 Motherboard Roundup - November 2000" stability test!

What's your experience with EPoX quality, stabilty and support?

 

[dougjnn]

Thanks, I got a nerdsbyte order in. Pending. Went with the YS Tech fan upgrade. That one is also supposed to be fairly quiet, but a little stronger than the small stock Delta.

 

[spencer]

senior guy,

My 8KTA+ has been great. I didn't want an Abit because I had two BH6's and both went bad and then they started the $25 RMA which is a crock of you know what. I didn't want an Asus because they are very high priced and I had a P3V4X that I wasn't very impressed with at all and the K7TPro2 wasn't out yet(I wanted one that would overclock) so I went with the 8KTA+. Stability is great, as stable as any computer I've ever owned, if not more. I think the quality is excellent but that's just my opinion. I've never had a problem with it so I don't know how their support is. Another thing I like about it is it don't have any of them damn CNR or AMR slots which are useless to me.

 

[thiro]

Is it possible to have some good advices regardind main boards and processors buying. The more i read the more i get confused... I'm looking for speed, stability, oc friendly and of coarse money is a concern...Thanks!
Thinking to switch to Amd Athlon...

 

[StickHead]

Senior Guy:

Epox is top notch in the stability department in my book, only surpassed by maybe MSI. The motherboard arcticles here on Anandtech seem to be lacking as of late, I.E: how do you test stability??

 

[dougjnn]

Yeah, this smells primo to me, as long as its not slow.

It's got features galore.

And Epox has a way better rep for stability than say Abit. Abit was the first with the mostest for overclockers, so it is much loved. But it has generally not been a very stable board maker. It was fast in its BX line though. But lots of returns. One of the worst for returns. Well, partly that may be because the kinds of people who buy Abit boards are difficult bleeding edge type customers.

 

[IntelConvert]

The EPoX 8KTA3 is the best featured of all the KT133A boards, especially in that it has 4 DIMM slots (not other KT133A has more than 3 slots).

But it would be very interesting to see some benchmark testing between a few of these boards to see how well they perform!

 

[dougjnn]

duplicate

 

[dougjnn]

It looks like Epox is planning a clone of this board, only with DDR memory and the AMD 760 northbridge chipset. All I have seen on timing is first quarter 2001.

Same six PCI slots. The Highpoint raid is an option. Don't know the number of memory slots, but it's probably three. All the AMD 760 boards I have seen have either 2 or 3 DDR slots. I get the feeling more are hard to do right. In fact, most have only 2 DDR memory slots. So we'll see.

It's call the 8k7a and 8k7a+ (with raid).

 

[senior guy]

That's interesting at most. In my eyes PC2100 DDRAM is almost as much a rip-off as RDRAM. Sure, PC1600 is readily available and priced right, but it just doesn't cut it. So IMHO, the best thing you can do now for a new build is KT133A with SDRAM, and if you can find one, a 133/266MHz Tbird.

 

[AMD4ME2]

I just read that it is quite easy to run 133mhz with pc1600
which effectively makes it pc2100.. of course that screws me pretty hard considering that I just bought pc133 and I too am waiting somewhat patiently for the kt133a boards to arrive..

 

[dougjnn]

I don't think you are reading Micron/ the market right senior guy. PC2100 ram is only available now on a scarcity basis, essential as a grey market bleed through from authorized system builders who are testing it. It still hasn't been "released" on a general basis to the channels.

Micron/Crucial just opened up the general window for PC1600 DDR within the last week. Crucial is selling it at the same price it sells cas2 133 SDRAM (which is only a bit more than cas2 100mhz SDRAM). That suggests to me that 2100 ddr it will be only 10% or so more than cas2 133 SDRAM. Which according to various industry pundits is supposed to represent the approximate extra manufacturing cost, no doubt getting the info from manufacturers.

Before I say the price that Crucial was selling 1600 DDR for, I had similar thoughts to yours. BUt Crucial's move in the last week made a big difference in my forward thinking.

Now where is that Epox 266 DDR board???

 

[thiro]

I'm looking forward to EP-8KTA3. (maybe around next week as i been told) but What about stability? Need some background from Epox products owner before i make the move.
Thanks.Help needed !