Why would you ever get the Epox 8k7a over the 8k7a+??

[TheJackal]

Even if you don't want RAID, it isn't a bad thing to have for the future. Is RAID the only difference between the boards? Also, does it support a Thunderbird 1.33 processor? I thought i read somewhere it was only up to 1.2.

 

[Boonesmi]

price is why i would pick the non + version

 

[AppleTalking]

The 8K7A does support the 1.33 and 1.4GHz. Athlon processors. Trust me.

The reason to choose the 8K7A over the 8K7A+ is that most of us are not independently wealthy and don't feel like paying the extra $50 for the onboard RAID. RAID is not necessary for the home user or gamer, the performance benefit does not necessarily justify the price. And if you need RAID later on, you can just spend that $50 and get a PCI card. Why spend the money if you don't need the feature?

Plus I only have one hard drive.

Nick

 

[Smoke]

I've been all INTEL up to this point. If I get the Epox 8K7A how will I handle the bios if I purchase a TB@1.4GHz? The bios that ships with the 8K7A only recognizes up to the TB@1.3GHz. Wouldn't I have a problem booting up the first time with an unrecognized CPU?

 

[Boonesmi]

the problem is getting the board to auto identify the cpu correctly
but you can always do "user defined" settings then flash to a new bios

ive also read several posts from people who bought the 1.4 with the epox 8k7a and had no problem getting it to boot so they could flash the bios.

also to be fair i remember reading one guy who was having problems (dont know if it was because of the 8k7a/1.4ghz or if the problem was user related, he didnt really seem to know what he was doing)

 

[Boonesmi]

link

 

[Smoke]

A little off topic but why would a TB 1.4 overclock higher than, say for instance, a TB 1.2? If the chip is unlocked, it would seem you could get equally good OCed performance?

 

[AppleTalking]

Smokeball: The reason a 1.4 would overclock higher is because it's a 1.4 chip to begin with. Most times you will be able to get a good 20% overclock on Tbirds. That means that you could push a 1.2GHz. chip up to 1.4 and a 1.4GHz. chip up to 1.6 or so. Of course, there are always good chips (like the 1.2s that go up to 1.6) and bad chips (like the 1.4s that hardly overclock at all). But you will typically get a higher overclock with 1.4GHz. chips because they're already rated at 1.4 to begin with.

Nick

 

[Boonesmi]

example:

amd has 1000 cpu's come off the line, they test all of them, some test higher then others and some fail
then they can bin them the fastest ones go in the 1.4ghz bin

 

[Smoke]

Are there any specific IDs on the "good" chips? When I OCed my 566Celeron there were some IDs that did much better than others.

 

[AppleTalking]

Good overclocking cores are AXIA, AYIA, and AYHJA. I know that AXIA is slightly better than AYIA, which is slightly better the AVIA, but I'm not sure yet on the new AYHJA core. Some weeks do better than others. AXIA Week 9 was a pretty sweet week IIRC.

BTW, these numbers can be found on the second line of code on the core of the chip.

Nick

 

[Boonesmi]

not as far as i know, the only thing is the stepping, but that just means what batch it came from

link
the above link is starting to get a little outdated (heheeh just a few weeks will do that)

 

[bdunosk]

I didn't get the + because I have an all-SCSI setup. Who needs IDE?