Epox 8KRA2+ (KT600): KT600 Hits the Streets

Ever since the nForce2 chipset was introduced late last year VIA has been a distant second to NVIDIA in the minds of Athlon XP enthusiasts. Since nForce2’s introduction NVIDIA has enjoyed increased profits and market share from their CPU chipset business. Ironically, NVIDIA’s traditionally rock solid grasp on the video chipset market has waned over the last nine months due to a combination of two factors; a severe lack of execution on the 0.13-micron process from foundry partner TSMC, and tough competition from ATI’s R300 line of products, which coincidentally became available just a few weeks before the first nForce2 motherboards started trickling into the channel late October of 2002. We wonder if ATI will be able to successfully penetrate the Socket A chipset business with a killer technology like nForce2; we’re sure NVIDIA will be watching that development quite closely.

Anyway, at long last we can take an in depth look at VIA’s final Socket A chipset, the KT600, which started shipping just under a couple of weeks ago. Today we bring you a review of one of the first motherboards based on VIA’s KT600 chipset, the Epox 8KRA2+. Epox has put together a very intriguing high-end Athlon XP motherboard that, contrary to the present pattern, is based on a single channel DDR memory controller. Read on to find out if the 8KRA2+ deserves to be in your next system...

UPDATED 7-1-2003