Socket 754 Roundup: Comparing Generation 2
by Wesley Fink on May 28, 2004 5:57 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Epox 8KDA3+: Features and Layout
| Motherboard Specifications | |
| CPU Interface | Socket 754 Athlon 64 |
| Chipset | nVidia nForce3-250Gb |
| CPU Ratios | 8 to 22 in 1X increments |
| Bus Speeds | 200MHz to 350MHz (in 1MHz increments) |
| PCI/AGP Speeds | Auto, 66MHz to 100MHz (in 1MHz increments) |
| HyperTransport | 1x-4x (200MHz to 800MHz) |
| Core Voltage | 1.55V to 1.70V in 0.05V increments |
| DRAM Voltage | 2.5V to 2.8V in 0.1V increments |
| AGP Voltage | 1.5V-1.8V in 0.1V increments |
| Chipset Voltage | 1.60V to 1.75V in 0.05V increments |
| Memory Slots | Three 184-pin DDR DIMM Slots Unbuffered Non-ECC Memory to 2GB Total |
| Expansion Slots | 1 AGP 8X Slot 6 PCI Slots |
| Onboard SATA/RAID | nVidia 2-Drive SATA(RAID 0, 1) Plus SiI3114 4-Drive SATA (RAID 0, 1, 5, 10) |
| Onboard IDE | Two Standard nVidia ATA133/100/66 (4 drives) |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 8 USB 2.0 ports supported by nF3-250 2 1394A FireWire ports by VIA VT6306 |
| Onboard LAN | 1Gigabit Ethernet on-chip by nF3-250GB |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC850 8-Channel with UAJ |
We were very interested in seeing what Epox would do with the nForce3-250 chipset. Epox has a history of building motherboards that are extremely fast with a very wide range of tweaking options. Frankly, while we were impressed with the features that Epox packed in the 8KDA3+, we were quite unimpressed with the mediocre range of tweaking options when we received the Epox. However, Epox persevered and the board improved dramatically over 2 BIOS revisions during our testing. The latest BIOS for the 8KDA3+ provides a very competitive range of tweaking options and it also turns out to be an outstanding performer.
Epox uses their same ugly green trademark for the 8KDA3+, so this is not a board for case modders who demand color coordination. The full-size ATX board is generally well laid out, however, with plenty of room around the CPU for even the largest heatsink/fan. Since this is a board that might find its way into a tower case, we should point out that the floppy and IDE connectors are very low right on board. This is not the best location and will cause a reaching problem in many case designs. Epox is the only board in the roundup with 6 PCI slots, if that is important to you, but the price that you pay for this feature is possibly having to remove very large video cards when you want to change memory. There is also the Epox 2 digit LED trademark that provides diagnostic read-outs to assist in troubleshooting.
Epox does use the latest Gb chipset, so you have both on-chip Gigabit LAN and on-chip Firewall. There are no firewire connections, however, but these can be easily added with a PCI card if you need them. Both Optical and Coaxial SPDIF connectors are handily located on the back IO panel. Epox also has used the Silicon Image SiI3114 controller instead of nVidia's accessory chip. The 3114 supports up to 4 additional SATA drives with standard RAID 0 and 1 plus the option of RAID 5 and 10. RAID 5 and 10 provide options for a Hot Spare and on-line mirror rebuilding to the 4 SATA drives.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
30 Comments
View All Comments
Odeen - Monday, May 31, 2004 - link
There is a difference between SATA native to chipset, and SATA native to the OS.SATA native to chipset means the chipset runs the SATA internally, off the Hypertransport or V-Link bandwidth, which is at least a gigabyte/second.
Intel's implementation of SATA is cool because to the OS it emulates a standard IDE controller. (Thus it's "native" to the OS.) The downside of this approach is that every OS other than XP gets horribly confused seeing two primary and two secondary controllers. (i.e. your PATA1 is Primary, your PATA2 is Secondary, your SATA1 is.. again Primary) Without "compatibility" options in the BIOS, which limits you to four drives total (i.e. SATA channels become masters on IDE1 and IDE2, with PATA masters becoming slaves, and PATA slaves dropping off the map, or, as an alternative, PATA2 disappearing, and SATA1 and SATA2 becoming PATA1 Master and PATA1 Slave) Win2K and DOS-based utilities (such as bootable Antivirus or Partitioning program CD's and utilities like the drive test disks that you get with a hard drive,) fail on startup.
Running SATA as a SCSI-over-IDE, requiring drivers, is a more flexible approach, but requires the use of driver floppies. Still, there's something neat about having four drives all hooked up as masters (2 SATA / 2 PATA) and installing XP without driver floppies.
I'm not sure how it can be remotely possible with a 4 drive SATA controller, though.
sprockkets - Monday, May 31, 2004 - link
Does anybody know if the NF3 chipset has any functionality similar to Intel's SATA, like is SATA done natively without needing any special drivers or programs for the os to use or understand?rms - Monday, May 31, 2004 - link
I also would have preferred to see feature benchmarking instead of cpu/memory benchmarking.rms
Zak - Sunday, May 30, 2004 - link
2 RAM slots on the Abit mobo??? They call THAT an improvement??? Why can't there be at least 4? With 1GB chips' prices being still very high that would be a major selling point for many. I'd upgrade my mobo instantly if I could stick 4 512MB DDR400 chips and not have them run at 333...Zak
Odeen - Sunday, May 30, 2004 - link
I'm very surprised that none of the motherboards except for MSI actually implemented all the features of their chipsets. Both the NF3-250GB and the K8T800 Pro support 4 chipset-level SATA ports, but only MSI has all 4. If it wasn't for that Corecell silliness, I'd be taking a long, hard look at the MSI board.Crassus - Sunday, May 30, 2004 - link
Whats the point of showing benchmarks when all the boards perform within margin of error? When the memory controller is part of the CPU there's IMHO little point in benchmarking it.Why not go after the components that make a bigger difference, esp. HDD, Ethernet and stuff in terms of throughput, CPU utilisation and so?
JustAnAverageGuy - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
#11In RAM, generally speed increases are more noticible in real world performance than timings.
Obviously if you have 400 cas 3-3-3-8, versus 400 cas 2-2-2-11, 2-2-2-11 would win. Generally though, speed is more important than timings after a certain point.
bigtoe33 - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
#9I think you may have one of these supposed 3000 boards that have non-pro chipsets that Abit says are pro chipsets but really appear to be not..
I would take your issue to Abit.
qquizz - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
Concerning the overclock. I can overclock the crap out of my XP2100+, but I keep it at levels where it's stable using Prime95 and Memtest. I wonder if these overclocks can meet my standards?gplracer - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
All of the ram in this comparision was CAS3. I wonder how the CAS3 at 270mhz compares to CAS@ at 250mhz. I run my corsair at that speed now.