Motherboards in 2001 Preview: Part 1

EPoX shows us DDR, KT133A and more

This is the EPoX EP-8K7A which was actually demonstrated during Comdex. The board should be ready to ship by the end of the month.  It uses the AMD 761 North Bridge and the VIA 686B South Bridge, supporting 200/266 MHz FSB AMD processors, and up to 2GB of DDR SDRAM.  Once again, with only 2 DIMM slots, it’s unlikely that the 2GB memory limit of the AMD 761 North Bridge will actually be attained any time soon by this board.It also has the Highpoint HPT370 ATA 100 RAID and the P80P POST diagnostic tool. 

The EP-3VHA, shown above, is EPoX’s Socket-370 DDR solution.  It uses the VIA Apollo Pro266 chipset and offers three DIMM slots, supporting up to 1.5GB DDR SDRAM.

The other board that EPoX demonstrated during Comdex was the EP-D3VA, shown above.  It is a dual Socket-370 motherboard using the VIA 694X / 596B combination.  Once again, we can see a push from manufacturers towards high-end servers applications.  The four DIMM slots support up to 2GB of SDRAM.

This is the EP-8KTA3.  It is similar to the EP-8KTA2, with the exception that EPoX uses the updated North Bridge from the VIA KT133A chipset, so the board supports 200/266 MHz FSB AMD processors.

This is the EP-3SLA, a VIA PM133 board for Intel’s Socket-370 processors.  Like the KM133, it features integrated S3 Savage 4 video.