Any reason I should not buy the Epox 8KTA3??

[AKDUDE]

The deal over at www.newegg.com is really getting me to think that I should get one. I trust Newegg, and their free shipping deals really get me thinking.
Im probably gonna order this one before the days end monday, unless you guys think im making a mistake.

Im swinging back and forth between the Epox, and the iWill with the DDR bus.
I want something thats not gonna give me alot of trouble, I want overclocking features, but I want it to setup and work as smoothly as possible, with all the "tweaking" time spent on performance, not getting something to just work.
Newegg also has free shipping on the iWill boards.

At this time I really don't care much about Raid, as neat as it is, if I HAVE to have it in the future I can get a PCI raid card.

If you fellas were going to get a motherboard today, would you get one that uses the new DDR memory, or stick with the SDRAM and throw the money saved at PC150 ram?
HELP!

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?description=13-123-133

AKDUDE

 

[wild_andy_c]

I got one that I reviewed for EPoX. Although it was sent to me, and do I have loads of other motherboards - this is the best board I have come across for ages.

The stability of this board at crazy FSB's is amazing. My PC100 does 145Mhz CAS2 on it. Performance is unreal. Really unreal.

The Iwill does not offer much of a performance boost. Memory is hard to come by and so forth.

If you were gonna wait a while however - the choice may be different, the feeling too.


I'll just state (you can read the review at my site too) that the 8KTA3 is a very accomplished piece of electronic engineering and bid u farewell

 

[AKDUDE]

Thanks for the reply Andy, thats what I wanted to hear .
Everyone seems to be all excited about the iWill, but I havn't heard one negative thing about the EPOX.
AKDUDE

 

[wild_andy_c]

It gets better though - I've been running a 150Mhz FSB for 48 hours now with no crashes

 

[jmy]

i'm debating between the epox and the msi k7t turbo.. any comments ??

 

[DaveB]

It looks like a good value, but probably not the best board you could get. Over at Anand's it crashed two times in their 24 stability test, the same as the Abit KT7A. But the MSI K7T Turbo had zero (0) crashes in 48 hours. In other tests I've seen, the Epox runs good but the same CPU O/C'ed higher on the Abit board.

I'm not saying it's a bad board, because at Anand's the stabilty tests are very intense and they've always stated that only 2 crashes in 24 hours is actually quite good. You'll probably never duplicate those kinds of conditions anyway. Here are Anand’s criticisms in the summary of the review:

“The poor design around the CPU socket might affect the cooling of the CPU. With AMD processors running relatively hot at speed about 1GHz, cooling has become more important, and the current design takes the risk of blocking the airflow. The lack of 1MHz increments in FSB speeds also takes a big hit in overclocking, especially FSB speeds of higher than 140MHz are proved to be achievable.”

And Newegg has the MSI K7T Turbo with Raid Retail Version for only $9 more also with free shipping.

 

[proze]

i like the look of the epox, personally. probably be my next upgrade after a better cpu.

 

[AKDUDE]

Well, I went ahead and ordered the EPOX. I almost ordered the MSI, but didn't do it.
Ill post how it goes, also got 128megs of Kingmax pc150 from www.crazypc.com for 55 bucks!
AKDUDE

 

[OpenFriday]

nice AK once i get some of the green im buying the Epox aswell. Just picked up a duron 650 for the he|| of it. have fun

-OpenFriday

 

[fallout55]

I just traded my Epox 8KTA3 in on an Iwill KK266. My duron 700 was topped out at 910(140x6.5) with the Epox but now it's at 973(139x7) with the Iwill. The big reason of the increase is that the Epox would only give me a 1.81 actual vcore, even when set at 1.85. This Iwill is giving me 1.91 at that same setting. And also remember that after 133 the fsb settings on the Epox go from 133-136-140-145-150..etc while the Iwill has 1 mhz adjustments up to 200mhz. I am having strange multiplier problems with the Iwill though.