reviews

Epox EP-8RDA+ Motherboard Review

Author: Dennis Garcia

What is there to say, both boards performed relatively the same in every test, the Soltek SL-75FRN-L pulled ahead in a few of the benchmarks but by such a slight margin I can hardly consider a winner in any category. This is to be expected given they both use the A3 Northbridge.

One thing that we did find with the Epox board is that you do not have to unlock the lower multipliers on the newer Athlon XP T-bred processors. All of the multiplier values are selectable in the bios giving you full control over your processor. A small wire needed to be inserted into the CPU socket to unlock values lower than 12x on the Soltek board.

Throughout these tests the Epox 8RDA+ ran consistently strong and many of the problems that we did have can be attributed to a very buggy and unstable BIOS. There were many instances of bios "freezing" or corruption that made testing this board a real chore, though from what I've seen given the proper modifications and some higher latency DDR memory you can get some amazing performance from the Epox board.

Speaking of memory this is where the 8RDA+ scores the lowest. Clearly low latency memory cannot be used in this board reliably since a simple CMOS reset will render the motherboard unbootable. Of course the optimal solution would be to use memory with higher latency timers but we would much rather see the problem fixed in the BIOS then resort to having to use low quality RAM. I know of many people (including myself) that have returned their 8RDA+ boards thinking that the board was broken when it was actually a problem with memory compatibility.

Full chipset features available
Dual channel DDR 400
Good stock performance
Multiplier unlocking in BIOS
Bios ready for 400Mhz FSB Athlon
CPU cooler mounting holes
Rare Green PCB

Unstable Bios freezing/corruption
Marginal overclocking without motherboard modifications
No active Northbridge cooling
Low latency memory incompatibility

I would like to thank the guys at Misr Corps for helping to make this review possible. Check out their online store for all of your Soltek and Epox needs.

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