EPoX 8K9A2+ Motherboard Review

By Brandon Turnbull on January 14, 2003

Introduction

I have always been a fan of EPoX motherboards and have used them a lot because of their stability, features, and overclockability. I reviewed the EPoX 8K3A+ a while back here at OCmodshop which used the VIA KT333 chipset. This is the EPoX 8K9A2+ motherboard which uses the KT400 chipset.

The VIA KT400 chipset brings some good new features to the table like DDR400 support, 8x AGP, onboard LAN, SATA, ATA133, 6 USB 2.0 ports and many other things which can be seen below.

The main reason that I have always liked EPoX motherboards is because they are great overclockers. With the 8K3A+ Vcore voltages of above 2.00v being offered it gave a lot of room for overclocking. Along with the ability to use high voltages without doing any modifications they usually offer a large amount of memory tweaking options.

VIA KT400 Specifications

Supports AMD Athlon™ XP processors
200/266/333MHz FSB settings
200/266/333MHz System bus settings
Support for AGP 2X/4X/8X
Supports up to 4.0GB DDR200/266/333SDRAM
8X V-Link 533MB/s high bandwidth North/South Bridge interconnect
Support for Advanced Communications Riser (ACR) Card Standard
Integrated 6 channel Surround Sound AC-97 Audio
Integrated MC-97 Modem
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet MAC
Support for ATA 33/66/100/133
Support for USB 2.0, 6 USB ports, UHCI compliant
Advanced power management capabilities including ACPI/OnNow
664-pin BGA VT8368 North Bridge
487-pin BGA VT8235 South Bridge

The EPoX 8K9A2+ has a lot of features which most current KT400 motherboards have. It supports Durons, Thunderbirds, Athlon XPs, and Thoroughbreds. There are 3 DDR Slots for PC3200 (it can handle faster RAM of course) and the voltage on the RAM can be increased to 3.2v. There are 4 USB 2.0 ports with another 2 optional, ATA-133 IDE and UltraDMA-100+33 RAID controller. Along with the IDE RAID available with this board SATA RAID is available which can do up to ATA150 speeds. This motherboard also comes with 6-channel full-duplex integrated sound and an onboard 10/100 LAN port.

Specifications

Processor AMD Athlon™, Athlon™ XP, Duron™
Core Logic VIA Apollo KT400 Chipset + VIA VT8235
BIOS Award/Phoenix BIOS v6.0
Max. FSB 333MHz
Memory 3 x DDR SDRAM PC2700, 4GB max.Form Factor ATX

Expansion Slots

AGP 1, 8xPCI 6, 32-bit

Ports

PS/2 1 mouse, 1 keyboard.
Serial 2
Parallel 1
USB 4 onboard, 2 optional. USB 2.0
Network 1 x VIA Tahoe VIA VT6103 Physical Layer / Transceiver
Floppy 2 drives max.
IDE 2 x E/IDE Ultra DMA/133, 4 drives max.
RAID IDE 2 x Highpoint HPT372 UDMA/ATA 133 RAID, 4 drives max.

Controllers

Sound Realtek ALC650 6-channel full-duplex integrated sound
Option Silicon Image Sil3112a SerialATA

The EPoX 8K9A2+ is not your basic motherboard by any standard, this thing comes with a lot to offer. This motherboard like the KT333 from EPoX has the ability to go past 1.85v for the Vcore all the way up to 2.03v. The EPoX 8K9A2+ does all of the voltage, multipler, memory and every other option you might need to change through the BIOS. The only 2 jumpers that are on this motherboard are for selecting the CPU host clock and to clear the CMOS.