EPoX 8K9A2+ KT400 Mainboard Review (11)
Overclocker 23 Oct 2002

In our tests, the overall performance of this board is average. We tested the board using a Corsair XMS3200 CAS 2.5 DDR400 module and ran it at the DDR333 spec speed. I was unable to use the 1T cmd rate at Ultra timings as the system is super unstable.  I swapped three different Corsair XMS modules including a XMS3500 but I could not get it to run at 1T cmd too. Tuning it down to 2T cmd solves the problem.

Although there is the unofficial DDR400 which is selectable, we aren't able to run it at aggressive timings of Ultra (Turbo is OK, but performance level loses to DDR333 CAS 2 Ultra timings). Anyway, DDR400 is a non JEDEC standard and it depends on a bit of luck of your selection of DDR modules to be able to run steadily at DDR400 speed probably upping the VDIMM voltage to 2.7v or above.

Feature wise, this board has the necessary features including ATA RAID, 6 ch audio, SerialATA, LAN, USB 2.0. This board seems to be Bluetooth ready as the USB port on board has the words indicating the "future" support of it.

For an unlocked AXP1900+, we clock it up to AXP2100+ which is 145Mhz FSB and it is stable at Turbo timings. We even managed to run the board at DDR400, Turbo timings, but the scores are that impressive compared to running it at DDR333 Ultra timings. Looks like we have to wait till KT400A which has an enhanced memory controller to resolve the async DDR400 problems.

Overall, EPoX 8K9A2+ offers quite good feature set and it comes with a full suite of tweaking options available in BIOS. With the help of the Debug LED and Watch Dog Timer, it is probably a good board as overclocking test bed. We managed to overclock our Corsair XMS3200 DDR400 CAS 2.5 module at Turbo timings using async mode running FSB at 145 and memory at DDR436 (218) at default voltage.

Retail price : USD130
* pricing based on pricewatch.com

Discuss

Below, we list down some pros and cons of this board :

Pros:

• CPU ratio, FSB (1mhz), Vcore voltages adjustable
• 6 channel audio
• USB 2.0, AGP 8x

Cons:

• No firewire support
• IDE ports and RAID ports are too close

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10.

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