VIA KT333 Motherboard Roundup - June 2002

EPoX 8K3A+

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EPoX was one of the first manufacturers to release a KT266A board and they did the same when the KT333 chipset was released as well. Being one of the first boards on the market, the 8K3A+ doesn't use VIA's VT6202 USB 2.0 controller. The 8233A South Bridge does provide support for 6 USB 1.1 ports, two of which are provided on the motherboard and another two through an external bracket.

The board features a full 6 PCI slots and a single AGP 4X slot not to mention three DIMM slots. Like all too many of these boards with more than 2 memory slots, stability isn't guaranteed with all banks populated. You will be able to use a maximum of two DDR333 modules without sacrificing stability. We also ran into other issues with 3 DIMMs installed such as incorrectly reporting the memory size at POST.

The 8K3A+ uses a fairly large heatsink on the North Bridge without a fan and uses a thermistor in the center of the CPU socket for temperature measurement. Update: Apparently the 8K3A+ does offer support for the Athlon XP's internal diode as pointed out by AnandTech Forum member N8.

The 8K3A+ is the only motherboard in this roundup that still has a numerical diagnostic tool on-board to help diagnose problems during the system's POST. In order to save PCB area, EPoX has gone to a smaller display but the functionality is still the same. It would be helpful if they provided a card outside of the manual with all of the POST error codes for even quicker debugging.

Compared to some of the other boards in this roundup, the level of integration on the 8K3A+ is fairly light. All that's present is an on-board AC'97 codec and a HighPoint IDE RAID controller. The ALC650 drives the 6-channel audio on the board while the HPT372 handles the two IDE RAID channels.

Other than the issues with three DIMMs installed, the 8K3A+ worked fine for us during our extensive testing.