7VRXP or EPoX 8K3A+

[SecretSquirrel]

I am leaning towards the Gigabyte...any comments please?

[mird-OC]

i'd lean towards the epox... if only for it's hella OC'ing feats.

[Humantuckshop]

What mird said - go teh EPOX!

[SecretSquirrel]

Yeah but the Epox doesnt have half the extras...what about the ASUS A7V333? Is that any good, because thats a reasonably priced one.

[mird-OC]

Originally posted by SecretSquirrel
Yeah but the Epox doesnt have half the extras...what about the ASUS A7V333? Is that any good, because thats a reasonably priced one.
well, are you an OVERCLOCKER or a FEATURE-WHORE? ;)

i mean honestly, where are those dinky features gonna get you? :p

[theYANK]

gigabyte is 'supposedly' trying to put their heads back into overclocking, but at this point in time I'd still say Epox - you can always ADD features. ;)

[Wibber]

depends wot you've allready got.. if you got a nic and decent soundcard then get the epox..otherwise epox+nic+sound card can be a ittle pricey, so get the GA

[SecretSquirrel]

Yeah, well, thats the thing, I dont have a soundcard at the moment, however, I CAN rectify this if I get the Epox, but it would probably end up being the SB Live! because I'm not unreasonably poor still...we shall see.


The other option was the Asus board...not sure yet, want to see how good it is for the overclocking, because thats fairly hot piece of ass...6 channel onboard also...

[Wibber]

erm I'd get the epox or the gigabyte

[Grrr!!]

I would go for the Gigabyte, mainly because I'd rather pay $270 for that, then a massive amount for the Epox ($311), as well as all the extras.

[Ragnor]

What are you on about..?

The EPOX 8K3A+ KT333 CE (inc RAID) is $269 @ StylesPc

[Agent 86]

Anantech (http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1636&p=20) reviewed both those boards and a few others last week.

[Grrr!!]

Pricespy isn't upto date.

$311 @ pp.co.nz

[Grrr!!]

THG recommends the Gigabyte:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q2/020509/index.html

[Ragnor]

PriceSpy isn't all that reliable... there's just too many nz retailers for the one (or couple) of dudes to handle...

hehe Tomshardware..

They've become a bit of a joke round here.. a few people call it TardsHardware..

Once upon a time they were the pioneers, tom himself actually did the reviews back then.. thesedays they just aren't *it* in terms or good quality, in depth and reliable reviews..

Anyway both boards are fine.. but for the following reasons the gigabyte sucks, reasons Tom would never point out:

The onboard sound:
supports only 2 channels
Is a creative chip.. and its a worse model then sblive level of quality... and it's made by creative so driver support will last about 6months .. enough said..! /avoids rant.

An actual sound card is always at least 10x better then onboard

The onboard NIC:
It's a realtek :rolleyes: cpu cycle hungry..

An actual NIC is always better then onboard.. go for non realtek eg: from cheapest to expensive... netgear, 3com, intel ..

Also you can't use the king of cpu coolers, the Alpha 8045 on it without some risk.. it presses up against the capactors and they didn't leave enough quite room around the bolt thru holes used to bolt it on

there are more but I can't be stuffed thinking of them..

.. yah anyway..

Go teh Epox, buy a soundcard, hell even a sblive is alot better then onboard, they're going cheap 2nd hand.

Gigabyte are trying to get back into the overclocker market, but
they're rusty and haven't tried hard enough I believe

... get a gigabyte for your mum or grandma

[Mr ABIT]

the 8k3a+ has been said to have poor 3d performance at high fsb's compared to other kt333 boards running at the same fsb...

[Humantuckshop]

Originally posted by Mr ABIT
the 8k3a+ has been said to have poor 3d performance at high fsb's compared to other kt333 boards running at the same fsb...


Really? I've read quite alot of articles on the Epox 8K3A+ and none of them mentioned that.........

[Ragnor]

Haven't seen or heard any such thing myself... post a link or refer to your proof please...!

There really isn't any significant difference between any of the KT333 CE boards.. the main difference is in features, support and the flexibility of bios options..

[Mr ABIT]

!! ok ill have to find it again saw it ages ago...

[Mr ABIT]

the way i remember it it had something to do with an agp divider kicking in at a certain fsb, so you lost a considerable % of your agp bandwidth something like 20 - 30% i think, but dont worry ill find the link and you'll see

[Ragnor]

hehe oh dear... that's the difference between a KT266a board and a KT333 board not between brands..

KT333 has support for 166fsb (ie 333 DDR) ... this means there is an extra divider that kicks in at 166 to make sure that the agp and pci buses run at spec ie: the 66 and 33mhz that they are supposed to run at.

When you overclock to 166 on a kt266a the agp and pci speeds get increased too.. meaning every component in your system gets overclocked.. hard drives, network cards, sound cards...

So of course it's faster...

n00b


;)

[SilverPriest]

Or one could just get an nForce board which keeps the PCI and AGP in spec anyway regardless of fsb speed ;)

[Wibber]

the divider stitch is set in either software (almost everybody) or hardware (gigabyte), the KT333 itself supports the 1/5, so some boards like the 8K3A+ have it, but some like the VRXP don't