I was very lucky to get my hands on this Motherboard , I was chasing the new Gigabyte KT400 MB and whoa , MSY also just got the 8K5A3 in earlier that day . This MB has been a sales success for Epox in the USA , apparently selling like the proverbial hot cake , so strap on your seat belts folks , and lets take this board for a test drive .

EP-8K5A3+
Socket A motherboard
AMD Athlon™, Athlon™ XP, Duron™
266MHz Max FSB
VIA Apollo KT333 Chipset
DDR SDRAM PC2700

Specifications
Processor AMD Athlon™, Athlon™ XP, Duron™
Core Logic VIA Apollo KT333 Chipset + VIA VT8235
BIOS Award/Phoenix BIOS v6.0
Max. FSB 266MHz
Memory 4 x DDR SDRAM PC2700, 4GB max.
Form Factor ATX, 305mm x 245mm

Expansion Slots
AGP 1, 1x / 2x / 4x
PCI 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 4 x Highpoint HPT374 UDMA/ATA 133 RAID, 8 drives max.

Controllers
Sound Realtek ALC650 6-channel full-duplex integrated sound

Special Features
Hardware Monitoring Function provided by Winbond
Keyboard Power On (KBPO)
Suspend To RAM (STR)
CPU V-core settings are adjustable by BIOS
CPU clock settings are adjustable by BIOS
CPU multiplier settings are adjustable by BIOS
Memory voltage settings are adjustable by BIOS
Wake On Lan (WOL)
P80P Diagnostic LED
Magic Flash

 

 

 

FIRST IMPRESSION'S:

An impressive board to say the least , esp after reading all the hype on the Epox web site , you would almost be lead into thinking this was the second coming of the KT333 chipset . The list of features is certainly impressive , I have to say , much more so than with the 8K3A . Installing the Board into my case was a no boner , with possibly the placement of the IDE slots ( including the 4 raid ) being a problem for some depending on the layout of your case , and the number of drives used , and the video card chosen , hehehehe what Im trying to say is , you could run out of space in a real hurry , real fast , for all those IDE cables , esp with a GF4 ti4600 . Getting the board up and running was no problem what so ever , my unlocked XP1700 was set for 11.5 x 166FSB @ 1.8v and the ram set to Turbo , Win98SE was freshly installed as were the supplied MB Drivers , Nvidia 29.42 drivers for the GF4 ti4200 and Direct X8.1 .

BENCHMARKS: 8K5A3 VS 8K3A

400W power sup / 7200rpm Maxtor ATA133 HDD / 64meg GF4ti4200 / Volcano 7+ / C-media PCI sound /

The results here were rather close , but the high score went to the Epox 8K3A every time , Sisoftsandra 2002 and 3Dmark2001SE . Starting with Sisoftsandra 2002 :

Arithmetic Bench

8K5A3	Drystone 5308
8K3A	Drystone 5325
8K5A3	Whetstone 2654
8K3A	Whetstone 2657

 

 

 

 

Multimedia Bench

8K5A3	Integer 10522
8K3A	Integer 10534
8K5A3	Floating Point 11664
8K3A	Floating Point 11675

 

 

 

 

Memory bandwidth

8K5A3	Int 2524
8K3A	Int 2545
8K5A3	Float 2277
8K3A	Float 2396

 

 

 

 

3Dmark2001SE

8K5A3	10623 3Dmarks
8K3A	10876 3Dmarks

 

 

 

OVERCLOCKING:

Well I had some high hopes here for the 8K5A3 Motherboard , ever since having my XP1700 unlocked its refused to run 3Dmark2001SE without locking up somewhere along the benchmark test with the cpu doing 2GHZ, no mater the voltage . The 8K5A3 managed to equal the longest run I got on the Epox 8K3A , locking up around test 11 , at 2.1 volts ( 8K5A3 ) whilst the XP1700 on the 8K3A did it at 2volts even .

CONCLUSION:

Whilst this new MB is not superior to the 8K3A in overclocking "YET" , give it some time and a few bios revisions , and the 8K5A3 may become the top dog yet , the early BIOS's for the 8K3A weren't much to write home about , remember ? . Ok , I have nothing negative to say about this board ( I dont have 2 matching drives to try RAID ) , and from what I saw in the BIOS , setting up raid on this board should be easy . Speaking of raid , thats 4 Channel raid offered on this board or 8 IDE devices , over and above the standard 4 , ( wonder if Maxtor would send me 4-740 80gig HDD's ? Probably not ) .

This is one feature packed Motherboard , and whilst I would love to have on for myself , IM not going to part with my trusty 8K3A just yet , ESP since the KT400 boards are just starting to be released for sale , and I would expect the rev2 KT400 chipset to be out around Christmas . If not possibly an entirely new chipset to take further advantage of the XP cpu's change to 166FSB.

The Epox 8K5A3 is one solid , high performance MB that anyone looking for a KT333 solution should take a long hard look at , with the release of the 8K3A Epox has proven it can produce a serious MB , and the 8K5A3 is a continuation of this , if not possibly an evolution into something even better . If this board is anything to go by , then I can say with some confidence that Epox has matured into a serious Contender for your hard earned money , whether your a overclocker or not , I believe this MB deserves some respect . Again , I have nothing negative to say about this board , its a good , solid performer , and with further BIOS updates may even better the 8K3A in the benchmarks race , but folks , benchmarks are not everything , good solid performance counts for more in my books , and this board has just that , I did not have a single problem with it , nothing , OK I didn't ( could not ) try raid , but apart from that , I find myself in a situation where I have to give this MB 10 out of 10 , it just happens to be that good .

I would like to thank Andrew from MSY for making this review possible:

Matt Korhonen