EPoX 8K5A3+ Motherboard Review

Introduction

EPoX has been one of the biggest success stories in the hardware industry since VIA and SiS. EPoX six years ago was nothing but another name in the hardware sector, but today they are almost topping ABIT with their overclocking and innovative designed motherboards.

EPoX gained fame in the AMD sector when they were more than two weeks ahead of any other motherboard manufacturer with the release of retail KX133 Slot A motherboards. While these boards did have their share of niggles (all KX133 suffered some problems), this board was one of the biggest successes for EPoX in a long time. With AMD releasing Socket A CPU's and new chipsets for them, EPoX jumped back into R&D and were again among the first to release their KT133 and KT133A line of boards. These boards also featured new Athlon FSB and Multiplier overclocking options and even RAID in some models. This made the overclockers sit up and say "Which to buy, ABIT or EPoX?"

The release of DDR SDRAM had EPoX back at the tables setting up their KT266 and KT266A motherboards, both coming in RAID models and with six USB ports allowing for even greater expansion possibilities. When VIA got their new KT333 chips in full flight, EPoX produced another winner in the 8K3A+. Now with the introduction of VIA's new VT8235 Southbridge and the new features it posesses, EPoX has moved even further into the KT333 realm. Today we have in our grubby little hands the newest AMD Athlon solution from EPoX, the 8K5A3+.