Blown Stock Caps
New Panasonic FR Capacitors
System Setup and Usage
The EpoX 8KHA+ was a joy to setup from start to finish. Since there were no jumpers or DIP switches to configure (except for the JCK1 jumper, which I'll get to later), the CPU setup was done in no time. On first boot, the board started with the FSB set to 100 MHz, the necessary settings could then be made directly from within the BIOS. Afterwards, I configured all chipset and memory settings for best performance, which resulted in a memory configuration of DDR266 CL2 2-2-5 1T with 4-bank Interleaving enabled and "System Performance" set to “Turbo”. This worked right away and proved to be stable throughout all testing.
The second step before the actual system setup is always the installation of the expansion cards. Thankfully, Epox included an INT-routing table in the manual, where the sharing between the PCI slots is clearly visible:
The information we get here, is, that PCI #4 and PCI #6 are shared, as well as PCI #3 and PCI #5. The next piece of necessary information can be obtained in the subpage “PnP/PCI Configurations” of the BIOS, where we can see which onboard devices allocate their IRQs on which INT line, by selecting the options "INT Pin 1/2/3/4 Assignment":
- INT-A: AGP
- INT-B: free
- INT-C: onboard audio
- INT-D: USB controller
Based on this combined information, we have two free INT lines available once the onboard audio is disabled (along with other unused onboard devices like serial and parallel ports, etc.). These sharing-free slots will be used by the SB Live! and the SATA controller; the Ethernet card will be sharing its IRQ with the USB controller(s), resulting in this setup:
- PCI #1: free
- PCI #2: SATA controller
- PCI #3: SB Live!
- PCI #4: Voodoo 2
- PCI #5: Voodoo 2
- PCI #6: 3Com NIC
This configuration proved to be completely trouble-free. The subsequent benchmarks with the Voodoo 5 also showed no problems at all.
When I was done with my testing, I wanted to take a closer look at the 1/5 & 1/6 dividers this board is said to have, as well as the “JCK1” jumper. But before we even begin, let me tell you this up front: I cannot recommend using either 166 MHz or 200 MHz FSB with this motherboard (although at least FSB166 should be somewhat possible).
For the test, I first removed all expansion cards and the hard drive. I then started by setting the JCK1 jumper to 133 MHz and the FSB to 166 MHz in the BIOS. In the “Advanced Chipset Settings” section, I set “System Performance” to “Normal”. the DRAM speed to 133MHz (which is a 1:1 FSB:MEM divider), timings to “Auto” and the command rate to 2T. With the CPU Multiplier lowered to 7x, this resulted in a CPU clock of 1166 MHz, with a 166 MHz CL2,5 3-3-6 2T memory configuration.
I restored my Win98 image and was able to install the chipset- and graphics drivers without issues. To get a hint if the AGP clock runs at a stock 66 MHz (which would proof the presence of a 1/5 divider), I fired up the Final Reality benchmark and did a bus bandwidth test. And although the CPU clock was lower and the memory timings were also much slower then in my regular test before, the measured bandwidth was roughly 4% higher compared to my result of the regular benchmark session before.
To investigate this further, I wanted to bench the SSD on the SIL controller to see, if the SSD speed increases over what I measured during the regular test. This should be the case, if the PCI Bus got overclocked by the increased FSB.
But when I tried to boot with the SATA controller installed, the system got stuck where the controller usually detects the connected SSD. I quickly doubled checked, if everything works fine at a stock 133 MHz FSB - and yes, the SSD got detected instantly. In my opinion this finally proves, that there is no 1/5 divider.
I decided to do some further testing in this direction, though. Firstly, I raised the FSB to 167 MHz to see if the divider maybe kicks in a little later - which was not the case. After this, I lowered the FSB to 160, 155 and then 150 MHz, where the SATA controller finally started working. I got a nice increase of ~15/30% on the Read/Write values of the SSD, although the PCI performance on the 8KHA+ is not the best in general (which we'll come to later) and also the SB Live! was not in the system. The Soundblaster card always lowers the PCI performance by a small margin when installed.
To draw a better picture of the AGP performance with various FSB speeds, I redid the Final Reality Bus Bandwidth test with the stock 1200 MHz (9x133) CPU speed and memory timings lowered to those, that I used for the faster FSB settings. CPU speed and memory timings definitely have an impact on the result, so please keep in mind, that all three additional results with the faster FSB speeds have a slightly lower CPU clock. These are the results:
| CPU / Multi / FSB | Bandwidth | Suspected AGP Clock | Suspected AGP overclock | Performance Gain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1166 MHz (7x166) | 323 MB/s | 83 MHz | 25,76 % | 8,39 % |
| 1163 MHz (7,5x155) | 321 MB/s | 77,5 MHz | 17,42 % | 7,72 % |
| 1168 MHz (8x146) | 302 MB/s | 73 MHz | 10,61 % | 1,34 % |
| 1200 MHz (9x133) | 298 MB/s | 66 MHz | 0 % | 0 % |
As visible above, all FSB-overclocked configurations show a better AGP bandwidth, despite the lower CPU clock. This also displays clearly, that there is no 1/5 divider implemented (or to be precise 2/5 for AGP..). I also tried setting the "DRAM Speed" to 100 MHz in the BIOS, to check if the divider has some kind of “hidden activation” linked to this setting. In short: The table would look exactly as seen above, just with different absolute results.
Since with FSB166 we already have a hefty 41,5 MHz PCI clock, I did not try to boot higher FSB speeds into Windows or do extensive tests how low I can go with the memory timings. With such high PCI clocks, it is very possible that the hard drive gets damaged and I prefer to avoid that 😉
Nevertheless, I succeeded to get a POST with higher FSB speeds and the hard drive disconnected. It seems, that the chipset itself is able to go all the way up to 200 MHz, but the board has problems to run the memory at such high frequencies. Perhaps the signal gets to noisy or something like that.
With 180 FSB and DDR360 I got a POST, but the system froze after a few seconds in the BIOS. Higher memory voltages did not help, but the DDR400 stick is definitely not the limiting factor here anyway. Maybe raising the I/O voltage would help, but that is not possible on the 8KHA+.
Interestingly enough, the board POSTs with FSB200 and it is "stable" enough to let me navigate through the BIOS. I put “stable” in quotation marks, because the keyboard reacts very laggy with FSB200, sometimes keystrokes get ignored. It definitely feels “unsafe”. The reason I got a POST with FSB200, is, that EpoX implemented a hardwired 4:3 (FSB:MEM) divider for 200 MHz. The memory gets clocked to 150 MHz (DDR300), regardless of the DRAM 133MHz setting, which translates to a 1:1 FSB:MEM divider at all other FSB speeds.
FSB166
FSB180
FSB200
EpoX EP-8KHA+ (VIA KT266A)
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Layout
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Features
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Overclocking Options
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Compatibility
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Documentation & Support
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Performance: GeForce 4 Ti 4200
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Performance: Voodoo 5 5500
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Performance: Voodoo 2 SLI
OVERALL
| Pros | Cons |
| + Great CPU support | – Bad ATX connector position |
| + Good overall performance | – Rather low PCI performance |