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To: fyodor_ who wrote (149345)	11/25/2001 10:50:22 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

templintech.com INTRODUCTION: Via has done it again. After the lackluster reception the KT266 chipset received, Via of course went to work on an updated version of the chipset, just like with the KT133. With the revised chipset Via has given the competition something to aim for. The AMD 761 is an incredible chipset in of itself, but it just didn't seem to take full advantage of DDR technology, not that the KT266a chipset does, but it's a step forward in the right direction. Epox has in my opinion the best motherboard utilizing the AMD 761 chipset; it is simply a dream board for all us overclockers out there with its stability and ability to run at extreme FSB speeds. Now with the release of the KT266a chipset Epox has once again entered the scene with a board that could once again be king, maybe. The question is can they keep up the high standards set by the 8k7a..... There have been all kinds of bad press in hardware forums about problems with the 8KHA board. There is a confirmed problem that early boards had a boot problem when trying to warm boot the system. Epox has said that it is related to bad BIOS chips when in fact many people have stated that the problem persists even with the new BIOS chips, typically when running at high FSB speeds. Epox was quick to release a new revision of the board, 2.0 which supposedly fixed the problems- it didn't. My experience with this board didn't start out on a high note, I got one of the original revisions, 1.03, and it simply would not boot, it gave me a C1 error every time I powered it on. I was one of the lucky ones to get a bad board :(. My next board was one of the new revisions and it has the boot problems, every time I turn the system on it won't boot, I have to hit the reset button to get it to boot up. Hopefully Epox will find a fix for these issues or there will be a lot of unhappy Epox fan's out there that will be looking for a less problematic board, possibly in the Abit KR7 due out in a few weeks. Update: After I wrote this part of the article I was playing around and came across something very odd. I noticed that if you used an AMD Athlon (non XP or MP) in the 8KHA the boot issues went away. I put my 1.33 in the board and it now runs flawlessly, no problems whatsoever with cold or warm boots. The only problem remains at high FSB speeds, the 8KHA+ simply is not stable at high FSB clocks, I get random reboots. Now here's where it gets interesting, after placing the AMD XP 1900+ into the 8K7A the boot issues arose. Now I have used that particular board for a few months now without a single glitch, and suddenly the exact same problem I was having with the 8KHA was now happening on the 8K7A. My theory is that the whole thing over the BIOS chips causing this boot problem simply isn't right. I spoke to an AMD rep a while back and he had said something about needing and AMD approved motherboard for the XP due to different power requirements that the XP needs. Though many boards will run the XP just fine, small issues may arise due to the fact that it isn't built to AMD specifications for the XP processor specifically. So I believe this is where all the problems are arising from, not the BIOS like people have been saying on the net. Of course this is all just my opinion and I hope that others out there will test this theory and let me know what they find here so that I can do an update to this review. Now I spoke to an Epox support tech and he told me that they have a few 8KHA+'s running with an XP1900+ with no problems at all, no boot issues or anything, even though the problem is obviously there he basically told me that my board should be fine, though different configurations will produce different results. I just hope this issue will be resolved soon enough...