EPoX 7KXA KX133 Slot-A ATX

The Bad

As the first KX133 motherboard to hit the streets, one can only be skeptical of whether or not the 7KXA will succeed as a stable and reliable product over time, but judging by EPoX's history we can presume for the better. We only had a few gripes with this early revision of the 7KXA, some of which should hopefully be addressed in the final shipping version of the board.

For one thing, the board was noticeably less stable than our Gigabyte GA-7IX test bed during our stability and reliability tests, but most of the crashes could be attributed to the early revision of the motherboard. For end users, this shouldn't be a problem, but make sure that an unscrupulous vendor doesn't try and stick you with a pre-release sample - the revision number is printed at the upper left hand corner of the PCB.

From an overclocker's perspective, it would have been nice to see more intermediate FSB frequencies between 100MHz and 110MHz for those users that can't seem to hit the 110MHz on their boards. But it is a positive thing that our K7XA managed to successfully boot into Windows and run tests at the 115MHz FSB frequency, a feat our old K7M could not accomplish.

We have still yet to find a motherboard manufacturer that can truly push the limits of the Athlon's EV6 bus, with the 7KXA still hovering around 110MHz as the max attainable FSB frequency regardless of the setup. We have spoken to a few companies also looking to push the FSB on these motherboards, and unfortunately, there hasn't been a single success story at the higher settings, such as 133MHz, which is provided for on the board via a single reserved jumper setting. This isn't an issue with the motherboard itself, but rather something to think about for potential buyers, especially with the next generation of Athlon chipsets due out in the second half of this year with support for DDR SDRAM and higher FSB frequencies.

On the other hand, a new motherboard isn't nearly as big of an investment as, for example, a new CPU. However, replacing a motherboard in 6 months may be all right for some, but for others, it's not an option. Keep this in mind before you shell out for the latest KX133 solution.

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: Yes

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: 1 x 128MB Corsair PC133 SDRAM; 1 x 128MB Mushkin PC133 SDRAM

SDRAM Tested: 1 x 128MB Corsair PC133 SDRAM; 1 x 128MB Mushkin PC133 SDRAM

Manufacturer: Corsair
Purchase Website: http://www.corsairmicro.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Website: http://www.mushkin.com