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AMD were kind enough to supply an EPoX 8K3A+ for the purposes of this review (along with the half GB of TwinMos DDR) and this morning, just in time for some late afternoon testing, EPoX couriered a spanking new EP-8K5A2+ to me and in the end it provided the platform for the XP2600 benchmarks in this review. 8K5A2+ is 8K3A+ on steroids, with all the new amenities that you are used to but the 8K3A+ didn't provide.
Onboard Ethernet, which I've come to rely on recently and USB 2.0 are just the highlights with the main change being the new southbridge. The KT333 northbridge that provides memory controller, CPU interface and the AGP interface is identical but the new VT8235 southbridge (everything the north doesn't give you including PCI bus, USB controllers, audio, Ethernet, legacy interfaces etc) is all new.
The VT8235 is famous for it's redesigned PCI bus, something that VIA have taken some punishment for in the past (and rightly so). No firm tests that I know of to prove it's any better than the old bus design but I didn't encounter any issues during testing despite using a Creative soundcard, the traditional adversary to stable running on a VIA chipset of days gona by. So onto the spec.
• AMD Athlon XP2600+ 'Thoroughbred' @ 16.5 x 133MHz FSB (2.13GHz)
• EPoX 8K5A2+, VIA KT333 Chipset (+ VT8235), Socket A AMD DDR Motherboard
• MSI 645E Max2 LRU, SiS645DX Chipset, Socket 478 Intel Pentium 4 DDR Motherboard
• SOYO KT333 DRAGON Ultra, VIA KT333 Chipset, Socket A AMD DDR Motherboard
• Intel Pentium 4 1.8A 'Northwood' @ 133MHz FSB (2.4GHz, 2.4B effective)
• AMD Athlon XP2200+ @ 133MHz FSB (1.8GHz)
• 2 x 256Mb Samsung PC2700 DDR Memory Modules (CAS2, 2-5-2)
• 2 x 256Mb TwinMos PC2700 DDR Memory Modules (CAS2, 2-5-2)
• MSI G4Ti4400-VTD (MS-8871) GeForce4 Ti4400 128MB
• Adaptec 39160 PCI SCSI Dual Channel U160 controller
• 18.3GB Seagate Cheetah X15 U160 15,000rpm SCSI disk
• 2 x 73Gb Seagate Cheetah U160 10,000rpm SCSI disks
• Plextor 12/10/32S SCSI CDRW
• Pioneer 6x Slot-load SCSI DVD
• Creative Soundblaster Audigy Player Retail
• Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148
• DetonatorXP 28.80 NVIDIA drivers
• Aquamark v2.3
• Quake3 v1.30
• 3DMark 2001 Professional Second Edition
• Serious Sam: The Second Encounter Demo
• Comanche 4 Demo Benchmark
• PiFast version 4.1, by Xavier Gourdon
• LAME v3.91 MMX and RazorLame 1.1.5 front end
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