Epox EP-6VBA2
Epox is establishing itself with a reputation for manufacturing stable motherboards based on non-Intel Chipsets. Their EP-MVP3G2 and G5 motherboards are one of the best Super 7 motherboards supporting the AMD K6-2 and K6-III processors.The Epox EP-6VBA2 continues this tradition. It is an excellent motherboard based on the VIA Apollo Pro 133A Chipset. This board supports PC133, Pentium III processors with 133 MHz Front Side Bus, ATA-66 hard drives and 4x AGP video cards.
The Epox motherboard is based on the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset. This two chip set is comprised of a 694x North Bridge controller and a 686A South Bridge peripheral controller.
It is also possible to combine the 596B South Bridge with the 694x North Bridge. The 686A portion supports PCI 2.2 whereas the 596B supports PCI 2.1. It also supports AC97 audio.
Specifically, the VT82C686A Peripheral Controller has the following features:
PC98 compliant PCI-to-ISA bridge
AC-97 Audio
Ultra DMA/33/66 Master PCI-IDE Controller
USB controller
Keyboard controller
Real Time Clock
Distributed DMA
Serial IRQ
Plug and Play
ACPI
Enhanced Power Management
SMBus
Temperature, Voltage, and fan monitoring
The 694x portion of the chipset combination allows motherboards to be manufacturerd which support PC133 SDRAM, 4x AGP video cards, and Intel Pentium III processors with the 133 MHz Front Side Bus.
In addition to the above features, the Epox motherboard supports easy processor settings with their ESSJ ("Easy Setting Single Jumper "). This is a single jumper which is moved to the correct external bus speed setting.
The clock multiplier is set by setting four switches, labeled SW1. The 8x clock multiplier is etched on the board for the 66 MHz and 100 MHz FSB but is written as reserved in the manual for the 133 FSB.
IRQ assignments for PCI slots via the BIOS, Keyboard power-ON function, Power On After Power Failure, VCM and ESDRAM memory support are also included with the board.
Memory support is a great feature of the Epox motherboard. This is because the Epox 6VBA2 motherboard can support PC100 or PC133 Synchronous DRAM that operates asynchronously to the processor bus.
In other words, it is possible to have a 100 MHz FSB processor while using PC133 memory or a 133 MHz FSB processor while using PC100 memory.
Please realize that you should not mix PC133 and PC100 memory modules. It is also not a good idea to mix different brands of memory.
The motherboard also supports VCM and ESDRAM memory. This allows maximum configuration for anyone interested in a board with room for future upgrades.
Again, total system memory continues to be the most important factor in overall system performance. According to most memory manufacturers, adding more memory is the least expensive upgrade relative to a new processor or new video card.
