The second generation of Athlon motherboards is finally upon us, but before we dive into one of the first members of this new class of Athlon motherboards, let's take a look at some of the advantages the second generation of boards to hit the market will hold over the handful of boards that launched with the Athlon or shortly thereafter:

• 4-layer PCB designs resulting in lower overall costs and more manufacturer support
• 133MHz memory bus speed support courtesy of the VIA KX133 chipset
• AGP 4X support allowing for higher AGP texturing speeds and more triangles to be transferred over the AGP bus when used with AGP 4X graphics accelerators, also courtesy of the KX133
• More overclocking options

Most of those features are a direct result of the release of VIA's KX133 chipset, while others, such as more overclocking options, are simply consequences of the demand of the market. We have learned quite a bit from the initial wave of Athlon motherboards: for one thing, there are some manufacturers who are very scared of producing an Athlon motherboard, much less publicizing it. Unfortunately, this trend will carry on, though not as badly, into the next wave of Athlon motherboards that hit the market. On the bright side, some new comers to the Athlon motherboard market will be promoting their Slot-A products just like any other motherboard, and among those is the 11 year old EPoX.

If you remember, EPoX had some of the first and the best VIA based Super7 solutions back during the reign of the K6-2 and K6-III as AMD's flagship CPUs. It only makes sense that EPoX should leverage their previous history with VIA to produce one of the first motherboards based on VIA's KX133 Athlon solution. Dating back to well before last year's Fall Comdex in Las Vegas, EPoX has been actively promoting their KX133 based design, which was just recently dubbed the EP-7KXA. A quick visit to their front page reveals that they are continuing to do so:

This active promotion and lack of shame when talking about the board is a very commendable act on the part of VIA, and luckily enough, while it's not the best, the 7KXA as a motherboard is just as praiseworthy.

The Good

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The 7KXA is the first available KX133 motherboard on the market, which by itself will sell quite a few of these boards. VIA worked quite a bit with their partners to make sure that designs based on the KX133 were as close to perfection as possible; it just so happened that EPoX's boards made it out of R&D and into production just slightly ahead of the competition.

The board features the 371 North Bridge from VIA which enables the 133MHz memory bus frequency support of the motherboard. The memory bus itself can run at either the FSB frequency, which by default is 100MHz, or at 33MHz + FSB which would put the memory bus at 133MHz while the FSB runs at 100MHz. As we've discovered from our review of the KX133 chipset, the 133MHz memory bus does increase performance anywhere from 0% to 20% in normal applications depending on their dependency on a high speed memory bus. The ability to set the memory bus frequency allows PC100 memory owners to use their memory without having to upgrade to PC133 while allowing PC133 owners the added performance benefits of the increased memory bandwidth.

Like all currently available Athlon motherboards, the 7KXA features three 168-pin DIMM slots. The slots themselves are capable of accepting PC100 or PC133 SDRAM as well as VC100 or VC133 Virtual Channel SDRAM. With the latter two being nothing more than vaporware in the market right now, PC100/PC133 memory is really what you can expect to use with the board.

The 371 North Bridge also drives the AGP 4X support claimed by the 7KXA. Our internal tests revealed that the 7KXA is actually using the updated stepping of VIA's AGP 4X core, which is also found in their Apollo Pro 133A chipset revision CE. The updated stepping of the AGP core eliminates all problems with running graphics accelerators in AGP 4X mode, an issue which plagued some of the first AGP 4X boards based on VIA's chipsets but because of the updated core is not present on the 7KXA. The board itself features a universal AGP slot which isn't keyed specifically for AGP 2X or AGP 4X cards, which lets the user install virtually any currently available AGP card in the slot, whether it is an AGP 1X/2X or 4X card.

On the south side of the KX133, we have the 686A South Bridge used on the 7KXA. In our KX133 review, we also discussed exactly what makes the 686A such an intelligent move for motherboard manufacturers -- primarily its highly integrated nature. The 686A South Bridge integrates an I/O controller, an ISA bridge, hardware monitoring functions, along with the usual South Bridge functions all in a single chip. As you can guess, this helps to reduce the overall cost of the motherboard since it removes quite a few chips from the PCB and integrates them into a single chip.

From an expansion perspective, EPoX decided to play it safe with the 7KXA since they took advantage of the integrated ISA bridge of the 686A and included a single ISA slot on the board. In the next few months, expect more and more motherboards to ship without any ISA slots, but this time around, EPoX decided to keep the sole slot on-board for any legacy peripherals you may have. The single ISA slot is shared with the last PCI slot, meaning that only one can be occupied at a time. The 5 PCI slots and single ISA slot are combined with an AMR slot and the aforementioned AGP slot to form the 7KXA's 5/1/1/1 expansion slot configuration (PCI/ISA/AMR/AGP). If you recall, this expansion slot configuration has also been used on ASUS' K7M, which is based on the older AMD 750 chipset.

Like the K7M, the 7KXA features a single AMR slot which is driven by the on-board audio codec. While we weren't familiar with the manufacturer of the codec, it was just as capable as the solutions we have tested in the past -- after all, it's still a software based audio/modem solution. Because of the codec's nature, it does eat up quite a bit of CPU time while processing instructions since there is no hardware to offload the instructions/operations onto.

Luckily, unlike the K7M which we have been comparing the 7KXA to, the board itself offers quite a bit of space between the Slot-A interface connector and the memory banks which provides for most larger heatsink/fan combos to be used in conjunction with the motherboard. The only layout issue that may pose problems for some is the fact that three of the five PCI slots cannot accept full length PCI cards as a result of obstructions on the motherboard.

On the opposite side of the Slot-A connector, EPoX lined up a row of ten 2200uF capacitors, eight 1200uF caps and a handful of switching voltage regulators, four of which have average sized heatsinks. The reason for all of this attention back there is to help supply a stable and clean signal to the power hungry Athlon CPU that will inevitably be sitting less than a centimeter away. This design helps to explain the decent stability we experienced with the K7XA; while it's definitely not the most stable motherboard we've tested, considering we were reviewing a pre-release revision 0.3 sample, the stability was impressive. We expect the stability and reliability to improve in the final shipping version of the board.

Until recently, ASUS has been the only Athlon motherboard manufacturer with options for the overclocker. Now, EPoX shares that title with ASUS by outfitting the 7KXA with a clock generator capable of supplying much more than the default 100MHz FSB clock. The 7KXA unfortunately boasts a large support for useless FSB settings such as the 83 / 88 / 90 and 95MHz settings which do nothing but decrease overall system performance. In fact, the only useful FSB settings other than the default 100MHz frequency are the remaining 110 and 115MHz settings. On the bright side, both of those settings worked flawlessly on our test bed setup. While pushing the 115MHz barrier did result in a small but noticeable sacrifice in stability, the 110MHz setting was quite solid. But, because of the lack of any intermediate settings between 100MHz and 110MHz, the 7KXA does not enjoy the same flexibility as the K7M in that if your board doesn't work at 110MHz, the next best thing is the default 100MHZ setting.

Another overclocking oriented feature is the ability to control the core voltage the motherboard supplies to the CPU, which is controlled by a set of dip-switches placed behind the Slot-A and AGP connectors. The five switches allow for core voltages ranging from 1.50v up to 1.80v in 0.05v increments to be selected; however, if you count the number of possible combinations possible with 5 switches, it is obvious that there is the potential for more reserved settings.

As we mentioned before, the 686A South Bridge features integrated hardware monitoring functions, which are luckily supported by more than one third party hardware monitoring application.

A trend with many motherboard manufacturers has been to bundle Norton AntiVirus and Norton Ghost with their boards, and EPoX follows suit with the 7KXA. While most users have one form of antivirus software installed on their computer, Norton Ghost is a very useful utility for making images of your hard drives in preparation for the worst. It's not the most expensive bundle, but it's definitely one of the more useful ones out there.

The 7KXA's User's Manual is mediocre in quality, it doesn't go into nearly as much depth as we would like it to. It covers the basics, lists the specs, and then immediately dives into an AWARD BIOS setup manual. A bit disappointing but not a devastating downside for this otherwise well put together product.

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

The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

Click Here to learn about AnandTech's Motherboard Testing Methodology.

As the first KX133 board to hit the market, the EPoX will definitely sell quite a few 7KXAs based on that fact alone. The 7KXA will probably end up being the definition of what an average KX133 motherboard will be defined as in the upcoming months. Its overclocking features put the 7KXA up on the levels of the K7M and MSI's newly released K7Pro in terms of overclocking desire, but the board still lacks the added features that would truly separate it from the rest of the pack.

Overall, the 7KXA is a perfectly fine KX133 based solution. It will be one of the first available (if not the first available) in most areas and it combines EPoX's usual quality and reliability with the feature set provided by VIA's KX133 chipset. For those of you that need a KX133 board now, the 7KXA is obviously a better solution than nothing.

But for those of you that can wait, DDR Athlon chipsets are reportedly just a few months away and if you can't wait that long, it'll be about a month until you start seeing more KX133 based boards appear from companies like ASUS and Tyan among others.

How it Rates

Note: The Overall Rating is not an average of all of the categories