EPoX 7KXA KX133 Slot-A ATX

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.