EPOX - EPoX EP-8RDA6+ PRO Motherboard Review

Many AMD CPU motherboard manufacturers are shifting their attention away from the Socket A platform in favour of the new Athlon64 format, and rightly so. The Socket A platform has pretty much hit it’s ceiling, the Athlon XP 3200+ being the highest available CPU (At time of press). This being the case, we have paired the 8RDA6+ Pro board with an Athlon 3200+, a pair of Crucial’s Ballistix modules and a Radeon 9800 XT. Expect the performance figures to be about what you can expect to ever get from this board.

…Overall I was very satisfied with the EP-8RDA6+, it’s wide array of features, accessories and functionality makes the £65 price tag very worthwhile. If you want to milk your Athlon XP for all it’s worth before taking the plunge into Athlon64 then I would recommend it. The reason the board has only scored 91 is down to the board not automatically detecting my CPU and forcing me to increase the voltage to attain a stable system.

With the CPU pushed to its limits, the system as a whole was able to match some of the results obtained from an XP2500 system using an x800 Pro, so there is still some room for improvement where game framerates are concerned. SATA RAID performance however appears to be a strong point for the Silicon Image’s controller, nVidia’s chipset appears to be lacking slightly though.

Thanks to the board’s large array of included extras, features, quality and the very affordable asking price, the EP-8RDA6+ Pro has been awarded the Excellent Value, the second product to ever have done so on PyroPort!

Pros
Loads of accessories
Good asking price
Wide array of features
Good performance
Cons
Had some CPU recognition issues
Minor discrepancies in the manual
Score 91

EPoX EP-8RDA6+ PRO Motherboard @ Pyro Port