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Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/476
EPoX EP-3VCA Apollo Pro 133A Socket-370 ATX
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 8, 2000 11:26 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
As with most current PC motherboard manufacturers, EPoX was formed back in the late 80's but only in the past few years have their products been brought into the public eye, mainly because of the advent of the Internet as medium for free marketing for those companies that can produce high quality products.
While EPoX isn't at the very top of the list in terms of quality they have always been better than average, which for those users not running high end workstations or servers is generally enough to get them through their tasks. With some fairly decent EPoX motherboards here in the lab, we definitely had some high expectations for their Apollo Pro 133A based motherboard, the 3VCA.
Unfortunately, the Apollo Pro 133A motherboard market is still an infant one. Motherboard manufacturers are still working out the issues involving their implementations of the 133A chipset, and because of this we have seen a number of normally reliable motherboard manufacturers release some very disappointing solutions based on VIA's alluring chipset.
But with the increasing demand for true 133MHz FSB motherboards for use with the extremely overclockable FC-PGA Pentium III chips, some users are growing very desperate in the search for a motherboard with official 133MHz FSB support that is reliable at the same time. In spite of the recent influx of poorly manufactured 133A based motherboards, EPoX seems to have risen to the challenge quite nicely with their 3VCA.
New Anand Tech Report Card Rating 85/B
CPU Interface |
FC-PGA/PPGA Socket-370
|
Chipset |
VIA Apollo 133A
VIA 694X North Bridge VIA 686A South Bridge |
L2 Cache |
N/A (on-chip)
|
Form Factor |
ATX
|
Bus Speeds |
66 / 75 / 83
100 / 105 / 110 / 112 / 115 / 120 / 124 133 / 140 / 150 |
Voltages Supported |
Auto Detect (1.30v - 3.5v)
|
Memory Slots |
3 168-pin DIMM Slots
|
Expansion Slots |
1 AMR Slot
1 AGP Slot 5 PCI Slots (3 Full Length) 1 ISA Slot (1 Shared / 1 Full Length) |
AC'97 |
VIA VT1611A
|
BIOS |
AWARD BIOS
|
The Good
While we have seen 133A based motherboards that feature a Slot-1 connector combined with a Socket-370 connector (ala Tyan Trinity 400) as well as those with simply a Slot-1 connector, the 3VCA is the first we have seen with solely a Socket-370 interface. The first thing that must be mentioned is that the Socket-370 implementation on the 3VCA is fully pin-compatible with both PPGA Celeron CPUs and FC-PGA Pentium III CPUs. This two way compatibility may not seem like much, but the 3VCA is one of the first motherboards to officially support both CPUs in a Socket-370 interface in the initial shipping revision of the motherboard. The documentation does not specifically state whether the socket is compatible with VIA/Cyrix's upcoming Joshua processor, however it is pretty safe to assume that the board will be compatible with the upcoming CPU.
Making use of a physically smaller (in length) Socket-370 connector, you would expect the 3VCA to be a noticeably smaller motherboard when compared to the Slot-1 133A solutions we've looked at in the past. This isn't the case as EPoX uses the saved space to help clear up some of the clutter normally associated with boards that are this crowded. The board features a somewhat common 5/1/1/1 (PCI/ISA/AMR/AGP) expansion slot configuration provided for by the VIA 686A South Bridge on-board the PCB. The 686A's integrated PCI-to-ISA bridge allows for the single ISA slot to be included without using an external PCI-to-ISA bridge and it's integrated AC'97 controller provides for the low-cost AMR interface. In addition to those two cost saving features, the 686A also provides the native Ultra ATA 66 support of the 3VCA.
As with most 133A based motherboards, the 3VCA features a total of three DIMM slots all of which are capable of accepting up to 256MB DIMMs. Our compatibility tests showed that using double sided 256MB DIMMs that featured 128Mbit SDRAM chips had no problem with the 3VCA, which is something we expected to happen, especially since we weren't dealing with stacked or registered DIMMs.
Courtesy of the 694X North Bridge (essentially what makes this chipset the Apollo Pro 133A), you can use either VC100/VC133 Virtual Channel SDRAM or regular PC100/PC133 SDRAM. But since the availability of VC-SDRAM is so scarce, and because of the negligible performance advantage the Virtual Channel technology offers over regular SDRAM, you probably won't be too impressed by the chipset's VC-SDRAM support.
The 694X North Bridge provides for full AGP 4X compliance, a small step up from its predecessor, the 693A, with its AGP 2X limitation. From a performance perspective, AGP 4X doesn't really offer that much of a performance increase over AGP 2X, at least using the current crop of graphics accelerators and games. But since the 694X is currently available at virtually the same cost as the older 693A, it makes the most sense for EPoX to capitalize on AGP 4X's marketing value with the 3VCA. Because of its AGP 4X support, the 3VCA boasts a universal AGP connector without any 3.3v or 1.5v notches thus allowing the card to accept any AGP 1X, 2X or 4X compliant graphics card.
The AMR slot, wedged in between the first PCI slot and the universal AGP connector is driven by the VIA VT1611A AC'97 codec. While the 686A South Bridge features an integrated AC'97 controller, the codec is still placed on board. For system integrators the AMR slot is an excellent way to keep costs down while providing for a bundled modem, but for end users its generally a waste of a slot.
Because of the small Socket-370 connector EPoX was able to perfect the layout of the board by placing the ATX power connector at the lower right hand corner of the PCB, out of the way of the rest of the motherboard. Surrounding the Socket-370 connector are ten 1000uF capacitors as well as a handful of smaller caps designed to help stabilize the power signals supplied to the CPU, thus attempting to improve the board's stability. From our tests, the 3VCA ended up being a board of average stability, which is much more than what can be said for some of the other 133A boards we've looked at. By average stability we mean stability about on par with that of ABIT's BH6 but definitely not as high as the MX64 from AOpen which uses the same 133A chipset.
One of EPoX's trademark features in the past has been their Easy Set Single Jumper (ESSJ) configuration which is essentially the use of a single jumper to select what FSB setting you would like to run at. The way the settings work on the is a bit different than the conventional ESSJ on older EPoX boards in that the jumper actually controls the AGP divider and what FSB settings are available in the BIOS. Choosing a setting between 66MHz and 83MHz results in an 1/1 AGP to FSB ratio and allows FSB frequencies from 66MHz up to 83MHz to be selected from within the BIOS setup. Picking anything between 100MHz and 124MHz (inclusive) results in a 2/3 AGP ratio and allows those FSB settings to be selected from within the BIOS. And finally selecting the 133MHz, 140MHz or 150MHz settings enable the 1/2 AGP ratio and let you select from those settings in the BIOS. You can consider this setup as being sort of a pseudo-jumperless setup requiring only a small bit of configuration.
Hardware monitoring is provided for by the 686A South Bridge, unfortunately there are no external thermistor headers so the only two monitored temperatures are that of the CPU and that of the South Bridge itself.
Bundled with the board is an average manual, lacking in the usual areas of installation and BIOS configuration but the most valuable part of the bundle is the GHOST 5.1 software that EPoX provides on the included CD. GHOST is a disk imaging solution that allows you to create backup images of your data and is quite useful for transferring data from one hard drive to another.
The Bad
Where is the voltage configuration? Because the 3VCA is a Socket-370-only solution, there is no way of adjusting the core voltage supplied to the installed CPU since EPoX does not provide for the manual adjustment via the BIOS setup or via jumpers. This is very disappointing because one of the reasons most AnandTech readers are looking for a Socket-370 133A board with FC-PGA support is to overclock their FC-PGA Pentium IIIs, which don't always work at 100% stability at the default core voltage.
On the topic of overclocking, bumping up the FSB frequency to 140MHz or 150MHz on the 3VCA resulted in a system unable to boot into Windows. This was using our 550E that we had running at 825MHz (150MHz FSB) on the Tyan Trinity 400. If we were allowed the option to increase the core voltage from 1.60v to 1.65 or 1.70 we may have been able to attain a stable system at 770MHz or maybe even 825MHz but unfortunately, as we mentioned above, this feature was not provided for with the 3VCA.
Another major complaint about the 3VCA applies to most EPoX boards, being the availability of them. EPoX products are definitely more difficult to find than the bigger names like ASUS or even ABIT, but it's not nearly as bad as some of the lesser known manufacturers of decent boards such as Transcend.
The 686A South Bridge supports two USB headers, for a total of four on-board USB ports. Unfortunately, EPoX decided to place the USB2 connector (for the other 2 USB ports) at the very back of the motherboard, meaning if you want to have front mounted USB ports you would have to have a fairly long cable extending from the back of your case up to the front. We would have rather seen EPoX placed the USB2 connector at the other end of the board near the IDE ports.
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.
Test Configuration |
|
Processor(s): |
Intel
Pentium III 550E
|
RAM: |
1
x 128MB Corsair PC133 SDRAM
1 x 128MB Mushkin PC133 SDRAM |
Hard Drive(s): |
Western Digital 153BA Ultra
ATA 66
|
Bus Master Drivers: |
VIA 4-in-1 v4.19 BMIDE Driver
|
Video Card(s): |
NVIDIA
GeForce 256 SDR
|
Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA
Detonator 3.53
|
Operation System(s): |
Windows
98 SE
|
Motherboard Revision: |
EPoX
EP-3VCA Revision 0.3
|
Windows 98 Performance |
||
Sysmark 2000 | Content Creation Winstone 2000 |
|
Intel Pentium III 733 (5.5 x 133) |
151
|
28.8
|
The Final Decision
The 3VCA is definitely one of the more stable Apollo Pro 133A solutions we have seen, which is something that we have come to expect from EPoX as a manufacturer. They have always been big with VIA chipsets, especially after their strong introduction of their VIA based Super7 line not too long ago.
The 3VCA does have its shortcomings, primarily relating to overclocking or its lack of cooperation when overclocking. It is definitely a shame that a feature such as a manual voltage configuration hasn't made its way onto all of the latest motherboards, but it is a feature that will keep the 3VCA out of the hands of many. Even if you have faith in your FC-PGA CPU and believe that it will overclock to 733MHz+ without increasing the core voltage, you'll want to take into account that the higher clocked Pentium IIIs are set at a 1.65v core voltage for a reason. If you plan on overclocking, the 3VCA isn't for you.
As a general usage Apollo Pro 133A board, the 3VCA isn't bad at all. The stability of the board is about average and if the overclocking limitations aren't bothersome and you have limited access to the 133A boards you can get your hands on, then the 3VCA isn't a bad choice, it's just not the greatest.
AnandTech Motherboard Rating |
|
Business | |
Performance |
86%
|
Price |
92%
|
Ease of Use |
88%
|
Overclocked Stability |
70%
|
General Stability |
85%
|
Quality |
85%
|
Documentation |
85%
|
Reliability |
85%
|
Overall Rating |
85%
|
Click Here to learn about AnandTech's Motherboard Testing Methodology.