Although the EPoX company exists for a long time already, it isn't so popular. But that is only because thecompany doesn't follow an aggressive marketing policy, as such companies as ASUS or ABIT do. Actually, this notin the least means that EPoX products are inferior in quality or in specifications to mainboards from some morenotable competitors. Moreover, all EPoX's boards showed a very good performance compared to some renownedmanufacturers' products. At the same time, EPoX often announced its novelties much earlier than its competitorsdid, especially the VIA chipset based mainboards (e.g. the KX133-based ones). And now we've got an opportunity totest personally one of VIA Apollo Pro133A based motherboards from EPoX - EP-6VBA2.

Specification

• CPU
  • Slot 1 Intel Pentium II/III and Intel Celeron (via Slot 1-to-Socket 370 converter) with 66/100/133MHz system bus frequencies
  • Supports CPU frequency multipliers from 3x to 8x
• Chipset
  • VIA Apollo Pro133A (VT82C694X+VT82C686A)
• System Memory
  • 3 x 168-pin DIMM slots supporting to 768MB PC100/PC133 SDRAM with 3.3V voltage
  • 8/16/32/64/128/256/512MB memory modules
  • Supports ECC and parity
  • Supports Virtual Channel Memory (VCM)
• AGP
  • AGP slot supporting 4x mode
• Slots
  • 5 32bit PCI, 1 ISA and 1 AMR slots
• Integrated sound
  • Software AC'97 sound
• I/O ports
  • 4 USB ports (2 built-in ports and 2 extra connected ports)
  • 2 serial ports and 1 parallel port supporting ECP and EPP
  • PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse
  • Game/MIDI port, speakers out, line and microphone ins
• Integrated UltraDMA/66 IDE controller
  • 2 UltraDMA/66 Bus Master IDE channels (supporting up to 4 ATAPI-devices)
  • Supports DVD-ROM, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW and LS-120
• BIOS
  • Award Plug and Play BIOS
• Other
  • Wake on modem, mouse, keyboard, LAN and timer
  • Hardware monitoring
  • Easy Setting Single Jumper (ESSJ) technology
• Board Dimensions
  • ATX Form Factor, 20.0m x 30.5cm

The EPoX EP-6VBA2 system board comes in a standard box with sober coloring. The package includes FDD and UltraDMA/66 cables,a pretty brief user's manual and a CD with drivers and software. The package looked too poor with Epox's own hardware monitoringutility only. That is why, following a good tradition established by the mainboard manufacturers, EPoX also provided a CD withNorton Antivirus and Norton Ghost 5.1, a hard drive copying utility.

Closer Look

Although a clear tendency towards the release of Socket-370 based new products is evident on the mainboard market now,EPoX EP-6VBA2 is still based on the SC242 (Slot 1). This can be explained by the fact that the motherboard isn't that new.Now Intel isn't going to linger any longer with the transition to FC-PGA-processors and makes all the efforts in thisdirection, which means that 6VBA2 can easily become the last of Slot 1 based mainboards that we will test. However, thisIntel's position doesn't at all mean the death of Slot 1 motherboards, because there are still enough Slot 1-to-Socket370 connectors on the market including those supporting the Coppermine processors. Even Intel acknowledges their existenceand even recommends on its private web-site for system assemblers the following connectors for use with the FC-PGA IntelPentium III: Gigabyte GA-6R7+, Asus S370-133 (rev 1.01), Micro-Star MS-6905 Master, Magic Pro MP-A8++ (rev 4.5), SoltekSL-02A++ (rev 4.5), Iwill Slocket III (rev 0.9).

The system board has three DIMM slots, allowing a total of 768MB of memory for the EP-6VBA2. As any other VIA ApolloPro133A based mainboard, 6VBA2 accepts PC100 as well as PC133 SDRAM modules. As the system bus of this chipset can operateboth: at the CPU bus frequency and at frequencies 33MHz higher or lower than that, the use of PC133 SDRAM with 133MHz systembus processors isn't mandatory. (More exactly, VIA Apollo Pro133A allows clocking the memory to FSB, FSB+PCI and FSB-PCIfrequencies.) In this case PC100 SDRAM will be quite enough. There is also the same possibility to clock the memory busof a CPU with a 100MHz FSB to 133MHz. This allows increasing the overall system performance. By the way, when using a CPUwith 133MHz FSB on 6VBA2, nothing forbids clocking memory to 166MHz if only there were such memory... Talking about memoryit's necessary to mention the support of a rather exotic VCM SDRAM, a buffered multi-channel version of PC133 SDRAM,currently manufactured only by NEC.

The clock frequency multiplier on 6VBA2 is set with a block of four dip-switches. They allow settings from 3x to 8x,although that's of no use for modern processors, which have a locked clock multiplier in the core. The FSB frequency isset via a single thirteen-position jumper. This EpoX technology is called Easy Set Single Jumper (ESSJ). Nevertheless,the BIOS Setup also allows correcting the jumper setting.

EPoX EP-6VBA2 has a rather standard expansion slots configuration - 5/1/1/1 (PCI/ISA/AMR/AGP). The universal AGP slotof 6VBA2 supports both 3.3V AGP 1x/2x and 1.5V AGP 4x graphics cards. Thanks to the fact, that EpoX, unlike many othermanufacturers, has chosen VIA 686A for the South Bridge instead of 586B, ISA slot is implemented without an additionalPCI-to-ISA bridge chip, which in this case is integrated into the chipset. As to the full-size expansion cards, they canbe installed in any slot except one PCI slot.

Another feature of VIA 686A South Bridge is AC'97 codec, that allows the implementation of an AMR slot and of asoftware-based sound card (the latter is possible with the help of VIA VT1611A DAC). Although this feature takes upto 10% of processor resources, it allows reducing the system cost due to no need in a separate sound card. The built-insound can be disabled via BIOS Setup.

The EPoX EP-6VBA2 is designed according to all the specifications, that's why all the power supply unit, FDD and IDEconnectors are situated where they, actually, should be - in front of the DIMM slots. However, there still are still twosmall specs issues to mention. The first is that the FDD connectors of, the first primary and the secondary channelsIDEconnectors are both all black. The second problem is that the connector for an additional pair of USB ports is situatedon the rear side of the board, while the additional ports are supposed to be installed on the front panel of the computer.The board is of a rather small depth and can be easily fit in any ATX case. The board has a preinstalled folding retentionmechanism for processor mounting that supports all types of CPU cartridges.

Around Slot1 on 6VBA2 there are ten capacitors of a rather small value - 1000uF, which are supposed to "refine" thepower in order to improve the board's stability. However, as we could see in the previous reviews of VIA Apollo Pro133Abased boards, many manufacturers use capacitors of a higher value. Combined with the absence of a heatsink on the Northbridge of the chipset, this fact can seriously affect the reliability of EPoX EP-6VBA2.

As for BIOS, 6VBA2 uses Award 4.51PG. At the same time 6VBA2 as Chaintech 6ATA4 has an AwardFlash reflashing utilityin the ROM that can be loaded during the computer boot-up. You just have to insert a floppy disk with a new BIOSupdate into the disk drive for it to work. The main advantage of this approach is the secured protection from damaging theFlash-memory contents by using some improper flashing utilities and a certain simplification of BIOS updating.

There are no particular complaints about the BIOS settings. As usual, VIA chipset based mainboards feature diversepossibilities for PCI and AGP bus memory timings configuration. It is possible to manually assign IRQs to PCI slots andto disable AGP 4x and FastWrites modes via BIOS Setup. However, one confusing issue has to be mentioned here. FastWritesmode is enabled by default in the BIOS although that results into a slight performance decrease in 3D applications.Moreover, several tests show that with FastWrites enabled EPoX EP-6VBA2 becomes unstable when working with NVIDIAGeForce 256 based graphics cards. That's why we'd recommend to disable AGP FastWrites on your 6VBA2 from the beginning.

Hardware monitoring of EPoX EP-6VBA2 operates using the features of the South Bridge chipset, VT82C686A, whichcontrols two temperatures, two fans' rotation speeds (there are two connectors for them on the board) and 5 voltages.A rather small number of sensors is conditioned by the features of the chipset, which can monitor only one moretemperature sensor in addition to the above mentioned ones. The processor temperature is measured with in an "ancient" way:with a thermal diode, put right in front of Slot 1. EPoX even decided not to use the flexible tail, which is so popularamong other mainboard manufacturers. That's why you should regard the processor temperature taken by the hardwaremonitoring utility as the "air temperature near the processor heatsink".

Overclocking

As it has been mentioned before, the system bus frequency on EPoX EP-6VBA2 is set with the ESSJ technology: a singlethirteen-position jumper, which supports twelve other frequencies - 66, 75, 83, 100, 105, 110, 115, 120, 124, 133, 140 and150MHz, in addition to the default one. However the board's Winbond W83194R-39A clock generator allows choosing a largernumber of settings. This feature of 6VBA2 is carried out in BIOS Setup, which has a special option for system busfrequency correction. Besides the default setting, when the FSB frequency equals to the jumper-selected setting, theBIOS Setup allows choosing the following frequencies. If the jumper is set to 66, 75 or 83MHz, you can choose the samesettings in the BIOS; if the jumper is set from 100 to 120MHz, then 100, 103, 105, 110, 112, 115, 120, 124 and 133MHz valuesbecome available in BIOS Setup; if the jumper is set higher than 124MHz, you get the choice of 124, 133, 140 and 150MHzfrequencies in BIOS Setup.

Thus EPoX EP-6VBA2 offers overclockers a rather standard frequencies selection. However, double-level overclockinglike that has one very important advantage: AGP frequency divider is chosen by the mainboard depending on the ESSJ level.It's 1:1 for the frequencies below 100MHz, 2:3 - for the frequencies from 100 to 120MHz and 1:2 - for the settings from124MHz and up. As a result, smart overclockers can get the possibility to set via BIOS Setup any FSB frequency having setESSJ in the appropriate way according to the desired AGP frequency divider.

Unfortunately the list of EpoX's EP-6VBA2 overclocking advantages ends here. The system doesn't allow changing theCPU core and input-output circuits voltage.

When we tried to overclock Intel Pentium III 500 FC-PGA processor on 6VBA2, the results turned out quite predictable.As with many other mainboards, which FSB is limited by 150MHz, the processor could easily overclock to 750MHz (5x150MHz).Further FSB frequency increase appeared impossible just because the clock generator of our 6VBA2 simply couldn't produce agreater frequency. Hence, taking into consideration that there is also no way to change the CPU core voltage, this mainboardisn't the best solution as an overclocking platform for FC-PGA processors, which are so famous for their particularoverclocking potential.

Performance

The test system was configured as follows:

• Intel Pentium III 600EB (4.5x133) CPU
• Creative 3DBlaster Annihilator graphics card
• Creative Sound Blaster Live! sound card
• IBM DJNA 372200 hard disk drive
• 128MB PC133 SDRAM by Micron

For our tests we used VIA Service Pack ver. 4.20. When we carried out the benchmarks for ASUS P3V4X, we had to enable FastWrites mode, because only in this mode with 1003 BIOS version this mainboard showed acceptable performance in 3D applications.

Speed characteristics isn't the main argument when you choose a motherboard from a range of products based on the samechipset. The performances of different products differ so much, that you can't rely only on the benchmarks when selectingthe right board. It's much more important to pay attention to the special features of a product. As to the fastness of VIAApollo Pro133 based boards compared to those on other chipsets, it has been already discussed inour PIII Chipset Roundup. Nevertheless we have to note that EPoX EP-6VBA2 doesn't showany remarkable speed, as it can be seen from the diagram. Furthermore, as it has already been mentioned, in the defaultmode (for 6VBA2 - with the AGP FastWrites feature enabled) the board demonstrates low stability both when playing 3D-gamesand during routine work with GUI. Still there are no complaints about the stability and reliability of EPoX EP-6VBA2 withFastWrites disabled.

Conclusions

So, another VIA Apollo Pro133A based mainboard with its own advantages and issues hits the market. Although 6VBA2 doesn'tboast any unique features, it will be surely appreciated by customers, due to its relatively low price, for instance.

Highs

• Supports Coppermine, 133MHz bus and AGP 4x mode
• Allows manual AGP frequency divider configuration

Lows

• Stability problems with FastWrites mode enabled
• Low performance
• Poor CPU overclockability