EPoX 8HDA3+ Socket 754 Motherboard

Company: EPoX
Product: 8HDA3+
Date Reviewed: October 27, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

EPoX 8HDA3+ Overclocking:

Since there are no multiplier adjustments, we can only change the system clock in order to overclock the CPU. First let us note that at the stock 200MHz FSB that the true speed is 207MHz. This is more than likely due to the BIOS. Running at a real-time 207MHz will perform better than 200MHz. We are not sure why EPoX would design the board this way, but we continue our testing even with the 7MHz offset.

The highest stable FSB we were able to get was 222 using 1.6V. We had to use the 333MHz memory divider to reach this speed. Keep in mind that the real-time clock is 229 with the 7MHz offset. Since this is our first review of a VIA K8 board and our first encounter with Athlon 64, it is hard to say how good these results are. From what we can gather from other reviews, this is a good overclock but we will find out more when we get a chance to play with more Socket 754 mainboards.

Our processor did not seem to like the high voltages like the previous Athlon XP chips. Maybe in the future we can try some more extreme cooling and see what we are able to get out of this setup. For now, we are pleased with our overclocking results and stay tuned as we have many more Socket 754 boards coming from almost all the major manufacturers.