EPoX or Gigabyte?

C

cuber

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 7, 2004
Messages
165
k thx... But how is P4 3ghz compare to AMD64 3000 939? Should i just upgrade to P4 so that i dont have to upgrade my mobo?
 
Another vote for EPoX....
(my current board & most stable one ive run in aprox 2 years)

oh... and as for the p4/amd delema... the only reason i would consider spending the extra $50-80 on the AMD Mobo/cpu setup over just getting a new cpu is heat... but if you already have a good heatsink that can dissipate the heat the pressy gives off... then that would be my route...
 
About the AMD or P4 issue, I would also suggest you go with a P4 considering what you do. Practically the only field AMD is better than Intel is gaming. Since you do much more stuff than only gaming a Pentium should serve you better, plus they also perform really well in gaming. Besides, a lot of the times the bottleneck is the video card and not the CPU, since most of the latest CPUs are powerful enough to handle today's games. As long as you get more than 60fps, your human eyes won't notice the difference. 100fps looks the same as 60fps to us. Here's a link to a review of the AMD Venice core where they compared it to other AMD CPUs with different cores as well to some Pentium 4 CPUs. You can see that Pentium performed better on mostly everything except for gaming:

AMD Venice Review: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-venice.html

IMO, you almost can't tell the difference between one CPU or the other while gaming, but when it comes to finishing tasks a few seconds faster, there you CAN notice the difference, as you can count the time yourself.

As for which motherboard to go with... I couldn't say as I've never had an EPoX or a Gigabyte mobo.
 
I feel equally comfortable with either brand, and have had good service from both companies for a long time, now, even back in the days of the Intel 430VX chipset (Gigabyte).
 
*edit* just noticed my gigabyte board is a bit different from the one you linked....only real differences I can see is the HTT is slower, as it is the older nforce3 chipset, less sata ports, no onboard 1394, no dual biosand no gigabite ethernet connection.....might want to consider my Ultra-939 instead.(5 edits later I think I got it all, lol)

I have both. Initially I ordered that epox board, I had some difficulties with it, which later turned out to be unrelated to the actual motherboard.....but during that time I decided to just order another board, the gigabyte in my sig.

I did run the epox board a while, had no major issues with it, except for the poor placement of the sata ports and dimms. Both are just a little too close to the video card for my liking, making frequent tweaking a pain. It also seemed to refuse to run my ram in 1T mode. Overclocked well enough ( didnt push it to the limit ) and bios functions were easy to navigate. No major beefs with the board.


The gigabyte board manual gives me a laugh, because of the smattering of "engrish" throughout....some of it is a fairly poor translation, but if you know what you doing its not that big of a deal. Board seems to overvolt just a bit...but i'm wary of trusting any software that reports voltages on a mobo, period. Can add voltage to the HTT as well, which is something the epox doesnt offer. Niether board will go over 2.9v for the ram, and the gigabyte might only go to 2.8.

Offers a great deal of flexability in ram settings, and runs my ram at 1T with the current settings, no problemo. The board also has a built in backup bios, and the bios also has a function that allows you to flash the bios without a bootable dos disk...pretty cool actually for those of us who managed to corrupt a nforce2 bios and had to deal with the hassle of hotflashing on those older nforce2 board. One thing I have not figured out how to get rid of is this annoying message when mine posts. The board pauses because I have it overclocked, and is asking me to go into the bios and do, uh, something. That of which I have not figured out yet. Doesnt seem to be effecting anything however.

The gigabyte also offers more sata/raid options than I know what to do with, as well as pata raid.

I am satisfied with the gigabyte so far. Not sure what i'll do with the epox yet.

Only other thing I might add is I have been having a problem finding a fairly active forum for us gigabyte board owners. Best I have been able to come up with is this


whereas the epox board has this official support forum


Any specific questions, feel free to ask.
 
Oh, and the gigabyte board had plastic push pins instead of a screw down design to hold the backplate. I had to rob the parts off my epox to get my xp-90 to work.
 
cuber said:
I currently have a MSI neo2 865pe, P4 2.4ghz 533fsb. And im thinking about upgrading to skt939, AMD 64 3000 (venice).
I was wondering which 1 of these mobo i should get.

GIGABYTE GA-K8NSC-939 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce3 800 Hyper Transport

EPoX EP-9NDA3J Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce3 Ultra 1000 Hyper Transport

Or should i just upgrade to P4 3.2ghz (prescott)?
I do alot of multi tasking, video editing, photoshop and gaming (UT2004, CSS and Guild wars)

thx,
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That's like choosing between Cancer and AIDS. I'll be blunt. Neither of those board makers are terribly consistant when it comes to quality control. They often look good on paper, but don't actually last very long.

I replace many Gigabyte and EpoX boards for busted caps, and other failures. Even with the newer boards. Long term reliability is not something that a hardware review can really cover as they never have the time.

This does not mean every board model and part that comes from either of those brands. Personally, I don't think you save much when going with those brands vs. another company like Asus that is FAR more consistant when it comes to quality and low failure rates. Of course everyones experiences vary, but until I see a major improvement in the reliability of those boards, I would NEVER recommend them.

This is just based on my personal experience with those two mobo makers. Take it for what its worth.
 
I currently own a Epox mobo and have had it for about 6 months or so and I've had no problems what so ever with it. I've also owned a Gigabyte, that pos came shipped damaged and never even got to a post screen with it. I've owned many brands of mobo's and this is one area will you will do yourself a favor by buying a quality one. Not saying that epox isn't , try looking at some Asus', MSI's, Abit's and some DFI's.
 
EpoX

I've tested both, the gigabyte's voltage is extremely unstable, the board as a whole is rather unstable. DPS = hype. The EpoX was a damn good overclocker too. They got a bad rap from busting caps on older boards, but the new ones use decent capacitors now... but which would you rather take out? Components from voltage instability or a petty motherboard?
 
I'd say epox, but not without qualification:
EPoX boards are made to a price, no two ways about it, The 2 boards i or RL people i know have had have all had dodgy caps (8RDA+, all went after 18-20months) but, they were fantastic boards while running.

Gigabyte are generally a bit poo, cheap, not good overclockers, as others have said, poor voltages.

As far as AMD/p4 goes go with an upgraded P4, Hyperthreaded (6 series) if you can afford it. Youll notice a huge difference in the smoothness of everyday tasks, and games wont take a hit vs A64 cos youre gonna be limited by your graphics card whatever processor you choose.

Even if you were to upgrade the GPU id say stick with intel if your priority is Day to day tasks/photoshop etc, or make the switch to AMD if you need the absolute highest fps you can get.

Last point, if you do get AMD, make sure you get one of the new venice cores, they are so much better than the older cores its untrue, and should overclock very well indeed.
 
Herulach said:
I'd say epox, but not without qualification:
EPoX boards are made to a price, no two ways about it, The 2 boards i or RL people i know have had have all had dodgy caps (8RDA+, all went after 18-20months) but, they were fantastic boards while running.

Gigabyte are generally a bit poo, cheap, not good overclockers, as others have said, poor voltages.

As far as AMD/p4 goes go with an upgraded P4, Hyperthreaded (6 series) if you can afford it. Youll notice a huge difference in the smoothness of everyday tasks, and games wont take a hit vs A64 cos youre gonna be limited by your graphics card whatever processor you choose.

Even if you were to upgrade the GPU id say stick with intel if your priority is Day to day tasks/photoshop etc, or make the switch to AMD if you need the absolute highest fps you can get.

Last point, if you do get AMD, make sure you get one of the new venice cores, they are so much better than the older cores its untrue, and should overclock very well indeed.
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While I don't like EpoX you've summed up why really nicely. Dodgy caps suck ass. Gigabyte is crap for alot of reasons.

The only thing is, I disagree about the P4 vs. AMD statement on gaming. I can feel the difference. I've used both a P4 [email protected] and a Athlon 3800+@stock speeds and the speeds listed in my sig, I can tell you from personal experience, with the same graphics card, reguardless of what it is, the CPU limitations become more apparent faster on Intel processors. Which plain sucks. Not to say they give bad performance, its just that they don't give near the performance the AMD's do. Check out the benches the differences are huge. The A64 3200+ can handle Intel's BEST. That's sad.

Granted in other applications, I would agree. Intel would be an excellent choice.
 
I wouldn't say the AMD64 3200+ beats Intel's best (6xx series), but the 3500+ can though. Although, not in all games.
 
MakubexGB said:
I wouldn't say the AMD64 3200+ beats Intel's best (6xx series), but the 3500+ can though. Although, not in all games.
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The 3200+ is damn close to almost everything in the 600 series. The EE's are still probably over the top by a small margin. That doesn't mean the Intel's can't be OC'ed to compensate some. Because they can. My 3.9GHz Pentium 4 didn't have the power to do it though.
 
I would deffinatly say ASUS.

But Since that wasnt an Option. I dont know. I personnaly would never get Epox or Gigabyte... so thats my opinion on it
 
aZn_plyR said:
since I own gigabyte..I would have to say...... Gigabyte.
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Since I own a Gigabyte...I would have to say...hell no.

One of their P4 boards, on the shelf, where it is probably staying.
 
Herulach said:
I'd say epox, but not without qualification:
EPoX boards are made to a price, no two ways about it, The 2 boards i or RL people i know have had have all had dodgy caps (8RDA+, all went after 18-20months) but, they were fantastic boards while running.
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That really depends on revision... the 8RDA had a few revisions that had bad caps... but the majority of them were great boards, my 2 or 3 year 8RDA that I got my T-Bred 1700+ up to 2.7Ghz just went into RMA recently from no bad caps (ATX plug had something wrong with it), but the 8RDA/GA is the only board mentioned to have bad caps.. maybe the K-series too, but I haven't heard ANYTHING about any of the other boards, I very much doubt we shall see leaky caps on recent boards.

ashmedai said:
Since I own a Gigabyte...I would have to say...hell no.

One of their P4 boards, on the shelf, where it is probably staying.
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Same position I was in, except with a couple of their 939 NF3 boards
 
i would say epox.i have an 8rda3+ and an 8rda,tho the rda did have bad caps,but it was nothing i couldn'r repair myself and the rda3+ was running great until i upgraded to my present config of an asus a8n-sli dlx and a 3000+ winnie.
 
or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813136152R
If you don't mind a missing cable or two (mine works fine, overclocks as well as any new ones). If you absolutely despise refurbs then I understand, but for $50 less most of these are open box, and those that aren't have been fixed by the manufacturer (if it's going to not work/be broken, you are going to know it within the first 24 hours). My experience at least has been 100% fine (no rmas) with refurbs at newegg (maybe 10 items, HD, mb, etc). I figure for the same price as the other boards, you can get the latest and greatest A64 motherboard (it might even be SLI moddable).
 
there are many factors which truly make a motherboard great. if you note the commentary, most of it is relative to the user. in my years of experience, and testing multiple hardware, i can say that i have not found the "perfect one" yet. however, i have had some that are very close from multiple vendors.

i find it interesting, that the opinions are not scientific, and many will just denounce a vendor, not thinking that there is a relation to thier experience, knowledge, and hardware used for the system. what really can make a system good is, compliancy. make sure the products that you choose to buy are guaranteed to work together. e.g. ram has been tested, and verified for use on the motherboard. if you do not choose such, make sure the vendor has an excellent warranty, and consumer interfacing. for when the time comes, it will not be like dealing with a horrible insurance company. this means research, and read. find the just of things, but do not take the opinions seriously, unless you can note the technical knowledge conveyed.

if you want a giabyte motherboard to choose from, i would rather you consider this one. another thing to consider, cost will increase, and you could be hanging on to your agp card, but you may want to consider a pci-express path, which could be a better total cost of ownership, in the long run.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=241780
 
Go with the Epox. Overall they make high quality, high performance boards.

I would definitely choose an Epox board over Gigabyte, and also before Abit or Asus.
 
Badger_sly said:
Go with the Epox. Overall they make high quality, high performance boards.

I would definitely choose an Epox board over Gigabyte, and also before Abit or Asus.
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Asus especially is known for the highest quality boards with the best overall stability. Not to say every model is perfect. They've got a better history than EpoX. EpoX is a lower teir manufacturer.

Plus, as a service tech I've replaced more EpoX's than Asus boards, and Asus makes more boards than EpoX ever will. They've been doing it longer, have more models and are huge in the OEM market.

I can't see why anyone would chose EpoX over an Asus board. While they may get glowing reviews, EpoX boards don't live as long as Asus boards do. Reviews don't get to cover long term reliability. The out of the box experience may be good, but long term, Asus usually wins over EpoX any day of the week.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
Asus especially is known for the highest quality boards with the best overall stability. Not to say every model is perfect. They've got a better history than EpoX. EpoX is a lower teir manufacturer.

Plus, as a service tech I've replaced more EpoX's than Asus boards, and Asus makes more boards than EpoX ever will. They've been doing it longer, have more models and are huge in the OEM market.

I can't see why anyone would chose EpoX over an Asus board. While they may get glowing reviews, EpoX boards don't live as long as Asus boards do. Reviews don't get to cover long term reliability. The out of the box experience may be good, but long term, Asus usually wins over EpoX any day of the week.
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Until recently I held the exact same view, but I'm getting the impression on their newer stuff that Asus & Abit are slacking off while Epox is working hard to improve their boards.

Which brand is good changes from time to time if the leader doesn't work hard to stay there.
 
I'd have to agree with SirFragalot:

Every Asus board I've had or seen in action has lasted for a long time. I've had my A7V for over 4 years before I had trouble with it at all. Epox...well, you see my sig, but these boards life seems to be counted in a matter of days or weeks. Overclocking? Abit or DFI...to hell with Epox. I don't care about the overclocking of a motherboard if it can't stand up more than a few weeks before keeling over. Personally, I rate ECS and Soyo over Epox...mainly because I've been able to run their motherboards without a hiccup for several months. I've tried several motherboards from ECS, Soyo and Epox, and it's consistantly been Epox that's had trouble. For all the bashing of ECS and Soyo vs. the praise for Epox, I have to wonder if some people aren't smoking something illegal.
 
Master [H] said:
Personally, I rate ECS and Soyo over Epox...
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Again...I did too. I'm suggesting that their newer stuff has ceased sucking to the extremes that it used to suck, and that they may in fact now be a viable low-cost choice.

Grudges over crappy hardware can last for a long time after the company has improved, I for one still have a thing against MSI over some crap they pulled maybe three years ago? I am starting to not hate Epox as much as I once did, and if any other fellow Epox-haters have any input -- based on Epox's "current" hardware -- I would be highly interested.
 
Well I'm in the minority here as well. I'll say Gigabyte. I think Gigabyte is probably the most stable and reliable non-overclock motherboard out there. Gigabyte is also starting to get better, as far as enthusiast boards with each Motherboard they manufacture.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
..Asus makes more boards than EpoX ..They've been doing it longer, have more models and are huge in the OEM market.
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At least a couple of your statements were correct.

And I didn't see where the OP was wondering about an OEM system or board.
 
MakubexGB said:
About the AMD or P4 issue, I would also suggest you go with a P4 considering what you do. Practically the only field AMD is better than Intel is gaming. Since you do much more stuff than only gaming a Pentium should serve you better, plus they also perform really well in gaming. Besides, a lot of the times the bottleneck is the video card and not the CPU, since most of the latest CPUs are powerful enough to handle today's games. As long as you get more than 60fps, your human eyes won't notice the difference. 100fps looks the same as 60fps to us. Here's a link to a review of the AMD Venice core where they compared it to other AMD CPUs with different cores as well to some Pentium 4 CPUs. You can see that Pentium performed better on mostly everything except for gaming:

AMD Venice Review: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-venice.html

IMO, you almost can't tell the difference between one CPU or the other while gaming, but when it comes to finishing tasks a few seconds faster, there you CAN notice the difference, as you can count the time yourself.

As for which motherboard to go with... I couldn't say as I've never had an EPoX or a Gigabyte mobo.
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There isnt a diffrence between intell/amd chips, amd has 64bit comerical proc's intell has 64bit server procs.......if you game go with an A64, if you dont, you can still just as well get an A64, or an intell.......Hyperthreading isnt what people think it is, they think its this marvioulos thing that you can rip cd's play games, while listening to music.......in theory it sounds cool, and its a good selling point, but the fact is, a good A64 proc can do the same......hell i burn cd's while playing games and havent had a problem on my AXP rig of all things........i would go with AMD cause first, they are rather cheap, second they dont produce an ass of heat like intel is notorious for, and amd has 64 bit processing as well as 32, so it can run win64, as well as xp......AMD64 is more future proof because of the 64bit

the dual core intell chips are the only future proof chips intell has....IMO (btw dont flame me cause this is all my opinion:p) amd has the dual core and the 64 chips for future proof but people just know Intel is more main stream and AMD is the underdog, gamers are the people who scream AMD and they are known for that......my advice, get an AMD, they are all around better and more future proof

and go with Epox, they are much more stable.....or just wait for the DFI nf4 agp board :p


soulsaver_8229
 
soulsaver_8229 said:
There isnt a diffrence between intell/amd chips, amd has 64bit comerical proc's intell has 64bit server procs.......if you game go with an A64, if you dont, you can still just as well get an A64, or an intell.......Hyperthreading isnt what people think it is, they think its this marvioulos thing that you can rip cd's play games, while listening to music.......in theory it sounds cool, and its a good selling point, but the fact is, a good A64 proc can do the same......hell i burn cd's while playing games and havent had a problem on my AXP rig of all things........i would go with AMD cause first, they are rather cheap, second they dont produce an ass of heat like intel is notorious for, and amd has 64 bit processing as well as 32, so it can run win64, as well as xp......AMD64 is more future proof because of the 64bit

the dual core intell chips are the only future proof chips intell has....IMO (btw dont flame me cause this is all my opinion:p) amd has the dual core and the 64 chips for future proof but people just know Intel is more main stream and AMD is the underdog, gamers are the people who scream AMD and they are known for that......my advice, get an AMD, they are all around better and more future proof

and go with Epox, they are much more stable.....or just wait for the DFI nf4 agp board :p


soulsaver_8229
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The Intel Pentium 4 600 series is EM64T and has the XD bit which is the same as AMD's NX bit. So that's as future proof as the AMD.

I can tell you that the AMD single core processors do not multi-task like a Pentium 4. Believe me. I've got both. I work on both.

In games the AMD Athlon 64 family whipes the floor with the whole Intel Pentium 4 family. In benchmark testing the 2800+ is better than 75% of the P4's. Assuming everything else in the systems are equal.

Theres no magic to HT, but it does work. It does make a difference in how the system responds under heavy load. Light multi-tasking, is fine on either. Really load up on both systems, and you'll see the difference.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
It does make a difference in how the system responds under heavy load. Light multi-tasking, is fine on either.
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Yep. There's stuff my 2.4C does better just because of that little virtualization trick. AMD has Pacifica coming which is the same trick (whether hyperthreading or Pacifica will do it better, don't know yet, but Intel sure beat AMD to the punch with that one). My Venice is waaay faster than my P4, but it's smoother on the P4 if I'm doing two high-load things at once.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
The Intel Pentium 4 600 series is EM64T and has the XD bit which is the same as AMD's NX bit. So that's as future proof as the AMD.

I can tell you that the AMD single core processors do not multi-task like a Pentium 4. Believe me. I've got both. I work on both.

In games the AMD Athlon 64 family whipes the floor with the whole Intel Pentium 4 family. In benchmark testing the 2800+ is better than 75% of the P4's. Assuming everything else in the systems are equal.

Theres no magic to HT, but it does work. It does make a difference in how the system responds under heavy load. Light multi-tasking, is fine on either. Really load up on both systems, and you'll see the difference.
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And ive been able to mess with both an AMD64 and a HT'ed 3.6 i think it is? p4, my friend who owns a computer store has both as his main rigs.......i can assure you other than gaming, i saw no real diffrence, maybe under heavy load......serriously, unless your in a 4-6 process multi tasking job, you arent gonna do that at home.....i like the ht'ed idea, once they get chips with 8 possiable threads would be great, but 1 more thead isnt gonna help.............much.......

soulsaver_8229
 
soulsaver_8229 said:
And ive been able to mess with both an AMD64 and a HT'ed 3.6 i think it is? p4, my friend who owns a computer store has both as his main rigs.......i can assure you other than gaming, i saw no real diffrence, maybe under heavy load......serriously, unless your in a 4-6 process multi tasking job, you arent gonna do that at home.....i like the ht'ed idea, once they get chips with 8 possiable threads would be great, but 1 more thead isnt gonna help.............much.......

soulsaver_8229
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Ain't gonna do that at home, eh?
Use windows file sharing to transfer large folders with small files... take a UT2004 installation for example... transfer it to your AMD64 rig and then browse the web, watch a movie... play a game, or simply organize your file system, how about encoding a divx movie from a series of VOBS you made and just try to listen to music... all of this is possible with two cpus/dual-core/Hyperthreading... but it's absolutely impossible with a single-cpu/core solution.
 
ok heres what i do at the same time with my xp2000+

play halo
websurf while halo server running for people
i have desktop sidebar with all options on
music playing
and i have yahoo messager with webcam on
and i run virus check/updates and spyware and such
while looking at pictures trying to sort them out

cpu gets right at around......65pct when i do all of that at the same time, memory is about 46pct, and i never cut my computer off unless changeing settings or downloaded something that needs it......

yes halo hicups, dosent lag, but hicups here and there music never lags/hicups, sites take a bit longer to load, but all in all it isnt bad.....

when intel chips get to 4-6 theads.......then ill be impressed and be like dam i think i should buy that.....untill then im fine with what i have, and people are buying into thier comercialization? <--wtf,

anyway.....this is my opinion, has nothing to do with fact, has to do with what i know and read, nothing will change my mind, i perfer AMD, simple as that, flame me, call me a fan boi......i had bad times with intel, havent had a bad time with amd as of yet and its just my opinion on the Hyperthreading......


soulsaver_8229
 
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