A Closer Look

The box was one of the first surprises for me. Being used to the corrugated plastic boxes Epox have used in the past it seemed quite unusual to be faced with an ordinary cardboard affair. While it was nice to not be met with some kind of futuristic mode of transport or humanoid lifeform on the front I'm not sure I know quite what the Dinosaur skeleton has to do with anything! That's assuming it is a Dinasaur of course, it could be a dog or a horse for all I know, biology never was my strong suit.

And as I hinted at on the previous page the bundle is somewhere between basic and just plain mean with even the IDE cable limited to one. You can't knock Epox for wanting to keep the price down without sacrificing on quality or performance but with potential buyers getting accustomed to very similar performance levels between motherboards from different vendors, those who don't know of the Epox reputation certainly aren't going to be tempted by the value added side of things.

Slipping the board from the box was almost like I'd stepped through a time warp it's so long since I've handled a good, old fashioned green motherboard. The illusion was completed by the fact that the COM and game ports were located on a seperate bracket just like in the bad old days, though the reasons for this will become clear shortly. This aside the motherboard itself looks very clean an uncluttered for a 6 PCI slot model, no doubt helped by the lack of "extras" like Serial-ATA and RAID.

Click for a Larger Image

In terms of its layout I'm going to resist the temptation to knock the 8RGA+ for its ATX power connector placement. There isn't a motherboard manufacturer on the market who isn't aware that reviewers will moan about power connectors positioned as these are so there's clearly a good reason for doing it. You may also notice that unlike a lot of nForce2 boards Epox have opted for a three phase power sechematic in addition to the square, four pin auxilliary power connector which helps heep the CPU and memory fed with power while coping with the additional demands from the integral graphics core if it's being used.

Slightly less forgiveable though is the choice to position the IDE connectors parallel to the boards edge. Doing this means at worst you won't be able to use longer cards in PCI slots 2, 3 and 4 or at best you'll have to fold the IDE cables flat and let the card/s sit on top of them assuming there's enough clearance. Again I'm pretty sure Epox were quite aware of this issue when they OK'd the board at the design stage rather than it being some kind of naive mistake, Epox are a bit too cute for that, it's just a shame there wasn't the option to have them at 90 degrees to their current orientation and aligned with the gaps between the PCI slots. If I'm going to be picky the IDE connectors are also postioned quite low on the board which will no doubt concern one or two full tower case users who have their drives installed high up.

The P80P Diagnostic LED is as familiar on Epox boards as pictures of that bearded, fat guy are at Christmas and for good reason.....it works. It may well have started life as a simple diagnostic tool for Epox engineers to test sample boards with and it may have the unfortunate handicap of being a two digit unit that's dealing with three digit error codes but even so a generation of Epox users have come to rely on it for at-a-glance trouble shooting. I'm a little surprised it hasn't evolved a little considering some manufacturers are testing the water with "talking" BIOS error flagging and other more advanced techniques but despite having shrunk slightly the principle has remained unchanged since its introduction. Still, it it ain't broke why fix it?

Socket clearance is impressive and should facilitate the largest of heatsinks, plus it was good to see the four holes were present and correct for those wanting to run with something a little more exotic for cooling their CPU.

And another increasingly comon feature is the use of protective plastic sheet beneath the socket lugs on both sides. This is to protect the delicate circuitry should your screwdriver slip while fitting or removing your heat sink. Personally I find it incredible that we're still using such a primitive method for securing heat sinks but that's a rant for another day.

The passive cooling supplied on the IGP (or North Bridge if you still work in old money) is a nice anough looking bolt-on but I doubt it's very efficient. Those fins machined into it will certainly increase surface area and improve heat dissipation but the fact that they go right through to the bottom also means much less of the sink is actually in contact with the IGP to begin with. You can't help but feel that active cooling would have been a wiser choice. The box does list the optional MagicLight (LED illuminated) fan but quite where you can get it from I'm not sure.

Another feature that used to be a rarity but which is now fairly standard equipment is an AGP retention mechanism and the 8RGA+ comes with the traditional swinging clip.

ALC650 Features

• High-performance CODEC with high S/N ratio (>90 dB)
  
• 18-bit ADC and 20-bit DAC resolution
  
• Compliant with AC'97 2.2 specifications
  
• 18-bit stereo full-duplex CODEC with independent and variable sampling rate
  
• 4 analog line-level stereo inputs with 5-bit volume control: LINE_IN, CD, VIDEO, AUX
  
• 2 analog line-level mono inputs: PC_BEEP, PHONE_IN
  
• Mono output with 5-bit volume control
  
• Stereo output with 5-bit volume control
  
• 6 channel slot selectable DAC output for multi-channel applications
  
• 2 MIC inputs, which are software selectable
  
• Power management capabilities
  
• 3D Stereo enhancement
  
• Embedded 50mW/20ohm OP at front LINE output
  
• External amplifier power down capability
  
• Digital S/PDIF output
  
• Digital S/PDIF input (ALC650 Rev. E or later)
  
• No external crystal/clock required
  
• Supports 1 general purpose I/O pin
  
• Power supply: digital: 3.3V; analog: 5V/3.3V
  
• Standard 48-pin LQFP package
  
  

RTL8801B Features

• PCs and add-on cards
  
• Fully supports provisions of IEEE1394-1995 for a High-Performance Serial Bus and the P1394a draft 2.0 standard
  
• Provides two fully compliant cable ports at 100/200/400 Mbps
  
• Fully compliant with Open HCI requirements
  
• Full P1394a additional function support
  
• Cable power presence monitoring
  
• Separate cable bias (TPBIAS) and driver termination voltage supply for each port
  
• Encode and decode functions included for data-strobe bit level encoding
  
• Supports LPS/link-on pin for PHY-link interface
  
• Incoming data resynchronized to local clock
  
• A single 24.576 MHZ crystal provides transmit/receive data at 100/200/400 Mbps and LLC clock at 49.152 Mbps
  
• Adaptive equalizer
  
• Easily configured as a repeater
  
• Single 3.3V power supply
  
• 48-pin LQFP package
  

Introduction

BIOS