Epox BXB-S BX Dual Processor Slot-1

The Bad

Unfortunately the BXB-S is not the perfect motherboard, although it does come quite close.  The biggest flaw AnandTech found with the motherboard was the outright poor documentation.  There is an obvious lack of effort that was put into the documentation of the BXB-S, and it is truly sad when the included Adaptec SCSI documentation is more thorough and complete than the motherboard's User's Manual.  Although the BXB-S isn't exactly a starter's motherboard, you'll definitely want to make sure you know what you're doing when you're setting the board up as you'll get very little, if any help from the bundled User's Manual. 

The price Adaptec is charging for their integrated PCI SCSI solutions has gone up considerably in recent times, thus driving the price of motherboards with on-board SCSI up by astronomical amounts.  The price of the BXB-S is a very discouraging factor, however if you look at any dual processor motherboard with on-board SCSI, you're going to get a similar price, if not greater than the Epox BXB-S, simply because the Epox name apparently doesn't go for as much as say, the Tyan or Supermicro name.

The quality of the levers on the DIMM slots of the BXB-S could be improved, they can be easily broken, and in a server system where installing more RAM is an almost constant upgrade, you'll definitely want to be careful with doing so on the BXB-S.  Although this is nit-picking, when you create a motherboard as well rounded as the BXB-S, you have to be able to push Epox to improve even further, don't be surprised if the next dual processor board to come out of Epox's plants is even higher in quality than the first one.  Without a driving force to beget improvement, a manufacturer is without direction, luckily Epox won't be without direction in this case.

The final problem found with the BXB-S is the presence of only two CPU fan connectors by the processor slots, with more and more Pentium II Heatsink/Fan combos coming with two or more fans, two ports for two slots isn't enough anymore.  At the same time, the large Sanyo capacitors at the back of the second processor slot limit the size of the heatsink of the first processor, so be sure to get some accurate measurements before ordering a heatsink/fan combo for your dual Pentium II system (retail heatsink/fans fit fine).

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 0

• 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: Mushkin SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM; Memory Man SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64MB Mushkin PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 64MB Memory-Man PC100 SDRAM

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Web-Site: 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.

How I Tested

• Each benchmark was run a minimum of 2 times and a maximum of 5 times, if the motherboard failed to complete a single test within the 5 allocated test runs the OS/Software was re-installed on a freshly formatted Hard Drive and the BIOS settings were adjusted to prevent the test from failing again.  All such encounters were noted at the exact time of their occurrence.

• Business Winstone 98 & 3D Winbench 98 was run at each individually tested clock speed, if reliable scores were achieved with the first two test runs of the suite an average of the two was taken and recorded as the final score at that clock speed.  If the test system displayed erratic behavior while the tests were running or the results were incredibly low/high the tests were re-run up to 5 times and an average of all the test runs was taken and recorded at the final score at that clock speed

• All video tests were conducted using an AGP video accelerator

• No foreign drivers were present in the test system other than those required for the system to function to the best of its ability

• All foreign installation files were moved to a separate partition during the test as to prevent them from effecting the test results

• All tests were conducted at 1024 x 768 x 16-bit color

• Quake 2 tests were conducted at 800 x 600 x 16-bit color in Software Rendering Mode