Our own Jonathan Hung has put together a review of the EPoX EP-9NPA+ SLI nForce 4 SLI AMD Motherboard If you are planning to build a new SLI system you will want to look this one over.

The EPoX EP-9NPA+SLI is a very strong contender in the increasingly crowded SLI market. What sets this board apart from the rest is the great feature set and the cheaper price. Currently, the EP-9NPA+SLI is found on PriceGrabber at $150 which is $25 cheaper than the Asus A8N-SLI, DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI, and the ABIT Fatal1ty AN8. Also the EPoX features are useful without being bloated or superfluous. I think in the regard of price, performance, and features EPoX is superior to all the other “premium” boards.

Introduction & Specs

EPoX hits the market with a well-packaged nForce 4 SLI for AMD Socket 939. It’s cheaper than other SLI boards and has many great features. So does EPoX have a contender on their hands? We also have 6600GT SLI performance numbers too!

Ever since Ryan reviewed the nForce 4 SLI back in October 2004, I’ve been eager to get my hands on one for a review. Of course since then Ryan has reviewed SLI boards from Asus, Gigabyte and DFI and we’ve seen that all these boards perform roughly the same. So what differentiates one offering from another is their price, features, and service/warranty. It is for this reason I’m looking forward to reviewing the EPoX EP-9NPA+SLI. The EP-9NPA+SLI is priced cheaper than many higher end boards, and knowing EPoX’s reputation you can expect a lot of overclocking features too. So let’s see if EPoX has a winner on their hands with their top AMD board.

Specifications

The following are just the basic tehcnical specs, which does not include any of EPoX’s extra stuff and special features. If I listed those here, it’d spoil the surprise, right?

EPoX EP-9NPA+SLI Specs
Chipset	NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI
Bus Frequency	2x-5x 200MHz HT (400MHz – 1000MHz)
Memory	DDR 400MHz
Memory Slots	4 slots
Memory Capacity	4GB
Drive Connectivity	4x ATA100 IDE 6x SATA II (RAID 0, 1)
Audio	Realtek ALC850 (AC’97 v2.3 Codec)
Analog Audio Connectivity	Front, Surround, Rear, Center / Subwoofer, Line-in, Microphone
Digital Audio Connectivity	SPDIF Optical & Coax Output
Network	1 x Vitesse VSC8201 Gigabit LAN controller
USB 2.0	10x connections (4x rear panel, 2x on bracket, 4x spare)
Firewire IEEE1394	2x IEEE1394a connections via bundled bracket