EPoX 9NDA3+ NF3 Ultra Socket 939 Mainboard Review (1) Bluetooth 13 Aug 2004
9NDA3+
EPoX 9NDA3+ is probably the latest
NF3 Ultra offering from EPoX. In fact, so far we haven't seen much NF3-Ultra
boards in the market so far. EPoX 9NDA3+, like its Socket 754 brother, has a
feast of features for the users.
This board comes with 4 USB + 4 USB
(thru external bracket). It single chipset supports PATA IDE connecting up to 4
IDE devices to ATA-133. The NF3 Ultra chipset also supports two SATA ports. Two
other RAID ports are supported by the onboard Marvell 88SR3020 SATA PHY. All
SATA ports comes with RAID 0,1,0+1 support.
EP-9NDA3+ offers the industry’s only native Gigabit Ethernet networking
solution, providing over 200% more networking bandwidth when compared to older
PCI-based Gigabit Ethernet solutions, while using 20% less CPU overhead in the
process. EP-9NDA3+ also provides
hardware-optimized Firewall solution,
effectively protecting personal PC from network level hacking attacks and other
common security risks without sacrificing a lot of networking performance. This
solution provides many anti-hacking features, including logging capability,
domain name filtering, and remote manageability for experienced users and IT
professionals. EP-9NDA3+ also supports AMD
Cool-n-Quiet technology
for energy savings and quieter operation.
The board also comes with on board
Gigabit Ethernet with Cicada CIS8201 Gigabit Ethernet PHY. Two 1394 ports with
up to 400Mbps bandwidth from onboard VIA VT6307 1394 controller. There is 8 ch
audio via the ALC855 chipset.
The PowerBIOS provides excellent over
clocking features and they include support of asynchronous FSB/DIMM timing mode
and 1MHz fine tuning on AGP clock. It also support CPU clock (up to 400MHz FSB)
and voltage, AGP voltage, DIMM frequency and voltage settings.
Specs
CPU Socket:
Support Socket-939 based AMD Athlon-64/ Athlon-64 FX up to 3600+ with 2.0GTs
Hyper Transport
System Memory:
Four 184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMM sockets
Support single-sided or double-sided 2.5v DDR-333/400 DIMMs with dual channel
architecture in 128/256/512Mb technologies
Support Asynchronous clocking mode between FSB and DIMM
Support up to 4 GB system memory
Chipset：
nVidia nForce3 Ultra AGPset
Expansion Slots:
Five PCI connectors compliant with PCI v2.2
One 1.5v AGP- 8X/4X connector compliant with AGP v3.0
USB:
Eight USB connectors compliant with USB2.0 from embedded USB controller (4
connectors at rear panel)
P-ATA IDE:
Two IDE ports (up to 4 IDE devices) with UDMA-33, ATA-66/100/133 support from
embedded IDE controller
S-ATA RAID:
Two S-ATA ports from nForce3 Ultra with up to 150MBps bandwidth
Two S-ATA ports from Marvell 88SR3020 SATA PHY.
With RAID 0,1,0+1 support
LAN:
1Gb Ethernet from onboard Cicada CIS8201 Gigabit Ethernet PHY.
100Mb Ethernet from onboard Realtek RTL8201BL Ethernet PHY.(Colayout)
1394a:
Two 1394 ports with up to 400Mbps bandwidth from onboard VIA VT6307 1394
controller
Audio:
Selectable 2, 6 or 8-CH audio from onboard Realtek ALC85x AC’97 v2.3 compliant
CODEC.
Support Aux-In, CD-In, S/PDIF-in and S/PDIF-out
Optical and Coaxial S/PDIF_Out available on rear panel
Rear panel audio jacks configuration;
For 2-channel mode; stereo Line-out (green), stereo Line-In (blue) and Mic-In
(pink)
For 6-channel mode; Front stereo-out(green), Rear stereo-out (blue), Center and
Sub-woofer (pink)
For 8-channel mode; stereo Line-In (blue), Mic-In (pink), Front stereo-out(green),
Rear stereo-out (black), Center and Sub-woofer (Orange) and Side stereo-out(gray)
Support Front panel audio for Mic-In and stereo Line-out only. (Front panel
Line-out electrically shared with rear panel Line-out)
Support Auto Jack Sensing for fool-proof audio device installation
I/O:
Onboard Winbond W83627THF LPC I/O controller
Legacy peripheral interface for PS/2 keyboard & mouse, FDD, Parallel, Two
Serial, Game and IrDA (v1.0 compliant), …
Support Hardware Monitoring function such as fan speed monitoring and CPU
temperature sensing.
Support Smart FAN Control and Intelligent Fan speed control for chassis Fan
BIOS:
4Mb Flash EEPROM with Award Plug & Play BIOS
Support ACPI S3 (Suspend To RAM) mode in ACPI compliant O/S
Support EZ Boot for fast bootable device selection
Support Magic Health for system hardware status report during system boot-up
Support Cool ‘n Quiet
Special Features:
◎Support KBPO (Keyboard Power ON) function
◎Support Wake-On-LAN by PME
◎Support USB resume in S3
◎Onboard Post-Port LED display
◎Support AGP-Master for protection against improper AGP card insertion
◎PowerBIOS for excellent over clocking features:
Support Asynchronous FSB/DIMM timing mode and 1MHz fine tuning on AGP clock
Support BIOS adjustable CPU clock and voltage, AGP voltage, DIMM frequency and
voltage settings.
Powerful utilities for Windows:
USDM (Unified System Diagnostic Manager) for system hardware monitoring
Magic Flash for BIOS update without requiring DOS flash utility and bootable
diskette
Magic Screen for personal bootup screen design
Useful software bundle:
Symantec Ghost, Norton Personal Firewall and Trend PC-Cillin for system backup
and security
Form Factor:
305mm x 245mm x 40mm, ATX Size
Accessories
User’s manual, IO shield
CD for drivers, utilities and bundle software
Round IDE & FDD cables.
S-ATA data and power cable.
Game + COM Bracket cable.
