EPoX 8NPA SLI mainboard is based on the NVIDIA NF4 SLI chipset supporting 2 x PCI-Ex8 graphics card for best gaming performance. This mainboard supports the Socket 754 processors. It supports 800MHz HTT FSB, 2GB DDR400, 6 Channel Audio, 10 USB ports, 2 x PCI-E x 8, GbE LAN, 1394, 4 SATA II RAID. Embedded Firewall with Active Armour comes with the chipset and it can be enabled for a more secured computing environment.

There are also abundant overclocking features built onboard in the PowerBIOS. They include ram timing adjustments, voltage adjustments (vdimm up to 3.1v, Vcore). FSB up to 400MHz, Maxmemclk etc (see gallery for more).

With this first S754 SLI board, we were surprised by the performance of this board. With a 3400+ processor, we tested it against S939 SLI boards with a FX-53 which is clocked higher. Whether in Normal or SLI mode, the board performs very well in benchmarks in 3Dmark03/05. In games like DOOM3, we see a dip, this could be due to the fact that such games would run better on a dual channel architecture boards.

The board comes with lots of overclocking options which you would not want to miss out. Most overclockers will be delighted to find the voltage adjustments of DIMM up to 3.1v, vchipset, FSB range up to 400MHz, multiplier from 8x to 25x. (See gallery for more). ASync 166,133,100 operation. HTT frequency can be set to 1GHz, 800MHz, 600Mhz, 400 MHz but width is fixed and not adjustable. Vchipset voltage can go up to 1.8v as well. Unfortunately, there are some issues with the BIOS, the ram timings seems to be FIXed at CAS 2, 5-2-2,1T no matter how I set it in the BIOS.  I shall test the o/c when I receive a newer BIOS.

Overall, if you have been cursing and swearing why you bought the S754 processor at a premium, all is not lost. EPoX comes to the rescue with the first board that supports SLi on S754 board. According to EPoX, it targets the board as an entry level SLi system for users who upgrades one at a time. Users could also pair it up with the cheaper Sempron processor and overclock it to reach the speeds of a 2.4G system as most of the newer semprons seems to be super overclockable. If that is the case, you might end up paying less for a SLi system (thru overclocking the processor).

Pricing (US)

Pricing (UK)

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Pros

• USB 2.0 
• NVRAID
• Firewire
• SATA II
• Firewall
• SLI

Cons

• No 1394
• Single GbE

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.