EPoX 9NPA+SLI mainboard is based on the NVIDIA NF4 SLI chipset supporting 2 x PCI-E graphics card for best gaming performance. This mainboard supports the Socket 939 Athlon 64FX processors. It supports 1GHz HTT FSB, Dual Channel DDR400, 8 Channel Audio, 10 USB ports, 2 x PCI-E x 8 (or 1 x PCI-E x 16), GbE LAN, 1394, 6 SATA II RAID (4 by NV chipset, 2 others by Siliconimage) and 1394. 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).

In our test, we found that the performance is comparable to our other NF4 Ultra board when used in Normal mode. When we used it in SLI mode, it performs very well in DOOM3 and synthetic benchmarks when we compared to the Gigabyte GV-3D1 tested on the Gigabyte's own K8NXP-SLI mainboard.

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.

With these options. I tested it straight away when we got the board. 300 x 8 is not a problem with our FX-53. It works without any problems at all. I went on to find the maximum FSB the board. Lowering the HTT to 3x (600MHz), Async memory at 133MHz, Vcore at +0.05v, vdimm at 2.8v, vchipset at 1.8v, multipier at 6x, I managed to get it all stable and running well at 366 x 6 with memory running just above 200MHz FSB (DDR400). That is using the Gigabyte 3D cooler heatsink which isn't really made for overclocking. SuperPI and 3DMark2003 completes the test without any problems. Running it at 1:1, I can achieve DDR600 Cas 3, 8-4-4 running at 300x8. (See gallery for overclocking options)

Overall, if you are looking for a NF4 SLI board that overclocks, the EPoX 9NPA+SLI is definitely one of the boards worth consideration. The flashing LEDs next to the DIMM slots and the Blue leds on board looks extremely cool when placed in a casing. The only thing that we are troubled is that the board has a PCI-Ex1 slot which is a bit too close to the power connector. The other thing is that it only comes with a single Gigabit Ethernet port. Firewire is supported but only 1394a. The duct also takes up the space where the former Com1 and Parallel port were located. If you have older devices that uses COM port or LPT1 ports, you will have to install the external brackets which are not provided in the package we have.

Pricing (US)

Pricing (UK)

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Pros

• USB 2.0 
• NVRAID
• Firewire
• SATA II
• Firewall
• 8 ch audio
• SLI

Cons

• only 1394a
• Single GbE
• No COM/LPT1 port

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.