EPoX EP-9NPA+ Ultra is another NF4 Ultra board we test at OCW. This board offers an almost complete feature set which most users would love. They include sipport up to 10 x USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet with Firewall built in, 8 ch audio, 1394. It also comes with 2 IDE + 4 SATA ports for IDE/SATA RAID supported by the  chipset.

In our test, we found that the performance is comparable to our other NF4 Ultra board from Gigabyte. Both boards performs equally well. Compared to the ATi K8 board from MSI, the EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra is definitely a better choice not only in terms of performance but also in features.

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.

EPoX is well known for its overclockable boards. 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 3.1v, vchipset at 1.8v, multipier at 8x, I managed to get it all stable and running well at 310 x 8 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 at 310 x 8.
(See gallery for overclocking options)

We did another test and this time we are really impressed. I ran the board at CPU:RAM = 1:1 . I ran the board at 310x8, memory is thus at 310MHz = DDR 620 using the same pair of Corsair ram running CAS 3,8-4-4. It is amazing. Below is a screen shot. Using sisoft memory benchmark, the score is 7003/6921.

Overall, if you are looking for a NF4 ultra board that overclocks, the EPoX 9NPA+ is one of the choices to be considered. The only down side is that it only has one single Gigabit Ethernet port and the Firewire chip is only 1394a standard.

Pricing

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Pros

• 1394
• USB 2.0 
• Gigabit Ethernet
• IDE RAID + SATA RAID
• 8 ch audio.
• Overclocking features - voltage, fsb, multiplier etc
• Diagnostic LED

Cons

• Single Gigabit Ethernet
• 1394b

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.